Some versions of us were built for survival.
I settle in for the evening. It’s been a long, though productive, day. I open my banking app while I’m resting on the lounge, and the number makes me sit up. It’s higher than it’s ever been. Involuntarily, my chest tightens even before I’ve fully taken it in.
Why can’t I quieten the rising sense of panic that grabs me every time I look at how well things are going? Mostly, why do I have the strongest sensation that everything is about to be ripped away just when another piece of good finds its way into the picture?
I wasn’t lying about who I was. I was loyal to who I’d learnt to be.
This is the pattern I observed in myself during the early days of things coming together. An ever-present suspicion that things were developing in a way that seemed far too good to be true. It wasn’t lack of desire for a better life that was the problem. It was that I was still having trouble getting used to the idea that I wasn’t about to be punished for wanting to be my best self.
When I was a young girl, something happened that shook my sense of what was safe. It happened at the same time I was excelling at dancing, and somewhere in my young mind the two became entangled.
Of course I didn’t fully understand it then, but I carried from that experience a notion that would take me a further thirty-odd years to unpack. I thought that I was never supposed to do ‘too’ well at things. That if I did, there would be consequences.
Then life did what life does. Difficult things happened, as they do with everybody. I knew I wasn’t unique in that, and yet I couldn’t stop blaming myself for what occurred. In my mind, I had linked the two together – me doing well, and bad things happening – just as surely as cause and effect.
When later, life began filling with new experiences and moments of wholehearted joy, that feeling of impending doom would inexplicably become stronger than ever.
And in the early days, I would act on it. Self-sabotaging, returning to drinking, overspending or taking unnecessary risks. I hadn’t yet succeeded in moving out of survival mode and into the person I had become.
Remaining convinced the next worst thing was only ever just around the corner, I would behave in ways that ensured it was. Because at least that was familiar. And at least when it occurred on my terms, there weren’t any unforeseen surprises.
But what an exhausting way to live! It made me constantly anxious, consumed by overthinking and ever feeling unworthy of being enough, of being happy and of taking ownership of the things I was trying to create. And it was certainly not a road map for long-term success.
It took time, quite a few failed attempts and the support of a best friend who believed in me more than I could yet believe in myself. That they could see in me something so much more than what my past had led me to be gave me the strength to begin practising self-forgiveness.
Eventually I was able to recognise the version of myself that needed putting down, and I finally learnt how to stop picking it up again. I think that was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. Though also, one of the most worthwhile.
Now, when I check my bank account balance and the number momentarily makes my heart race and my chest tighten, I notice it and say hello. ‘Ah, there you are, old me. Have you forgotten, you’re not welcome here anymore?’
It sounds ridiculous but bringing my awareness to something which was automatic and largely unconscious for years, gradually weakens its hold over me. It doesn’t make the feeling disappear. But it means I’m no longer taking orders from it.
The old version kept me safe once. It just can’t take me where I’m going. It makes me wonder, in what ways are you still loyal to who you’ve been?
I write from lived experience, not as a clinician or expert. What I share is what I’ve noticed and what has helped me, not advice for everyone. [Why I write this way]
If this brings something up for you, Lifeline is on 13 11 14 (24/7).
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How Do You Step into the Person You Are Becoming? | Why Is It Hard to Accept When Things Are Working?