Reinventing Your Life: The Breakthrough Program to End Negative Behavior and Feel Great Again (46 page)

Pamela is the so-called superwoman. She does it all. She is a doctor and is director of the anesthesiology department at an Ivy League university. She not only excels in the practice of administering anesthesia, one of the most difficult areas in medicine, but she also heads a large-scale research program. She has won grants from federal and private organizations, publishes in top journals, and travels all over the world to present at professional meetings. She earns over two hundred thousand dollars a year.

At the same time she is a perfect wife and mother. Her husband, Craig, is an executive in a large corporation, and practically every week she either attends or throws some business-related social function. Through it all, she insists on being there for her children, and makes sure to schedule time each day to spend with them. She also schedules time each day to exercise and is an excellent tennis player. Her house is immaculate, and the grounds around it are gardened perfectly. Pamela tells me that she regrets that she cannot do all of the gardening herself.

THERAPIST: So you’re a person in life who tries to do it all.

PAMELA: That’s right, and I guess I do do it all. The only problem is that I’m doing so many different things that I’m a mess. It’s go, go, go all the time.

THERAPIST: It sounds like it’s too much for you.

PAMELA: I’ll say it’s too much. I’m not enjoying life. You would think, with all I have, I would enjoy it a little. But I don’t. In fact, I’ve been feeling really depressed. Overwhelmed and depressed. That’s why I’ve come to therapy. It’s getting so that I don’t want to get out of bed.

THERAPIST: Have you actually stopped doing things?

PAMELA: Of course not. I still do it all. I still get out of bed. Nothing has changed. But maybe it’s that I just turned forty. I want something more out of life. I want some time for myself.

Keith:
Forty-two years old. His relentless quest for
SUCCESS IS DESTROYING HIM PHYSICALLY.

Keith is also successful at what he does. He is a television newscaster for a major New York station. He is good-looking and exudes a faint air of superiority. He is careful to tell me in an offhand way about all his achievements. He is famous, knows famous people, is powerful at the station, is rich, and dates beautiful models and actresses. But through it all, Keith is still dissatisfied. He wants more. He is
driven.

THERAPIST: Why have you come to therapy?

KEITH: I’ll be honest with you. I don’t want to be here. The only reason I’ve come is that my doctors tell me that my irritable bowel and headaches are caused by stress. I have to learn to relax.

THERAPIST: So you want to get rid of the irritable bowel and headaches, but leave everything else the same?

KEITH: Yeah. I’m not about to stop pushing to get ahead.

Fill out this questionnaire to measure the strength of your Unrelenting Standards lifetrap. Use the scale on the following page.

SCORING KEY

1. Completely untrue of me
   
2. Mostly untrue of me
   
3. Slightly more true than untrue of me
   
4. Moderately true of me
   
5. Mostly true of me
   
6. Describes me perfectly
   

If you have any 5’s or 6’s on this questionnaire, this lifetrap may still apply to you, even if your score is in the low range.

INTERPRETING YOUR
UNRELENTING STANDARDS
SCORE

10-19 Very low. This lifetrap probably does
not
apply to you.

20-29 Fairly low. This lifetrap may only apply
occasionally
.

30-39 Moderate. This lifetrap is an
issue
in your life.

40-49 High. This is definitely an
important
lifetrap for you.

50-60 Very high. This is definitely one of your
core
lifetraps.

The primary feeling is
pressure.
You can never relax and enjoy life. You are always pushing, pushing, pushing, to get ahead. You fight to be the best at whatever you do, whether it is school, work, sports, hobbies, dating, or sex. You have to have the best house, the best car, the best job, make the most money, and look the most handsome or beautiful. You have to be perfectly creative and perfectly organized.

The name of the lifetrap is from the point of view of the outside observer. It was we, not Pamela and Keith, who felt their standards were unrelenting. To Pamela and Keith, it was just a normal level of trying to achieve. People who have the Unrelenting Standards lifetrap are usually successful at whatever they do, but this success is from the point of view of other people.
Other
people think that you have achieved a lot, but you take your achievements for granted. They are only what you have expected of yourself.

Physical stress symptoms, such as the irritable bowel and headaches experienced by Keith, are common. You might have high blood pressure, ulcers, colitis, insomnia, fatigue, panic attacks, heart arrhythmias, obesity, back pain, skin problems, arthritis, asthma, or any number of other physical problems.

KEITH: It is as though my body is telling me I can’t do this, I can’t push this hard.

THERAPIST: Something has to give.

For you, life is only
doing.
Life is having to work or achieve all the time. You are always straining at the edge of your limits. There is never a chance to take a break, to stop and enjoy things. Everything, including activities that could be enjoyable, such as games or swimming, becomes an ordeal. Pamela and Craig discussed this in one of our marital sessions.

PAMELA: I can’t really relax when I play tennis. It’s like I’m watching my game and worrying about perfecting every shot. And I get really pissed off when I can’t get it right.

THERAPIST: So even your play is work.

CRAIG: It’s true. I really don’t like playing with her for that reason. She takes the game so seriously, and gets so tense. Each game is a life-and-death matter. And she gets upset when she loses. She’s really not a good sport.

Unrelenting Standards can create the full gamut of negative emotions. You feel constantly frustrated and irritated with yourself for not meeting your standards. You may feel chronically angry, and certainly you feel high levels of anxiety. You obsess about the next thing you have to do right. A major focus of your anxiety is
time:
You have so much to do and so little time. You are always aware of time and feel a constant sense of time
pressure.
And you can feel depressed at the grimness of your life and at the emptiness of what you have achieved.

You might ask
why
you continue to push yourself this way. As exhausted as you are, instead of slowing down, you accelerate, taking on more and more responsibility. It is as though you believe that one of the things you do is finally going to bring you satisfaction. You do not realize that the way you approach everything makes genuine pleasure impossible. Inevitably, whatever you try to accomplish takes on that same cast, that same heavy feeling of pressure.

KEITH: I keep thinking that if I could get to where I want to be, I could be satisfied.

THERAPIST: But no matter what you get, whether it’s a new job, a new girlfriend, a new car, or a new trip, you always apply those same relentless standards. It’s really those standards that have to change.

You believe in the possibility of success—that if you keep striving you can actually achieve that wonderful state of perfection. Although you probably do not consider yourself truly successful, you feel that you are improving, getting closer to your goal. This sense of progress keeps you going. You imagine an end to the road, when you can finally relax and enjoy life. You fantasize about some future time when you will be released.

THERAPIST: What is it that keeps you going at this frantic pace? Why don’t you just stop?

PAMELA: I think about that a lot myself I think it’s that I always see the light at the end of the tunnel, when I can relax and have what I want I feel like I’m getting there.

But that state of peace that you hope to find at the end of your striving never comes. Even if it did, you would just find something else, some other relentless standard to meet. This is how your lifetrap reinforces itself. At your core, you are not comfortable unless you are striving. It may not make you happy, but it is familiar. It is the devil you know.

There are at least three common variants of the Unrelenting Standards lifetrap. You may be more than one type—you may be all three, in fact.

THREE TYPES OF UNRELENTING STANDARDS

1. Compulsivity
   
2. Achievement Orientation
   
3. Status Orientation
   

The
compulsive
is the person who keeps everything in perfect order. You are the type who attends to every detail no matter how slight, who fears making any mistake no matter how minor. You feel frustrated and upset when things are not just right.

KEITH: My date with Sharon was a disaster. When we got to the theater, we were off center by at least six seats. I was so irritated, I could barely pay attention to the play.

THERAPIST: That’s a shame. I know making time to see this play meant a lot to you. Too bad you couldn’t enjoy it.

When Keith goes somewhere, no detail escapes him. The seat has to be perfect, the food has to be flawless, and the room temperature has to be exactly right. Of course, something is wrong every time, and he just cannot settle down and enjoy himself.

Keith gets angry at his surroundings for disappointing him. But not all compulsive people get angry at their surroundings. Some get angry at themselves. It may be that you blame yourself more than your surroundings. Pamela is this way. Like Keith, she is the compulsive type, but most of her anger is directed at herself.

THERAPIST: How did your dinner party go?

PAMELA: It went okay, except the rice was a trifle overcooked. I was really mad at myself about that rice.

When Pamela thinks about her dinner party, her mind fastens on the one detail that did not go quite right. She reproaches herself for not getting this detail right.

Obsessive
self
-control is common. In fact, the whole issue of control is central to this type. When you feel
out
of control in other aspects of your life (because of Vulnerability or Subjugation, for example), compulsivity can be a way to cope so you feel
in
control.

This is the so-called workaholic. You are the person who works sixteenhour days, seven days a week. You place an excessive value on a high level of achievement at the expense of your other needs. You have to be the best.

PAMELA: When I was in college I remember I once couldn’t sleep all night because I was worrying that I was going to get a „B“ in my calculus course. I was thinking I wouldn’t get to be valedictorian with that „B.“ I was just so mad at myself for blowing that course.

It is important to distinguish Unrelenting Standards from the Failure lifetrap. Failure is the sense that you have failed relative to your peers, that you are below average. Unrelenting Standards is the sense that you are at least average, but that you are constantly striving to meet very high, perfectionistic standards. The person with the Failure lifetrap will attempt a task and then think, „I can’t do anything right, I messed it up.“ The person with Unrelenting Standards will attempt that task and think, „I did okay, but I could do better.“

PAMELA: It’s not that I think I’m going to fail. I know I’ll do a good job. My fear is not of fading, but of being merely mediocre, of not standing out from the crowd.

The Unrelenting Standards lifetrap can sometimes lead to a sense of failure. If your unrelenting standards are so high that you cannot come close to meeting them, then you may begin to feel incompetent, a failure.

It may be that you fall so far short of your goals that you feel you have not achieved anything at all.

Many workaholics exist in a state of chronic irritability or hostility. This is the Type-A personality. Type-A’s get angry at anyone who outdoes them or who blocks their ambitions. Or, if the blocks are internal, they get angry at themselves. They are not pushing hard enough, or doing well enough at something. They feel a constant sense of internal irritation.