Who is driving your car
and how old are they?
I have been doing some more learning recently discovering what drives us. I may have mentioned this before, 95% of our thoughts are not conscious…and 75% of those thoughts are negative. It’s like having a hand wringing creature sitting on your shoulder (see the Meet Your Lizard newsletter March 26). Of course the difficulty here is that subconscious thoughts are well, subconscious.
We are not directly aware of them.
Have a think about spending some money, maybe on a non essential but lovely to have. What is the next thought after the “I’d love that!” do you get all L’Oreal about it? “Because I am worth it?” Or is there a judgey often adult type voice saying “you can’t afford it, don’t need it, are you kidding?” One of my favourite refrains to myself is “who do you think you are/delusions of grandeur?” from a rather taller than me, intimidating adult figure standing there with arms akimbo. Another old favourite is fear of authority, tax man, governing body, even my financial advisor – it always feels like being called to see the headmaster. This is totally in my head, he is very nice and wonderfully reassuring.
How many of you have started a new diet and lasted about 3 days while inside there is a two year old having a tantrum because it doesn’t include family size bags of crisps and large glasses of wine. Eventually raging child wins and another diet bites the dust. What was the thinking behind the dieting? Often good sensible reasons, need to lose weight, feeling unfit, not liking the way you look. But probe a little deeper how do you feel?
Ashamed, disgusting, weak, out of control?
When we have these thoughts and feelings particularly the out of control ones we’ll do anything not to feel them. So we develop escape strategies, could be eating too much, doom scrolling, watching every episode of Gavin and Stacy, having to clean the bathroom. These subtexts are often laid down in childhood usually pre seven years old. They may have been messages from your parents/teachers/ friends. As parents we visit our fears on our children partly because 1. We are unaware of them and 2. we are trying to keep our children safe.
What can you do?
Firstly just notice what is going on, try to re-wind what was going on just before you decided that cleaning the bathroom was FAR MORE important than filling in your tax return, phoning your difficult relative, or booking a lovely spa treatment. What was the Greek chorus of thoughts in the background.
Secondly how do you feel? Notice the first thing that comes up and ask why do I feel like this, because? Ditto the second and third thing up to the fifth thing if you need to. Wait until you get a visceral response a heart lift/contraction/ fluttery tummy and remember it. So that when you feel it again you’ll recognise it more quickly. Then you’ll have more agency with how you deal with the uncomfortableness. Even doing simple things like rubbing your tummy, or putting your hand on your chest can sooth that (probably) younger scared part of yourself. Tell that part you are ok and I’ve (the adult bit) have got you.
I have found that for me the fear of authority driver pops up surprisingly often and I now recognise the feelings that surround it. One of my strategies is to use an AI (yes I know) generated picture based on me as a happy 2 year old jumping into a puddle. I use it as a screen saver and it reminds me of the happy and curious child that is in there under all of the layer of conditioning.
It is surprisingly effective.