Failure, Change, and The Unknown! Oh my!

Dorothy: Do you suppose we'll meet any wild animals?
Scarecrow: Mm, we might.
Scarecrow: Animals that eat... s-traw?
Tin Woodsman: Some, but mostly lions, and tigers, and bears.
Dorothy: Lions?
Scarecrow: And tigers?
Tin Woodsman: And bears. 

- Wizard of Oz (1939), care of IMDB.com 

Ever since I've started down this "self-discovery" journey, I've been searching for "the root".  The penultimate cause of my behavioral and emotional problems.  Even when I didn't know what I was looking for, I just had this idea in my head that every problem has a root somewhere.  

Over time, I realized that looking for "the root" left me spinning in circles following paths that lead to other paths which lead back to original paths.  From that point, I sort of gave up my search for "the root".  

Since then, however, I've noticed a few running themes that always seem to pop back up:  Failure, Change, and The Unknown.  And more specifically, Fear of Failure, Fear of Change, and Fear of The Unknown, but it fit into the wizard of oz quote better the first way ;-)

While it's not a specific event, or situation that I was looking for when searching for "the root", I believe these three fears are some of, if not the, top contributors to the problems I deal with today.  

Fear of Failure:

I guess, somewhere along the line, I missed the lesson on failing. Failing with grace, failing without going off the rails, failing with confidence.  The fear of failing, or screwing up, or disappointing someone, is something I've yet to find the tools to overcome.  As a result, I'm hesitant to try new things and go out of my comfort zone.  

And failure doesn't necessarily need to be a grandiose event.  Making someone else's job more difficult, even by accident, is a failure to me.   Not living up to expectations, even unrealistic or irrational ones, is a failure to me. 

I have a hard time seeing a failure as an opportunity to learn.  Historically, it's been an opportunity to beat myself up.  It's gotten to the point that I almost expect failure when a new situation arises.  Another way it also ties in with the Fear of Change, is that if I don't change things, if I keep as much of my life the same way it's "always been", there won't be any brand new chances to fail.  When a new opportunity arises, I'll immediately start thinking about how it can all go wrong, and start planning for ways to get out of it as quickly as I can. 


Fear of Change:

Like I said above, Fear of Change is tied very closely to Fear of Failure.  Change inherently brings opportunities to fail.  Yes, there's also chances to succeed, but my mind focuses on the failure opportunities.  

There's a change in leadership at work.  Immediately my mind starts to run with thoughts of "Things are going to be harder to accomplish, I'm not going to get along with the new leadership, things were fine before, why did they have to go and screw things up?"

Change also brings with it, in most cases, unknown outcomes.

Fear of The Unknown:

I meet someone new.  I have no idea where things will go between us.  Will they go smoothly? What differences of opinion will come up along the way?  How will they react to how I do things?  How will I react to how they do things? What will happen if things get to the point that either side doesn't want to have contact with the other side?

My brain tends to go on overdrive when a situation with an unknown or unpredictable outcome arises.  I start to extrapolate problems that can come up.  I have to be prepared to handle what's going to come up.  I need to know about it now, I can't wait for it to happen and then react.  


This post took longer than I'd planned on to write up, and I should really get some work done ;-)  I may come back and update and expand upon it some more.   

Inverse Golden Rule

Since there can be multiple definitions of the Golden Rule, I'll specify what I mean when I use the term.

"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you"

That's a pretty good rule to live by.  Treat people the way you want to be treated.  I don't necessarily think about the specifics of the Golden Rule on a daily basis, but how I live my life meshes with it pretty well.  However, I've developed a personality trait that seems to have spawned out of the Golden Rule.   I like to call it the "Inverse Golden Rule".  (Note to any techy friends reading this: I don't necessarily mean the mathematical inverse, it's just a convenient play on words :-P) 

"Expect others to do unto you, as you have done unto them"

I spend a good amount of effort in my interactions with people trying to read them.  I try to look for patterns, and more specifically recognize when those patterns have changed, normally for the worse.  When that happens, generally I'll ask if they're ok, if they need some help, if everything's all right.

The "Inverse Golden Rule" is what I like to call my irrational expectation that someone else will do the same for me.  "Why doesn't anybody notice that I'm upset and ask me if I'm all right?  If they were acting like this, I'd ask them!"  This should not be taken that my friends and family don't care about how I feel and don't ask if I'm all right.  They do.  But there's a part of my brain that, like I said, irrationally expects someone to be there and ask me if I'm all right. 

And to be honest, I'm far from perfect either.  I'm sure I let my friends and family down from time to time.  I'm not always able to pick up on the signals, and sometimes I'm just not paying attention enough to notice it or act on it.  So, what gives me the right to expect them to do unto me? (Note: Expectation will be a topic for another post all by itself someday)

I think part of it comes from a (recently weakening) unwillingness to actively ask for help.  That if I could somehow get people to notice that I'm upset and offer to help, then I don't have to admit weakness by asking for it, or I won't feel guilty for having asked for help. 

I think another part of it comes from the inherent unrealistic expectations that you can infer from the original "Golden Rule".  It doesn't say:

"Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you and you can expect them to do unto you that way"

In reality it's more like:

"Do unto others,as you would have them do unto you and your chances of being do unto that way increase" 


Questions for discussion:

• Does anyone else out there have an "Inverse Golden Rule" that they have to deal with?
• If so, what kinds of coping mechanisms do you use?

"Right"ism

One of the big personality traits I struggle with the most is Perfectionism.  When I say Perfectionism, I mean that I become frustrated, worried, or anxious when something doesn't feel "right".  Maybe "Right"ism would be a better name for it?  

A small example of this happened today at work.  My team manager scheduled a team meeting.  Some time later, the department director scheduled a conflicting department meeting at the same time.  The team is a subset of the department.  My initial reaction to this was that it was "wrong" that these two didn't coordinate together, or at least check the calendar scheduling system before announcing their meetings.  Now this situation didn't cause me to go into a spiral of anxiety or anything, I just use it to highlight the kind of thing that will mentally trip me up during my day. 

A bigger example was my week of jury duty fun last week.  There were many different situations that came up that upset me or frustrated me or more to the point took way too much of my focus and mental energy.  Three hour courtroom delays, people not listening to instructions made by the prosecuting attorney.  

I'd say a vast majority of the situations that trigger my "Right"ism are clearly things outside of my control.  I still tend to lose sight of that fact and get caught up in the "instinctive" emotions that they create in me.  Either that or I snowball.  I take my time trying to understand the situation, which delays my response, which makes me more anxious and nervous, which throws off my thinking about the situation, which causes me to again, just react instinctively and go strictly off of emotion. 

In a perfect world, when these situations come up, I would like to be calm and composed.  I would like to quietly take in as much information as I could about the situation.  I would like to identify all the factors outside of my control and either ignore them, or identify ways to work around or work through them.  And all of this would happen within a split-second, allowing me to not appear phased or thrown off and respond in a calm manner.


Questions for discussion

• Have you/Do you struggle with Perfectionism/"Right"ism?
• If you struggled with it in the past, and feel you are coping with it better today, what led you to change your thinking? What kinds of tips/tricks/tools did you use to help change your thought process?

Welcome!

Welcome to "Get Stuff Out Of Your Head"!  

My goal with this blog is to, well, do like the title says.  For the longest time I kept a lot of my problems inside and didn't talk about them.  Once I started to open up about them, I learned some things.  I learned how keeping them in my head let them grow and morph into irrational thoughts.  I learned how their perspectives could get lost and small issues felt like giant anchors.  I learned that I wasn't the only one who shared similar fears.  

To start, I'll be sharing some of my own concerns/fears/thoughts/issues/problems/etc.  If this thing goes anywhere, and some conversations start, then that'll be wonderful. 

If anyone reading this has something they'd like to share in order to get some help, or to start a conversation or a discussion, please feel free to email me at getstuffoutofyourhead@gmail.com.  Anything you send me will be kept anonymous if posted here, unless you tell me otherwise.

I'm not a mental health specialist.  I don't have answers.  I just wanted to make a place to help foster talking about things that don't get a lot of discussion.

Thanks for visiting!