psychology | Bang On About

With every year that goes by, there is an invitation to drop deeper into a relationship with self. There can be many selves, faces and parts of a story that make up one human.

As I listen to podcasts of people’s stories (shout out to current fav Heavyweight), I’m often in spontaneous tears for qour fragility, our hopes and our regrets, longing and loving as humans, a rare delicate species of contradiction.

Here I stand at 46, more wildness with smokey colored hair yet a steadiness within that was never there in my 20s. More grounded than my frenetic 30s of managing the necessary self-sacrificing involved in child rearing. The constant busyness surrounded with thinking about others and neglecting my own needs.

There are still myriads of oscillating moods and ladders/snakes to ride in this game called life. But I embrace the narrative of becoming in middle age, instead of the BS about loss of external ideals (beauty, allure, worth). The hard won lessons begin to line up, the way callouses form on well worn fingers.

I am seeing middle age in terms of a doorway, a threshold of sorts that we reach and it’s a holy undertaking. It’s not some fantastical window, it is quite literally a choice to let go of baggage or otherwise be drowned by it. Be weighed down by past regret, joints stiff with suppressed emotions, nerves jiggling with unease unless we take stock.

I remember the slow realisation that I was not who I thought I was. The slippery soup of resentment and discontent started to show its face in subversive ways and my mind would go into defending my actions as a way to collude and keep the status quo. It can be confronting to get real with yourself. It was unpleasant to see the hidden anger that I’ve pushed down since birth to maintain the lie we are sold about being too much if we show it, express or unleash it. Somehow, we won’t be as acceptable or palatable, we will wander into un-becoming territory and be shunned for it.

So where does the energy go? We swallow and suck in, bite our tongues and tense our jaws, until it lies dormant in our bones, a dense layer of stuckness. A sleeping tiger that we may not even know is there until the peri-portal of menopause comes to shake things up.

Maybe that’s the purpose to purify and burn off what lies behind our masks or any false self operating in this world. And isn’t this world a lot? There is no wonder we develop ways of coping and surviving. There is no shame in how we survived up until this point. But there is a reckoning, a call to evolve beyond our coping strategies, to become more em-body-ied.

To do that, we have to face what lies within these skin sacks we call home.

I strained a relationship with a dear friend because of my anger. I could feel the burning rumble of its power with thoughts trying to marry up yet not quite making sense, the justification and entitlement came swinging out, and it hurt someone that I love deeply. It surprised me with its force. I was not prepared for its edge, its righteous possible ancestral depth, it felt more than me. And it was not pretty. It was brief yet volcanic, and it’s taken years to walk it out, to reflect and even now I don’t kid myself to fully understand. But respect it I do. That energy had spite and spunk in its fury, something I’ve needed to release before it hurts others again or makes me sick. I see its root in learnt beliefs about holding on to emotions, to battling, being silenced and continual striving throughout my life as a mode of operandi, yet all the while stuffing this repressed e-motion down below my awareness.

It was a painful lesson to nearly lose a friend and have a relationship permanently changed. Yet this was the price needed for me to take action. And even in that action, I pussyfooted around, minimised feelings and built more landmines in the process as I avoided the truth. The truth being I was afraid of being confronted, of falling short, of not knowing where to start…

This is the wrath of peri menopause, and maybe this is why it can last a decade or so, because we need time to digest its force and its messages. It required me to stop kidding myself, stop projecting or making excuses, and get quiet enough to listen to the shadows within.

If they say our body is our temple, it involves a thorough clean out of all the rooms, looking under the floorboards, behind the curtains and below the windowsills.

Not easy but worth it for some level of peace on the other side.

If the ‘how’ question remains unanswered, it takes time and effort to retro fit this personalised journey. I needed to call in my support crew (women who were ahead of me), educate myself about this transition and ask for support from multiple sources. I’m still doing it.

When I was in high school for about two years, I use to watch every calorie I ate and over time it became easier to skip meals and restrict the amount of food I had as well. My memories are a bit hazy, but it felt good to have self control and as our society rewards us for this trait as well as having a slim body, it was quite a reinforcing cycle. In my teen mind during the huge change of neural pruning that was upon its networks, somehow I internalised the idea that if I can maintain this socially acceptable appearance (which I believed was the only worthy thing about me) I would feel better. Furthermore, our culture bombards us with billboards, magazines and social media sprouting thin/beauty ideals about how we need to look to be accepted and secure in the social hierarchy.

Fast forward decades, I work as a therapist at an eating disorder facility. Whilst piecing the puzzle together as to how someone ended up where they are is often met with a solid wall of denial about what their reality has become. This makes me ponder on how difficult it can be to accept our reality as it is and as humans we construct, invent, defy, push, control and try to fix our experiences into a shape that is more palatable. However, the problem is that it can wear us out until our original pain is buried 10 feet under layers of suffering. It is so often about trying to avoid our feelings that we end up with endlessly complex behaviours to keep ourselves busy and productive, distracted and numb. Over time, we are disconnected from our bodies, our inner selves, and of course our emotions that we don’t know who we are or what we actually feel about anything.

One does not have to develop a raging eating disorder to relate to this predicament. I would hazard a guess that our modern lives and societal messaging programmes us for carrying on with chronic busyness, productivity and achievement-focused intellectualisation in the fruitless pursuit of self worth. I am not against goal setting or taking on challenges that shape and define us. Yet I am against the idea that our self worth is tied to what we achieve, how we look or what we own. Marketing has shaped these ideals as the path to happiness and fulfilment. Well if that was the case, why are there a lot of high achievers from affluent backgrounds reaching perceived milestones with poor mental health and low self esteem?

We need more of the idea that we are inherently worthy just as we are. It’s a concept that secure attachment to loving parents who put the onus on effort rather than outcome (achievement) can help to foster. Yet even with this protective factor, many people simply inherit these feelings of unworthiness in our competitive Type A culture. I’ve seen emotionally sensitive, empathic people internalise these beliefs as gospel which takes some effort and support to shift, until they realise that this not good enough narrative is not part of who they are, but what they’ve learnt.

Basically, the system is broken, not us. The system that portrays that external validation will lead to peaceful, contented lives. It’s like placing your worth badge on the jacket of a capitalist patriarch as they walk out of the door, never to be seen again.

I’m done with being told how I should look, act, spend money or get in debt to have arbitrary satisfaction. Outside the shoulds and shouldn’ts, I’ll meet you there.

Bang On About

Tag Archives: psychology

Be-coming in Middle Age

Search for self worth