"I'm sick and tired of being good."
Dana is a 35 year old, and by all accounts, successful woman. Good family, great kids, high level job, attractive, in good health. What brings her into counseling, however, is a recent scare where she found herself really attracted to and sexually tempted by a work colleague. Nothing happened, but the unexpected burst of emotions took her aback.
Being good is nothing new for Dana - she has been that way her whole life. Always followed the rules, did well in school. When other friends were going a bit adolescent-crazy in high school, she pretty much toed the line. Her parents were always bragging about her, teachers loved her. What's not to like?
The problem is that for many good kids, being good isn't about well-thought-through values, but essentially a child's way of coping with a scary world. The scariness can come from growing up in a chaotic family (alcoholic families come to mind) or ones where parents were seen as strict and demanding. You decide early on that the way to avoid conflict is to follow the rules - the shoulds that others tell you and fill your head. You learn to be externally, rather than internally, focused, and highly sensitive to others. Basically, you're happy if they're happy, and so you need to stay aware of what makes them happy. And, like Dana, it works - you stay out of trouble, avoid conflict, and are often successful.
But what works for the child doesn't work as well for the adult. Now the world has gotten bigger. As a kid Dana needed to only please her parents and teacher, now it's her parents, her husband, her boss, and probably the secretary at church, the president of the board she is on, etc. She constantly feels stretched thin trying to accommodate to so many people. She also, like a lot of "good kids," has a hard time making decisions because all decisions need to be right - that is, everyone needs to be happy - which leaves her feeling always stressed and anxious. Such folks can often wind up feeling like martyrs, sucking it up and doing more than everyone else in an effort to be good and keep everyone happy. Under stress their first line of defense is to be good; their second line of defense is to be even gooder - trying even harder to make others happy - often leading to burnout or depression.
What's driving this is basically magical thinking - that if I do the all the right things, other people will somehow, without my saying it, know what I need and give it to me. This never happens, of course, because others can't read your mind, and they don't know you're doing what you're doing because you should, they think you are doing it because you want to.
This inevitably lead to periodic bursts of resentment, unfairness, fed-upness, fueling an argument with a spouse over dirty dishes that suddenly turns into WW3, a drinking binge or buying of 10 pairs of shoes, or Dana's almost-affair. If Dana were 10 years older, this might turn into the infamous midlife crisis complete with a quitting of her job, a full-blown affair, or a divorce.
Being good gets old because you realize that the magical thinking isn't working, that time is running out. Too much of you, you realize, is getting left out of life. The hyper-focus on shoulds leaves no room for the wants, and actually those wants are hard to define because your brain is so wired towards the shoulds. Like Dana the only way you can really tell is when you get fed up and get a strong, albeit brief, sense of what you don't want.
So how do you break out of this "good" box. The issue isn't about affairs or laundry, it's about how you run your life. It's about shifting gears and rewiring your brain. Some ways to get started:
Sort out shoulds and wants. Pick a non-work day and before you do anything that day - vacuum the rug, do laundry - ask yourself are you doing it because you want to or should. You don't need to change what you do, just try and see what drives you. At first you may not be able to tell, but that's okay - simply by asking the question you are beginning to rewire your brain.
Pay attention to what you don't like. Adolescence a time where you discover what you like by process of elimination - basically by trying lots of things and finding out what you don't like and doing something else. Because many good kids missed a large chunk of their adolescence, they never learned these lessons. Do it now.
So if Dana's husband suggests watching a certain movie and Dana can emotionally tell that she really doesn't want to see it, she needs to pay attention to that and ideally try speaking up. Again, its not about the movie but rewiring. Acting on these reactions and using them as information prevents the build up of resentment.
Act on wants. Anytime you get any wisp of something you want - Chinese food, skipping the laundry and taking a hike in the mountains instead - try acting on it. This builds those neurological connects and helps shift decision-making from your head and shoulds to your gut and wants.
Practice making decisions quickly. For a lot a good folks, deciding what to order at a restaurant can be just as weighty as what job to take or what college to attend. The goal here is to learn to trust your emotional reactions, to avoid getting always bogged down in making the "right" decision. Only by making what seem like brusque decisions and finding that others really don't care and you don't get in trouble can you learn to trust yourself.
Practice being assertive. Rather than thinking people will figure out what you need, take the risk of actually telling them. Essentially you need to do as an adult what you couldn't do as a kid. Dana's brush with an affair may tell her something about what she needs from her husband that she is not getting. Irritations at work can lead her to a conversation with her boss about small changes that can make her work-life better.
Now the first few times she tries this, she is going to feel like a 10 year-old. She will worry about how her husband and boss will react, worry that she is trouble, will be a nervous wreck. That's okay, it's only the old wiring getting fired up. With practice the gap between her head and heart will close and it will get easier. She just needs to keep it up.
So give it a try. Experiment with stepping out of the "good-kid" box. If you need help sorting out what you want, need support stepping up, consider talking to counselor or therapist, even for a brief time just to help you get started.
The only thing you have to gain, after all, is yourself.
