This past week (or two) has been, well, I’m not sure. Part of me wants to say busy, maybe even productive, but as soon as I go to type that, there is this voice in my head that points out that no, it can’t be, but without giving me any reasons why it can’t be.
This bastard voice is one I’ve been painstakingly rooting out and isolating. I’ve dubbed it The Abusive Taskmaster. You may have one too. It’s the one that screams at me that whatever I am doing isn’t the right thing to be doing right now, without any constructive feedback on what IS the right thing to be doing right now. (This is how I identify it from my voice pointing out that uh, hey self, you’re procrastinating and you know it. The Abusive Taskmaster doesn’t offer anything much constructive.)
This voice, TAS, I’ve talked about it before. It leaves you feeling jittery and guilty for doing something, because clearly you should be doing something else, something better. And usually something Not For Yourself.
This voice gets the distinction of being Abusive because, well, it is, and I KNOW for me that it’s a hold over from being in abusive situations (narcissistic, psychologically abusive situations at that.) Situations where I was berated or punished (in some form or fashion, be it by way of active punishment or passive aggressive neglect of needs punishment) for not doing what someone else in some position of authority wanted me to be doing, thought I should be doing.
Urg. Okay, I’m not saying this the way I want. Let me back up.
This week, I had a conversation with a really good friend of mine. We’ll call this friend M. M and I were talking about feeling pride in what we can do, our accomplishments, and where the line between pride and arrogance is.
(M is damn smart, and I genuinely enjoy the rabbit holes M and I go down, even if they are often intensely personal. This was one of those conversations.)
I said I didn’t think M or I had any reason to worry about crossing the line between being proud of ourselves and being arrogant bastards, but that the worry about crossing it, that I think came from jealousy, fear, and abuse.
You see, M and I were both, in one way or another, taught that people who are proud of themselves are arrogant. People who put themselves out there, people who talk positively about themselves and their accomplishments, they are arrogant. And I figured that what might be bugging us (or at least me) wasn’t so much that they were arrogant, as we were jealous of their comfort and ability to be proud of themselves when we weren’t able to be comfortable being proud of ourselves.
“Why the hell are they so proud of themselves? Arrogant asshole – I’m just as good at what I do if not better than they are, but I’m not out there bragging about myself. Don’t they know that that is arrogant and no one likes a braggart?”
You may have heard your own inner voices go: “Why the hell are they so proud of themselves? Arrogant asshole – I’m just as good at what I do if not better than they are, but I’m not out there bragging about myself. Don’t they know that that is arrogant and no one likes a braggart?”
Or some version of that.
That’s jealousy.
I don’t think of myself as a jealous person, so I had to unpack that. Was I jealous of their skills? Of their abilities? Of the attention they got when they did it? Nope. (Okay, maybe a tiny bit of the last one, but I’ll explain why in a minute.)
What I was jealous of was that they were proud of themselves, so comfortably and effortlessly. They were just able to put their work or selves out there, and not feel like it was wrong to do it. That they didn’t believe doing that said horrible, unflattering things about themselves.
Because it doesn’t, guys. Being proud of ourselves? It’s not a bad thing. (Competing and squashing others down because you’re insecure, okay, that’s not really being proud of yourself.)
Let me say it again. Being proud of ourselves? It’s not a bad thing.
So what I was jealous of, what I wished I had, was the comfort level they had when sharing their things. I wanted to be that comfortable, I wanted to be proud of myself, inherently, without also feeling riddled with doubt and hate that I was somehow a Bad Person for being proud of myself.
Why the HELL did I feel that way to start off with? How did I pick that bullshit up?
Guys, I think, at least in my case, it’s a holdover from being in an abusive situation. Not necessarily maliciously abusive – like, actively, consciously abused by someone who thought it all through, though it can be. Not necessarily that kind, but that could be the case for some people. I suspect it’s more unaware, narcissistic, abuse.
Here’s how it worked (for me):
Humans have a psychological need to feel appreciated, to feel competent and valuable. A healthy, well-balanced psyche gets that appreciation, ideally, from themselves. They learned along the way to be proud of what they can do, often simply because they DID IT at all, and so they need minimal reinforcement from an outside source, as far as affirmation and appreciation goes. (Though the vast majority of us like affirmation and appreciation to some variable extent.) This is awesome.
If you don’t learn – typically by positive feedback when you did something and were proud of yourself – that you are good enough as is, you’re often in for a world of hurt. If you learn that the only time you are good enough is when you are pleasing someone else (show of hands here), if you are shamed for being proud of yourself, if the primary times you have your need of affirmation and appreciation met are when you are meeting the needs of someone in authority, then you are going to go the rest of your life both needing external validation, AND being afraid of putting yourself out there to meet that need.
This is how a narcissist or someone with those tendencies – knowingly or not – controls you and keeps you doing what they want. Even if they only know that their doing this gets them what they need, like a mouse pushing the right button for food, this is how they control you. They provide validation and appreciation when you do what they want, and when you don’t, they don’t, or worse, punish you. (Not just or even violence, but anything from criticism to withholding their affection or neglecting their responsibilities to you and your needs in the relationship.)
Because you’re trying so hard to be Good Enough for them, and just good enough in general, AND because you can’t be good enough and proud of yourself on your own, you keep seeking out their approval by jumping through more and more of their ever more difficult hoops, until they are flaming hoops of electrified death suspended over a mile wide chasm. You can’t meet them, and you are forever stuck trying to make them happy, meet their needs, while they have no responsibility to meet yours, because clearly you aren’t meeting theirs.
And this is what hell is.
This was the gist of the conversation M and I had the other day. How maybe it’s jealousy of someone being proud of themselves that makes people turn up their nose and call someone arrogant. That it comes from missing an important lesson and being abused or neglected, from not being able to be comfortable being proud of yourself. In being taught that validation must come from someone else, or we’re bad somehow.
Abuse fucks you up, but it’s not hopelessly permanent. There is hope, but how you come back from it will be individual to you. Mine is for me, too.
Now, listen. Before I go any further, I just want to clarify that I’m not saying that all abuse is malicious or intentional, nor am I advocating that we baby the hell out of everyone. I am aware that humans, all of us, typically try to do the best we can. But guys, we’re all, individually and collectively, pretty fucked up, and it’s a slow crawl as a species away from dog eat dog to collectively supporting wellness. It is an extremely slow cultural evolution, and we’re seeing bouncing back from the extremes (everyone is a winner) to the old way of dog eat dog thinking that has been shown to cause no shortage of pain and trauma to the humans living now. We’re still evolving, albeit slowly, and learning every single day how to be human together. I do think that it’s time our methods of teaching and interacting with each other caught up with what we know about ourselves as a species. What worked in our childhood as a species, because we did not know better, should not be the methods we use as we grow, when we DO know better.
It’s a mess, the whole thing.
So, yeah. I deal with that painful place of jealousy of wanting to be proud of myself, and the fear of being not good/perfect if I am, of not being worth loving, but also having that need for validation and affirmation that I am still learning to meet for myself. It’s uncomfortable as all get out – thanks in no small part to that mental voice I mentioned earlier, The Abusive Taskmaster.
It’s the learned one that tells me that I should be doing something better, something different, and I am well aware that it’s a hold over from when I had an abusive authority setting up hoops for me to jump through. If I wasn’t jumping through those hoops, if I was doing something for myself, I was going to find myself on the receiving end of negative feedback, of not having my needs met. I’m human. I internalized right quick how to get my needs for affirmation and affection met, because those are big needs. It only lasted so long until I could no longer jump through hoops and then I hit need-starvation. After so long of starving to have my needs met, I snapped. I left.
Now that I’m out of those situations, I have to unlearn that voice, and it’s HARD.
This week is a good example of that. I’ve been reworking the website. I needed some added functionality badly, and the set up I had couldn’t ever provide it. So, complete overhaul it was. I’ve also been creating a bunch of new nail wrap designs for the shop, while waiting for finances to allow me to place proof orders for four new legging designs. Oh, and I’ve been to a conference, and woven 10 inches of chain, and answered questions about Posh and Jamberry and helped cook meals and steam cleaned carpet.
Sounds like I’ve been busting ass, doesn’t it? Sounds like I should be proud of myself for working on my businesses and website and goals and new projects and squeezing in some housework.
I’m not. Instead, each time I’ve done any of those things, that Abusive Taskmaster voice kicks in, berating me for not doing something Else. Not that it tells me what to do instead – it can’t, because I don’t have an authority outside of me setting up hoops for me anymore. But it doesn’t. ever. shut. up. So when I sit down to work on wrap designs, or load up Photoshop to start working on a new clothing design, or pull up an unfinished page of the website, I’m overwhelmed with jittery guilt for doing something for myself. For making myself, my goals, my wants, a priority over someone else. Even when there is no one else to put first.
I’ve been putting someone else’s needs before mine for so long I become physically ill from putting mine first. I fight back nausea and fear. It drums up a feeling of near-panic. It sucks.
As hard as it is, I’m doing it anyway, because I know that voice is like the dying flailing of a detached lizard tail. It’s automatic, and it was attached to something at one time, but it has no life of its own now… and no teeth anymore. It will stop, as long as I acknowledge it, and move through the discomfort. I’m learning that it’s good and healthy to be proud of myself, that validation needs to come from me first, if I want to be free and happy.
I am slowly, painfully, learning. But I am doing it. (And M is too.)
Obligatory Disclaimer:
Because someone always nitpicks the title: jealousy doesn’t make you bad, so no, this is not shaming. Jealousy is an emotion you can use to learn more about yourself and what you want. We are told it’s bad, but we are also told that our self-worth depends on what some asshole gets from is. So, just to be clear: Jealoisy is NOT inherently bad, nor does feeling it make you a bad person. It makes you human.
And: No, not everyone will relate to this. Duh, no shit, Sherlock. And sure, there are probably arrogant people. But use your feelings of discomfort or lack thereof to learn about yourself instead of judging others. You grow from that, which is another reason to feel contentedly proud of yourself.