One of my clients describes this experience she had in grammar school. Being the chubbiest and slowest of the other kids performing wind sprints in Mrs. Wahlberg's P.E. class, my client would often come in last. Already tired and overwhelmed from being beaten, Mrs. Wahlberg would make her run several more wind sprints on her own while been scoffed at by the other kids. To this very day she pulls out her own Mrs. Wahlberg when the tax bill hasn't been paid; the bags from last weekend's vacation haven't been unpacked; and, oh yes, when she has totally forgotten to write a thoughtful response to that person who emailed her last week. As the "to do's" build up, so does the overwhelm.
The anxiety can be so debilitating that it swirls inside of her, almost like a lava lamp. Throughout most of her day, she anxiously wonders to herself, "What have I let slip through the cracks? Am I doing 'the right thing' at this moment? Am I on the right track?" Secretly she wonders, "Will I ever know what 'the right track' is?"
Instead of gathering her wits about her, my client invites Mrs. Wahlberg and the kids in her class to mock her: "You're chubby. You're slow. You're weak. You're lame." All the while, my client mistakenly believes that this will somehow motivate her to get unburied from the mountain of tasks, known and unknown, that await her.
This may sound like someone else's story, but it's actually all of our stories. We've all come to believe in some particular way that we are weak, slow, defective, ugly, unlovable or just plain, "not enough." We've gathered plenty of evidence that validates our insufficiency. When we find ourselves yet again in situations that confirm our flaw, we beat ourselves up.
Here's the kicker. We mistakenly believe that if we're mean or cruel enough, somehow we will slough off our bad habits. Instead, we're practicing being cruel to ourselves, which stimulates the stress hormone, cortisol, into our blood, sending us into a depression that deepens the hole we're already in.
Below the self-loathing and the accompanying longing that we'd just get this part of ourselves handled is a deep and old wound. It's the kind of wounding that can happen in Mrs. Wahlberg's P.E. class; when dad married the bitch that wished I hadn't existed or; as in my case when my brother took his life and nobody knew how to help.
These experiences leave exquisitely tender marks on the mind, body and spirit. To make contact with these imprints can be like putting our hand on a hot stove. They burn. We don't know how to keep these parts of ourselves company; in fact we've spent a lifetime wishing they would just go away.
There comes a point for many of us, however, when we stop running from them, when we stop attempting to beat ourselves into submission. Maybe someone shows up who can help us, or maybe we end up completely overwhelmed and can no longer keep up the facade. However it happens, instead of running from them, we turn around and look. We find a gentle and tolerable way to keep these parts of us company. When we do, we begin to discover that instead of needing to be excised, these parts of ourselves are actually hidden with treasures of insight, compassion and wisdom.
As my client learns to keep this underlying pain company, to welcome it, to have compassion for herself, she's starting to discover that when she's triggered, she can use it as an invitation to come back, come back to the chubby, little girl being abused in Mrs. Wahlberg's class.
"Above all else," she says, "We don't abuse children. Above all else, I don't abuse myself."