Most of us have an idea of how we want to live our lives – or at least, we think we do. What many of us aren’t aware of is what drives us to live the way we do, and why. American psychologist Taibi Kahler identified five common motivations – 5 Drivers – that determine how most of us make our choices, whether we know it or not. Take a look. Do any of these resonate with you?
- Please others
- Be strong
- Be perfect
- Try hard
- Hurry up
Now, these are not all bad. Not at all. “Try hard” is something our kids get told at school, and most of us parents validate it, because why not? There’s nothing wrong with trying hard – it’s how we do our best at something, how we learn, and how we set ourselves up for the future. But like a coin, there are two sides to each driver and the flip side is often a bit more destructive than we realise.
Take “try hard” as an example.
When ‘Trying Hard’ becomes punishment
Trying hard means we will do our best and will often feel great about the results. The trouble is, if we have anxiety, we’re also likely to criticise ourselves for ‘getting it wrong’ whenever our best feels like less than someone else’s acheivements. This is when SMOG language threatens to derail us:
- I Should’t eat that
- I Mustn’t argue with him
- I Ought to clear the loft today
- I’ve Got to do 5 loads of washing this weekend
All of these are common things we tell ourselves because we think they will help us get through the pressures in our day-to-day lives. And they will, but do they reflect what we really want and – more importantly – need? I can answer this question, because I’m a recovering perfectionist. Instinctively, I want to live my life according to a set of self-imposed rules that keep me on track – except for when they don’t.
When I fail to live up to my own standards (which I often do, because they’re just too hard), I can guilt-trip and blame myself, and then it’s game over for my self-esteem. And what happens when our self-esteem takes a nose-dive? You’ve guessed it; we spiral into behaviours we don’t like about ourselves, like drinking alcohol, eating sugar, or procrastinating. We call this retroflection – the process of turning the things we don’t like about our lives against ourselves. It’s destructive, but we do it because it’s easier than correcting the original cause.
If you’re interested and want to know more, read about Kahler’s 5 Drivers.
People-pleasing
The other thing I want to call out from Kahler’s list of drivers is the drive to please others. Let me make it clear that this is not your fault. We were taught this as children, necessarily, as a means of getting through life effectively. And largely, these were appropriate lessons. After all, if we spit in another child’s face in primary school, we need to learn that it won’t help us move forward in life. If we refuse to eat vegetables at the table, we’ll probably have some digestive issues that get in the way of doing what we enjoy. And if we don’t learn to cross the road safely, we probably won’t make it to adulthood. They’re survival lessons.
But depending on the way we were taught, there’s a good chance we learned to make other people around us happy in order to gain approval. And why do we care so much about approval? Because in our primitive history, it meant the difference between life and death. Annoy the tribe and you’re on your own; your chances of survival against a sabre-tooth tiger were much stronger in a group, and so you behaved yourself. It’s instinctive.
Morals: They’re nothing but a coded survival instinct!
Theodore Sturgeon
So what do we do about anxiety?
Some people are lucky; they’re born without anxiety (as, I believe, we all are) and they manage to hold onto that glorious ability to remain ‘unbothered’ by most of what happens in their lives. Others – and I think that’s most of us – respond to our (completely normal) experiences in the completely normal way of learning how to avoid stress in the future. Again, it’s biological. Don’t blame yourself for hypervigilance on a beach if you’ve previously had your bag stolen and been left with nothing but a bikini (me); or for an inability to fall asleep if your baby once choked in hers (also me).
Don’t try to ignore anxiety
That’s why it’s pointless telling ourselves to get over it. Instead – and I want you to bear with me here – what we need to do is get comfortable with anxiety. Instead of trying to avoid it, repress it, or blame ourselves for it, the best defence we have against anxiety is to welcome it in. What we resist, persists, said someone really famous, and it’s always stuck with me. Think about anxiety as as small child raising the alarm; if you ignore it, is it going to go away and settle down with a cup of warm milk? Of course not! It’s going to shout louder, pester more, tug at your jeans until you finally stop what you’re doing and pay some goddamn attention.
That’s why counselling works. Your therapist isn’t scared of your anxiety. They will listen and understand. And if they don’t understand, a good counsellor will ask questions until they’re as close to understanding what it’s like to be in your body as it’s possible to be, without being you. And that’s when you’ll start to notice a difference – when you get comfortable knowing that anxiety is normal, you don’t have to fight it, and it will get better when you listen to it. That’s when it will start to settle down.
Do you struggle with anxiety? Get in touch to see if therapy might help.
