Tag: trauma

C-PTSD – Are Ya Bored Yet?

About as exciting as watching paint dry, right? Noone much wants to hear about other people’s ailments and challenges – physical or otherwise.

And so it was on my personal healing journey. There were dozens of false starts. Therapists who should have been flipping burgers, not perpetually flipping prescriptions at their patients.

I lost friends over the degree of disclosure I shared about my personal experience. Much of it would have had a priest in a confessional writhing in discomfort.

In the midst of the search for answers and the effort to become grounded, I knew nothing of this.

I only know it was a personal watershed to stumble across the diagnostic criteria for PTSD some years back.

I had struggled in a vacuum emotionally for some years. I knew I didn’t feel “normal” though I didn’t know exactly what that might mean if I did.

My internal reactions were too strong. My interactions too intense. My emotions were too jangled and out of control.

I would frequently “space out” when listening to people talk.

I would often have to consciously bring myself back into the room and concentrate on what was being said.

I didn’t think it should require that much effort just to socialize with friends.

When I read Amanda Melheim’s recent review of The Body Keeps the Score, I heard a reflected version of my own life story and healing journey.

Bessel van Der Kolk’s seminal work on trauma has been around for quite some time now.

Like many things, written work can be seen anew through the eyes of another skillful writer. Van der Kolk’s book sat at the top of the New York Times bestseller list for months.

It is still the reference of choice for practitioners and sufferers to help them understand how trauma imprints and manifests in the brain.

Melheim weaves in the manifestation of her traumatic experience in her own behavior with explanations she only discovered in Van der Kolk’s book.

It is bad enough that a traumatic event can suffuse a victim with powerlessness and helplessness. Unresolved, that response can be triggered over and over again in adulthood until the source of the pain is addressed and expunged.

That is easier said than done. The field of trauma treatment is still developing. Thank heaven the established medical profession has at least evolved beyond frontal lobotomies on legitimately disturbed and agitated patients.

But trauma treatment is still spotty and disagreement exists on what the best modalities are to defeat its lingering symptoms. Melheim shares some important insights from Van der Kolk’s book about this.

Much as smoking took years to evolve in the public consciousness as the health menace it is, PTSD is still on the sidelines as a widely accepted and understood health phenomenon. PTSD in soldiers gets more attention and support than traumatized victims of abuse or sexual assault.

In the meantime, Melheim’s review of The Body Keeps the Score makes a strong case for why a more universal understanding of PTSD’s deleterious effects on society is likely to take awhile.

While weaving in elements of her personal story, she illustrates the symptoms of PTSD in everyday life that can be written off by the uninformed as something else – laziness, flakiness, bad character or histrionics.

Melheim has added to the evidence and ongoing necessary conversation about PTSD and C-PTSD. They are similar afflictions but differ in degree.

I am grateful she made that foray. Her article is well worth a read if you are a PTSD sufferer or if you know any.

Even if you just want deeper insight into why otherwise good people seem to act against their best interests, it can be helpful to learn their reactions aren’t always in their control.

Diderot’s Robe

I’ve often used the analogy of Diderot’s Robe to describe the odd sense of frustration I felt when I was renovating old houses.

A similar sense of dissatisfaction ensued when I acquired a snazzy new something – an appliance, a jazzy new piece of furniture, or even a new clothing item. When is enough?

Buying new things can make old things look bad by comparison. It is difficult to buy one new appliance without wanting to change them all to match. New furniture can make your old furniture look shabby. New clothing usually needs new accessories, like shoes or a piece of jewelry or a bright scarf to “go with it.” Maybe a new coat or jacket, too?

The phrase Diderot effect was coined in reference to French philosopher Denis Diderot (1713-1784) who bemoaned the gift he received of a new housecoat.

The effect was first described in Diderot’s essay “Regrets on Parting with My Old Dressing Gown”. Here he tells how the gift of a beautiful scarlet dressing gown leads to unexpected results, eventually plunging him into debt. Initially pleased with the gift, Diderot came to rue his new garment. Compared to his elegant new dressing gown, the rest of his possessions began to seem tawdry and he became dissatisfied that they did not live up to the elegance and style of his new possession. He replaced his old straw chair, for example, with an armchair covered in Moroccan leather; his old desk was replaced with an expensive new writing table; his formerly beloved prints were replaced with more costly prints, and so on.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diderot_effect

The term Diderot effect is commonly heard in discussions of sustainable consumption and green consumerism. A purchase or gift can create dissatisfaction with one’s existing possessions and environment. This can start a pattern of consumption with negative environmental, psychological, and social impacts.

I have lived this effect and continue to struggle with it. I have a pretty good idea where it started.

My comfortable and financially secure childhood – while unstable – was ripped away from me at 11 years old. The transition from a life of comfortable middle class privilege to a life of poverty was gradual when I look back at it now.

I mostly recall that what had formerly been easy to acquire or take part in no longer was. There used to be riding lessons and swimming lessons and dance lessons and summer camp. New clothes to start every school year. At Christmas, we counted on the new cotton nighties and slippers from my grandmother. After I turned 11, these all went away.

My Dad moved us to another province. My mother was no longer in my life, except nominally. By sixteen, I was living on my own in a big city. My father moved an hour and half away to his own new home in the country.

I used to watch my peers in amazement who never seemed overly troubled by money issues. They needed something, asked their parents for it and got it. I remember asking my father for anything new or necessary made me feel I had deeply insulted him. I was – by even asking – doing something horribly wrong. What exactly I didn’t know.

I found myself in harm’s way when I didn’t have – or wouldn’t spend – the money for taxi fare. I was occasionally trapped in a dicey situation where booze and drugs were flowing much too freely. The boys at those parties could be presumptuous and opportunistic.

Sorting out my relationship with money has been a lifelong struggle and continues. As I look around, I don’t believe I am alone in this troubled relationship with money and things. Cumulative credit card debt is staggering. Indeed the debt burden of the USA is staggering itself.

A storage company in my Canadian hometown is erecting building after building as people seek out a place to keep their excess goods. I am one of them. They are doing a land office business. Think about that. Paying huge sums of money to store items because we don’t have space or a use for them in our present environment? Sounds pretty crazy, doesn’t it?

Our way of life and consuming is wildly out of balance. I chuckle at the allure of “big box stores.” I once read Costco and Sam’s and Wal-Mart give consumers the dual psychological satisfaction of “thrift” and “abundance.” Local grocery stores offer so many BOGO items that I may soon need to rent a storage locker for my excess canned goods.

I once longed to win the lottery., Who wouldn’t want a magical solution to their money problems? Who wouldn’t want guaranteed financial security? Who wouldn’t want the joy and satisfaction of taking care of friends and loved ones who would benefit from the help? And who hasn’t seen or heard the common stories of lottery winners whose lives spiraled downward and out of control just a few short years after their windfall?

I so get Diderot’s dilemma. I have lived it. It is hard to answer the question, “When is enough?” Like so many other of life’s big questions (and money, given its central role in our health, comfort and well-being is certainly one of them), it is time to make a truce with money.

To befriend it but not make it my master. To acquire what we need without being showy or arrogant (tell that to a Leo!!). To get off the credit card merry-go-round. Diderot knew why.

“I was absolute master of my old dressing gown”, Diderot writes, “but I have become a slave to my new one … Beware of the contamination of sudden wealth. The poor man may take his ease without thinking of appearances, but the rich man is always under a strain”.

tps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diderot_effect

Perchance to Dream

It is rather brilliant how we keep the harsher realities of life at arm’s-length as we go about our day-to-day lives.

Death occurs around us all the time. It is happening somewhere right now to someone we don’t even remotely know and now never will. We rarely feel death’s bite until it is up close and personal. When someone in our family dies, or in our circle, however, the hole left in our own little world is palpable and vast.

Whether suddenly or after a long illness, the transition from interacting with a thinking, breathing individual to internalizing their utter absence is wrenching. It can stir up all manner of emotional reactions and invite you into a period of self-reflection. If you’re lucky.

Starting out in life, mostly we are lucky enough to ignore all of that. As young people struggling to find their feet and make their own lives, the primary focus in early adulthood is on building an education and career and home and family. Not for everybody, especially these days, but for many.

In his book, The Myth of Normal, author, physician and public speaker Gabor Mate challenges the collective concept of “normalcy.” He challenges our notions of what currently passes as “normal” in our physical and psychological lives in the Western world.

Instead, Mate says, our culture and the institutions it has created, are founded on very unhealthy and unstable ground. We have built most of our health and support systems focused on intervention and not on prevention.

In this sense, our society has built responses based largely on reactive and superficial markers. Doctors rarely have time to dig deep enough into a person’s history and social/emotional context to gather information about conditions that might underly and caused their illness.

Mate asserts that personal and cultural trauma contributes significantly to all health problems – both physical and psychological — and the physical and psychological cannot be fully separated from one another.

I could not agree more. It is life’s inequalities and access to opportunities that shape us. Also – as Mate explains – we are all defined for better or worse by the circumstances of our birth and the family we are born into. The continuum is widely divergent.

We paint over the divergence from our personal experience of “normalcy” with stories or rationalizations. Our co-created narrative attempts to explain away why our “normal” family is somehow legitimately different or unique or better than or less than others.

In our family, my mother dictated the value of accomplishment above almost everything. My father saw value in great wealth. While these were their espoused values, their reality was markedly different.

Ongoing struggles in both parents with addiction and self-esteem. Inter-personal violence. Destructive power struggles between my mother and father as they sought to prove superiority over the other.

So we had a house. And cars. And my parent’s had careers. And a marriage. And social standing. Until, one day, suddenly, they didn’t.

It is hard to grieve the death of a way of life. I look back now on how radically and permanently my life changed when my parents split up and we left the town I was born in. It would be rare for a child to make sense of what was happening to them in a traumatic environment at the moment. Children’s primary job is to survive and grow. Making sense of how they did that must come later.

I think of this when I reflect on the Ukraine or Gaza. The reality they are living through – the children in particular – will become their memory of ”normal” up the road. Yet we all seem to proceed with the expectation that to succeed in life, the survivors must simply put the past behind them, step up to do what must be done to make a life and integrate themselves as productive and “normal” citizens.

We do ourselves no favors by ignoring death’s reality and eventuality around us and for us. Traditional farmers seemed to have a better handle on this than city folk. The cycles of birth and death can be daily occurrences in lives lived close to the land.

Collectively, we are all “whistling past the graveyard.” So the trick is not necessarily to focus on death and its certainty while we are living our lives. But we shouldn’t discount it either.

Poet Mary Oliver dealt with an abusive childhood background by turning her focus to nature and exploring her own sense of wonder. It is available to all of us if we but look. We all need to figure out what Oliver famously asked of us: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” 

Answering that question for yourself and living it out is the rebuttal you will draw on when facing your own death. It will also allow you to create your own personal and unique sense of “normalcy,” and not one imposed on you by others.

It’s in you, believe me. All you have to do is find the courage and character to act on it. That is what I tell myself anyway and, for the most part, it is working.

Fuck Fear

Fear swims into my chest unbidden and swirls around my solar plexus in aching, incessant revolutions. Dead center in my body. Unbidden and heavy … triggered by what I assume will be bad news.

It is said that while we cannot control what others do or think or what happens around us, we can control our reactions. When fear hits, I immediately think all of that is pure malarkey.

My solar plexus fills up with fear without any conscious thought on my part. It is downright creepy.

I do not invite fear to fill up inside me overwhelming my senses and my reason. But fill up inside me it does. As surely as gas goes straight into a tank when the nozzle is depressed.

Unlike pumping gas, however, the fear doesn’t stop once the nozzle is released. It feels like a more automatic process.

I have learned some remedies for managing uncomfortable feelings of fear. Intellectually, I realize the highest and best road to take in the face of fear is simply facing it.

But that is usually my strategy of last resort. I play games in my head. I avoid picking up the phone or confronting the perpetrator. I avoid whatever will connect me to the bad news I fear. My stomach churns incessantly and the fear dances and coagulates in my body’s middle region.

As a stopgap measure, avoidance is actually not so bad a choice. It gives me time to collect myself. It gives me time to steel myself for the words I emphatically do not want to hear. In the poem Desiderata, there is a line I often refer back to: “Nurture strength of spirit to shield yourself in times of sudden misfortune.”

For me, getting to that end state is unreliable. When I am already feeling run down, maybe a little vulnerable, hungry, angry, lonely or tired … the well-known HALT acronym, I tend to be even more avoidant.

I have my fair share of memories where fear and terror swooped in when my defenses were at their very lowest ebb. I had no emotional or psychological defenses as no small child does. Yet my childhood world was full of fearful happenings and sudden wrenching losses.

Dad would frequently come home drunk and beat up my mother. I could do nothing but sit on the top step of the staircase outside my bedroom and shake from a combination of fear and cold in my thin cotton nightdress. Mom told me I once put myself between the two of them and pushed them apart when they were fighting. That was a pretty ballsy move for a four year old.

My beloved golden cocker spaniel Gus and my best buddy as a toddler was killed by a car when he bolted across the road in front of our house. He had been after a quicksilver squirrel. The squirrel got away.

Noone talked to me about how Gus died. As I recall, they didn’t even actually tell me he was dead. Probably one of those incipient “white lies” parents make up, presumably to “protect” their children. Maybe at the tender age of two or three years old, they saw no need to “traumatize” me with details I could not understand. Or so they thought.

I knew something must be wrong because Gus was nowhere to be found and didn’t come to my call. I also knew when I came upon a large red pool of liquid left in the front porch after Gus’s lifeless body had been taken away.

The sadness of that loss was compounded by the secrecy and hushed voices of adults around me who talk in that sotto voce way when something terrible has happened.

I know when I make that call today, I am going to hear: “Nothing more can be done. The builder can proceed and there is no legal impediment to prevent him from doing so.” I am steeling myself for the bad news.

By contrast, yesterday, my heart filled up with joy and hope for a few hours. An investigator came from the local authorities yesterday. I was temporarily cheered and encouraged by his very presence.

In the back of my mind, however, I knew my elation and optimism was sitting on flimsy evidence. Still, hope is a powerful analgesic.

An analgesic which is about to wear off.

Fuck.

Sick Stuff

When I was around 5 or 6 years old, I lived in the Sears catalog. I pored through it regularly and marveled at all the stuff on offer.

I remember landing on a pretty little red dress. I still recall it vividly. It was a sheer red fabric dotted with tiny and perfectly symmetrical polka dots. It had a standup collar and short sleeves. There was a long, ribbon-like belt that tied in the back.

I lusted after that dress. Which at six years old was about all I could do. You “normal” people out there might read that and say: “Why didn’t you show it to your parents and ask them to buy it for you?” You would only ask that question if you had a “normal” upbringing. Which I did not.

I now understand the function that clunky Sears catalog played. It was an escape hatch. It was a safe place to hide from the violence and unpredictability between my parents. It helped me imagine a better life than what I was living. One where I had pretty little dresses to wear that would be cleaned, pressed, hung up in my closet and always there. Waiting for me.

The reality I lived in was that there was shit in my ballet costume. I will explain. The parents introduced my sister and I to the normal rites of passage for little girls back in the day. Ballet was one of the biggies. After a year of playing around with ballet moves in a gym at the Y, we would apply all the moves we learned at our annual end of the year recital. Boy did we get excited> excited

In preparation, Mom would take us to a local seamstress to have ballet costumes made. We were measured up and down and across and around. The seamstress would nod sagely and promise my mother a fixed pickup date. I saw the fabrics that would be used to make my ballet costume.

It was to be created out of a stretchy satin fabric and constructed like a bathing suit in a teal-like shade. Green-y-blue (or blue-y green) with alternating layers of green and blue tulle acting as the attached skirt, or tutu.

The straps were a dark green satin ribbon. At the hip, two green leaf shaped appliques were meant to accentuate that a leaf was what I was supposed to be. I nearly fainted it was so beautiful.

Being in a different dance number, my sister had a pretty little white number. It was embellished in blue sequins in two straight lines down either side of her front. White satin straps on her costume. She was a snowflake. That hasn’t changed.

Mom took great pride in spraying our little black ballet slippers silver. I wasn’t ever sure why she did that. Our black slippers seemed fine and the silver an unnecessarily gauche touch. I doubt I was so analytical back then but merely saw the silver slippers as “odd.”

As time went on and the marriage and my parents’ mental health deteriorated, our home environment similarly declined. In around this time period, a new baby sister entered the picture.

She was cute and entertaining. Couldn’t speak right to save her life. As she was learning to speak, my middle sister and I would coach her on the proper pronunciation of words. To no avail. The words would come out garbled. We thought there might be something wrong with her.

One day I started looking for my beautiful ballet dresses to dress up the baby sister. Clothes were not usually hung up or put away in our house. So I headed to the closet, opened the door and started digging through the clothes on the floor. Then I spied it. The strap or tutu or some part of it caught my eye and I pulled it out.

And my nose wrinkled. My beautiful blue-green teal ballet costume reeked. When I looked in the crotch, I saw why. Dried shit. I nearly cried.

I can’t remember now exactly how I responded. Heartsick. Confused. Aghast. How could this happen to something so beautiful? Why was my costume ruined and not someone else’s? Why weren’t my clothes put away? I had no answers.

Turns out that potty training was another victim of my parents’ neglect and addictions. The routine parents put children through to teach them how and when to use a toilet was overlooked for my sister. For quite a long time. It would appear the use of diapers was missing, too. I assume she is potty trained by now. Except her mouth retained the same problem. I only know that, at the time and in memory, I was devastated.

I know how that experience and many others manifested in me as an adult. I am a bit paranoid and hysterical about my “stuff.” I think my relationship to stuff has morphed into an addiction. In an ineffective attempt to control what I have and how much I have and keep it safe, I have gone all together too far the other way.

Amazon replaced the Sears catalog. The wound is so deep I often can’t just buy one quality item, but must buy two or three “just in case.” I am determined that no one will destroy or take my property away from me again, by God! And if they do, I have a replacement. Right here! Somewhere!

That’s turned out to be some pretty dysfunctional and irrational thinking. It hasn’t served me well. Too much stuff. They are only distractions and obstacles to what I rally want. And worse, when I am stressed, my instinct is to shop. Buy something pretty. Make the bad thing go away. Show that I am not as broke as I fear. Spend money! That’ll fix it. Sheesh.

I am on the brink of offloading much of what I accumulated to make me feel safe. Those are the keys words here. Feeling safe. That is a state of mind. It has been hard won for me.

For someone with a trauma history like mine, it was a distorted coping mechanism I am trying to stare down. I don’t feel alone with it. It is a chronic condition for many and the marketing gurus tap into and exploit that vulnerabilty. And are they ever good at that.

I must get good at ignoring them. I also have some work to do to remind myself that “stuff” is not security. Even if you have a million dollars in the bank, if the core wounds aren’t healed, the money won’t matter. I am slowly starting to get that.

But it’s tough. My trauma training started early in life. When it is all you have known in your formative years, it is hard to change tracks. But I must. As I have changed and abandoned other dysfunctional and addictive coping mechanisms – booze, cigarettes, sex, collections.

This road to “perfection” is very long and tiresome. Maybe death is the big graduation party. Who knows? I only know that I have to recommit regularly to deliberately follow a path of peace, harmony and healing.

As my Newfoundland friends are wont to say, life’s a hard pull.

Letting Go

The source where I found this says these wise words come from Anthony Hopkins. I’m a little skeptical. I will have to do some proper research to find out – if indeed he wrote them – when and where? A university graduation speech, perhaps?

Often people who become THAT famous have all sorts of positives attributed to them: even things they had nothing to do with.

That said, these words are perfect. And again, this morning as happened yesterday morning, they are words I need to hear. I am in a friendship situation where the overarching qualities are disrespect and arrogance. That was not immediately apparent.

Now that it is, it is time to cut ties. An unpleasant process to be sure. Like undergoing surgery to remove an unwanted growth that is hurting you. It must be done.

How long did I live in situations in my young life where I was not treated well and as I deserved? In fact, I was often treated very badly. I regularly gave over my well-being and self-esteem to others who misused and abused it. It is a common trait in trauma survivors.

At least now I recognize poor treatment from others and can reject it… even when it takes awhile.

′′Let go the people who are not prepared to love you. This is the hardest thing you will have to do in your life and it will also be the most important thing. Stop having hard conversations with people who don’t want change.

Stop showing up for people who have no interest in your presence. I know your instinct is to do everything to earn the appreciation of those around you, but it’s a boost that steals your time, energy, mental and physical health.

When you begin to fight for a life with joy, interest and commitment, not everyone will be ready to follow you in this place. This doesn’t mean you need to change what you are, it means you should let go of the people who aren’t ready to accompany you.

If you are excluded, insulted, forgotten or ignored by the people you give your time to, you don’t do yourself a favor by continuing to offer your energy and your life. The truth is that you are not for everyone and not everyone is for you.

That’s what makes it so special when you meet people who reciprocate love. You will know how precious you are.

The more time you spend trying to make yourself loved by someone who is unable to, the more time you waste depriving yourself of the possibility of this connection to someone else.

There are billions of people on this planet and many of them will meet with you at your level of interest and commitment.

The more you stay involved with people who use you as a pillow, a background option or a therapist for emotional healing, the longer you stay away from the community you want.

Maybe if you stop showing up, you won’t be wanted. Maybe if you stop trying, the relationship will end. Maybe if you stop texting your phone will stay dark for weeks. That doesn’t mean you ruined the relationship, it means the only thing holding it back was the energy that only you gave to keep it. This is not love, it’s attachment. It’s wanting to give a chance to those who don’t deserve it. You deserve so much, there are people who should not be in your life.

The most valuable thing you have in your life is your time and energy, and both are limited. When you give your time and energy, it will define your existence.

When you realize this, you begin to understand why you are so anxious when you spend time with people, in activities, places or situations that don’t suit you and shouldn’t be around you, your energy is stolen.

You will begin to realize that the most important thing you can do for yourself and for everyone around you is to protect your energy more fiercely than anything else. Make your life a safe haven, in which only ′′compatible′′ people are allowed.

You are not responsible for saving anyone. You are not responsible for convincing them to improve. It’s not your work to exist for people and give your life to them! If you feel bad, if you feel compelled, you will be the root of all your problems, fearing that they will not return the favours you have granted. It’s your only obligation to realize that you are the love of your destiny and accept the love you deserve.

Decide that you deserve true friendship, commitment, true and complete love with healthy and prosperous people. Then wait and see how much everything begins to change. Don’t waste time with people who are not worth it. Change will give you the love, the esteem, happiness and the protection you deserve.

Wholehearted Agreement

This opinion piece was published in The New York Times a couple of days ago.

Writer David Brooks is riding a familiar hobby horse.

As much as “therapy culture,” has risen in recent decades, it has plenty of legitimate critics.

I’m one of them.

I particularly like the issue taken by Brooks with what qualifies as “traumatic.” Where it once referred to extreme abuses in war or profound psychological damage from assaults such as rape, the word trauma is now thrown around like rice at a wedding. Similarly benign “damage” and the insults of living life are too often labeled “traumatic,” as well.

I appreciated the caution in Christopher Lacsh’s 1979 book, The Culture of Narcissism. He warned the perils of endless introspection would result in the very culture we live in today.

Self-absorption among younger people “rules” and “rocks” and smears itself across the planet on all manner of social platforms. My concern is how many young people are chasing fame and fortune before they can legally drink in some states.

And for those who can’t or don’t make it in a big way, well … teenage suicide rates are off the historical chart. It is not a coincidence.

Putting the cart before the horse comes to mind. Healing is hard work. I write about healing because of some big, frequent ugly events that no little girl should have to live through. Not “mom was mean to me when I was little” variety but that was an issue, too.

I feel I “paid my dues” in the healing community. I employed a lot of personal searching, soul-searching, and healing modalities (yoga, meditation, talk therapy, anti-depressants, sobriety).

But make no mistake. Arriving at a healing destination where I can look back on the journey with a mixture of self-compassion, compassion for the perpetrators, self-forgiveness, and wry sense of humor took decades.

Through it all, I raised children, worked in the world, and I lived without a partner. My recent status as a married woman is a great cherry comfort on the cake of my life and healing. Not the catalyst.

That determination came from me and my own personal actions. Some days I fell apart. On other days, I felt little and worthless. But I always managed to cling to the mast. It was no cakewalk but it was worth it.

So in the therapy-soaked social environment of today, sometimes just knowing the psychological lingo qualifies you in your own mind for respect and special management.

That isn’t working and the piece below deftly explores why. The question is, can the social Titanic we are currently sailing avoid the iceberg in time?

The Four Agreements: 4/4

The fourth agreement in Don Miguel Ruiz’s book is Always Do Your Best.

I shoulda-coulda-woulda learned this lesson much earlier. My inflated ego made constant judgments about the level of job I was in, my academic ranking compared to my peers, and my general circumstances. There were two negative consequences to that faulty thinking.

First, I couldn’t fully relax and enjoy the job experience I was having. Even though I didn’t have a clear idea of what level I should be at, I was convinced the current level was insufficient. For my ego. Never mind that I was an inexperienced kid who was at exactly the right place for her age and stage. I didn’t have the internal psychological framework to assure me that where I was was just fine. For now.

Second was the truth that by feeling somehow superior, I didn’t always do the best job I could. I was, by times, baselessly argumentative and demanding, and difficult. With my coworkers and with my bosses. I had some notion that I was “above” what I was doing. Today, I feel considerable shame and humility for that bratty attitude. It put people off (especially employers) and I had a hard time fitting into the work crowd.

There are a raft of things I could say to contextualize my situation. I was a traumatized child. I often came to work hungover in my twenties in the heydays of my hard drinking. I once showed up drunk in the morning at my TV job still drunk from partying the night before. Add “actress” to my job resume right next to “on-air reporter.” I hadn’t yet heard the term “personal work,” let alone begun to do it to wrestle my demons into submission.

Ruiz says that always doing one’s best helps turn the first three agreements into habits. If we internalize and follow the habits of taking nothing personally, being as honest and clear as possible with our word, and making no assumptions without verification, our best is a natural byproduct.

One’s “best” effort will change depending on the situation, but no one needs to feel guilty about that. In any situation, there are many factors working with or on us that we cannot control. But always doing one’s best builds immunity to guilt and judgment and self-recrimination. In effect, Ruiz’s four agreements are a prescription for taking personal responsibility.

Learning that lesson matures us as we let go of the youthful tendency to blame our parents and other external circumstances, such as money or culture, or religion. or race, for our misery and difficulties. The only way out is through. By doing our best, we can look back with pride and satisfaction on the wake we have left in our life.

In what looks like a nod to the philosophy of “pursuing your bliss,” Ruiz adds that one should not act exclusively for rewards in life but because one is doing what one wants to. Rewards will naturally follow.

I’ve always liked the saying: “Find work that you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.” Still good advice.