DAY 5: Life Lesson Basics - Oh shit...
Monday, January 23, 2023
WFIW of the Day: Yesterday afternoon, my daughter got dropped off at home by her friend’s mom. I was lying in bed, watching The Good Place and feeling blissfully lazy. The polite thing would have been to get up, go out there and greet this woman I barely know, telling her thank you and exchanging pleasantries and I DID NOT FUCKING DO IT. I let my husband do it, instead. And it felt glorious.
2014 was the year that I started intentionally changing the way my brain works.
Up until that year, my brain had functioned in one well-oiled loop:
Notice something I was not doing well enough (hint: everything)
Berate myself until I felt spurred to action by feelings of worthlessness. This was a tricky balance - I had to zap myself with just enough shame to get me off my ass, but not SO MUCH that I simply moped around feeling depressed.
Do the action, feel better at first because I was at least moving in the direction of a goal. And being a very capable person, I’d always get some external praise or cookie or other validation.
Continue to fuel myself with pure, unadulterated willpower until the weight of all the spent fuel became too heavy to bear.
Engage in some sort of inadvisable behavior as an act of wild rebellion against my taskmaster (me).
Repeat.
This system worked marvelously for me for 32 years.
In 7th grade, I noticed that I was no longer at the top of my class, so I vowed to myself to study even harder and get an A+ on every single quiz from then on. And I did! For awhile… and then it all started to feel like too much and I remember distinctly NOT studying at all for a quiz and getting a “C”…. a goddamn “C”. The teacher was handing back our graded quizes and joked to the entire class, “You’ll never believe who got a ‘C’ on this one!!” She must have seen the horrified look on my face because she quickly added, “… not that it’ll make a dent in her perfect grade point average.” Too late. Damage done. Move immediately back to Step 1, do not pass “GO”, do not collect $200.
I pushed and pushed and pushed myself through the first two years of college, noticing allll the ways that I was no longer the smartest person in school (and there were MANY because this school was literally Harvard). Finally, I had a breakdown and my best friend found me hiding under the desk in my tiny dorm room crying out, “NO! I don’t wanna come out!” I ended up taking a whole semester off to rest and release some of the stress that had built up inside me so I could cheerfully get back onto good ol’ STEP 1 at the beginning of the next semester.
Every single damn day, STILL, I wake up with lots of criticism looping inside my head. Today, it was “Everyone else in this coaching course is practicing and progressing WAY FASTER than you. What’s wrong with you? Why can’t you just get off your ass and find some people to practice on, even though you’re scared?”
But here’s the difference… that criticism no longer feels like the TRUTH of me. Instead, it feels like a familiar, annoying roommate. One that I can look at and say:
…. “Oh, it’s you again. Look, I know you worry a lot, but I promise it’s ok.” or…
……”Wow, you’re trying so hard to protect me. That’s what you’ve been doing for a long-ass time and I really appreciate it, but I just don’t need as much of that now.” or sometimes…
….. “Sweet Baby Jesus, you AGAIN?! Leave me the F alone!”
>>>Because when I look back, one of the earliest, stickiest lessons I learned from my life coach is to ask this question: “Would you ever talk this way to your best friend?”
When I first heard this question, I pictured my beloved childhood friend, Andrew… how he tries his best, and treats others with kindness, and is terribly hard on himself. And NO, I would NEVER call him a worthless piece of trash and tell him to get his ass out of bed or no one would love him.
I remember realizing for the first time, “Holy shit… I treat myself HORRIBLY.”
Of course, my next thought was, “What is WRONG with me?? I have to fix myself immediately.”
In other words, the realization did not make the critical voice go away, not by a long shot.
But for the first time, I saw it as just a PART of me. And if it was one part, that meant there were other parts… maybe a wiser part that could listen to it and choose whether or not to believe it.
And that set a whole lot of change in motion.
With Gratitude,
Shinah
P.S. - This doesn’t feel like my best piece of writing. But I think that’s a part of the process… write every day, and most of it will be “meh”, but occasionally, something inspired will slip out. I’m just making room for more inspired slips and blips. That’s the game.