Get Out of Your Own Way

by Mark Goulston

  3. Rehabilitation. To overcome the fear of being hurt again, the injured party needs more than promises; only a genuine change of behavior can restore faith and trust. For the agent, this meant participating in a program to stop drinking and demonstrating that she could act appropriately when irritated by her mother-in-law. The developer entered couples counseling with his wife and made an honest effort to resolve the frustration and discontent that had driven him to have an affair.

  It often hurts more to be hurtful than to be hurt. With remorse, restitution and rehabilitation you can heal the pain of having hurt someone you love and at the same time show that you can be trusted. If you work consistently at the Three R’s, the burden will eventually shift to the other person. At one point, he or she must be willing to drop the bitterness and give you a second chance. Without that act of faith, a wounded relationship can’t begin to heal.

  USABLE INSIGHT:

  Love means always having to show you’re sorry.

  TAKING ACTION

  Try to feel the Three H’s from the other’s point of view. Consider: a. Why he might feel hurt.

  b. How and why he might hate you for hurting.

  c. Why he would hesitate to lower his guard and trust you again.

  Think of the Three R’s you would need if you were in his shoes. a. What kind of remorse would it take to ease your hurt?

  b. What kind of penalty or restitution would it take to lessen your anger and hatred?

  c. What changes in behavior would it take for you to trust again?

  Let the person know you realize you were wrong and care about the pain you caused.

  Offer restitution by giving something that costs more than money.

  Make him feel safe by behaving in a nonhurtful way in similar situations.

  Holding It All In

  “Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak whispers the o’er-fraught heart and bids it break.”

  —SHAKESPEARE

  I was once a guest expert on a Sally Jessy Raphael show in which the topic was family secrets. The guests were three women: one had watched her father kill her mother and then himself; one had been raped and impregnated by her brother; and one had been told as a child that her father was dead only to learn, as an adult, that he had been living in the same town all along.

  I admired the courage it took these people to tell their stories to millions of strangers. Off camera, I remarked that it must have been hard to get them on the show. I was mistaken. They had actually written to request an appearance. They weren’t merely attention-seekers. They desperately needed to purge themselves of secrets they had been carrying around for years, and they chose this show because they perceived Sally as trustworthy and her faceless viewers as no discernible threat. The sense of relief in those tortured souls was palpable.

  The experience crystalized something I’d known for some time: how important it is to talk about horrible experiences.

  “Words are the physicians of a mind diseased.”

  —AESCHYLUS

  After you experience something horrible, the obvious impact of pain, fear and loss is usually accompanied by another piercing feeling: loneliness. Even in a shared trauma such as a flood or an earthquake, the impact is uniquely felt by each individual, and to some extent everyone feels alone. For example, couples who lose a child usually grieve together but experience the tragedy in different ways. For the mother, the dominant feeling is usually loss; the object of her maternal love is gone. For the father, the overwhelming feeling is often shame—for having failed in his role as protector. Talking it out eases the sense of isolation; you feel more a part of the world instead of apart from it.

  In addition, expressing yourself is a way of purging emotions. A horrible event leaves a toxic residue, and the act of describing it to another person serves as a syringe to draw out the accumulated poison. If you don’t get rid of that poison, you will have to use defense mechanisms such as denial and repression to disconnect from the horror. The poison will accumulate until it pollutes your body, mind and soul, with potentially disastrous consequences.

  The more quickly and more completely you express yourself, the faster and easier the healing. Letting it out early is the emotional equivalent of getting back on your bike after a fall. The longer you wait, the scarier it becomes. Also, the pain you suppress accumulates and gathers to it anything of a similar nature. The end result can be anything from a psychosomatic illness to a phobia.

  Why, then, do we hold it in? Like all self-defeating behavior, it seems the more expedient choice. For one thing, we fear that letting it out will be overwhelming. After all, every time the memory pops into mind we feel pain, not relief. We assume that telling it to others will make matters worse. We’re also afraid that if we unburden ourselves to the wrong person, we won’t feel soothed at all. Rather, we’ll only burden them and turn them off. Our feelings might be disregarded or trivialized, and we will be made to feel foolish. Another reason we hold our feelings in is that we are afraid we won’t be able to stop at just remembering the pain but will relive it and become overwhelmed.

  As a therapist I ask specific questions to encourage patients to describe terrible events in detail: What color was it? How loud were the sounds? Was it cold in the room? Could you smell anything? In a safe environment, reliving the incident through the senses brings out feelings that might have been suppressed. This can facilitate healing.

  A good example is Gay, a single mother who ran a mail order business from her home. One day, caught up in her work, she inadvertently left her front door open. She was on the phone when she heard a loud screech of brakes, a scream and an awful thud. She ran out to find her child bleeding and unconscious as a hysterical driver tried to revive him. The child survived but was disfigured for life. Gripped by guilt and haunted by nightmares, Gay found the memory too painful to discuss. After a while, though, she poured forth the entire gruesome story in precise detail, including what her child looked like in the street and how ashamed she felt in the emergency room. By spelling it all out, Gay was able to begin healing, and eventually to forgive herself.

  “What soap is for the body, tears are for the soul.”

  —JEWISH PROVERB

  Because they are trained to listen and required by law to honor confidentiality, therapists are often the best people to hear your tale. But they are not the only good listeners. Sometimes the best choice is someone who has experienced a similar horror. Such people are in the best position to say convincingly, “I understand,” and “You’re not alone.” For that reason, a peer support group is often an indispensable adjunct to therapy.

  Whatever their relation to you, good listeners have certain traits in common: they listen closely and patiently, without tuning you out; they accept your feelings without dismissing or trivializing them; and, perhaps most important, they are wise enough to validate that what you experienced was, in fact, horrible.

  It is not enough merely to think about a terrible memory or vent your feelings to an indifferent ear. You cannot heal until you feel; you cannot feel until it is safe; and you cannot feel safe unless someone is willing to listen until the pain subsides.

  USABLE INSIGHT:

  Having the horror heard helps to heal the hurt.

  TAKING ACTION

  Find an empathic person with whom you feel free to share your story.

  Ask for a green light to express yourself fully and without time restraints.

  Ask him or her to listen without judging, questioning or commenting on what you say.

  Describe your experience in as much detail as you can recall, including sights, sounds, tastes, smells and, most of all, feelings.

  Quitting Too Soon

  “Perseverance … keeps honor bright: to have done, is to hang quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail in monumental mockery.”

  —SHAKESPEARE

  Paul was smart, charming and highly energetic, a man with big ideas and the ability to get others excited about them.
He should have been a big success. But every one of his ventures, like each of the jobs he’d taken, had ended in disappointment. His wife, Ruth, was tired of it. She’d been virtually supporting both of them for nine years. “He just doesn’t try hard enough,” she complained.

  In fact, Paul didn’t need to try harder, he needed to try differently. He would get wildly enthusiastic when launching a new enterprise, only to get restless when it came time for the detail work and frustrated by delays and obstacles. If Paul were an athlete he’d jump out to a big lead, then suffer a letdown while his opponent shot ahead. He needed to learn what the CEO of a major corporation once told me: “The key to success is tolerating boredom.” It requires revising, fine tuning, getting the bugs out. If you get excited only by novelty, if you can’t tolerate the tedious part of the process, you’ll lose patience and quit. That’s what would happen to Paul. As soon as reality set in, the thrill would lessen, and he would decide that whatever he was striving for was wrong or futile. “It’s not turning out the way I thought it would,” he would say. Or, “This is not what I really want to do.”

  “Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance.”

  —SAMUEL JOHNSON

  Boredom is not the only reason we quit too soon. When something, whether a job or a marriage, turns out to be more difficult than we anticipated, some of us decide it’s not worth the effort. This is especially true when the obstacles we run into expose an area of weakness or inadequacy. The fear of humiliation shatters our willingness to persevere. We don’t admit this to ourselves, of course. We just find reasons why it’s best to cut our losses.

  Like most self-defeating behavior, quitting serves a purpose. It relieves frustration and anxiety when we feel stuck or trapped. It keeps us from confronting a deeper fear—that we don’t have what it takes to succeed, for example. It can also be a disguised cry for help or a way of asking for a pep talk. Men are especially prone to quitting as a matter of pride; to them, asking for help is the same as begging. That’s why it takes 500,000 sperm cells to fertilize one egg: men are too proud to ask for directions.

  “Effort is only effort when it begins to hurt.”

  —JOSÉ ORTEGA Y GASSETT

  But the comfort of quitting exacts a steep price, and not just the obvious one, which is not reaching our goals. When we quit repeatedly, we lose credibility in others’ eyes, and eventually in our own as well. No one respects a quitter. We also never learn the value of perseverance or the skills needed to work through obstacles and overcome frustration.

  Of course, there are times when all the effort and good intentions in the world won’t salvage the project or relationship. But there is a difference between stopping and quitting. Stopping implies reevaluating and adjusting your course of action. Quitting implies giving up, abandoning ship, releasing yourself from the burden of responsibility.

  “Failure is not the falling down but the staying down.”

  —MARY PICKFORD

  How can you tell the difference between quitting and a sensible decision to cut your losses? One way is to look at the past and get a sense of what your pattern is: have you been more likely to quit too soon, or to hold on too long? It also helps to get input from knowledgeable people. Use them to determine whether you’ve explored all the available options, gathered all the necessary information, solicited all the possible help. If you haven’t, chances are you’re quitting too soon.

  You know the old saying, “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.” Well, if you always get out as soon as the kitchen gets hot, your life will end up half-baked.

  USABLE INSIGHT:

  You have more control over trying or quitting than you do over succeeding or failing.

  TAKING ACTION

  Think of the last time you quit something, and review the positive and negative consequences of having done so.

  Look at the present situation and write down the potential pluses and minuses of quitting at this time.

  Make a list of your other options, with the pluses and minuses of each one.

  Enlist the help of someone who can be objective and nonjudgmental in helping you evaluate the situation. (You might want to go through the previous two steps with that person.)

  If you’re inclined to quit, ask yourself why, and why now. Are the reasons justifiable, or are you merely hoping to avoid something unpleasant, such as embarrassment or boredom?

  If you decide to hang in there, enlist the help and support of someone you can count on.

  Letting Others Control Your Life

  “It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere.”

  —AGNES REPPLIER

  Fran, a 32-year-old paralegal who called herself “the queen of the people-pleasers,” gets credit for what I call The Cheshire Cat Syndrome. She told me that she felt like the feline creature from Alice in Wonderland, who would alternate between visible and invisible while its smile would always remain. Fran smiled through all her relationships—with parents, bosses, friends and lovers—but now, in therapy, her face was twisted with pain. “I’ve become more and more invisible,” she said. “I’m afraid I’m going to disappear altogether, and I don’t know how to make it stop.”

  Like Fran, many people care so much about what others think of them that they lose track of themselves. It’s as if the route to self-esteem passes through a toll booth of other people’s opinions, and each time they drive through they pay with a piece of their identity.

  Many of the adults I see in therapy are unable to remember much about themselves in childhood, but they remember other people quite vividly. They recall when Mom and Dad seemed happy or sad, enthused or exhausted, cheerful or angry. This is because they learned, as children, that the way to feel safe was to do whatever made an angry dad smile or a depressed mom brighten—and how not to make them angry or depressed. Rather than focus on their own sense of vitality, initiative and growth, their efforts went into making their home calmer and less dangerous. As a result, their sense of worth was determined by what those they depended on felt about them: when their parents seemed happy they felt worthwhile; when their parents seemed unhappy they felt they were bad and somehow to blame.

  “I have not moved from there to here without I think to please you, and still an everlasting funeral marches round your heart.”

  —ARTHUR MILLER

  When too much concern with the desires, wishes and needs of others are carried into adulthood, you can develop a prove-show-hide-please personality. You spend much of your life trying to prove things to others, show them you’re worthy, hide unpleasant truths from them and please them—all in an effort to feel safe and worthy.

  When your motivation is to prove yourself to others, that is because you feel they don’t believe in you. You think, “I’ll prove I’m worthy of their faith.” Whereas proving stems from a deep sense of hurt, showing is rooted in anger. It’s a response to the perception that others don’t believe you, period. Because you think they regard you as a phony or a liar, you constantly have to demonstrate your authenticity.

  The impetus to hide comes from fear. Believing that another person is intolerant and unforgiving, you are wary of being attacked if you make a mistake. So you live a secret life, hidden from criticism but also from your true feelings and true personality. The motivation to please usually stems from the feeling that making someone happy is the ticket to being loved and accepted. You appease and pacify to create a cheerful environment, and when you fail you invariably feel guilty.

  To a certain extent, most people in close relationships link their well-being to the moods of another person. The tragedy occurs when you become so consumed by proving, showing, hiding and pleasing that you relinquish control of your life, sacrificing your needs and desires on the altar of another. You might be able to rationalize living that way for a while, vowing to get back to your own life one day. But if you wait too long, you might find you have lost your way entirely
.

  USABLE INSIGHT:

  You can’t live for others without losing your self.

  TAKING ACTION

  Determine to what extent you are a prove-show-hide-please personality by rating yourself on a scale of 0 to 10 on each of these characteristics. In your most important relationships, how much of your energy is devoted to proving yourself to others, where 0 equals none and 10 equals all? Once you have the answer, do the same for show, hide and please.

  If the sum of all four totals is more than 20, you are probably living more for others than yourself. You are squelching your own desires, interests and ambitions to make someone feel a certain way about you.

  Realize that you have very little power to make others happy and almost none to keep them happy.

  Tell the other person that he has done nothing wrong, but that you’ve realized you tend to defer to others more than is good for you.

  Tell him that from now on you plan to be honest about expressing disagreement and disappointment, and that you hope he will understand.

  Monitor your follow-through by rating yourself once a month, as in step one.

  Seek out people who do not expect you to be more to them than you are to yourself. You may not be attracted to them now, because you are drawn to what is familiar, namely people you can please and serve. But the familiar may not be good for you.

  Leaving Too Much to Chance

  “Chiefly the mold of a man’s fortune is in his own hands.”

  —FRANCIS BACON

  For a therapist, it is almost an everyday occurrence to hear someone say, “From now on it’s going to be different” or “I’ll never do that again.” Sadly, it is also an everyday occurrence to hear someone, sheepish and downcast, say, “Nothing ever changes” or “I blew it again.”