CARL’S STORY
I had been an athlete ever since middle school. I enjoyed it but struggled with fear and performance anxiety. I completely devoted myself to training, hoping I would eventually be good enough to perform even when the anxiety showed up. One day I was competing in a race, and I was in the best shape of my life. I dug deep, moved through the fear, and crossed the finish line with a time faster than I had ever dreamed of. I had always imagined that the moment I finally conquered my demons and performed to my athletic potential would be euphoric.
It was the opposite. A few minutes later, I felt completely deflated. It seemed that no one but me cared. None of my dedication, discipline, and determination seemed to matter at all. I could not help but wonder, what was the point of being an athlete? Somehow I expected my life to be dramatically better now that I was fast, strong, and fearless. But the next day, I woke up, and everything seemed the same.
After crossing the finish line and not seeing the rainbows and fireworks I had expected, I had a very difficult time getting motivated to do anything. Up until that race, I was driven, determined, and disciplined, and in all honesty, addicted. I wanted that fast time so badly, but once I had it, it did not have the huge impact I expected. All my drive was gone. I had lost my mojo. I sat around and could not bring myself to care about anything. I spent a lot of time asking myself questions: Why do athletes do what they do? Why does it matter? How are they being of service? How are they contributing? I could not understand the point of winning at sports or why it mattered, and why I wanted it so badly.
Recognizing that exercise had become an addiction was a huge turning point for me, and in order to quit the addiction, I actually had to allow myself to get out of shape for a period of time. Obsessively exercising was a way for me to avoid dealing with other aspects of my life where I had been struggling. I was also addicted to being in control of how my body looked, and letting this go forced me to take a painful and honest yet necessary look at what was driving me.
I discovered I had been motivated by deeply rooted insecurities and a need to prove myself. I had juicy demons when it came to fear, and I was on a mission to overcome them. I had to find another way to be motivated not only to exercise, but to do anything. I began by seriously reflecting on why I was an athlete in the first place. When I went through a process of digging deep and learning that my drive was all about proving myself, I no longer felt a powerful urge to do it again. Although disappointing, that final push to the finish line physically released more anger than I knew was there.
I have begun reconnecting with my inner athlete — the part of me that played sports because I enjoyed the feeling, not for the result. Knowing that I have that athlete inside of me who I can trust to show up when I need him has empowered me to be with fear and move forward anyway, in all other aspects of my life. I give my inner athlete what he needs — regular opportunities to flex and strengthen his courage muscles; and he gives me what I need — a deep well of courage.
I have worked hard on recognizing that the highs we get from onetime events like sports competitions and vacations are fleeting and only permanently change the fabric of the rest of our lives if we look hard for the lessons.
COMPENSATORY STRATEGIES
“Pain pushes until vision pulls.”
— Michael Beckwith
Consider this: what you are good at may not be good for you. Expectations based on what you were successful at and that have driven your behavior may be blocking you from truly knowing and expressing your most authentic gifts, as was the case with Carl. Coming up with new actions to treat an Expectation Hangover without first investigating the expectations that drove the original behavior is like building a house on an unstable foundation full of cracks. You may be able to build something that stands for a while; but eventually, the weak foundation will give way, and the house will collapse. Similarly, putting new behaviors in place without excavating the previous foundation may produce short-term results but will not lead to lasting changes.
By now you understand that we all experience things that are painful. We develop some form of defense mechanism, such as denial, repression, or rationalization, to safeguard against feelings and thoughts that are too difficult to cope with. On top of our defense mechanism, we also develop a compensatory strategy, which takes a defense mechanism one step further. Whenever we feel unworthy, unsafe, unlovable, or broken, our ego develops a strategy to compensate for whatever is missing. We buy into the misunderstanding that being ourselves is no longer enough. This compensatory strategy then informs the choices we make and actions we take, especially during an Expectation Hangover, when our safety and worth feel threatened.
The following formula shows how a compensatory strategy develops and operates in your life:
Painful things happen Defense mechanism (protection) Compensatory strategy (to compensate for insecurity, lack, or fear) Survival Result (not fulfillment)
Note that the result in this formula is not fulfillment.
Before you step into the role of the Scientist and research your own compensatory strategy, I’ll share mine. As a child, I had no expectations of myself and expected the best from others because I did not have evidence to the contrary. As a little girl, I was happy, outgoing, and engaging, and I loved people. Then, in fourth grade, a group of girls formed the “I hate Christine club.” I was teased and left out, and I isolated to protect myself. I felt sad, lonely, and ashamed. My expectations regarding how I would be loved and accepted for being myself were shattered. This Expectation Hangover led me to form a story that I was completely unlikable and something was wrong with me.
The compensatory strategy I developed to distract myself from the pain and make up for what I felt was missing was to become obsessed with accomplishment. I became an achievement addict, in an effort to prove my worth. Getting a B on anything was unacceptable to me. I relentlessly pushed myself to some imagined future that I believed would finally give me the external validation I longed for.
And I did it. I had an extremely successful career at a young age because I was so driven by insecurity. This compensatory strategy was tied to my survival and sense of worthiness, so it was very strong. But I was still miserable because the very thing that was driving me was sitting on top of an old story that was full of pain. I consistently had Expectation Hangovers when I would accomplish something that I thought would make me feel better about myself yet did not.
Understanding why you do what you do leads to lasting change. Our compensatory strategy (or strategies) absolutely informs and influences the choices we make and actions we take in the present, which impact our future. Often it takes an Expectation Hangover to get us to question the behaviors that have gotten us where we are and to motivate us to investigate and transform our actions.
WHITNEY’S STORY
I had my dream job in the big city of Chicago and my dream guy, who seemed like “the one.” Then I lost it all. I was informed via text from my boss, “Don’t bother coming in tomorrow.” I moved home and started working…at my high school job at the small-town movie theater. I was mortified. How do I explain this to all those people from high school? I’m behind the concession stand while they’re standing out there with their wives and husbands and children, spending the money they earned at their great jobs — and I’m wearing a faded red bow tie. Then the day my boyfriend was supposed to arrive for Christmas, he calls and says, “I don’t love you anymore, I can’t be with you, and I’ve met someone else.” I collapsed like an actress in a bad black-and-white movie. Not only had I regressed to my high school job and home, but my future husband (as I looked at him then) had dumped me a few days before Christmas. I didn’t know how to go on. For three days I drank through my parents’ wine stores in the garage. I didn’t leave my room. I didn’t want to feel anything. I wanted to evaporate off the face of the planet. I had lost the entire life I had worked so hard for. I jumped on shady free dating sites. Anything to prove that I was a ca
tch.
I figured if I didn’t deal with my Expectation Hangover and just had fun, eventually, it would be far enough in the past that it wouldn’t matter anymore. After a brief time playing out this pattern of wine and darkness, my inner self said, “Get up. This is not how to deal with the hardships you’re facing.” I saw how destructive my behavior was and started to turn around once I had a big realization: I learned that I created my Expectation Hangover. Here’s how: During college I got so motivated by the external signs of being successful — great job, knowledge, romantic relationships. I wanted to be validated externally. I totally disconnected from my “soft spot,” where my soul and the Universe come in to whisper knowledge and where my true desires live.
I was driven by what my ego wanted, not my soft spot. I’d forced things into existence that weren’t meant to be. Eventually, the universe will make you listen to your soft spot. And that’s just what it did. It pulled the rug out from under me, twice. And I realized I’d better start listening.
I started to journal a lot, to reconnect to who I truly was and what I truly valued. I let my need for external validation go and put my trust in the Universe. And then things started to happen. I have a new job that came from a random conversation with a woman at a cocktail party. I met a man and am not in a codependent relationship, where if one leaves, the other dies (I learned my lesson from my breakup). In just one year, my whole life is on a different track, and it’s never been easier. All those years, I was clinging so hard to a dream that was fueled by an insatiable need to be validated. When I finally stopped looking outside myself, gave myself the approval I was seeking, and let go of my ego-constructed dream, I could hear the whispers of my soul.
Stephanie grew up with a mother who was not very involved in her life. Stephanie never felt truly loved or wanted, or like she belonged. The compensatory strategy she developed was to be a caretaker because that was the very thing she longed for the most. Her pain over not feeling loved or wanted pushed her to go above and beyond to make others feel loved and give them a sense of belonging. The payoff was that she felt she had a place in the world — taking care of others. Yet she experienced repeated Expectation Hangovers about the disappointment she would feel after going above and beyond for someone else and then feeling that her love was not reciprocated.
Compensatory strategies come with payoffs and costs. The payoffs are the results we are able to create; the undesirable feelings and experiences we are able to avoid; and the comfort we get from behaving in a way that makes us feel accepted, validated, safe, worthy, or loved. The biggest cost of a compensatory strategy is that although we may create an external result, that result often comes with an Expectation Hangover. As an achievement addict, I was consistently stressed-out and focused on the next best thing to shoot for. I never felt I could relax. For Stephanie the cost was that being such a caretaker eventually built up resentment because she was not getting anything back. We become so consumed with the pursuit of our compensatory strategy that we never stop to ask, “Who am I, and what do I really want?”
Rudi grew up in a household with very strict parents, and he longed to be acknowledged and feel his parents approved of him. In order to get that desired approval, he became a doctor; both his parents were doctors and expected him to be one as well. When he came to see me at thirty-one years old, he was suffering from a debilitating Expectation Hangover regarding his profession. Being a doctor was never his dream; it was his parents’ dream for him. Because he was so driven by his compensatory strategy of seeking validation, he never explored what inspired him, and ended up working hard for a degree that he never really wanted. Whenever your choices and actions are fueled mostly by a compensatory strategy, the costs will always outweigh the payoffs.
To help you uncover your own compensatory strategy, this section outlines some common compensatory strategies and explains how they develop. You may identify with more than one of them, as some characteristics overlap; however, there will be one that stands out as the motivation that drives your choices and behavior the most. As you review these, also consider the behaviors your primary caregivers modeled — especially anyone you looked up to or whose approval you sought. Many times we learn our compensatory strategies from others: we either decide to be just like them, or we choose a completely opposite strategy.
High achiever. If you use this strategy, you are highly driven and have accomplished a lot in your life. You feel best about yourself when you achieve. You have been acknowledged for your accomplishments and are perceived as successful. Failure is not an option, and if you judge yourself as failing in any way, you are unreasonably hard on yourself. The next milestone is always on your radar. You developed this strategy to make up for feeling you were not enough just being who you are (based on criticism, teasing, or feeling left out). Or you could have developed this strategy because you were only rewarded for your accomplishments (and the reward felt like love).
People pleaser or chameleon. When this is your strategy, making sure everyone else is happy and likes you is a priority. You put others first and do whatever it takes to avoid upsetting someone else. You avoid confrontation at all costs. Pleasing others and having them like you makes you feel safe and loved. You have an uncanny ability to read the people in a room and morph into whatever it takes to make them feel at ease. You thrive on being whoever you need to be in order to blend in and avoid any negativity. You tend to be outwardly optimistic and can act like everything is fine even if it isn’t. Perhaps you grew up in a house where there was a lot of fighting and upset, or strong personalities, so you became a peacemaker or highly adaptable. You may have developed the people-pleasing/chameleon strategy to avoid getting picked on. Or maybe you were acknowledged early on for being a “good girl” or “good boy” and thought putting your own needs aside was the way to get love.
Type A or control freak. With this strategy, you get a lot done and love to be in control. You are a great planner, think everything through, and feel best when things are going your way. You’d rather take something on yourself than delegate it. “Going with the flow” is completely ineffective for you. This strategy often develops when your trust was violated in some way and you decided the only person you could rely on was yourself. It can also develop as a result of a rattling Expectation Hangover that happened at a young age, causing you to believe that controlling things was the way to manage and prevent the unexpected.
Validation and approval seeker. This strategy makes you overly reliant on feedback from outside sources. You desire to be seen, heard, and liked. This develops from either an overdeveloped or underdeveloped ego: either your parents always made you feel you were the best, so your sense of worth was constantly dependent on outside validation; or you never truly felt seen or supported by any healthy parental figure, so you were on a constant quest for outside approval to make up for it.
Performer or comedian. If your strategy is to be a performer or comedian, everyone loves being around you because you prefer to keep things light. Going deep or being in uncomfortable situations is torture. You prefer to make people laugh, to entertain them. You might be sarcastic or eccentric, to divert people’s attention from seeing who you truly are. These strategies develop because you found distraction was a useful way to keep yourself safe and fit in somehow. You might have grown up in a chaotic household where you became a performer to distract people from engaging in the chaos. Perhaps you use humor as a way of avoiding vulnerability because you feel insecure or unable to express your deep feelings. Sarcasm can be a sneaky way to bring out hidden anger or aggression. Or you may have had big feelings as a child but did not feel safe to express them, so distracting yourself and others became a strategy for channeling that energy.
Rescuer or caretaker. If your strategy of choice is to assume the role of rescuer/caretaker, you take care of everyone else. You are the person people call when they need something, because you’ll drop everything to help them. Boundaries are a challenge for you.
You often find yourself in relationships with needy people and spend more time attempting to rescue them than caring for yourself. You want to make sure everyone feels they belong and are extremely sensitive to the needs of others, often at the expense of your own needs. This strategy develops from feeling responsible for making sure someone else was okay (usually a parent) early on. Your sense of worthiness came from being there for someone else, and you avoid your own pain by caring for others.
Perfectionist. If you embrace this strategy, you are unsettled by things that are not absolutely perfect. You give 110 percent to everything you do and worry a lot about doing things “right.” You have extremely high standards and rarely feel you are measuring up to them. You don’t tolerate mistakes, and you are hard on yourself. You delay doing things, even things you really want to do, because you think everything has to be perfect before you can begin. The perfectionist strategy develops from growing up in a very judgmental environment. Often perfectionists grew up with parents or authority figures who were hard on them in the name of love and dished out a lot of “constructive criticism.” This criticism was internalized and now fuels the belief that love means pushing yourself hard, which drives the perfectionist behavior.
Busy bee. If your strategy is that of the busy bee, you rarely sit still. There is always something to do, and your entire schedule is full. Most of the time, you feel stressed, possibly overwhelmed, yet you get a high from constantly being on the go. You tend to be a worrywart and experience high levels of anxiety. You take on much more than most people could handle and pride yourself on being busy. This strategy can develop from rarely feeling peace or safety and needing a strategy to distract yourself. It can also come from experiencing a highly traumatic situation and not having the support system or tools to process it, which causes the pain to get lodged inside you. Keeping busy keeps you from having to feel or think about the pain.
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