Know Thyself: How to Avoid Faulty Conclusions

I received the following messages from several of my closest family and friends last week:

“Why are you being so quiet? What’s going on? I want to hear how you are doing.”

This was the gist of my reply to each of them:

“I’m fine. I just feel like I get my ass kicked every week and I’m either trying not to get my ass kicked, getting my ass kicked or recovering from getting my ass kicked”.

Despite my naivete, they ALL had the audacity to “follow up” about what “getting my ass kicked” meant. They were concerned and wanted to know more.

Realizing I should’ve been better prepared for those follow-up questions, I scrambled to find a way to explain this rollercoaster of emotional and spiritual origins (just to be clear, no one was physically ‘kicking my ass”. I am half Puerto Rican and half Cajun French and am told that I come by dramatic expression biologically).

Please see Exhibit A for a visual of my weekly ‘Ass Kicking’

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Weekends were pure bliss. I’d feel in-love with life, enjoy my days, feel grounded and clear-headed and even bask in spiritual, emotional and intellectual breakthroughs. I felt like my best-self and a million miles away from whatever peak of emotional breakdown that had happened previously in my week.

Then, inevitably, sometime throughout the week, little things would build up. And at some point I’d ‘breakdown’; for me this looks like tears, feeling lost and usually a lot of rigorous questioning of myself. When I’m struggling emotionally I’ve developed a (sometimes unhelpful) habit of questioning my worldview, my beliefs, myself and wanting to know ‘where I went wrong’ that I’d be delivered to such a dark (albeit temporary) place.

And then, whoosh, the sun would come back out by the end of the week, I’d get my footing emotionally and mentally. By the weekend I'd be basking in the pure sunshine of understanding and fulfillment (again, the dramatic communication is literally in my blood, very natural, just go with it).

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So what was kicking my ass?

At first I thought I was being bullied by the Universe. Let me explain.
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There’d be days where everything would go wrong. For instance, one day a few weeks ago the ALL following things happened:

• I received disappointing news on a deal I had been waiting to go through. I pulled myself up by taking a trip in the morning sunshine on my new beach cruiser to the little grocery shop right up the street to buy a few ingredients for dinner (I love riding my new bike, I live in a little beach town and I think it’s the coolest thing to ride the beach cruiser anywhere for any reason).
• On my way to the store, my favorite bird jumped out at me. He looked like this:

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• This bird flew out of the bushes and hovered over me, scaring the bejeebers out of me. Then he landed on the sidewalk blatantly refusing to let me pass. It seemed aggressive. This went on for about ten minutes, with me arguing with this bird to move while I’m on my bike on the side of the street ‘in front of everybody’ feeling like a fool. We ended up WALKING ACROSS A CROSSWALK this way and waiting together on the corner while I pushed the light to cross one more time and get away from him. I can’t make this up.

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• On the way back from the store, the basket on my new bike fell completely off (with the groceries in them) and I crashed my bike (with of course, my toppling off) in the middle of said intersection. This happened in the middle of the same place where the bird harassed me. It’s the busiest intersection on the whole island and I had just crashed with all my stuff in the middle of it, groceries splattered everywhere.

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• In the crash I lost my keys.
• Upon returning home I realized I lost my keys.
• I had to bike back to find my keys.
• Found the keys in the middle of the intersection, where I had to search for on the ground in-between cars like a weirdo.
• On the way back a GIANT transport truck honked right behind me and scared me so bad I almost started crying on the spot (granted I was fragile at this point). Cue thoughts of being bullied by the universe.
• Proceeded to make dinner. Cut off the tip of my finger while doing so. Horrified, I bandaged it up and tried to keep it together.
• Later, while finishing dinner, I stuck my hand in the oven the wrong way and severely burned my OTHER HAND. Now both hands are bandaged.
• My husband is the only other human I know on the island. He texts and says he’ll be home late.
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• Husband walks in later and I burst into tears holding up two bandaged hands and mumbling about a bird who tried to destroy my day.

Something to this effect happened every week. By the time all these strange little things built up leading to tears, I had begun to engage in thought processes of storytelling, assigning meaning and questioning my beliefs.

I could see on paper how although these kinds of days are certainly flustering, they don’t exactly equal emotional meltdowns that end in me questioning how I'm living my life and if the Universe is trying to mess with me right now. Something else was going on beneath the surface. When these types of strong reactions used to happen in our home growing up, my dad used to say ‘that’s a '4' and you’re responding like it’s an '8' so let’s figure out what’s really going on".
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The Root to Many Mysterious Meltdowns

There is a show called ‘30 Rock’. I’ve watched said show too many times to confess publicly. In this show, Liz Lemon (played by the beloved Tina Fey) is the head writer of a show akin to SNL. She manages diva actors/actresses and a team of ‘nerd writers’ while trying to have it all in the great city of New York. She’s used to doing everything behind the scenes until one day a little book she wrote called ‘Deal Breakers’ takes off and she’s miraculously offered her own show to talk about her insights and the book. Before going on stage for her debut episode she starts freaking out. She second-guesses herself, forgets how to do her hair properly and even (jokingly) forgets how to cry normally. She’s freaking out. She ironically locks herself in her dressing room and refuses to come out, something her actors did to her all the time. At the end of the episode she says that she realized why so many actors and artists act like divas; putting yourself out there for people is a type of vulnerability that can drive you crazy if you don’t know how to grow along side of it. Vulnerability is what Liz Lemon freaked out about. She was on a new stage that required a new level of being seen. wWhile it seemed glamorous and rather simple, it drove her into a diva rage that was triggered by seemingly ‘little’ things.

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Last night we finished one of our groups. Each woman in the group was accomplished, seasoned with self work and handled things in daily life that would outmatch many of their peers. They were all badasses at handling life and showing up. During our closing process, one member expressed her initial shock with how the group affected her. She explained that despite her familiarity with vulnerability, the group + art process had given her the experience of a completely different kind of vulnerability, one that freaked her out at first but then gave her wings at the end.

During this particular group there wasn’t one person who didn’t want to quit at some point (and all with good reasons). Despite their valid reasons for wanting to abandon the process they all stayed the course. Last night as we were closing and this particular member was describing the unexpected element of vulnerability, I saw everyone nodding in wholehearted agreement. Even seasoned queens of ‘vulnerability’ felt knocked off-course when a new, deeper or different kind showed up to reveal what needed to be revealed in the process. This of course has an incredible reward at the end but the shock of it can be disorienting and well, emotional.

Surprise! The Culprit has been Found

This mystery of my rollercoaster weeks became clear when I heard the group’s experience last night, saw a montage of my rollercoaster weeks and then recalled the Liz Lemon scene. It was as if my inner world offered up a very clear string of understanding that went something like this:

“Jess, you’ve been really vulnerable. Perhaps you thought that since you work with vulnerability for a living that you’d be immune to new vulnerabilities; you’re not. You’ve moved (three times since last October), you’re in a new place, your business has shifted, the world is changing and you’re putting yourself out there on a regular basis in a new way. You are feeling very vulnerable. This is the missing element of understanding that’s making your ‘4s’ turn into emotional ‘8s’.”

(Do you not have inside voices that explain everything to you sometimes if you’re quiet and ready to listen?)

Aha! Mystery solved, and this is why:

When we misdiagnose our problems, we will come to faulty conclusions. Faulty conclusions waste our time and add confusion to our data and intuition. I was on the verge of drawing faulty conclusions about the Universe bullying me, making poor life choices or even looking for faults in my belief system (which sometimes is perfectly logical to do). In this case, all those would’ve led to more confusion because the culprit lied in an underlying vulnerability that I hadn’t recognized. And it wasn’t until I exposed myself to others (via confessing my weekly ‘ass kickings’) and allowed myself to be seen (crying to husband with bandaged hands) that my inner world could offer up the proper connections (I’m vulnerable right now).

Now that I know that I’m feeling vulnerable I can use my problem-solving skills and supportive people in my life in more useful ways. For example, now I can text them back (or just send them this writeup) and meet their loving concern with authenticity.

For those that refuse to coast through life, there will always be a new challenge, a new mystery, a new level of personal evolution that where they will be stretched, again and again. No matter what level of business, performance or achievement we are at in life, knowing one's self if key to getting through the challenges we asked for. It's also key to being able to fully enjoy the rewards that arise as we push on through the many adventures life throws at us.

I’ll be over here awaiting my 'grand flourishing' and 'wings at the end of my process' like my beloved group member mentioned last night. I believe I'm due now for all this extra vulnerability I’ve been engaging in lately.
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See you in a Group,

Jesska Layne Herfst, MAPC