… I will find someone who will take me under their wing and take care of me forever. I won’t have to make decisions myself. I will let them assign tasks and activities to me, and I will swear total loyalty and fulfilment of those activities.
I won’t communicate what it is that I really want.
Because I don’t believe that I can get it. Because I have made the experience in my childhood that I am not getting it. The love, the attention, the care which I needed and didn’t get.
I will be who you want me to be.
Because then I’m perfect for you and you will take care of me.
The promise I was making
I silently promise compliance in exchange for care, while hiding what I actually want.
But my own wishes won’t disappear because I haven’t communicated them. I have agreed to something that I don’t really want to do.
Then I don’t fulfil what I promised. I unconsciously sabotage it, because I don’t actually want to do what I agreed to. But I don’t clearly say that either.
This happens in relationships. And this happens also at work.
I confuse myself so I can be nice
If I am confused, then I am not clear. If I am confused, I am harmless. If I am confused, I don’t know what I want.
So if I am confused, I can give you what you want because maybe I think this is actually what I want.
I confuse myself so I can be nice. I confuse you so that you’re not angry on top of it. If I were clear, I would know where I disagree. I would be angry or demanding. I would no longer be harmless.
This is how confusion helps me keep my promise: I will be who you want me to be, and I won’t clearly see what I want myself.
Realising what I am doing
What changed something for me was the realisation that this is a strategy. A rather insidious strategy, because part of it is not wanting to perceive the clarity of what I actually want.
Confusion is a strategy. Being harmless is a strategy. This is something I am doing, not just something that is happening to me.
Then I began noticing that there is something inside of me that wants to be taken care of. Something sitting in the driving seat, trying to receive what it can get.
And this is killing my relationships and my creative power, because I’m not getting what I really want, and I don’t know what I really want. All my energy is just seeping through nothingness, not creating anything of value for anyone.
I had been asking myself how I want to shape my life for five years.
What made the switch was realising that I’m confusing myself so I don’t know what I want—but actually I do.
The turning point was admitting: okay, this is what I am doing. This is the truth. And I want to do it differently. There is something in that like standing up at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and naming what has been happening.
And then what are the steps? For me, it was awareness. Noticing that I am using this strategy. Owning it and taking responsibility for it.
I explore the strategy and its collective consequences in Staying harmless through confusion.
Learning to inhabit the adult position
Before this, I felt moulded by my patterns. As though they determined what I could do, and I didn’t have the freedom to act outside them.
Then I discovered that there is an adult seat inside me. A position I can inhabit.
I began to see that the belief that I had no freedom to act outside my patterns was a lie. I actually can. I was just not doing it. I had never learned to inhabit that position.
The adult position is the one from which I acknowledge what I want, communicate it, and act towards it. From which I consciously create the reality I want and take responsibility for my participation in it, including the consequences of my actions.
There is this position of being an initiated adult: taking full-on responsibility for what I create, because I have the possibility to create what I want.
I need to learn to inhabit that position. And yes, it means coming back into the body. It means I will feel anger, and I will feel pain, and I will feel fear.
I don’t have that longing for someone to take care of me anymore, funnily enough. I have the longing to create something really beautiful. Something new, not the old anymore.
Growing up does not mean becoming better at living by the rules we learned as children.
Being an adult means I can shape my reality, my encounters, and my life anew, so that it becomes interesting and magical. It does not have to be what I imagined adulthood meant when I was a child. I do not have to become “responsible” according to that childhood picture.
I can create anew.