Sorry, Not Sorry

Ben:

Tic-Tac-Doh!

I have a nervous tic: I say I’m sorry all the time. I apologize for things and situations that aren’t my fault or are so minor that no apology is warranted. I can’t remember when I started doing it so that means I’ve probably been saying it for some time. In light of some other revelations I’ve had (see the last couple blog posts), I think I’ve stumbled onto why this happens.

You’re Grounded? (Good For You!)

All of us need to feel good about ourselves and the healthy among us are able to meet this need internally. At some early point in their lives, the self-worth of healthy people became grounded within and not tethered to people or events around them.

Since they don’t rely on the outside world to validate them, healthy people use external feedback as guideposts for their daily behavior. Social cues are meant to fill in the blanks when we don’t have all the information on how to behave in a situation. For me, however, social cues carried far more weight. Instead of guideposts and cues, I used external information to formulate my worth as a person.

Healthy people’s emotional boats are secured to a dock of internally-driven self-esteem. My boat wasn’t, and my feelings lifted and sank with the waves of input around me. The problem with relying so heavily on external information is that people outside of you have far less information about you than you do. When you make changes based on this incomplete and often incorrect information, then you’re not being true to yourself and you wind up living an unfulfilling life. I actually wound up living a miserable and sometimes traumatic life because I made decisions to get positive feedback from other people.

Perpetual Apologist

This brings me to my perpetual apologies. To put it bluntly, I said I was sorry so often because I wanted to control other people. Since validation was life to me, I tried putting other people in positions where they had to validate me. Politeness and civility demand that if someone issues an apology, in most situations, especially minor ones, the other person must accept it. The acceptance of my apology translated into acceptance of me. Also, if I thought I’d not lived up to someone else’s expectations of me, I’d fire off an apology. Better for me to fall on my sword and be critical of myself rather than receive disapproval from an outside source. With this in mind, I beat the other person to the imagined punch and issue my mea culpa.

Neon Sign: “Self Esteem For Sale: 1 Cent!”

Apologies are useful tools. They can be used to mend relationships, ease tensions, accept responsibility, and validate another person’s feelings when you’ve hurt them. However, when overused, apologies send a clear signal that you don’t value yourself. If you’re lucky, the person on the other end of the apology is conscientious and will respect your boundaries even if you don’t. However, the opportunist who hears the perpetual apologies will correctly interpret this as a sign of weakness and take advantage of you. I used to wonder why I continued to run afoul of people who treated me poorly. Now I realize my constant apologies were blood in the water to relational predators.

Batten Down the Hatches!

So what do you do? How do you put a stop to apologizing so much? I believe the first and most important step you can take is finding a way to tie your emotional boat to your internal pier. Do some soul searching and ask the tough questions.

Do you like yourself?

If the answer is “no” or “I’m not sure”...why?

Like my pastor says, this preaches easy but is hard to do. Talk about this with someone you trust, or go my route and find a professional. Saying “I’m sorry” so often could be a sign you’re struggling with your value as a person, and that can lead to much more serious problems than having a nervous tic.

Esther:

Ben’s had his half of this post ready to go for some time, by the way, but I will not be apologizing for my lateness. For obvious reasons.

I do want to tell you about a recent apology of mine, though. I caught myself telling Ben I was sorry for something. Saying it didn’t quite hit my gut the right way, and after a moment’s investigation I realized I didn’t even believe I’d done anything wrong. The apology was insecure and self-deprecating, and I’d offered what amounted to a lie without any conscious thought. What would cause such a knee-jerk reaction to the fear of potential conflict?

If you think like prey, it’s not hard to figure out.

Ben and I visited an aviary a few days ago. We’d love to have our own parrot one day and it’s fun to handle the parrots at this aviary, but we have to adjust our behavior and expectations of them when we do because they think quite differently from dogs and cats, which are predators, not prey.

One surprising bit of information about parrots is one of the reasons they bite. When a predator is nearby, flight is obviously a bird’s first response. But if that parrot is next to its mate or favorite human, it’s not uncommon for it to bite them as a way to get them to also flee to safety. The bite is meant to save, not to harm.

This sounds a lot like what I did with Ben when, sensing conflict might be imminent, I reverted to a childhood behavior. Why would false apology and self-criticism have ever been my survival strategy? Maybe to appease the anger of a predatory adult. Maybe to pretend we were on the same side so as to defuse the situation (“See? I think you’re right - I AM worthless.”). Maybe the self-criticism started out as pretended agreement and turned to preemptive self-talk (“if you do that, they’re going to say THIS about you, and you don’t want that, so don’t do it”). Maybe over time I forgot the reason I was doing all that preempting and started to believe my own lies.

And there you have the birth of an inner critic. It was trying to help, not harm, but such a survival strategy wasn’t meant to be a long-term solution. I’m no longer prey and I need to stop thinking like prey.

In the adult food chain, it’s true I still have the potential to be prey or predator on any given day. But, as a healthy adult, I’m not limited to those two options. Instead, when I feel the urgent “sorry” rising in my throat, I’m learning to breathe it back down and try peacefully coexisting with the other animals in my flock.

Liar, Liar

Ben:

Self esteem is a tricky and sometimes elusive thing for people to get their minds around. Under normal circumstances, people learn their value early on and that knowledge becomes a foundation upon which they build a healthy life. A positive self-esteem --one in which a person understands and embraces their own nature -- can insulate someone from the ups and downs of external forces acting on them. Compliments and criticisms, for example, have a significantly decreased emotional impact on someone with a strong sense of self as compared to someone who lives and dies based on others’ input.

There are two kinds of people I’d like to direct your attention towards; they are two sides of the same coin, and they’re both liars.

The first kind of liar is the avoider.

Avoiders say they like themselves when they actually possess deep contempt for themselves. They’re miserable because they know on some level that something needs to change, but they’re unable to face it. As a result, they isolate themselves emotionally. They cut everyone out, afraid others will bring attention to that broken part they can’t acknowledge. Avoiders might be caring and sensitive but outwardly appear callous, cold, or distant.

External feedback could dispel avoiders’ illusions so they’re terrified of it. These people typically have superficial relationships and only minimally commit to someone else. They also distract as much attention from their core as possible by being the life of the party or the curmudgeon. In both cases, whether the avoider chases people off or the excitement ends and the “friends” leave to go find someone real, people eventually leave the avoider, who then lapses into depression.

The second kind of liar is the pleaser.

Pleasers tell themselves they’re worthless. Everyone needs to feel valuable, and healthy people are taught their worth and taught how to correctly value themselves from an early age. Pleasers, however, have no internal resources to meet their need for self esteem so they look to others to meet it. They will move heaven and earth to see to it that others approve of them even if it means they themselves will be harmed in the process. In addition, they try to piggyback their life stories onto their pleasing antics so they can get the personal affirmation they desperately need. Their strategy goes something like this:

The pleaser gives someone a plate of cookies.

The pleaser then tells the person their life story while the person is eating said plate of cookies.

The pleaser then asks the person if they liked the cookies.

If the person says yes, the pleaser interprets it as, “Yes, I empathize with your life story and I approve of you,” when in truth, the person was just saying, “Yes, I liked your cookies.”

And while pleasers live for approval, they’re devastated by criticism. They’ve so invested their self worth into the people and elements around them that their emotions rise and fall in dramatic fashion along with their external input. Pleasers are like investors in an emotional stock market. This is what their major anxiety stems from: the fear their need won’t be met.

Using the above example, if the recipient of the cookies said, “No, I didn’t like your cookies,” a pleaser would be brought to tears, because they pair what they DO with who they ARE.

And, while the pleaser’s need for approval never goes away, eventually the pleaser runs out of resources to spend on approval. Their emotional stock market crashes and depression sets in.

So, for the pleasers and the avoiders, how do we deal with all this? How do we get ourselves out of these ruts? In both cases, self-honesty is the cure.

For the avoiders, it is making peace with the fact that there IS something inside that needs mending; that it CAN be mended; and that they will need to reach out to healthy people or perhaps professionals to help mend it.

For the pleasers, it begins with discovering their internal value and learning to like who they are. It means learning that self-worth is an inside job and can’t be accomplished through acts or gifts for others. It means no longer relying on others to assign value to them.

These aren’t things you can just will yourself to do. In many cases, especially where childhood dysfunction is involved, you’ll need professionals to help guide you towards a healthy understanding of yourself. It will likely be hard work and stir up uncomfortable emotions, but in the end, you’ll be more of a whole person, better equipped to deal with the world around you.

Esther:

I know your childhood can seem irrelevant, but you still carry everything you learned back there. How to ride a bicycle. How to tie your shoes. What to tell yourself when you make a mistake or someone criticizes you.

Sometimes I wonder if anyone has truly had a successful, well-adjusted childhood. Several people have told me they have, but their behavior and beliefs about themselves tell me a different story. Considering the vast number of us who didn’t make it to adulthood with the necessary internal values and life skills, you’d think by now we could all just talk about it openly and discuss the solutions at hand instead of protecting the sacred cow of parenthood.

This is not at all to vilify parents -- it’s actually to free them from an unrealistic responsibility. How can you give what you don’t have, or teach what you don’t know? Neither of my parents had healthy, well-adjusted parents, so how could they have been healthy and well-adjusted for me? How could I, in turn, have taught my children to do things I couldn’t do?

After quite a few years into adulthood, I saw I was making bad choices based on bad information. Very little of this bad information had been taught to me in plain words. Some of it I learned from watching how my parents interacted with the world, each other, and themselves; and a lot of it I learned from how they interacted with me.

The time for further parenting has passed, however. Now that I’m an adult, it’s my own responsibility to figure out what I learned right and what needs unlearned. I also need to identify the needs my parents were never able to meet for me, grieve those losses, and start meeting those needs for myself. Again, this is not to vilify anyone. My parents’ own needs were not met when they were children, and I imagine if we could keep looking back we’d find our family’s brand of dysfunction extends for centuries. Not all parents even try, and I’m comforted in knowing mine did.

So I’ve called it as I see it. What good does that do me?

Looking honestly at things is the first step in laying a new foundation. The idea of overhauling my old belief system is daunting, but if I don’t do this hard work, I could waste my entire life. Acting out of a misguided mindset, I could blindly hurt other people. The bad information I teach my children could set them up for future failure in their relationships, in their jobs, in every aspect of their lives.

The idea of wasting my life should be motivating enough, but I admit I didn’t initially value myself enough to care. What made the work worth it was realizing how many lies I’d already passed on to my children, and wondering if I still had time to become someone I’d be comfortable with them modeling themselves after.

My family has been doing the same thing over and over for generations and has gotten the same results. Logically, it follows that the only thing left to do is something different. It’s not a comfortable process to opt out of my family’s culture, but the lies won’t set anyone free.

Drinking Buddies and Takers

Esther:

Part I: Drinking Buddies

You’ve heard the old joke, “Doctor, it hurts when I do this.” “Then stop doing it.”

But if the thing that hurts is the way you’ve always lived, you’ll discover two unfortunate truths as you stop hurting yourself:

1. The only life you have a shot at improving is your own.
2. Some people will take your personal growth as an attack on them.

This is true for any area of growth:

·   When you take away the support beam of shared drinking or drugs, many of your friendships will crumble.

·   If you are a woman and decide to exercise and eat right, other women will turn on you. They will begin criticizing your appearance (“be careful you don’t get TOO skinny”) and scoffing at your food choices.

·   In the area of spiritual growth, consider this warning by Jesus in the Bible: “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household” (Matthew 10:34-36).

·    If you stop relying on the same unhealthy coping mechanisms everyone else in your family relies on, I promise even some of your most mild-mannered relatives will be unpleasant toward you.

This happens across the board because, when you’re unhealthy, you attract unhealthy people (or you are the product of an unhealthy family or community). It’s comfortable as long as everyone stays on the same page. But when one person dares to change, everyone around that person is forced to look at two opposing beliefs and make a choice. In most cases, mob mentality wins and they attack the lone threat to the status quo.

Does this mean you shouldn’t pursue physical, mental, or spiritual health?

Of course not. But be warned, you will lose relationships. You will want your loved ones to come experience this better, healthier feeling, but, despite your best efforts to communicate with them, they will only hear you attacking their comfortable sickness. The majority of people would rather be surrounded by those who enable their mindsets, not those who challenge them. Some of those people will be the very closest people to you. Those relationships will die and you will mourn them.

Be encouraged, though, that you will gain relationships. Just as you’ve begun making peace with your loneliness, healthier people will notice you, will see you’re one of them now. The empty spots in your life will begin filling with new, deeper friendships. And these new relationships won’t have the down sides you thought all relationships had. There will be mutual respect, acceptance, kindness, encouragement to keep becoming a better version of you.

The road to health may be a much narrower road with fewer travelers, but it sure is a scenic route. If you can find it, you won’t miss the highway. 

Ben:

Part II: Takers

“Some of them want to abuse you…”

            - The Eurythmics

Unhealthy peers aren't the only obstacle to getting healthy. Takers are an equal if not greater threat to you.

Beware people who try to get something from you that ordinarily they’d have no right to.

Sometimes the “something” the takers try to get from you is valuable, like your time, effort, or property. Typically, the takers want this valuable “something” for free even though you’re entitled to receive something valuable in return. Think of the bully who uses the threat of force to get the smart kid to do their homework.

Other times takers want something priceless from you that, ethically or morally, they have no right to ask for because it violates (infringes upon) your physical, psychological, emotional, or cognitive boundaries afforded to you by virtue of your identity as a human being. An extreme example is a human trafficker who kidnaps women and children and sells them to the highest bidder. All this is done by takers advancing their own agendas. These are people bent on control. Beware these people.

While human traffickers do exist and must be pursued and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, much more common and subtle kinds of takers come in the form of controlling people who use a “You Owe Me” approach to get what they want. They do this by leveraging guilt, the repayment of a past favor, any kind of relationship or association, or even religion. In my life I’ve suffered a tremendous amount of emotional stress because I was caught up in relationships with people whose demands and expectations were unreasonably high, and at the same time my sense of self-worth was terribly low. These people got away with it because they convinced me that I owed them. It was my responsibility to make good on my debt to them. I allowed myself to be convinced that I needed these people because no one else would have me or because they led me to believe that I had taken something I wasn’t entitled to. I was easy prey for the takers and, as a result, paid the price of decades of trauma and unhappiness.

Sadly, the pleasers usually are the ones who get sucked into this “You Owe Me” emotional black hole these controllers create with their powerful forces of personality. Pleasers proceed from a desire to do the right thing and get approval; the shrewd controller sees this and takes advantage. Pretty soon, the demands of the controller escalate to the point where the pleaser is taking the brunt of the emotional strain and even damage as a result of this horrible arrangement. I was a pleaser and was no exception to this.

One example of a “You Owe Me” relationship is the dysfunctional family. 

Takers who employ family “You Owe Me” tactics are usually the hardest to resist. Typically, it is the patriarch or the matriarch of the family who establishes this relationship. The takers create pressure by setting nearly impossible expectations and being stingy with their love and approval, only doling it out in small measures when they get what they want, when they want it, and how they want it. The children climb, punch, and elbow one another to be first in line to get this “love” and approval. And heaven help the only child of the “You Owe Me” parent or parents. The spotlight focused on them is akin to a magnifying glass on an ant.

Takers look at their kids not as children to be raised but as resources to be exploited, even going so far as to take their children’s innocence. Takers not only use “You Owe Me” pressure to get what they want, but they also guarantee silence by raising it to “You Owe the Family.” The children learn to always side with the takers, toe the family line, and to never, ever, ever tell (even in situations without sexual abuse). Takers abuse their family power to advance their own agendas and continue to lord over their kids even after the adult children have left home and started families of their own. Patriarchal/matriarchal takers expect deference and obedience to flow upwards to family leadership like a familial Amway pyramid scheme. Family gatherings resemble royalty holding court so the children and younger family members can dote and bow and scrape, feeding the insatiable need of the taker to be adored and admired.

Similarly, dysfunctional churches operate in much the same way. 

There are churches that behave more like country clubs. These country club churches are run by a select few who donate generously and have been members for decades. Their time and money, coupled with a weak spiritual environment, allow takers to build and exert considerable influence in the church, often practically running it. Spiritual takers weave their influence and twist scripture to compel their victims to obey them. A toxic cocktail of fear, the promise of wealth and prosperity, and ignorance of God’s word, open the door for these vipers to come in and prey on the weak. While the most extreme examples are cults, these takers exist in garden variety churches as well.

The reason takers need to take is because they need surrogates to absorb the toxic byproducts of their dysfunctional lives. 

Rather than admit they are unhealthy, face the consequences, and do the hard work of changing their lives for the better, the takers look for victims to absorb their natural, negative consequences for them. They never feel anxiety or sadness because you’re doing it for them. They have no incentive to get better. 

The taker throws the party, has the fun, and leaves their victim to clean up the mess and pay the bill every time. Why does the victim do it? Because the taker is sly and cunning and has convinced their victim that they owe it to them. The cycle plays out over and over, sometimes with the victim becoming a taker themselves. This can go on for generations in families. The parent takes out their own unresolved fears and anxieties on their child and the child in turn does the same to theirs and this familial pyramid scheme persists for generations. These could very well be the generational sins the Bible references.

So how can you tell if you’re being preyed upon?

If you’re doing something solely because it is what someone else wants you to do and it’s causing you distress, that is an excellent indicator. Trust your gut. If that youth leader thinks regular intense one-on-one counseling sessions are necessary to get you “right” with God, but something twists in your gut at the notion of seeing him, then you know. If you’re jumping every time the phone rings because you think it might be that parent who wants you to do something for them and you fear reprisal if you don’t do their bidding, then you know. If you cringe when that bully of a coworker clocks in each day, then you know.

You have to know that you are a person as much as anyone else is. Your time, money, peace of mind, physical well-being, expertise, and happiness are your own. Unless you’ve clearly purchased something on credit or entered into a legal/ethical contract of some sort, YOU DON’T OWE ANYONE ANYTHING.

The world won’t end if the taker gets mad. Learn to value yourself and respect yourself, and learn to live less on others' approval. If you can do these things, you can send the takers packing. 

You Only Get One

Ben:

It is SO easy to forget to take care of yourself, especially in the midst of chaotic situations and hectic lifestyles.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve found myself waking with anxiety day after day. However, I could never figure out why I was so anxious. During the past three months, I’ve been seeing a counselor. For those of you who aren’t regular readers, I’ve been through many trying and demanding experiences over the past couple decades. Since life has settled down recently, I decided it was time to speak with a professional about processing everything I’ve been through.

One thing I discovered in counseling was that I hadn’t been taking care of my basic needs. Sure, I ate, slept, and showered if the day wasn’t too busy, but I’d not made caring for myself a priority. I’ve been hopping from one crisis to the next and one big life change to the next for so long that I’d forgotten how to properly care for my own needs. The result of my basic psychological needs going chronically unmet was generalized anxiety I had a difficult time controlling. Every day I awoke feeling uneasy and unsettled. I’d switch between extreme worry and extreme sadness for no apparent reason.

Recently, I’ve been making my needs a priority. I make sure I shower, groom and dress daily, no matter how busy the schedule appears to me. I incorporate meditation in my daily routine and make an effort to keep on regular eating and sleeping schedules. I also keep a daily journal and engage in personal pursuits. All of this stemmed from a decision to stop trying to fix everyone else’s problems or create ideal situations. I’m learning to be content in this imperfect situation and trust my loved ones to make their own adjustments to be happy as well.

This has created freedom for me: freedom of thought, freedom of time, and freedom of energy. My family is enjoying this more relaxed and happier me. By virtue of taking care of myself and being less stressed and more happy, I’ve helped create better lives for everyone else.

Esther:

Self-care is like car maintenance. Not everyone sees the value in it but the consequences of not doing it speak for themselves.

If you don’t maintain your car, you drive it into the ground and have to buy another car much sooner than you would have had to.

If you don’t maintain yourself…

Oh, sorry. You only get one self.

Understanding this analogy is all well and good, but if you’ve been taking care of others all this time to the detriment of yourself, you’re most likely surrounded by people who won’t appreciate it if/when you decide to start taking care of yourself. They might say you’ve gotten distant or selfish. And that might sound to you like the end of the world. It used to sound like that to me, too.

But imagine I’ve asked you to drive me to see my family in another state. You’ve been driving for hours and your gas tank is nearly empty, but the minute you tell me you’ve got to stop at a gas station, I act offended and hurt.

“I thought you cared about me,” I say. “I don’t have time for you to stop right now.”

Would you apologize and keep driving until we were stranded on the side of the road? Or would you stop at the next gas station regardless of my ignorant criticism (and maybe suggest I find alternate transportation for the rest of my trip)?

Applying this mindset to the less obvious maintenance of self-care is easier said than done when you haven’t before, but it’s no less important. Think of the stories you may have heard, or witnessed firsthand, of the stress and higher mortality rate of caregivers. Or think of that one old shrew who seems “too mean to die” while the family she lives with wastes away with anxiety, depression, chronic headaches, ulcers, etc.

A healthy person will understand when you have to say no to something because your “car” is in the shop. In fact, one might say their reaction is a litmus test of their own mental health. It's a shame when someone doesn’t understand, but there’s no need to internalize and make that YOUR shame. Cars need gas, tire checks, bulb replacements, fluid and filter changes, my goodness, cars can be a lot of work. But it’s not frivolous work. And neither is caring for yourself.

Not sure how to start? That's okay. When I began, I checked out library books to learn the basics involved in caring for myself, just like I read up on parenting when I was pregnant. I did internet searches on the topic. I made mental notes when I observed other people intuitively caring for themselves. Ideally, as very young children, we all would have learned to be in tune with our basic needs and self-soothe, but life rarely takes the ideal route.

Here’s a fun choose-your-own-adventure questionnaire to figure out what sort of self-care you might need at the moment.

http://philome.la/jace_harr/you-feel-like-shit-an-interactive-self-care-guide/play

The Only Thing We Have to Fear

Ben:

A few posts ago I did a Star Wars themed satirical piece dealing with politics and religion. Some people held their breath, hoping they wouldn’t be plunged headlong into another political discussion which might cause them emotional distress. Only after seeing it was just in good fun did they let out a sigh of relief and enjoy the post.

That got me to thinking. Why all the fear? Why all the discomfort when it comes to things political?

I think our political fear is primarily about our collective anxieties relating to all the variables in life which can negatively impact us. Poverty, sickness, harm by accident or by the hands of someone else, loss of a means to support ourselves, people we view as “bad guys” winning while the people we view as “good guys” losing, all are examples of things that are out of our control that will hurt us in some fashion. Our instinct is to look to things bigger than us to prevent bad things from happening, and the government is often that “bigger thing” we look to for protection.

I do believe governments coupled with private citizens can help prevent some of the bad things. We have numerous documents showing the rights we’re entitled to. To help deal with people who violate those rights, we have a police department, a legal system, and places to confine those who break the law. If we suffer injury or illness, we have teams of mobile emergency responders at the ready to whisk us away to places which can restore us to health. We also have various avenues to pursue help when we’re not in positions to support ourselves.

Even so, even the biggest government and biggest collection of well-meaning citizens can’t prevent all the bad things from happening to us. People still get hurt by accidents or by other people; houses burn down; flood waters rise; tornadoes and earthquakes ravage neighborhoods; people get sick, lose jobs, and suffer the loss of quality of life; people die untimely deaths. Life is uncertain and that uncertainty can be terrifying.

Like children hiding under blankets, we avoid the truth of this uncertain world by clinging to the unrealistic hope that there is a force in our life that will stop all the bad things from happening. We place our hope in politicians who promise they can remake the world in such a way that we can rest easy in it. That we can go to bed at night and when we awaken the next day nothing will have changed. Our jobs will be there, our houses will be there, and we’ll be happy and safe. But our guy says the rival politicians won’t help us, won’t take care of us, won’t see to it that we wake up the next morning happy and safe. Then we fear that our guy won’t make it in and grow angry towards people who like and support the other guy.

This translates into anger at the other camp. Whether they are ignorant, naïve, or intentionally trying to hurt you by not voting in your security blanket, they are now your enemy. The other side feels the same way about you and the two sides clash.

I think in order to keep our sanity this election cycle, we need to understand that no matter who is in office, we are still vulnerable to the many things in life that can harm us. We need to make peace with the fact that life is indeed a fragile, transient thing and we should use these precious few moments we are gifted with to love those around us and do the best with the resources we have. Because neither our guy or their guy can determine how you think, how you believe, and ultimately how you act in a given moment. All that is up to you. And 200 years of our country’s history has proven that you can prosper no matter what idiot is in office.

Esther:

Until recently, most of my life choices were fear-motivated. I don’t recommend living like this. You’ll do some really dumb things.

When I was 18 I married a nice man because I was afraid he would be the only man to ever want to marry me. I didn’t go to college because I was afraid. I took easy, low-paying jobs because I was afraid I couldn’t handle more responsibility. I stayed in friendships that suffocated me and relationships that required me to cut off parts of myself and pack them away, because I feared conflict more than I feared giving up the right to be a person. I even stayed in a job my doctor warned was ruining my health because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to find a different one.

I share these bad choices with you so you’ll see I empathize if your fear has bullied you into similar bad choices.

More than other election years in recent history, this one has touched a deep nerve in an old fear of mine, and I’ve spoken to several people with abuse histories who mention the same feeling. For those of us with PTSD, sometimes a current, relatively safe situation feels like an old situation that was actually dangerous, that actually harmed us. Some injuries never heal all the way and at times something innocuous will brush them. The resulting pain startles us and the impulse is to flee, or to fight, or to freeze. To make the pain stop.

Of course, pain is only a symptom. The knee-jerk response of getting the pain to stop isn’t a good long-term strategy. The more I tried to ward off pain, the more my fear of pain grew until it was bigger than pain. I started confusing the two feelings, pain and fear.

Finally, years of fear-based choices caught up with me, the pain of those choices eclipsed my fear, and I left an actually dangerous situation my own fear had led me into. Pain, which I’d tried so hard to avoid, saved me.

When pain comes too early and too big in life, I think we can spend the rest of our lives thinking the point is to control our environment so that whatever our Ground Zero was never happens again. But it’s impossible to control everything.

I think the real point is to recognize fear as the enemy. To see pain as a teacher, not a torturer. And to learn how to breathe through the pain when it comes again.

Dogs of War

Esther:

Ben and I don’t consider three teenagers challenging enough, so we also have three dogs with a strong prey drive. As long as you have a fenced-in backyard, dogs with strong prey drives are really no problem.

Except Bernard, our Lab/Boxer, is surprisingly light on his feet. He’ll spring clean over a 3-foot chain link fence just to sniff what’s on the other side.

So we stopped relying solely on the chain link fence and started clipping Bernard to a tie-down when he went outside.

Until he snapped the connector ring on the tie-down and jumped the fence again.

We considered building a privacy fence until we saw Bernard clear the 8-foot privacy fence of a neighbor. So that was out.

It didn’t look like we had any choice but to install an invisible fence. Ben spent the greater part of a day working on that and for the next few weeks we introduced our dogs to it and trained them on its usage.

But then Beasley, our German Shepherd/Basset Hound, learned she could punch past the initial discomfort of the static collar and be free. She taught Bernard how to ignore his own static collar, and he helped her escape with him over the fence. We weren’t sure how she had gotten over the fence as she lacks Bernard’s springiness, but one time she had dislodged a block wedged between fence posts to join Bernard on the other side and together they went on a merry neighborhood rampage. So we didn’t put much past her, either.

Once our canine Bonnie and Clyde had defeated the invisible fence, I began to see Beasley and Bernard as dogs of mythical proportions. Other people had sedate family pets content to stay inside when the front door was activated, while our dogs smashed through the double-stacked pet gates at the very sound of our front door opening. We had managed to find two beasts from some havoc-wreaking pack.

Not to be thwarted, Ben bought a 50-foot tie-down cable rated for 200+ dogs and secured it to the base of a 19-year-old bush. Bernard slipped his collar and jumped the fence.

Ben tried again with a leather and nylon harness.

Bernard jumped the fence with the cable still attached, then left the torn harness in the neighbor’s yard to mock us with its emptiness when we pulled it back over the fence.

At this point it was clear we would have to treat the dogs like prisoners and only allow short, supervised walks in the yard. The very first time one of our daughters was the warden in charge, Bernard promptly sprang the fence and Beasley expertly scrambled up and over to follow.

At wits’ end, Ben replaced the 50-foot cable with a 20-foot one and got Martingale collars for our escapees. Beasley and Bernard are escorted outside one at a time when they need to use the facilities and this is working well to contain them.

But we know they still hear the cry of havoc on the wind, the call to war against squirrels and skunks and outdoor cats, and we remain vigilant.

Ben:

The third dog in our trio of ruffian canines is Jinx. Jinx is a female West Highland White Terrier (Westie). The Westie is a Scottish breed with a white coat and is typically 10-15 pounds in size. Westies are tenacious, energetic, affectionate, playful, and fierce and Jinx possesses all of those traits in abundance. The Westie my parents owned when I was growing up also embodied all those traits.

After I showed Esther videos and articles on Westies, she was sold on the idea -- so much so that she sent me a link to a breeder one morning. By that evening, I’d acquired Jinx and brought her home. The breeder told me that she was a troublemaker and I knew she’d fit right in with our bunch. The entire family immediately fell in love with her.

Almost finished growing, Jinx looks like she’ll top out around the 10-pound range, which is on the smaller end of the spectrum for her breed, but don’t tell Jinx that. She’s a 100-pound dog in a 10-pound body. She loves mixing it up with the other two dogs, and when they wrestle and pounce on each other, Jinx is right in the thick of it. She’s very rough and tumble.

When Jinx isn’t diving into the dog pile to wrestle, she’s burrowing under covers, leaping off the bed, chasing her tail, and attacking empty plastic bottles. I’m also convinced I could contract her out to do demolition on houses being renovated. She chews on furniture, rips up linoleum, gnaws on baseboards, and could probably singlehandedly destroy an entire home if given enough unsupervised time.

Jinx does have one enemy though: dog bowls. They offend her.

Early on, they offended her by having the nerve to be empty. After she finished eating and/or drinking, she’d growl, then flip and chase the bowl around the kitchen. Once the evil bowl is cornered and she can’t push it anymore, she’ll lie on her stomach and bark at it incessantly. Lately though, the dog bowls don’t even have to be empty to piss her off. They just have to exist. If left alone long enough with dog dishes, she’ll grab one side in her mouth, flip it over (emptying the contents all over the floor), and run around with it, barking as she goes. In addition to contracting her out for demolition, I think she could moonlight as a K-9 unit. She attacks things as if they’d insulted her mother.

Jinx is also a superb breakfast companion. She’s better than coffee (or at least as good as). Our morning routine consists of taking Jinx out of her crate and taking turns holding her in the morning. While Jinx is still waking up and her frenetic Westie synapses haven’t begun to fire yet, she’s quite the cuddle bug. We’re treated to sleepy eyes, yawns, and nuzzles. In return she gets to clean our breakfast plates at the table. (Maybe we shouldn’t, but YOU try and say no to those big brown eyes!)

We have a motley crew of dogs. Things go awry on a regular basis and, more often than not, I find myself storming through the neighborhood in pajama pants and fuzzy slippers to resolve the latest issue. They’ve caused us sleepless nights, damaged property, and terrorized the neighborhood (apologies once more to our neighbors), but it’s how we like it. Because when the human world has terrorized you, there’s nothing like curling up with a pile of dogs who love on you regardless if you missed a payment, failed to fill out a form properly, or didn’t return a call.

Weeds Against Humanity

Ben:

Our property spans a quarter acre at most, and, like most properties, the outside requires upkeep: the lawn mowed and edged, the weeds pulled, the gutters and downspouts cleaned out, and, if so desired, some flowers planted. Normally, this upkeep doesn’t require too much time or effort to accomplish. However, a couple years ago I went back to school to finish getting my degree. This meant that things like sleeping, eating properly, watching television, playing games, and especially lawn maintenance went to the wayside.

Two years have passed since I last took proper care of the outside of our home. Last week, finding some free time to try to catch things up, I found that work that used to take an afternoon to complete now took the better part of a week to accomplish. Half of our yard had been overgrown. The weeds and saplings normally pulled with little effort had now grown into small trees and stubborn patches of brush that had to be attacked with hoe and shovel. Some areas will even require professional help to clear out because I lack the tools and experience to do so.

As I surveyed our backyard, which I’ve mostly reclaimed now, the thought occurred to me that there are people very much like the weeds I struggled to remove. Controlling people, especially. Like weeds worming into an unsuspecting lawn, a controlling person will begin worming their way into a person’s life by offering small “favors” or giving modest “gifts” to their victims. Offered freely on the surface, these offerings are quickly followed with requests for the victim to reciprocate. The controller’s requests are harmless and easy to comply with at first but, as time goes on, the favors and gifts outstrip the receiver’s ability to respond in kind. For example, the controller will “loan” a large sum of money when the victim is in a bind that they have no way of paying back immediately. At that point, the controller has achieved their first goal.

The controller has now established an artificial sense of obligation in their victim. The controller then adds “suggestions” to the mix, weighing in on every area of their victim’s life -- what they should eat, what they should wear, and so on. The victim begins to feel the controller’s tightening grasp and experiences the conflict of their own free will clashing with the desires of the person holding the un-repayable debt over their head.

The more time passes, the more insurmountable the problem becomes for the victim. Like the runaway weeds and saplings that have overgrown a home, the controller has dominion over just about every part of the victim’s life, and the only way to get out from underneath it is to call in legal and psychological experts to help disentangle the whole mess.

I’ve used the word “victim” here, but in this scenario the victim is also to blame. Like the gardener who ignores the garden and lets it get taken over by all manner of undesirable flora and fauna, the victim didn’t take care of themselves properly either. Instead of saying “no” early when the stakes were low and it was easy to say, the victim went with the flow, avoiding conflict and pleasing the controller at every turn. They didn’t want to offend anyone or hurt anyone else’s feelings, but forgot that they themselves were people with rights, hopes, dreams, and physical and psychological needs. They forget they could say “no” and that they weren’t responsible for keeping other people happy.

There is a group of people who, sadly, have no say in the matter. They are the minors: the children, grandchildren, nieces, or nephews of adults who play the “you owe me” card throughout their lives. They have no choice but to comply. The best we adults can do is to help where we can by encouraging, counseling, and reminding the indentured child-servants of controlling parents that they are, indeed, people and are allowed to say “no,” especially when someone wants something from them they have no right to ask for.

I was recently liberated from a pair of controllers who haunted my life for nearly two decades. It was a hard lesson to learn, but I’m all too happy to say “no” now.

Esther:

I’m not a hobbyist gardener mainly because I don’t like weeding. I try to avoid any task that seems to need more maintenance than its goal (like doing dishes -- if I had my way, we’d only eat off paper plates). So when I was young, I avoided anything that seemed to be too much work. Saying no to pushy people -- either over and over, or once and dealing with the nuclear fallout, whichever their personalities seemed geared toward -- seemed far more work than just giving them what they wanted.

Sure, I’ll wear this. Okay, I’ll apologize for that. Fine, I’ll agree to whatever you want to say is wrong with me.

But some people push just to be pushing. They push because they’ve gotten addicted to spreading past the boundaries of others. And once their species has invaded non-native territories, they seem almost impossible to root out.

We -- those of us who are more likely to be invaded than to try invading -- don’t want to believe this could be anyone’s motivation. They must push because they believe they’re right. Maybe they push because they were once hurt like they’re now hurting us, and if we could get them to see the truth, they’d stop pushing.

I spent so much time and effort on the motivations of these weeds before I realized their motivation for pushing doesn’t matter. Regardless of their reasons for invading me, my response to them should be the same: a gentle, firm push right back at them.

Over and over. As many times as I need to. Pulling out their weeds every single time I see them, as soon as I see them, because they simply don’t belong here.

It seems like a lot of work. But whenever I think it might be too much work, I just remember that not doing that work is saying no to my own right to be a person. And when I keep my person free of weeds, I have room in my life for all the other people who are just people, free and easy to interact with, who aren’t trying to invade me at all.