Out of the Mire
…because thriving is the goal
To Blame or Not To Blame
Truth is not easy. Telling it, avoiding it, denying it, seeing it. Sometimes it isn’t clear. The truth, from my perspective, might look wildly different from someone else’s perspective. Perspectives. I do understand this.
Perspective-taking is the bedrock of empathy. Before you can enter into someone’s emotional experience, you must see their experience or situation from their perspective. Perspective-taking is a learned skill. For some, it comes naturally. Other people struggle with this. I suspect that one reason perspective-taking is difficult is that it confronts our self-perception. Let me explain.
Last night, my soon-to-be ex-husband invited me out to dinner. He chose a “foodie” restaurant. He had made reservations. In fact, it was our city’s Restaurant of the Year in 2012 as well as a James Beard semi-finalist. It was a carnivore’s paradise what with beefy, lumberjack-like servers toting around expansive platters of charcuterie and glasses of mead. I knew I was in for a rough ride. I don’t eat a lot of meat, and I rarely if ever eat pork. My ex looked to be in heaven. I ordered a glass of wine–something I rarely do.
Everything went smoothly until he leaned in and asked me a direct question about a situation in my life. I felt a bit cornered and started stuffing my mouth with huge pieces of salmon in hopes that it would prevent me from speaking or, at least, give me time to formulate an answer. I sucked down my wine quickly. He noticed. “Is it that hard to answer me?” he asked in a smug tone. “Try to see things from my perspective.”
“Try to see things from my perspective.”
I stayed married to him for as long as I did because I could see things from his perspective and lost sight of my own. I could only see things from his perspective for a long time because everything had become about him. His narrative had to change. His perspective mattered, but his self-perception was bolstering his perspective. His self-perception needed a shift.
Fortified by wine and four months of intense therapy, I determined to assert myself.
“I understand your perspective actually. I can fully empathize with you. It is time, however, that you see things from my perspective. Do you know why my therapy appointments go on for so long?”
“Not really.”
“Because I am a victim of domestic violence. That is how I have been labeled. It has been the goal of my therapist to make sure that I am safe and in a healthy environment. That I would be able to self-advocate.”
He looked stunned.
“When your wife has to have surgery followed up by four months of rehab in order to learn to walk again because of something that you did to her, whether it was motivated by rage or unmanaged anxiety, that is physical abuse. And physical abuse inflicted by a partner is domestic violence. You committed a felony when you came at me with that knife. I am faced with yet another surgery in one month because of injuries you inflicted upon me over the course of many years. It’s corrective. No, it was not intentional. Nonetheless, you knew. You blamed it on your anxiety. That was up to you to address. I should not have had to pay for your mental instability, but I did. You do not get to be around and act as a support person for me when I’m in recovery from a surgery that you, in fact, caused! That’s crazymaking. I get to choose my support people. You need to start seeing this from my perspective, too.”
I don’t think he can. To see himself as a man capable of abuse is too much. His self-perception and his perspective are interwoven. He wants me to continually look at the separation and dissolution of the marriage from his perspective. I can do that, and this is where my empathy for him enters. I am willing to look at my mistakes; however, I want to avoid blame. Danny Lee Silk’s interpretation of blame makes sense to me: “Blame is simply giving away our power, power to direct and change our own lives, to someone else. When we blame someone, we have said, “I cannot change unless you change. I cannot forgive unless you change. I cannot love unless you change”. This fits.
He expressed some blame last night. He was unable to accomplish certain things because of me. I am very interested to see just how deep that rabbit hole goes. I don’t blame him. Ultimately, I have always been responsible for my happiness which is why I’m choosing this path. It’s very difficult to create a rewarding and fulfilling life with someone who not only won’t participate in sustaining their own happiness but also blames you for their lack of it.
Blame is not a part of my emotional repertoire at this point. It makes us victims–victims of others and even ourselves. I want empowerment. And change.
Blame has to go.
Do You Like Receiving Compliments?
If you, like me, would rather artificially inseminate a stallion than receive a compliment, then this article is for you. Here’s a quote:
“…receiving praise from others when we feel negatively about ourselves elicits discomfort because it conflicts with our existing belief system. If we believe we’re truly undesirable, hearing compliments about how attractive we are will feel jarring and inauthentic. If we believe we’re unintelligent, someone lavishing us with praise about how smart we are will feel more like a taunt than a compliment. And if we’re convinced we’re incapable of success, receiving praise about our how capable we are can feel like a set-up for future heartbreak and disappointment.” (Winch)
No, I am in no way filled with self-loathing. This is about self-perception. We all may have areas where our self-perception doesn’t line up with the truth. Better still, we might know that our self-perception is off, and yet we don’t know what to do about it. A rather stereotypical example of this might be the supermodel who doesn’t believe that she’s beautiful or sexy. Here is a woman paid large sums of money to trade on her phenotype all the while perceiving herself to be unattractive. The world holds her up as an icon of female sexuality and beauty while she feels like an awkward kid on the inside. Her self-perception in no way lines up with how others view her or with what might be a more objective reality. Our self-perception does not necessarily have to agree with other people’s perception of us. Wouldn’t it be a welcome change, however, if our self-perception were based on a more objective reading of the truth?
What if, for example, we were able to better receive compliments around behavior or doing? “Wow! You did that so well! I love that!” Many of us struggle to believe that we can do anything right at all or are so perfectionistic that nothing is ever good enough. Receiving compliments around our efforts, therefore, produces feelings of great discomfort in us because another person’s perception of our efforts simply does not line up with our own. A sudden urge to hide (shame) might come forward, and we may become self-deprecating: “Oh no, it’s not that good. Really, there are so many things I need to fix there.”
This dynamic might also be at play when compliments are directed at our appearance: “Oh, you look so nice! I love that blouse on you. It’s so flattering.” If you are feeling less than attractive, then a compliment like this might make your day! Or, it might feel jarring as the article suggests: “How can she see me as attractive when I’m so clearly not?” In a way, it produces feelings of confusion and lends itself to a weird kind of crazymaking. Cognitive dissonance is afoot here.
Why is this worth discussing? When we begin to emerge from dysfunctional relationships, we may not yet have insight into the beliefs that we picked up along the way. We may sense that we do not feel like “our old selves”, and we may wonder why we feel so differently. Self-perception is a big topic, and it’s worth looking at as you build your life. It’s also worth observing how you feel when others compliment and notice you as they can act as a kind of measure for your self-perception and, hence, your self-esteem and present shame experience. Do you like and welcome compliments? Do you appreciate an ego boost? Are you able to receive compliments around your behavior and efforts, or is this difficult? Are you able to receive compliments around your appearance which links into your sexuality? Is it easier to receive compliments from your own gender as opposed to the opposite? For me, I find it easier to receive compliments from women than from men. This is worth noting. How do you feel when a person of the opposite gender compliments you? Do you crave compliments?
None of these questions are meant to garner self-judgment. They are like dropping breadcrumbs to aid in gaining insight into whether or not our self-perception is accurate. When a life is in transition or even in turmoil, doing small self-inventories can be very helpful in gaining momentum to move forward and jumpstart a healing process.
For further insight:
Why Some People Hate Receiving Compliments by Guy Winch Ph.D
Therapy Tuesday: A Case Study in Chasing Trauma
It finally happened. Therapy finally sucked. I cried. It was hard. This is when you know that you are going to do some real work. This is why you are there.
I was given homework last week. I was to reflect on why receiving compliments was so hard for me. I can receive compliments from women for the most part: “Jules, what a nice pie! What a nice job on that _________!” That’s easy enough. How about this? “Your hair looks good!” That’s easy because I can always defer to my stylist: “Thank you! My stylist always does such a great job.” Or this? “Those jeans look really good on you!” I can even deflect that one: “Oh, thanks! I think it’s the cut. Gap makes some pretty decent jeans. I think this one is extra flattering.”
But, receiving a compliment from a man? Well, now, that’s just not the same: “You look so sexy in that skirt.” I stare wide-eyed. “You’ve got great legs.” I think I’ll never wear a skirt again, I think to myself. “You smell amazing.” Would it be okay to adopt a no bathing policy? “I could stare into your eyes for hours.” Sunglasses. All the time. That’s the ticket. “You have beautiful hair.” You know, Sinead O’Connor had such an edgy look. I might adopt it. I bet I could pull it off.
Sexual compliments? Oh, no no no no. Nope. “You are such a great kisser.” Uh…”I love your body.” Uh…”I want to _______ because your ______ is so amazing.” Let’s not and say you did, okay? In fact, I’ll be contacting the witness protection program now. Take one last look at my ________ because it’s running away now. Fainting goat doesn’t even begin to cover what happens to me. I’m fairly certain that the fairy tale Sleeping Beauty was inspired by me, the sexual narcoleptic. Compliment me in bed and I go stiff and fall asleep.
I am exaggerating to make a point while making fun of myself, but there is some truth here. I really do not know how to properly receive compliments from men particularly if the man is attracted to me. If there is any sexual context to a compliment, then I freeze, feel violated, and want to flee the scene. This is a problem, and I want to solve the problem. This is what we talked about in therapy today. Did we find the root of the problem? Yes. Was I surprised by it? Yes.
I was very surprised by the origin of my reaction although I need not have been. Trauma weaves itself into our brains. It’s hard to figure out where it all goes until we start living our lives to the fullest. Suddenly, we hit a wall. Repeatedly. “I wonder why I can’t get over this hurdle?” or “My response does not match the size of this problem. I am overreacting here.” When I see this pattern, I tend to think that I might be having a trauma-based reaction. Surely enough, my inability to accept a compliment and even enter into any kind of flirting with a man is rooted in a trauma. This is noteworthy. Why? This trauma is twenty years-old.
It occurred when I was in captivity after being abducted. It was a sexual torture scenario involving extreme conditioning in order to produce compliance in me. This process is known by human traffickers as “breaking in”. My appearance and sexual attractiveness were very important to the man who abducted me since I was going to be put up for auction. My compliance was equally important. So, he spent a lot of time conditioning me in various ways to be compliant. One way in which he did this was to make me lie down on my back, hands by my side, completely naked, while he rubbed lotion all over me for as long as he wanted. During this exercise, he would comment on my body and all-over appearance. He would compliment me. I would keep my eyes closed tightly unless he told me to keep them open. I would try to tune him out as much as I could, but it was harder than one would think. Of all the things that I endured, this is one of the things that I hated the most. He would tell me to act like I enjoyed it. I never could. I could never pretend that I liked it. I hated him. He used very explicit language with me, and those words felt very shaming and humiliating to me.
For some reason, my brain has linked this experience with men, in general, paying me compliments. This is what was discovered in therapy today. I had no idea that the two events were coupled together. Separating from my soon-to-be ex-husband has unearthed latent trauma and brought it to the forefront. This is very good. You want to know what’s lurking beneath the surface. You want to find the connections in order to sever them.
If another person enters your life, for example, who challenges these hidden beliefs, it might be difficult. In my case, if a man came along and began praising me, complimenting me, and the like, I would be challenged a great deal, and this could be triggering. The thing to do then would be to chase down those triggers rather than avoid compliments or relationships. We want to challenge our false beliefs and unhook those biologically based traumatic memories. Yes, they did happen to us. Yes, those traumas were powerful, but that was then. This is now, and our brain needs to know that. I need to know as deeply as I can know that when a man pays me the most benign of compliments that he does not intend to drag me off to make me lie down against my will so that he can rub lotion all over me in preparation for selling me. That’s absurd, but, because I did experience this in the past, my brain thinks that it’s a real possibility again.
So, how does one untangle this? My session ended, and I was left to contain my emotions and tears. I have experience with EMDR, containment, and trauma-based therapies. I might attempt to use my imagination to create new scenarios in my mind to separate the original trauma from the present, and I know at least one person whom I can enlist to help me in this endeavor. My therapist and I, however, will have to come up with strategies next week to address this. I want this trauma back where it belongs–in the past. I want to respond appropriately in the present. I want my voice back, and I will achieve this.
We often have to chase down our trauma to be fully in the present and revisit old ruins–climb the beanstalks and slay the very old giants as it were–if we want to be the people who we know we really are. Healing from trauma is not a fairy tale. You don’t have to wait for someone to kiss you awake. You just have to be willing to try. And keep trying. Every day.
Healthy Assertiveness
Eight years ago after I had completed my epic three-year life and personality overhaul aka three years of psychotherapy, my therapist, a certified life coach in addition to being a therapist, changed his approach. We left the therapeutic approach behind and entered into coaching, a starkly different experience. I likened it to being slapped in the face for thirty minutes once a week.
The cognitive work was done. I knew what I needed to know. The remaining trauma work would have to emerge as life happened. It was a weird feeling, at the time, to know that my foundation was complete. I could go on to build something. Finally.
For the record, life coaching is 100% harder than therapy because it’s all on you. It was a very difficult paradigm shift but a worthwhile one. I recommend it to everyone. One of my goals in life coaching was to better learn assertiveness. I am still working on that goal. I am pleasantly assertive on behalf of other people, but I still find it a struggle when I must assert myself on behalf of myself. Asking for a divorce, however, is most likely the most assertive thing I’ve ever done, and that changed everything for me.
During my marriage, I tolerated a lot of bad behavior and mistreatment. Even abuse at times. What I have discovered is that when you are in a dysfunctional system, it is extremely difficult to get a proper perspective on your identity, your capabilities, reality, and possibilities for your future. The truth becomes skewed, and you become turned around. It’s akin to getting lost in a labyrinth. One day you look up and around and wonder how you got there, and then the panic sets in. How do you get out? Can you get out? How can you self-advocate when you don’t even know where you are anymore? How can you fight for yourself when you don’t even know who you are within this family system and dynamic? Everyone seems to have a point of view and doesn’t mind telling you what you should do. “Leave.” “Get a lawyer.” “You’re a battered woman.” “You’re complicit in your own abuse.” “You’re passive.” I’ve heard all these things, and, in the meantime, you can’t hear anything but the sound of the metaphorical water drowning you. You are just trying to survive and figure it out while people come at you with accusatory, pointing fingers. “You aren’t good enough. You are a bad example. You are too much. You are not enough.”
Once you begin escaping the oppressive dynamics of dysfunctional family systems and relationships, it becomes much easier to see where you have been victimized in big and small ways. Even aggressive advice-giving by well-meaning people can feel like added victimization because it is, at a minimum, invalidating and undermining. Men, women, and children in abusive environments need support rather than judgment. The ‘should’ statements do not validate or assume competence:
- “You should not be tolerating that.”
- “You should be leaving.”
- “You should be doing better than that.”
- “You should be making better choices.”
- “You should be a better parent than that.”
- “You should be learning from those mistakes.”
What if, as my therapist posed, one is doing the best that one can in a situation but is also aiming to do better? This is a DBT (dialectical behavior therapy) assumption: I am doing the best I can right now, but I also need to learn to do better. This allows for validation in the now and room for growth as well. It is a present/future mindset rather than a paradigm rooted in regret and constant looking back.
What I have found is that I am much more aware of relational bullshit (RBS), so to speak, now that I am leaving my marriage than I was before. Oh, I knew that it was there. I just didn’t know what to do about it. I was already tolerating so much RBS in my relationship with my husband that I had little energy left to deal with it in my relationships with other people; and this, I think, comes into play when we are faced with being assertive.
A great example of this is my experience with the Grumpy Barista. I order a fancy coffee drink, and Grumpy Barista not only makes it improperly but also refuses to correct her error. I stammer and fidget all the while attempting to ask for her to do her job while she gives me the Death Glare. That’s one end of the Assertiveness Spectrum. The other end might go something like this: “You will make my coffee properly, asshole, because I paid for that coffee, and you are paid to make my coffee! So, don’t you stand there and look at me like I just asked you to babysit my kids. You go back there and make my drink the right way, you understand me?” What might the middle of the spectrum look like? “I did not order this drink. Would you please correct your error and make the coffee drink that I paid for? Thank you.”
When all of your energy is being used to survive your primary relationship, self-advocating goes out the window. Becoming a doormat feels like the only option. Or, conversely, letting your amygdala rule the show is the other option because some part of you needs to step in and provide protection since no one else will. Consequently, you end up with extreme behaviors. You either bend over and take it (like I tend to do), or you dish it out before anyone can even blink twice at you. This makes it very hard to have healthy interactions, healthy relationships, and engage in truth-telling and truth-seeing.
One of the goals of a good therapeutic and life coaching relationship is to learn at what places in your life you are occupying extreme positions and then move to the middle. For me, I was reactionary due to PTSD; I would freeze. I did not know how to properly self-advocate. I would see the improper behavior but not know how to respond. Some people come out with both guns blazing. I would appear to do nothing. I would take it. This is why those toxic, judgmental ‘should’ statements are so damaging. Oftentimes, people say them to attempt to motivate others to take action: “You should do something!” What is not understood is that perceived passivity is often an honest reaction. It is the sympathetic nervous system’s response to stress manifesting itself as a freeze response or even a flight response. Not everyone has a fight response. I do not when it comes to self-advocacy. I do, however, for other people.
We unlearn our latent freeze/flight/fight responses over time and practice true self-advocacy through mindfulness and in validating environments and relationships. Dismantling the sympathetic nervous system’s tyranny over our mind and body is as simple as learning deep breathing exercises and as complicated as utilizing that skill every time, and this requires a developed self-awareness and sense of safety that come with increased safe relationships in our lives accompanied by a sense that we are capable of making good choices for ourselves. We are capable. We are strong. We are competent.
Healthy assertiveness comes, I believe, as healthy relationships increase and validating environments grow. We are allowed to try and fail, and then try again. The good news here is that we have so much more influence over these elements than we probably ever believed we did.
Resources:
Relaxed and Contented: Activating the Parasympathetic Wing of Your Nervous System
Therapy Tuesday: It’s Not Your Fault
Last Monday, my husband asked if he could take me out to lunch. I immediately felt a mild dread bloom in my stomach. We have an awkward and unusual living situation. We have stated that we no longer want to be married. We both know that the next step in moving toward not being married is separation. He, therefore, lives in the basement and will continue to live there until he moves out. This makes for a very weird situation. It made for an even weirder car ride to our lunch venue.
We arrived at the restaurant and were seated. I already knew what I wanted to order but pretended not to know by looking at the menu. He put down his menu and said, “So, I just wanted to check in with you. How are you doing with all the changes going on? Are you doing alright?”
Stop. Don’t pass go. What?! Since when did he ask empathetic questions? I felt like I had been transplanted into an alternate reality. I did not trust it. I redirected immediately.
“I’m okay. Tell me how you are doing. You are alone downstairs a lot now.”
“I’m fine. I just don’t like change.”
That felt like an answer consistent with the man I know. I wanted to help him reframe his situation if the element of change in his situation was the primary stressor. So, I told him a story about a man my friend knows.
“So, Alice knows this guy. He works in the IT department of one of the big companies in town. You have probably met him. Anyway, he is very successful in his job. He just lacks a strong social drive yet he is not on the autism spectrum. Sometimes, according to him, he will get an urge to try dating. He will feel a pang of something like loneliness. An urge to couple, I guess. So, he’ll go on a date. And, in the middle of the date, he’ll look across the table at the woman and think, ‘Why am I doing this? I don’t like this at all. This is a waste of time. I get nothing out of this. This is more trouble than it’s worth.’ And, he won’t go on another date again for a long time. He does play video games, and he forms virtual relationships in that context. Those virtual relationships seem to satisfy whatever need he has. Does any of this feel familiar to you or resonate with you?”
He looked thoughtful. Then he said, “Yeah. I can really relate to that.” I nodded and said, “Then really you aren’t losing much. Think of this change as cutting the crust off your lifestyle sandwich. I am keeping everything that I want, and you are keeping what you want.”
He really thought about it.
The weight of his words did not hit me until the next morning. I was cleaning the kitchen. I saw his face in my mind’s eye, sitting in front of me at the restaurant, looking thoughtfully smug, admitting that he felt like that guy in the story. He, too, had never seen the point of having relationships. The sense of having been deceived for 19 years slammed into me like a Mack truck. I just kept thinking, “You could have told the truth at any point over the past two decades! You didn’t have to stay with me!”
So, that is what I brought to therapy last Tuesday. My therapist made an excellent observation:
“But, Jules, your husband’s fear of change was greater than his inertia. He might not have liked being in relationships and found them to ultimately be too complicated and a waste of time, but his anxiety overrode that. He was willing to stay with you because he was too scared to do anything else.”
After you get over the offense of that observation, read it again. How many of us do the same thing? We know that we are in a situation that is not good for us, but we are too afraid to make changes. The change itself is too intimidating so we opt to just tolerate the status quo because familiarity feels better somehow–even if the situation is in no way beneficial to us.
I sat in my therapist’s office for an hour processing my feelings around my husband’s statement. What he said represented his point of view throughout our 19-year life together. I did not know that he was never going to get better or change. I never knew that he had no real interest in growth or development. I did not realize that he felt that being in a relationship was simply troublesome. I had been knocking myself out for almost half my life trying to make this marriage work while he was thinking that “all this” was really just an existential waste of time. Too complicated. I wanted to lie on the ground and have a seizure over it.
What is the good part about this revelation? It falls in line with my hypothesis about his schizoid tendencies, and it absolves me of any feelings of guilt that I had about divorcing him. Things are so much clearer to me now. My therapist observed, “You are seeing everything through a much clearer lens now. You are able to understand your situation as it is rather than second guess everything. And, most important, you finally see that you gave it everything that you had. This is not your fault.”
I nodded. He leaned in and made eye contact with me.
“This is not your fault.”
I nodded. He said it again.
“This is not your fault.”
Suddenly, I remembered the scene from Good Will Hunting when Robin Williams’ character is standing in front of Matt Damon’s character. He wants to tell him that his childhood abuse was in no way his doing. He did not deserve it. He did not have it coming. So, he looks at him and says, “It’s not your fault.” And he says it repeatedly until Damon’s character cannot hold up under the weight of it. Hearing that it’s not your fault in this way is very uncomfortable. This is what my therapist did to me. “It’s not your fault.” I had to work hard to keep my composure while, at the same time, allowing his words to penetrate.
What he was really saying is that it’s not my fault that my husband could not change. It’s not my fault that he could not choose me. It’s not my fault that he was reactionary and physically abused me. It’s not my fault that he has done what he has done or made the choices that he has made. It’s not my fault.
And, it’s not. After 19 years, I finally believe this. What’s more, I will not do what he is doing. I will not fear change more than what is possible. I am choosing the unknown over the known because, to me, that is choosing hope.
My marriage is a desolate place, and I am not responsible for my husband. I am, however, responsible for myself and for modeling to my daughters what appropriate behavior within marriage ought to look like. Should they find themselves in a very difficult relationship in the future, what legitimacy would I have to speak to that if I never did anything worthwhile about my own? This is something that has been on my mind.
As always, it is a winding road, and I do not know what lay ahead. Alas, I am hopeful, and it is so nice to feel hope again.
Maladaptive Perfectionism
My good friend, currently reading Brene Brown’s book I Thought It Was Just Me (but it wasn’t), insisted that I refer to her on my blog from here on out as A-Dizzle. Request granted. A-Dizzle never fails to send me outstanding quotes. This morning I found this excellent quote waiting for me in my inbox:
“If our goal is perfection rather than growth, it is unlikely that we are willing to go back, because it requires a level of self-empathy— the ability to look at our own actions with understanding and compassion; to understand our experiences in the context in which they happened and to do all this without judgement. When we choose growth over perfection, we choose empathy and connection. I use the term grounding because in order to examine where we are, where we want to go and how we want to get there, we must have a level of self-acceptance about who we are. Grounding gives us the stability we need to reach out and examine who we are and who we want to be. The more grounded we are, the less we feel compelled to defend our decisions and protect ourselves. We can look at ourselves with compassion rather than self-loathing.”– I Thought It Was Just Me (but it wasn’t), Brene Brown
What a striking thought. If you are anything like me, then perfectionism has been more than a minor demon nipping at your heels. It’s been an evil overlord riding you hard for most of your life, stealing your joy, paralyzing you, and emotionally exsanguinating you in moments when you should be overflowing with life. There are factors that set some of us up to experience perfectionism more than others. I am an only child raised by an only child. Only children tend to be overachievers. That is understating my tendencies. If it could be done well, then I had to do it better. Perfect simply was not good enough. An A+ was not sufficient. 100%? Wasn’t there extra credit? Coming in first was not good enough. Best? What is best? A gold medal? What’s better than that? I was expected to win the diamond-encrusted platinum medal. In everything. Not just performance. In appearance as well. I had to be the prettiest. The thinnest. The most well-mannered. The most well-bred with the best looking teeth. The fittest body. The most desirable hair.
I was, after all, a reflection of my family. I was essentially like a thoroughbred horse, and that’s how I was talked about. So, in reality, it wasn’t a stretch that I ended up on the auction block with men from other countries bidding on me. That is how I was treated by my family. I was, I felt, destined to be someone’s object at some point. Perfect. In every way.
And what happened when I did not meet my family’s definition of perfect? Punishment through excessive criticism and humiliation. Almost always public. Sometimes extreme.
My example is extreme, but sometimes we need an extreme example to be able to see the reality of our own lives. Your life and experiences are no less painful than mine just because they are different. Perfectionism is a soul killer because it quenches and prevents growth. There is no time for introspection and learning when you are trying to be something that is an impossibility. Why is the consistent goal aimed at attaining perfection an impossibility for humans?
Let’s define perfection. At its most basic and simplistic level, perfection means that something be it an idea, a system, a shape, or an entity lacks nothing nor requires anything to be what it is. It is what it is in its fullness and needs nothing inherently to be what it is nor can anything ever be taken from it for it to continue to be what it is. It is a self-contained system that exists unto itself, requiring and lacking nothing at the same time. Utter perfection.
This notion can in no way be applied to a human being for if we were to try to apply one descriptor to humans it would be this: NEED. Human beings need from the moment when we are born until the moment we die. We might try to attain complete self-containment in the form of extreme self-reliance, but we will still need. We need connection even if that comes in the form of connection to animals or nature. We need food, air, water. We need a sense of belonging and significance. We need hope.
An argument could be made that seeking perfection in life is a good thing. Perfectionism as a personality trait after all is not a bad thing. It might just make the difference between a mediocre novel and a great novel or a pretty good piece of art and a masterpiece. Let’s talk about that for a moment. I believe that when Brown is discussing “perfection” she is really discussing maladaptive perfectionism. There’s a phrase. Maladaptive perfectionism. What does that mean?
Let’s look at adaptive perfectionism. As I described myself before, I used to be a highly perfectionistic person in a maladaptive sense due to being raised under a proverbial microscope. For example, I never developed an eating disorder, but I was body dysmorphic and overcome with social anxiety particularly when I had to socialize with women. I was overly conscious of myself from being in a hypercritical environment. “Why do laugh like that? Ladies laugh like this.” “Why do you walk like that? Ladies walk like this.” “Why do you chew like that? Ladies chew like this.” “Did you gain weight? You should not gain weight.” “Your posture is inadequate. You are too loud. You are too quiet. You are too tall. You are too thin. You are too fat. You are too stupid. You are too selfish. You are too, too, too, too, too, too…” Had I been a robot, my CPU would have exploded. I did not know how to behave anymore from the constant barrage of criticism. “Are you breathing? Well, stop it.” So, I learned to become what was necessary to fit the environment. I adapted until no one could find one thing wrong with me, and this adaptation was actually maladaptive perfectionism. Before we can become maladaptive in our perfectionism, we must have the capacity for adaptive perfectionism.
Adaptive perfectionism is the capacity to pursue an ideal. It is the pilot light that fuels ambition. It is what keeps us up until 4 AM working on academic papers. It is what pushes us to pursue high levels of excellence under pressure. It is that quality that allows us to see small details in a broad landscape of color. Without adaptive perfectionism, the world would never have people willing to break the glass ceiling or turn oppressive social orders upside down. It is adaptive perfectionism in its many forms that gives us the Nelson Mandelas and the Marie Curies. We need that quality if we are ever going to better ourselves particularly if we are in oppressive environments. Adaptive perfectionism is a catalyst that says, “There is something better. You want it. You could be better. Go after it.”
Maladaptive perfectionism is essentially all of that externalized energy directed at an external goal internalized and turned on the self. Suddenly, the oppressive environment to be overcome is…you. Shame is at the core of maladaptive perfectionism because shame says, “You are fundamentally flawed. Something will always be wrong with you no matter what you do,” and this personality adaptation seeks to correct that because somewhere in every human being is a sense that shame is wrong. We are not fundamentally flawed, and we are going to prove it. Enter maladaptive perfectionism. We will become perfect. Flawless. We will look perfect. We will perform flawlessly. We will meet every high standard that can be met. We will prove to everyone that we are the best of the best of the best. We need nothing and lack nothing.
And then we fail. Or, worse, need something. And we fall into a shame spiral of epic proportions. This kind of perfectionism catalyzes self-loathing, anxiety often in the many forms of OCD, depression, self-harming behaviors, and eating disorders. At some point, we either stop and look for a way out of this way of thinking, or we jump back into maladaptive perfectionism and keep going.
How did I stop? In short, I got a C on a paper in college. My first C ever. In a graduate level Art History class! I felt like I was going to die. Seriously. I had never gotten a C on anything at university. I felt like a horrible human being and a waste of breath. My first step? Throwdown with the professor. He stood by his grade. That made it even worse! I left his office hyperventilating. It was a political decision. Suddenly, I had an epiphany! Was I at university to get good grades and, yet again, prove to my awful family that I was worth something? Or, was I there for me? How many scholarships, times on the Dean’s List, and academic accolades would it take for me to believe that I had inherent worth? What if I did well my entire life and still felt worthless?
And that was my question. In my eyes, I had failed to be perfect. A goddamn C. Such a miniscule thing, but, in that moment, it caused a crisis within me. Now what? Was I worth something or not? Who got to determine that? Me? God? Some crusty, old Flemish professor? My family? Who? Wasn’t there something to be learned in perceived failure? Was my obsession with being perfect getting in my way?
It was this moment that opened my eyes to the nature of my maladaptive perfectionism. It took me years to be free of it, but I really met it, face to face, for the first time then. “Hi, Maladaptive Perfectionism, I’m Jules. I think we should get to know each other. You’ve been a pain in my ass for years.”
In my experience, this is how you begin to shift from maladaptive perfectionism to adaptive perfectionism. From internalizing your idealism to externalizing it. This is what will allow you to become a catalyst for good in the world rather than viewing yourself as your worst enemy.
Get to know your maladaptive perfectionism. It’s a relationship worth pursuing.
Alexithymia and the Secret Schizoid
I want to switch gears for a moment. Some time ago I wrote this post–Affective Deprivation Disorder and Alexithymia in Marriage. According to my stats, this is the most widely viewed post on my blog. That is telling. I had never heard of alexithymia until I stumbled across the term while trying to find a name that might adequately describe a feature of my husband’s behavior. Once I discovered the term, the world opened up to me because once you have a name for something, then you are connected into a larger more common experience. In short, I felt validated.
Something recently occurred around this post. Someone commented. And then another person commented. Then, another. Soon, a dialogue started, and what I observed was again common experience. We had all been or were currently married to essentially the same man. The patterns of behavior were all the same. The relational trends within the marriage were almost identical. It was eerie. In my mind, as I read the comments, the only explanation was a pathology.
It must be stated that I am not a fan of the current direction that the therapeutic model in psychology is moving. A medical model is being applied. For example, a diagnosis like PTSD is pathologized and made to look almost like a disease process rather than a very normal response to trauma. Overlaying a medical diagnosis to a non-medical condition does not equip and heal people.
That being said, when I speak in terms of pathology regarding human behavior, I am referring to a commonality of “symptoms” that meet a set criteria. When there is a group of people who display similar to matching symptoms that repeatedly match a set criteria, then one is wont to look for pathology; pathology in this context means a set of features considered collectively for diagnostic purposes.
The pathology, therefore, that I believe is most likely present in my husband and quite possibly in other people often presenting with alexithymia (when there are other features present as well) is schizoid personality disorder. That’s a leap, I know. Allow me to explain. The most common diagnosis that presents with alexithymia is an autism spectrum disorder. There have been more than a few psychiatrists and therapists who have leapt to that conclusion when hearing of my husband’s behavior. I even went there. Alas, no, he is not on the autism spectrum. There has been, however, something wrong. Here is the criteria for schizoid personality disorder as listed by the World Health Organization:
- Emotional coldness, detachment or reduced affect.
- Limited capacity to express either positive or negative emotions towards others.
- Consistent preference for solitary activities.
- Very few, if any, close friends or relationships, and a lack of desire for such.
- Indifference to either praise or criticism.
- Little interest in having sexual experiences with another person (taking age into account).
- Taking pleasure in few, if any, activities.
- Indifference to social norms and conventions.
- Preoccupation with fantasy and introspection.
One must meet four of the nine criteria to be considered on the schizoid spectrum based upon WHO’s description. My husband meets eight.
To make matters more complicated, there is a comorbidity in those with schizoid personalities and autism spectrum disorders. The reason for this, I suspect, is that schizoid personality disorder seems to run in families where there are schizophrenia spectrum disorders present. And, where there are schizophrenia spectrum disorders present you will find autism spectrum disorders because autism and schizophrenia spectrum disorders are genetically related. So, I am going to make another leap and suggest that some people diagnosed with autism, particularly the high functioning variety, have, in fact, been on the schizoid spectrum simply because the criteria for schizoid personality disorder reads like a high functioning autism spectrum disorder. In the end, it gets very confusing for the clinician with little to no training in abnormal psychology and very confusing for everyone else. Furthermore, since ASDs and SCZ are both biologically based brain disorders, it begs the question: is alexithymia a brain-based response? In other words, what is the neurology behind something like an alexithymic expression? If we are looking for the truth, it’s a question that must be asked.
Here is the question that led me to post this. “Why is my husband so amazing at work, so skilled there, and such an asshole at home?” This is my husband. In something like an autism spectrum disorder, deficits are generalized. One struggles at work and at home. An AS adult cannot go to work and turn it on, so to speak, only to return home and derp it up. There is, however, a known phenomenon called the Secret Schizoid:
Many fundamentally schizoid individuals display an engaging, interactive personality that contradicts the observable characteristic emphasized by the DSM-IV and ICD-10 definitions of the schizoid personality.[8] Klein classifies these individuals as “secret schizoids”,[8] who present themselves as socially available, interested, engaged and involved in interacting yet remain emotionally withdrawn and sequestered within the safety of the internal world.
Withdrawal or detachment from the outer world is a characteristic feature of schizoid pathology, but may appear either in “classic” or in “secret” form. When classic, it matches the typical description of the schizoid personality offered in the DSM-IV. It is however “just as often” a hidden internal state: that which meets the objective eye may not match the subjective, internal world of the patient. Klein therefore cautions that one should not miss identifying the schizoid patient because one cannot see the patient’s withdrawal through the patient’s defensive, compensatory interaction with external reality. He suggests that one need only ask the patient what his or her subjective experience is in order to detect the presence of the schizoid refusal of emotional intimacy.[8]
Descriptions of the schizoid personality as “hidden” behind an outward appearance of emotional engagement have been recognized as far back as 1940 with Fairbairn’s description of “schizoid exhibitionism,” in which the schizoid individual is able to express a great deal of feeling and to make what appear to be impressive social contacts yet in reality gives nothing and loses nothing. Because he is only “playing a part,” his own personality is not involved. According to Fairbairn, the person disowns the part which he is playing and thus the schizoid individual seeks to preserve his own personality intact and immune from compromise.”[9] (online source)
This is why a person with schizoid personality disorder could go to work and be a superstar yet come home and be a completely different person. This is why a man like my husband was engaging, charismatic, charming, and enthusiastic before I married him. This is why no one can imagine what he’s like behind closed doors. This is why I was terrified that no one would believe me when I decided that the marriage had to end. I was going to have to decide within myself that it didn’t matter. I had to be okay within my own narrative of events.
It is too easy to drive yourself crazy trying to find an explanation for crazymaking behaviors. Autism? I can make sense of autism. Theory of mind deficits? Well, a theory of mind deficit isn’t just a problem in autism spectrum disorders. I know neurotypical adults who struggle with theory of mind. Many people on the personality disorder spectrum will struggle with theory of mind because theory of mind is about mind-mapping. It’s about perspective-taking and anticipating needs. It is cognitive empathy, and one of the hallmarks of many personality disorders is a lack of cognitive and even emotional empathy. This is where many clinicians get stuck and smack an autism diagnosis on a person who is really in no way autistic. It is unfair because said patient will receive a woefully inappropriate treatment plan (if they receive one at all), and their families will then come to believe something that is not true. In that scenario, no one gets the necessary help.
It must be stated that I am not trying to stigmatize alexithymia or invalidate the emotional experience of anyone who finds themselves experiencing it. I do my best to avoid stigmatizing language. This is, however, a blog, and blogs are written with a bias. My natural tendency is to be empathetic and compassionate to everyone, and I am actually annoyed with the larger therapeutic community in North America for bringing so little to the table on this specific topic. I have yet to meet one clinician who has ever heard the term ‘alexithymia’, and that’s a damned shame. What can be done to increase the emotional spectrum and repertoire for those who have it, and what can be done to equip those who love them and want a relationship? It’s simply not enough. People deserve more. All people.
In the end, for all of us who have lived with individuals struggling with alexithymia, it is important to note that alexithymia is a piece of a larger puzzle. We must find our locus of control and internalize it. Our lives are not just happening to us. What can we accept? What can we not accept? What do we need to be happy and fulfilled? Do we believe that we are responsible for the happiness of our partner? Does their happiness come at the expense of our own? Is that appropriate? What should the boundaries look like? What should be normalized and accepted and what should not be in terms of human expression or lack thereof? It’s hard to answer these questions when so little information is available, but we must try anyway.
What course do we have to set so that we can be happy, too? Then, do it.
Being Jack Donaghy
I wondered what writing this post might feel like. I wondered if I would ever arrive at this point. Would I ever find my courage? Would the door ever open up for me? Was it possible? Would I ever feel permitted?
I sat in my regularly scheduled Tuesday therapy session and told my therapist, “Are you ready? I feel like I’m living in a soap opera. Are you ready for the next episode of ‘All My Children’?” He held onto his chair and said, “I’m strapped in. Hit me with it.”
“He’s moving out.”
There it is, everyone. He is moving out.
My therapist’s face said it all. His jaw hit the floor. “Yep. He’s moving out. We are separating with the intent to divorce.”
My therapist and I talked about the precipitating event. How did it happen? Actually, we had this really cordial, friendly conversation. It was almost surreal. I was being kind to him, and the opportunity presented itself. Had he lost me? And, there it was. A door. I could tell the truth. It was right there. I just had to cross the threshold.
Suddenly, in that moment all the elements in my marriage that were not reconcilable passed before me. The moment that his self-centeredness turned into rape. The moment he tore the labrum in my hip resulting in surgery and four months of rehabilitation. The moment his anger turned into rage and he brandished a knife. All the moments of his self-loathing that he turned on our daughters and me. The betrayals. I heard the voices of my trusted friends and my therapist: “This is not how a man who loves a woman treats her. This will never be okay. You cannot stay in this. You will become complicit in your own abuse.” I thought of my daughters. I thought of how proud of me they are. I wanted to hold onto that. In an instant, it became clear.
“Yes, you have lost me.”
Peace.
“I know,” he said.
And that was the beginning of a much needed conversation. I felt such relief. I had been so frightened for so long that the relief I felt in finally speaking the truth overwhelmed me with happiness.
My therapist was gobsmacked. He said, “I am in awe at the power of speaking the truth. Once you start telling the truth it creates something. Things start to happen. You made something happen here. You only just talked about leaving, and here it is.”
Telling the truth is dangerous. I don’t recommend it unless you really want it. You have to want your life. Badly. You have to want wholeness and something better more than you want to be comfortable. It costs you something. It costs you predictability and that weird and twisted sense of safety however illusory it was. Even in dysfunctional environments, there is something safe in knowing who’s got the power and who hits the hardest. We learn to manipulate in situations like these. To escape environments like these, we have to give all that up. We have to start over, and, for some, that is a far worse prospect than staying.
I am a profoundly private person. I never told anyone what he had done to me. Not in full. I may have told one person. My close friend. She knew. She saw me die a little every day until I wasn’t me anymore. I can’t imagine what it might have been like for her to watch that. When I told the truth, however, people came forward and surrounded me with support and love. They also made me accountable for my own life. “You can’t stay in this. Find your strength again. Wake up from your sleep of death. Wake up.”
Hopelessness and despair will kill your soul. I have resisted it most of my life, but I could not fight it off in this marriage. Eventually, I succumbed to it as well. I saw no way out, and that is a lie. There must be a way out. There is a way out because I’m here writing this. My youngest daughter told a friend at school yesterday that her parents were divorcing. Somehow that one admission spread to teachers and parents, and I received emails. A parent, the principal, and a teacher. Everyone was expressing their support and offering to help–with assertiveness: “Let me help you. Ask for anything.” My private self was chafed, but my emotional self was touched and reassured. It proved one point. We are not alone. Help comes from unexpected places. Even school principals.
We simply must tell the truth. Be honest with yourself. Be compassionate with yourself–something I am terrible at. My therapist asked me directly yesterday,”Jules, can you look at yourself and say, ‘Jules, I love you.'” I squirmed. No. Who does that? That’s so touchy-feely. I felt very uncomfortable. I immediately used a defense mechanism. “Well, I see that you are using third person with me instead of first person, and studies show that using third person in self-talk in place of first person is more effective in displacing negativity, thus, helping boost confidence and decreasing anxiety. But, you would know that since you’re a PhD.” He stared at me and put his head in his hands. I then said, “I see what I did there. I fell back on my intellect to avoid feeling uncomfortable. Sorry. I deflected.” He sighed and laughed. At me, I think. I must be a very difficult client at times.
“Alright,” he said, “let’s come at this from a different perspective. You made a ’30 Rock’ reference earlier. I’ll make one. Do you recall when Jack Donaghy was giving himself a pep talk in the bathroom?”
Of course, I do! It was epic!
“I want you to do that. You are to treat yourself like that. Only positive statements. That’s self-compassion. This week, your homework is to be Jack Donaghy.”
Oh, that sneaky bastard! Clever man he is. Challenging me to a “30 Rock” showdown? I will take that challenge! And, you know what? It’s damn hard. How do you become Jack Donaghy and divorce at the same time while struggling to be assertive?
I’m trying to figure that out. Jack Donaghy did divorce Bianca and still manage to be himself (I’ve lost anyone who does not watch “30 Rock”. My apologies)..
So, tell the truth. Do it. See where it takes you. It’s taking me to 30 Rockefeller Plaza, self-compassion, and well beyond.
It’s Getting Hot in Here
I wish I could bring something therapeutically beneficial to the table this morning. What I can do is let you take a peek inside the therapeutic process of a “domestic abuse victim”. That’s what my therapist called me yesterday. Well, that’s very real, isn’t it?
It gets very real when your therapist mentions the Domestic Abuse Project. “Have you heard of it?”
Domestic violence is a slippery subject. It is very slippery for me because the question to be asked and answered is this: Am I married to an abuser or a man who, at times, abuses? It all sounds like semantic hairsplitting, and one might ask if there is even a difference. Yes, there is a difference. An abuser knows what they are doing, and they abuse with malicious intent. Perhaps with premeditation. That’s a simple definition. A person who engages in abusive behavior does not plan their abuse. They have a reactionary nature most likely precipitated by a mental illness diagnosis like PTSD, an anxiety disorder, a personality disorder, or even substance abuse issues like alcoholism. In other words, you are often interfacing with their disorder when they abuse rather than their person. The latter is my situation. I am married to a disorder and know his disorder intimately. I don’t think I know him very well at all.
This is not an excuse or a justification for any sort of abuse. It is merely an explanation.
It occurred to me a few weeks ago that I didn’t want to be in the marriage anymore. My therapist asked me what clicked.
“My hip. It hurts all the time. It’s damp now, and it aches every moment of the day. I have to be careful when I sit, when I stand, when I sleep, when I get in and out of the car, when I walk…It might ache for the rest of my life. It will always be a reminder to me of what he did to me. How do I get past that?”
I don’t think I’ve ever written it anywhere, but he was the reason behind my hip injury. I had hip surgery last August. It was a brutal recovery. I had to learn to walk again. It took four months of painful rehabilitation. When my therapist asked me how he behaved during my recovery, I told him. He drove me to all my PT appointments. He made sure I had what I needed. “To expiate his guilt?” Yes. And now? “Well, he asks if I need anything when I’m unwell. Like tea.”
“Like a roommate. You do understand that he treats you like a roommate. Anyone who lives with you ought to do the same.”
Yes, we live as roommates.
“What you describe is not how a husband treats his wife.”
It’s not?
What I can tell you is that it is far easier to recover from physical abuse than emotional abuse. I know this first hand. But, it is a lot easier to justify wanting out of a relationship when you have surgical scars, scars, and a person to point at while saying, “You put these here.” This is the slippery slope of domestic abuse. Gaslighting is so hard to combat. Feeling crazy all the time becomes such a part of your inner thought life that you become an easy target for the physical abuse. I felt so responsible for him, his disorder, and his actions after years of crazymaking behaviors that I didn’t even realize initially that what he did to my hip wasn’t my fault! It was only after a bit of time passed that I realized he had done something wrong. Then, more time passed. I was finally able to say to him, “You hurt me.” Only now can I call it abuse.
Why now? You have to be able to tell the truth and be ready to hear the truth. This is a big part of the therapeutic process. Truth. Revealing yourself. I hate it. It requires courage and hope even when it seems hopeless. I have had many a hopeless day and night. I felt like I was living in a nightmare a few days ago. The important thing to remember in difficult and desolate times is that you have a future worth fighting for, and you are the one person who can exercise control over what that future will look like–even if you feel like you have the least amount of influence in your life.
Alas, you keep going. You must because there is no turning back now. You see it through. Until darkness becomes day.
“Even darkness must pass.” Samwise Gamgee
Therapy Homework: Imagining Assertiveness
Therapy Tuesday. You know that you’re really in it when you don’t want to go. My therapist looks a little too happy to see me. Wipe that grin of your face dammit! It’s go time, and I don’t want to go. I, of course, smile and comply. I keep my inner toddler in a crate much like an insolent Australian Shepherd.
I used to own an Aussie. She was lovely and beautiful and loyal to a fault. I was her shepherd meaning that she followed me everywhere. Wherever I went, she went. I was never alone. She developed a brain tumor, however, and began trying to attack people. Her breed instincts were amplified by this tumor. Aussies are naturally suspicious of strangers. This is a breed standard. They guard sheep and cattle. This is a necessary trait. My Aussie became ferocious. She stopped recognizing people whom she knew and became dangerous. Because I was her “person” she would respond to my voice. On a good day, I could snap her out of attack behavior. This began happening just before she died. She always knew who I was, but she lost the essence of who she was as a trained working dog and trustworthy pet because of her tumor. Our lovely vet kindly helped her pass with her head in my lap.
Trauma is a bit like my Aussie’s brain tumor. It amplifies things. Everything starts to become threatening. We don’t recognize what is safe because everything feels potentially dangerous. My Aussie went into fight mode. And, like my Aussie, this heightened state follows you everywhere. She would sit outside the shower and wait for me when I bathed. She refused to be without me. She was waiting for a command from me. A job to do. Well, a post-traumatic brain feels like this. No matter where you go, there it is. The hypervigilance. The startle response. You might not even be thinking of anything trauma-related, but you’ll startle if someone sneezes. This is due to hypervigilance.
If you used to be assertive, then it becomes harder. Threats are now generalized. Uncertainty. Fear.
How do you deal with this?
I have PTSD. I’ve had it for years. My symptoms will die down although I have never lost an exaggerated startle response. If I’m doing really well, then it’s tolerable. Currently, I want to crawl out of my skin if I’m startled, and I can’t tolerate loud noises. I was in a café on Tuesday with a dear friend, and the management decided that 1 PM was the best time to install a new refrigerator. The noises produced by the drill–the stripping of the screws and the banging–overwhelmed me. I wanted to dissociate, and I’m not highly dissociative.
Therapy is getting harder because my therapist is starting to drill. I can feel it. He is talking to me about my perceptions of my husband as all-powerful. I’m smart. This is part of PTSD. Your perpetrator is viewed as all-powerful. I know that my husband is not all-powerful, but there are moments when it feels like an old programming switch is hit. Suddenly, I change my behavior. I know that I do this. I hate that I do this. I feel like I’ve got some malware in my brain, and I know who put it there. My parents. I don’t know how to get rid of it. I’ve de-bugged my brain quite a bit, but there is still this old code in there.
He’ll do something that I perceive as aggressive or threatening and, suddenly, I’ll apologize, assume the submissive position, and go silent. If we’re out in public, I’ll actually bow my head and walk behind him like a concubine. I’ve even called him ‘sir’ if you can believe that. It just comes out. “Yes, sir.” Funnily enough, he doesn’t say anything. He’s got a wife calling him ‘sir’ and walking behind him with her head bowed. When he does notice, he tells me stop it, and I can’t. I get stuck there. I can observe myself doing it. I feel very angry about this, and I feel ashamed to admit it. But, I know that this is deep programming.
So, my therapist is having me observe times when I could be assertive. He doesn’t want me to be assertive. He just wants me to observe the environment. When I see a time in which I might be able to assert myself, then I am to note it. If I were to assert myself, then what would that look like? What would I say? No action. Just observation.
This is helpful to me because it prevents me from shutting down. That “switch” won’t get flipped if I feel like I am safe to observe possibilities. I don’t have to act, but I could think about acting. I could create a scenario in my mind about what I could possibly say or do. My brain now has another option. The Stepford Wife malware can’t automatically override my thinking brain. This is really important because if I can keep my thinking brain engaged, then my Fainting Goat brain, my amygdala, won’t take over.
So, try this exercise if you have a similar struggle. Remove any pressure from yourself that you might feel to act. Step back and observe what you could do. Imagine what you could say. Where are your opportunities in different scenarios to assert yourself within your relationships? Don’t, however, feel any pressure to act. This engages your brain in a different way. If you are at all in a heightened state, this exercise is very helpful…and hopeful.
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Out of the Mire 