“I have to have all my shit together, all the time. There’s no room for me to be vulnerable or weak.”
When I was in therapy school, I sometimes struggled with being TOO competent. During my first year peer evaluation, my fellow students told me they kind of didn’t know how to help me. That I didn’t seem like I needed help, so they would mostly leave me alone, which for me, a connection-craving only child, felt very lonely.
I cried then, and asked them to please not give up on me. Then they moved toward me, asking if I truly needed help. It felt good, but I felt like they only connected with me once I made myself small.
When I was in my Family Constellations training program, my teacher talked about how he needed three years of training before he “felt ready” to facilitate without support. When I tried to step out on my own, and faltered, he chided me for taking on too much too quickly.
It seemed like if I was too big, I would be shunned or criticized.
Got it. So I shouldn’t be too big, right?
Credit: Ant Man
Hang on, though. Once I launched my business, I tried out several coaches who would see me in my place of confusion over marketing or bookkeeping and basically give me an “attaboy” type of speech. “You can do it! Just try harder! All you have to do is (listing like five steps that felt overwhelming)!”
Here, I felt that it wasn’t okay that I was acting small, scared, and overwhelmed. There was no room for that weakness.
The truth is that high performers have many times where we are strong and powerful…and probably intimidating for a number of people. And we will also have times where we are way beyond our expertise and abilities, and we will feel small, freaked out, and overwhelmed.
My regular readers will understand that this is normal, given that we are all made of psyche parts who take the wheel of consciousness at different times.
You’re not supposed to be the perfect size for everyone else, my friend. It’s likely that some people don’t know how to relate to you in your bigness or your smallness, and that’s okay, even when it doesn’t feel okay.
If you’re struggling to find someone who can hold your bigness and your smallness, please reach out to me. Reply to this email or book a chat time now.
