One More Perspective

Hi, I’m an over-functioning asshole.  I probably would seem less of a jerk if I didn’t step into spaces I didn’t need to, but I have a baseline programming that makes me feel very unsafe when I detect a gap in my connection with others.  Worse, I define that connection and my own worth based on how useful others see me.  …and now that I understand performance is how I was able to get attention as a child, I can see that having an internal drive to be acknowledged as useful renders me constantly seeking to be of value.  …and annoying, because what I define as value or a problem to be solved, someone else may not.  Not at all, in fact.  That’s the uncomfortable and inconvenient truth about me I am learning to acknowledge, accept and integrate; and that’s a lot.  My baseline programming of seeking acceptance through usefulness is exhausting for all involved, because I don’t take a break from it.  At least, until now.  Now, I am convinced growing away from this seeking is actually my spiritual journey for the rest of my life:  to be on the watch for and prevent my over-functioning.  

If left on autopilot, I naturally gravitate to where I can be of most utility.  My currency is any combination of knowledge-sharing, research, strategy, logistics planning, and insight-offering.  If I can be useful, then I can possibly belong.  Oof.  What a devastating going-in position, and ripe for exploitation. 

Imagine the ways this drive to be useful comes across to others.  Some are entirely put off by it; who asked me to be their personal problem solver?  Who invited me into that gap I perceive?  Is the gap a fact from another’s perspective, too?  So yes, I am still subconsciously entering the Rescuer-Victim-Persecuter (Karpman) triangle, despite having had the theory down pact for north of twenty years.  I recently learned though that the part of the brain that was programmed during the first years of one’s childhood is not the same as the part that learned about Imago Relationship Therapy and the concept of boundaries at age 30.  That mismatch of brain geography sucks.  It means that I can know what years of therapy taught me but it’s like watching YouTube videos of gardening without sticking your hands in the dirt. 

So, what does sticking my hands in the dirt actually look like? It looks like sitting on my hands. It means when I see a logistical trainwreck unfolding in front of me, instead of pulling out a spreadsheet and a rescue plan, I have to practice the excruciating art of doing absolutely nothing, and managing the internal anxiety that creates for me, by myself.  …or when someone doesn’t reach out and I realize maybe I have been the fuel behind this relationship, I have to accept that silence is probably the uncomfortable, uncaring view that belongs only to me.  It is OK for me to withdraw my energy and let relationships lapse, if that’s what will happen.  I no longer need to carry the weight of initiating and finding the connection.  I can give myself permission to let things and people go.  This is very different from the huffy, scorched-earth manner I would move on in the past.  Today, my letting go has to do only with my energy and has no other-person component at all.  It’s simply self-containment and authenticity.  My valuation is no longer based on my usefulness, my contribution of knowledge or resources.  My own measuring stick is my internal peace and alignment; it is my Imago Octopus tentacles relaxing.  Not reaching.  Not chasing. 

When the over-functioning of my Octopus finally ceases, the static stops, because hyper-vigilance isn’t quiet.  It functions exactly like loud, buzzing radio static in the background of my life; a non-stop hum of nervous energy and assessments.  The mental chatter, strategic mapping, and safety-seeking calculations suddenly drop away.  The frantic energy I was injecting into a relationship to keep it afloat stops.  As it turns out, the quiet left behind is massive.

When you spend a lifetime acting as the generator for every connection, the sudden silence can feel less like peace and more like a void.  …but I am learning to sit in that clearing.  I am discovering that if a space stays empty because I didn’t step in to engineer a bridge, it isn’t a failure of my utility, it is simply the truth of the landscape.  For the first time, I am allowed to just be a resident of that landscape, rather than its lead architect.

So that’s the real shift.  The child in me believed that an empty space was a dangerous gap, a sign that I was invisible unless I was fixing, planning, or mapping out a strategy. Relaxing my Octopus tentacles means looking at that misinterpreted, misplaced, misunderstood little girl and telling her the rescue mission is over.  We don’t have to audit the room anymore.  We don’t have to build a system to prove we belong.  We are allowed to just show up, keep our hands in our pockets, and trust that being human is currency enough.  True growth is matching my investment to the reality of any relationship, not its potential.

Lastly, why do I write all of this down?  Carl Jung has the answers:

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.“

Unfelt anger becomes passive aggression.
Unacknowledged fear becomes control.
Unlived desires turn into resentment.