From 2 to 6: Doubting my inner worth
In June 2006, I had to mow the lawn. It may be the only time I’ve actually done that. Rick is almost always on top of that particular task, but this time he was injured and unable.
So I gathered all my womanly I-can-do-this self-talk and got out there. But the entire time, I couldn’t shake the feeling that all my neighbors were looking out their windows and watching me, and (what’s worse) judging me to be completely inadequate for the task. With every turn, I was doing it wrong. With every row, I was missing too much or overlapping too much.
I knew this was irrational, but I couldn’t shake it. I knew where it came from (hovering parents who valued a job done well and didn’t comprehend the impact on an individual’s psyche when they interrupt to offer correction), but that didn’t help me let it go.
And that was normal. I usually carried around a foreboding sense that I was being watched and judged as inadequate. How would I ever escape that paralyzing criticism?
At work, I came up with a strategy for at least fighting back. I started a “good job” folder, and I meticulously tracked my error rate per week so I could compare weeks and see where I was showing improvement. If someone said anything vaguely positive to me, I wrote it down or printed it out and kept it in that folder. And I would review it periodically so I could see that I didn’t always suck.
That helped a bit. At least it added a voice of reason in among the irrational ones. I one rated confidence on a scale of 1-10, I’d say in took me from a 2 to a 6.
To get any further, though, I’d somehow have to move away from the irrational fear, and that was hard to do. I couldn’t reason it away, because it was irrational, so all the years of therapy, while good, didn’t fix it.
In June 2010, I was sent to what I thought was a week-long leadership development conference. And it was that, but it was more. In fact, it was one of the most integrative experiences I’ve ever had.
I was introduced that week to a practice of mindfulness meditation. I was not prepared for that at all, but I thought it was cool and interesting and relaxing, and I generally made jokes about it and looked back on the week as an odd introduction to something a lot of people do. In fact, I know that I left with the intention to try to work some time for meditation into my routine.
From 6 to 10: learning to doubt the web of thoughts
Over the next year I dealt with a lot of uncertainty. My job was eliminated, I searched feverishly for another job through my severance period, expecting fully that starting in mid-November I would be without income (and generally without savings), but a temp position at the University was offered to me, and I continued building my network and going deeper with training my mind.
I say “training my mind” very intentionally, because so much of what I was doing then fit that exactly. I was changing my thinking about myself, about the people around me, about my future, about how people relate to each other, about how things happen.
Most importantly, I was beginning to learn how to step back from my thinking and look at it. Most of this came from the practice of meditation, and the more I read about how to be effective in the world, the more I realized that the meditation practice was helping me to be more effective.
I’ve continued learning and practicing. Nothing award-winningly consistent, but I’m cycling through things at my own pace and going deeper as I can.
I need a capacity to notice my thinking and step back from it. To be able to say, “Look at that, I am really making myself self-conscious / hostile / anxious / confused / angry (or whatever). I think I’ll stop and let that go.”
I write that in the present tense because I have always need it and still do. I’m now actually starting to see it happen. By practicing in meditation simply recognizing that I am thinking, labeling it as thinking, and letting it fade so I can re-focus on my breathing, I am developing a skill that I can use in daily life.
Having a practice has made a huge difference. The irrational thoughts still come up, but it’s like in the story of A Beautiful Mind, when the brilliant mathematician started managing his schizophrenia without medication. He learned to stop taking his thinking too seriously. He carefully identified who and what he could definitely trust and learned to question anything else.
The rest of us can learn to do that, too. Our thoughts and feelings are less severe but can be no less paralyzing. All of us, no matter who we are, create our experience of reality by how we think about it. When we can learn to question our own thinking, we can move away from being the victims of our worlds and find the power we carry.
We can go to 10.
