Inherited Insecurity

             Holidays bombard the mind--the sweets and meat sweats, the nog-fueled family games and consequential brawls. It is without a doubt, the most haywire time of any year. Everything seems magnified—feasts, gifts, love, loneliness. For anyone teetering on insanity, this is the time to go ham. I’ve surfed this holiday season high like a pro. But, as Newton assured us, there is always a come down; it’s science. 
             I write this at our breakfast bar on another bluebird Colorado morning. The parental units have made their exit to the daily grind in an agro-rush, to-do lists abounding, while I take my time with the morning, make another cup of coffee and let that feeling sink in. You know, the feeling when everyone else in your life seems to have a plan, a purpose, even if it makes them miserable and you sit, twiddling thumbs, eerily content yet maddeningly concerned. I wonder if the Germans have a word for this (they have a word for everything); I shall simply call it ‘postcollegiateangst.’

            If there were such a place in which this psychosocial state would be less of a burden, my hometown should be up there. In fact, I will admit that Glenwood Springs, Colorado is quite exquisite—with landscapes worthy of Ansel Adams’ praise for days and colorful people to fill the space between takes. Living in this high mountain valley of Colorado is a dream, for anyone but those who grew up here.

            You know how it is, coming home. It is the kind of place where everyone knows your name, and that of your parents, and grandparents. And the whole time you’ve been gone, some grand tale has been squeezed down the gossip drain of work-out mom groups and hockey dads as to what you’ve been up to. University is an easy scapegoat; it’s like a coupon for four years out of their microscope of scrutiny. But man, once you dawn that cap, get ready for the firing squad of interrogators. I suppose this—what I like to call ‘small-town syndrome’—and a mélange of my sociocultural upbringing is the reason why every time I come home, no matter what time or space in life I occupy, I feel like a failure.

            I have made the habit of jittering my way through daily tasks with the kind of subtle anxiety that follows hyper-caffeination. A few nights ago, my Dad arrived home from work and I was a veritable mess—cooking, crying, laughing, making excel spreadsheets to map out my life.

            “Hey Kendall Nicole,” he beamed, “how was your day?”

            I shrugged my shoulders and broke down, “I feel worthless Pops.” He enveloped me in a bear hug. I shared with him my fears of this space in my life—where everything is uncertain and responsibilities are endless. I had recently made the decision to move to Portland, Oregon. All prodigious decisions ensue rippling doubt in their wake—did I make the right choice, how will I find work, I don’t have a network—etc.

            My father quelled my discontent with a dose of perspective, as he always does, “Kendall, I can’t imagine much else in the world should scare you considering where you have been and what you have accomplished.”

            This comment really got me thinking about the unsettling aura that has taken refuge in the folds of my prefrontal cortex. It is a societal script of inadequacy that women internalize. We are taught to become smaller, grow inward not outward— never give ourselves well-deserved credit or the benefit of the doubt. There is a self-esteem epidemic among my fellow ladies of the West and I think it is insidiously impeding our progress as humans with incredible talent for change and success.

            How peculiar is that I am so much more comfortable being abroad? I am not afraid to make mistakes or a fool out of myself; I have faith that everything will work out because it has to. In harsh juxtaposition, my home environment makes me question everything—my future, my body, my life-choices. Granted, women are treated atrociously in India, but there is certainly something about our society that degenerates women’s/human’s confidence.

            Perhaps it is a matter of context and this space carries age-old triggers specific to my conditioning, while being in a foreign land allows one to form a new self-concept irrespective of place, people, and past. When you are participating in another society you can always distance yourself from the cultural problems you witness; you can throw up your hands in surrender and think, “this place is crazy.” But when observing social issues at home, it is not something so easily ignored because it is in our mother cultures that we see a reflection of ourselves.

            One aspect of our culture that I find pressures young adults into settling for a safe,  ‘correct’ life (by societal standards), as opposed to pursuing their unique passions, is the premium placed on absolutes. Whether or not we are willing to admit it, we are dualists who thrive on certainty. I blame the religion of science for this mode of thinking—and consumerism. We categorically organize our world because that is what our culture values—a box and complementary explanation for everything. This mental technique, although extremely efficient, doesn’t allow a space for revering the unknown. If us ladies don’t fit into the ‘box’ of perfection as laid out by advertising companies and pop-culture, we render ourselves worthless as individuals.

            Perhaps us Westerners have become accustomed to playing God, but one of many things I learned in India is that we have little control over our lives in terms of macro-level planning. We must submit to the moment and trust that this is exactly where we need to be. Isn’t it true that most genuinely good things in life come to fruition at the whim of what some may call fate? The trick here is learning to have faith in said fate.

            I believe that we only have control insofar as our attitudes, emotions, and thought patterns. Opportunities will only present themselves when the mind is receptive. Thoughts are not innocuous; they have immense energy, carving neural pathways in their wake. These patterns have the ability to create Grand Canyons of mental dysfunction, from whose valley belly we can no longer see the sun. It is truly an amazing magic trick—telling yourself something enough times that you become convinced of its validity—regardless of its basis in rationale. Only if we learn to bolster self-love and dam destructive alleys can we lessen the grip of toxic cultural bombardment. That said, the ability to control mental erosion is a talent of Buddhaesque proportions, although certainly a skill worth cultivating.

            No matter how ‘zen’ the mind, women can’t help but internalize the patriarchal scaffolding of our society. With increased spelunking into the folds of my prefrontal cortex, I have called forth the unsettling aura of self-doubt, interrogating to reveal its nascence. The cultural dogma that assigns greater value to masculinity and objectifies femininity quietly traumatizes female psyches across the world. It is a dialogue of inadequacy that women internalize upon comparing themselves to ‘what women should be.’ We are taught to become smaller, grow inward not outward— never give ourselves well-deserved credit or the benefit of the doubt. The end result is a chronic self-depreciating epidemic, fostered in a soil of shame, that is insidiously impeding women’s progress to be recognized (within and without) as humans who hold up ‘half the sky’.  

            Dr.Gershan Kaufman writes about the psychology of shame and its roots in three American cultural scripts of success, independence, and conformity. The success script values those who ‘pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. As Kaufman writes, “competing for success and achieving by external standards of performance are the clarion calls of culture,” and eventually, “achievement becomes the measure of self-esteem, of one’s intrinsic worth or adequacy.” Dr. Kaufman continues to elaborate on the idea that if individuals don’t achieve the American-dream level of success, they are immediately viewed as failures; “simply being average must seem a curse.” The independence script values the ‘lone-rangers’ who don’t burden others with issues or accept help. The ‘go-it-alone’ attitude hinders the expression of our very essence as social beings. The conformity script is simple enough to understand; our culture doesn’t accept people who are different, in the minority, or outside our high expectations of mental/physical/professional/emotional/familial perfection.

            If you noticed, the aforementioned scripts generating our shame-culture involve the praise of hyper-masculinity and condemnation of care, vulnerability, patience, trust, community, and empathy—all feminine attributes that psychologists believe are rudimentary to combating shame.

            Dr.Brene Brown, a social worker from Texas—a fantastic lady whose work I have been a fan of for a while now—is a shame reseracher. Brown defines shame as,

“an intensely painful feeling or experience of believing we are flawed and therefore unworthy of acceptance and belonging. Women often experience shame when they are entangled in a web of layered, conflicting and competing social-community expectations. Shame creates feelings of fear, blame and disconnection.”

            We all know shame very well; that gut-feeling of “I’m not worthy” that can ruin your whole day. It limits opportunities of exposing yourself or taking chances at greatness due to a festering fear of failure or rejection.  Dr. Brown calls for women especially to start practicing authenticity in their lives—and the path to authentic living is through the forest of vulnerability where shame needs to be recognized, shared, and combated with genuine love for the self, as-is. She recognizes that,

“To love someone fiercely, to believe in something with your whole heart, to celebrate a fleeting moment in time, to fully engage in a life that doesn’t come with guarantees – these are risks that involve vulnerability and often pain. But, I’m learning that recognizing and leaning into the discomfort of vulnerability teaches us how to live with joy, gratitude and grace.”

            Dr. Brown’s call for humanity to live ‘whole-heartedly’ is liberating. I fully recommend reading any of her books, but my personal favorite is The Gifts of Imperfection.

            In the words of Ross Rosenburg , it all comes down to the question, “are you a human doing or a human being?” When we measure our self-worth by what we ‘do’ rather than who we ‘are,’ shame is bound to rule our lives because the proverbial carrots of our society are simply unattainable. We, as humans, must learn to embrace this culturally inherited insecurity as a condition of living a genuine life. Fear will always continue to lurk in the corners of our mind, and shame will burrow its way into our consciousness, but recognizing these emotions and thought patterns as part of the dark that attracts the light allows us to live genuine lives. As Dr. Brown so eloquently states: 

“The dark does not destroy the light; it defines it. It's our fear of the dark that casts our joy into the shadows… To become fully human means learning to turn my gratitude for being alive into some concrete common good. It means growing gentler toward human weakness. It means practicing forgiveness of my and everyone else's hourly failures to live up to divine standards. It means learning to forget myself on a regular basis in order to attend to the other selves in my vicinity. It means living so that "I'm only human" does not become an excuse for anything. It means receiving the human condition as blessing and not curse, in all its achingly frail and redemptive reality.”