Wanzology

Challenging What You Know

  Hey there! Hi!! How are ya? Welcome! Welcome! Welcome to another Wednesday episode of WANZOLOGY!! How's your new year going so far? Still on those, uh, resolutions are you? Are you? Yeah, I didn't make any. Actually, I only made one, but I think of it more of an aspiration. If you were listening last week, I talked about forgiveness, acceptance, patience, and tolerance. Those are going to be the guides by which I try to conduct myself, for my-self (two words), and the self that everybody sees, which is myself (one word). Okay? If I can concentrate on doing those four things, I think I have a very good chance of being happy. Or as a friend of mine put it, “The best I can hope for is to be reasonably happy most of the time.”

This week I had a very interesting thing happen with a therapist. For the first time, I had a therapist compliment me on the study and work, (action) that I've taken to try to change a behavior I didn't like. How many people have gotten like compliments from their therapist? I don't know. Very rare thing for me…like never. This was off the charts This was, “I really have nothing else to say you seem to be doing a good job!”, type of a compliment, and I'm like, “Huh? Wow!!”. Not realizing that who he was talking to was someone who has a tendency not to think too much of himself, who doesn't really understand how capable he is. Yes, I suffer from a confidence problem. It leads to self-sabotage, often. But I seem to have found a way out through understanding more about something called attachment theory and it may work for you, it may not. But I, I went and did my own research and noticed some similarities in my life, particularly with relationships. They always ended about the same way. I got freaked out, feeling like somebody cared too much for me. I didn't feel worthy of being cared for very much at all. I won't go into why that is. That's not my topic. My topic is the process of challenging what you know.

I thought for years that I was okay and things just didn't work out, communications went bad, ideals and morals changed between two people and that's why relationships broke up. But after a lot of digging, and a lot of self-honesty, I found I have been the root of my own problems when it comes to a serious relationship. Since college, they've all ended the same way. I'm usually disgusted, fed up, unhappy, or guilty or feeling ‘less than’, or something like that and I have to check out in order to save ‘my-self’ (two words). It's not been fun making these discoveries, but I'll tell you the process was pretty simple. The process involved honestly looking at what happened and how I felt during those times things were happening. What was I thinking? Then backing up a little bit to figure out, well, wait, how did I come to that path of thinking? Oh yeah. Talk to myself, I did. Looked around at other people's relationships and compared mine to theirs, I did. Felt left out because I didn't seem as happy as they were, nor did my partner.

Yes, guilty as charged. I was guilty of looking to solve an inner problem outside of myself, which never ever works. Self-esteem, the key word is “self”, meaning, it's an inside job among other things. But I mean, for the most part, your self-esteem, what you think of yourself, how you talk to yourself, how you treat yourself, is very important, especially when things aren't going right. Or you feel like they're not going right. Or if you're me, you seem to end up in the same mental hole, the same mental prison. For a while, I thought it was insanity. I keep trying all these different things and expecting a different result. Sometimes it took months, sometimes it took years, but I almost always ended up in exactly the same place. Leaving a relationship, feeling worse about myself than I did when I was in the relationship, and I felt bad in the relationship. Why did I feel bad? Mostly I didn't give myself enough credit. I didn't give myself kudos for my effort. I didn't focus on my effort. I didn't communicate my needs very well. I made way, way, way too many assumptions, and as I said before, I was looking outside of myself for these answers. Why am I like this? Because I'm like this.

Once you realize what you are, it's a little easier to figure out what to do if a change is what you want to make. But first, you have to challenge what you see, and what you think, and what you feel. Not all at the same time, but eventually, all those things come back with question marks. What you think, how you feel, what you see. And when you question what you think is reality and challenge it to be something other than what it appears to be, or you get a second opinion and someone sees it from a different perspective, well then what do you do with that information?

Consider. That's what you do. You consider the possibility that what you thought is not correct. Now, for me, I tried very hard to be a warm, fuzzy, sensitive, caring, outgoing person. I wanted to attract a likeminded individual to be a partner. But what I've found over and over was that I kept challenging the partner to figure me out, to figure out what I needed, what I wanted, why I would be impatient and to deal with it. Why I could be terse and not tactful, what other people call mean, but never see where the root of all that was coming from. I believed it was somebody's misinterpretation. I was used to not being listened to. I was used to not being understood. I was used to communicating in such a way that probably to a normal person, it didn't make any bloody sense, but I had to challenge what I thought I knew, and that is myself. I thought I knew who I was. I thought I knew what I was doing. Yet I always ended up in this pit of despair, feeling quote unquote, ‘less than’. Feeling like I didn't have, I just didn't have stuff to bring to the table to make it an equal, amicable relationship and that angered me, on the inside.

So I would turn inside and start trying to figure out, Why is it like this, again? Why do I feel like this, again? Why is somebody talking to me like that, again? Never thinking that it was a consequence of my own behavior, and that person outside of me was afraid because my frustration to them looked like anger, rage, danger. That was like speaking Chinese to me. I didn't understand how, how could you think such a thing?

I did a self-evaluation and figured out I never really learned how to manage anger. As a kid, I was small and scrawny, I got picked on all the time. I had a hair trigger temper, which means I fought. I got in fights, but at no time did I ever understand why I was getting in fights. I felt like I was justified in trying to defend my honor, to defend myself. Being so small and scrawny, you could probably push me over with a feather. I remember third and fourth grade, kids used to make fun of my last name and I would get down, dejected, and then pissed and come after people, which, when you're small and scrawny, isn't very effective. And it wasn't until I figured out the best defense for me was to develop a very quick wit, sharp tongue, command of the language. Those were my tools. By the time I got midway through junior high school. I gained respect by being able to ‘rank’ on somebody. “Oh, Wansley, you don't know what you're talking about.”. “Yeah, well, at least my mama's knuckles don't drag the ground when she walks!”
“Ooooooh!! He said that!! Ooooooh, Wanz!! Ooooooh!!!”, and all of a sudden, I felt like a big man, because I can out insult somebody. My sister gave me a great piece of advice. She said, “Insulting someone is an art form, and what you want to try to do is insult someone and have them think it's a compliment.” Yeah, I tried to get really good at that, too. By the time I got to college, I really started to question how people came to their own conclusions, because obviously, they were not as wise as I was. Because I didn't have their problems, that I knew of, that I'd admit to, that I was aware of, but I always had an answer. When I got into my 20s and 30s, alcohol just totally magnified everything, made it bigger than life. I remember getting into arguments with bandmates. They were trying to, like, get away from me, and I would, like, follow them, totally berating them. Trying to get them to change their mind to my way of thinking. So much so that I got the reputation “I will talk a hole right through you to get you to agree with me.”, seemed kind of cool at the time. I thought I was a very good debater at the time, I wasn't. That defense mechanism I had as a kid had become a prison. Almost like the mask that was worn by the Count of Monte Cristo. No one could actually ‘see’ the real me because I had this shield up. And if you got on the wrong side of the shield, my instinct was to destroy you. Yeah. Have everybody look at you. Don't look at me, I'm just pointing out your deficiencies. Yeah.

Finally, I got into a relationship where this person was healthy and questioned, why did I do that? And I'm like, “What do you mean, why do I do that? That's the way I've always been.”. And it caused this chasm in our relationship that just grew wider and wider until I couldn't take it anymore. I felt guilty that I was behaving in such a way to that person. I didn't think I was good for them, so I left. And when I left that relationship, I tried to exist on my own, noticing that I was starting to talk the same way that I had before. I was starting to feel the same way that I had before. Not only in this relationship, but in others. And I began to question what I thought I knew. And after digging around podcasts for a while, I stumbled onto crappychildhoodfairy.com and discovered that I had suffered a sort of trauma as a kid. It wasn't planned. I wasn't adequately nurtured as a child. No hit on my folks. I mean, they did the best that they could, but man, once I started figuring out the things that they told me, and then my reaction to the things that they told me and how those things became part of my persona, part of my defenses, part of my wall, that wasn't their fault, that was mine. I had to challenge why I felt a certain way. Going all the way back to 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th grade, but yet I was still acting the same in a frickin’ adult body! Having the same fear of being ‘discovered’, the fear of not being accepted, the fear of not being respected, the fear of being labeled as ‘not knowledgeable’. The last thing I wanted to be was dumb. The last thing I wanted to be was not intelligent. And what I found out is that, you know what? I'm pretty intelligent, I'm just not always that smart, and there's a difference.

Smart is deciding the quickest line to get out of the grocery store. Smart is figuring out how the traffic flows and getting behind the people who are actually moving, rather than just sitting in line, take your foot off the brake, cruise a little bit, 15 feet, put on the brake. Smart is understanding you can only spend so much money if you want to make it from Monday to Friday and some days you can't spend any. These are things that I just, I never got, I couldn't keep 15 cents. I could not save money. I could not acquire things. I just didn't, I thought it was, I didn't have the discipline, but that's not what it is, I just didn't believe I was capable and I didn't know how to build that capability until now.

I had to challenge what I thought I knew in order to figure out how to not be how I used to be, and granted it's new may not work, but I tell you what, When a counselor, a professional who ,deals with mental health, tells you, you seem to know what you're doing and where you're going and how to get there. Man, that's not something that I I've heard before. I've heard, try ‘this’, and have you ever looked at ‘that’? and how come you say it ‘this’ way?, and how do you, how do you determine what you need? Sheee-ooot!!! I never learned how to determine what I needed. What I needed was for you to listen to me, period. And in most cases, do as I told you! That's what I get for being the son of a sergeant. Always do what you're told. But it took me, it took me a couple of weeks to understand that's not how it's done. And when I challenged what I thought was true and found it to not work, I had example after example after example of it not working and the common denominator in all those failures was……..me.

I am now aware of what didn't work before and I'm investigating different ways of behaving, different ways of talking, different ways of listening, and considering the very, very, very real possibility that I don't know, but then be curious to find out.

How about you? Have you ever had a recurring emotional situation follow you all your life? Have you thought about challenging what you thought you knew? Getting a different perspective. I mean, going to therapy is great, but don't go to a therapist who's gonna just blow smoke up your dress and tell you, “You'll be fine if you just do these things”, and then when you come back, you didn't do those things and they go, “Oh, that's okay, you'll just have to try it again”, and you end up never trying. You just kind of bitch about it not working but you never put yourself in it, you never really took the chance to try. Do you have the courage to challenge what you think you already know in order to find out possibly a better way of doing whatever it is you would like to do? I mean, innovation doesn't have to be simply in technology. One can innovate one's own way of thinking. One can change a lot of things, people do it all the time. They turn their whole life around because they stopped doing the same thing dressed up in different clothing.

So find, find that gnawing, repetitive cycle in your life and maybe take a really good look at why it is. Why are you that way? Why do you think that way? And is that way wrong? A good way for you now? It might have worked 10, 20 years ago, but it may not be serving you. First, you have to challenge what you think you know and be open to the possibility it can be done better. The possibility that you can be better.

Thanks a lot. for listening to this RANT! And I'll keep you posted on how I'm doing. Because I kind of like the feeling of somebody who's accredited, and they make their life's profession off of listening to people to kind of give them hints or tell them what they're not doing right. I kind of like that feeling of being told, seems like you're doing things right. Everybody loves to hear that. I don't know anybody who doesn't like to get the ‘kudo’, the ‘pat on the back’. When you've spent a whole life going around a tree in the snow, and every time you see new tracks, you think you're, you're catching up with everybody only to find out that those tracks are yours and you've been going in circles. I'll let you know how it goes. Maybe listen to this episode again and think about it. Think about it. Challenging yourself. All it's going to really lead to is more knowledge and everyone knows knowledge is power.

Have yourself a great, great time and I will see you, figuratively, next week!!

Thanks for listening. Ciao, ciao for now.