Lacking Confidence in Florida

Dear Jassy:

I've been reading your blog for a while now, and have wanted to post but feel like my concerns are probably peanuts compared with the problems that some of your readers and patients are probably experiencing. What prompted me was the example you gave in your blog yesterday about the treatment plan for the person who couldn't stand up to their dad. That leapt right out of the page at me and I wanted to know if you had any suggestions for my situation.

I don't know what the clinical terminology is for what I have, but I guess you could say that I'm very shy and lack confidence. I'm 30 years old and I grew up in a small town in Florida with a family that isn't good at handling feelings. My dad is definitely the man of the house, and my mom is almost a stereotypical housewife - she works part-time, and has raised us kids (I'm the oldest of three, but the only girl). My dad's word is law and always has been and even when mom doesn't agree with him she'll stick up for him. She's always making excuses for the things he does and says. If my family were a schoolyard, he'd be the schoolyard bully, always puffing himself up and singling out the weakest one. I feel like I've spent my life avoiding him, trying to make myself small enough so that he won't pick on me. Don't get me wrong - he doesn't hit us, never has. But he doesn't need to. He has this way of looking at you that makes you shrivel and he is constantly angry, although it leaks out sideways and you never know when it will come in your direction.

I'm shy in groups, and am allow myself to be controlled by what I think people will think of me. I always assume the worst, and second-guess myself all the time. It stops me doing anything, because I'm convinced I'm going to fail, so what's the point. This would be easier to come to terms with if he had been outright mean, but it was more that he put us down, particularly me as the only girl (although he didn't always treat my Mom that well either.) I easily feel diminished and put down by people I hang out with - it makes having a boyfriend almost impossible. I'm just too scared I'd pick somebody just like my dad, so it's easier to stay single.

I've ended up in a job I don't really want to do, because I worry that my father will disapprove if I change career paths. I don't have friends, because I find it hard to trust people (and even harder to like them.) I bought a house I didn't really want to buy, but because it was close to my parents and my father said it was a "good deal." I live in a neighborhood I really don't like for the same reason. He's just too much of a bully to stand up to, so it's easier to adopt his dreams for me than to fight back against him and have my own. I just shut down around him as a way to deal with his non-stop telling me what I want to do, what I want to eat, where I want to live and how I should dress. He controls my mother this way too.

When I read back over this, I sound awful - like some kind of freak. On my good days, I can tell that I'm a good person. I'm very kind, thoughtful and caring. It's just that I can't always get in touch with remembering these things about myself.

I want to have a bigger life. A better life. One that I can feel happy in. Do you have any thoughts about my situation and how to change it?

Signed: Lacking Confidence in Florida


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Dear Ms. Confidence:

Your email requires a lot of detailed response, and if I were your therapist I would definitely want to explore all the ways in which being raised by your parents had impacted your ability to make decisions and feel good about yourself. However, for the purposes of this one email response, I don't want to jump in and give you advice or tell you what you should do, because I'm guessing you've been told what to think, what to feel, what to say and how to act most of your life and I suspect any attempt to do that would go over like a lead weight (and I was going to say "like a fart in church" but didn't want to offend any delicate sensibilities amongst my readers!).

If you are 30 years old then your father is probably somewhere between 48 and 60 years of age. He's lived more than half his life already, and hopefully at least some part of it has been the life he wanted. You, on the other hand, are living the life your father wanted for you, and it does not sound to me as if you are enjoying it very much at all. You have two choices. You can continue to live the life your father has chosen for you, and be unhappy. Or, you can start to make your own choices, deal with the fall-out from your father, but have a life that is more in line with your own values, wishes and desires. It really is up to you. If you pick option one, you pretty much know what to expect. However, option two will need some careful planning.

What I am going to suggest is that you carefully and slowly, taking your own sweet time, find a way to envision the kind of life that you would want to live - not the one that your father wants you to have, but the one that would make you truly content and happy. Remember - take this slowly, Ms. Confidence. It's going to take you quite a while, as you will need to get very particular in the details of your vision. To start with, close your eyes. Imagine you are sitting on a chair in the middle of a room. This room is in the house you live in, but not your current home. It's the home you don't yet live in, but will want to ultimately. As you slowly begin to see yourself sitting on the chair, start by describing the chair you are sitting on. Is it a hard wooden seat with a straightback? Is it a soft cushy armchair, with squishy cushions and pillowed armrests? Is it a Papasan chair, made from willow? Once you have the picture of the chair, go on to imagine the room you are sitting in. Which room is it? Kitchen, living room, bedroom or maybe you're sitting in a hallway? Imagine that you have opened your eyes and are looking around the room. Would it be small and cave like? Open and light? Just one large room with all your furniture and belongings around you? Do you imagine stairs leading to the second floor, or are you all on one level?

As you try to day-dream about this, you may find yourself resisting it and you may experience feelings of frustration. That is natural. You have not had free rein over your imagination for quite some time, so it will take a little while for you to feel comfortable and confident back in the driver's seat. Just keep breathing, and keep thinking about the feeling and ambience of the room you're in. Now imagine that you're standing up and walking around your house. Keep noticing the kind of house you're in and remember that you can create it to be exactly what you want it to be.

When you feel that you have a sense of the house, go to the front door and walk out. Take a deep breath, and with your eyes still closed, imagine what you see when you open your front door. Are you surrounded by trees, fields and countryside? Are you on a busy urban street? Are there people waving hello to you as you open your door or are they busy with their own lives not paying attention to you? Drink this in. Notice what feels happiest to you. Start to do this visioning with every part of your life - after all, how on earth can you change your life unless you know what you want it to look like? Think about how you would like to spend your evenings: do you want to go camping and hiking? Maybe dancing? Learn a new dance step? Or maybe a new language? Just keep writing down all the things that you'd like to try to learn, or have fun doing. Nobody is going to commit you to anything. You're just experiencing possibilities at the moment, mulling over potential interests, not committing yourself to a course of action.

If you are comfortable with writing make sure to write down all the things you figure out about the place you want to live, the people you want to live with or near, the kind of environment you want to live in and the kind of community you seek for yourself. Keep adding to it until you can practically taste it, until you can truly see it. Look for photographs in magazines that look like the kind of place you want to live, articles about things that matter to you, values you hold and keep them all in the same place with either your hand-written journal, or print outs from your computer the life you want and where you want to live it. Nobody, but nobody else will be able to do this for you.

Neither your father, nor I, nor your best and closest friends know what is best for you, or what kind of life you should have. You have the right to self-determination. You are entitled to make decisions that may not be the ones that I or your father, your mother, your friends etc., would choose. But you have the right to make them anyway. You even have the right to make no changes at all and to leave your life exactly the way it is. Just remember that it will be hard at first to come up with your own plan for your life - you are going to be stretching muscles that you haven't had to use in a while.

So, am I going to suggest that you cut the cord with your father? No. It would be pointless of me to advocate for that. Only you can know what's in your best interests. But I am going to encourage you to create a vision of the life you would really love so completely that you cannot bear not to be living it.

The next thing you could do, if you felt like it, is get hold of a copy of Brad Blanton's book, "Practicing Radical Honesty." There is a chapter in there on figuring out your "life purpose." It is one of the most useful exercises I've ever done. (If you don't have money for the book, email me your address and I'll photocopy the pages for you - Brad won't object, I'm sure.) Do that exercise as many times as you have to until you can really picture what your purpose is in the world.

At the point when you can see, taste and feel the kind of life you want for yourself, go see a therapist. When you start to put your life plan into action some pretty heavy duty feelings are going to come up, and you will need supports in place to help you deal with them.

First things first. You need to know your purpose AND the kind of life you want. When you've figured that out, you're onto the next place. So, Ms. Confidence, what do YOU want to do?

Best wishes to you,

Jassy