Why You Are Your Own Worst Enemy
One aspect of my training as a Marriage & Family Therapist is to notice patterns and themes in my client’s lives and draw links between certain behaviors, thoughts, and feelings that clients may not be seeing for themselves. One such theme I’ve noticed is something I am calling the double-edged sword. The “double-edged sword” is the concept that the same qualities and characteristics about your personality that make you kickass at work, can also hurt you in your personal life. The very thing that makes you so successful at work can also get the way in your intimate relationships.
Consider a successful surgeon who went through years of medical school & residency, who was diligent, motivated, disciplined. Or a CEO of a Fortune 500 company, who wakes up everyday at 4 AM to get in their workout with their personal trainer before going into work, and makes big decisions that affect hundreds, even thousands of people on a daily basis. Or perhaps consider the TV screenwriter, trained and keen on getting inside people’s heads, understanding people’s emotions. behaviors, and motivations. Or the psychotherapist, likewise, attuned and attentive to the needs of the people around them, and skilled at noticing their unhelpful patterns. All of these people have finely tuned skills that make them incredibly astute and successful in their jobs.
Now, take these highly skilled professionals out of the workplace and think about how these skills translate in relationships. The disciplined, hard-working, perfectionistic surgeon may have a partner who feels that the surgeon’s expectations are so high that they are always a disappointment. The partner might feel that they can’t relax around their person. Likewise, the surgeon may put so much pressure on herself to be perfect that she develops crippling anxiety and panic attacks. The CEO who is used to calling the shots at work and making all the decisions may come home to their partner who feels unheard, unprioritized, and like their opinions are not valued.
The writer who naturally sponges up the emotions of people around them may be a brilliant wordsmith, but in their romantic relationships they have a hard time shaking off any negative interactions. They may feel so super sensitive that they hyper-focus on negative interactions to a point where their partner feels like they are under a microscope.
Consider the therapist who is trained in listening at work, but is actually so tired of listening by the end of the day that their partner gets angry at them for not paying attention to anything they say! Or their partner may constantly feel therapized and analyzed by them, which is exhausting and unpleasant.
Sometimes our greatest talent or personality trait really works at work, and doesn’t work at home. Oftentimes, the things we are good at are actually due to trauma responses from our childhood. Someone who grows up with a parent with mental illness might become highly sensitive to their environment and be constantly looking for threats. This may mean that they have a high level of anxiety in relationships, or that they are highly reactive. We tend to evolve and adapt coping skills that help us when we are children, but can end up hurting us in our adult relationships.
So how do we differentiate which skills or parts of our personalities serve us best
—and where? Can we appreciate our work skills without automatically taking them home with us? Learning to identify when to lean into your natural talents, and when to soften around our habitual patterns to access empathy and compassion, is the key to maximizing your skills and qualities for their greatest use.
Here are a few tips for leaving work at work:
1) Take inventory of the skills and qualities that make you so successful at work
Is it your neurotic attention to detail or your hyper-organizational skills? Is it your direct approach that is at times disarming to others but truly gets the job done? Is it your high level of empathy making you the person that people feel comfortable going to with their problems? Is it your love for adventure and adrenaline and ability to quickly shift focus?
2) Think about where this might come from in your early childhood experiences
For example, if you grew up in a home that was volatile, a parent with anger issues or addiction, it might make sense that you learned to be highly aware of your environment at all times. This helped you notice any signs that mom was having a bad day, and keep yourself safe by staying away, or being especially helpful.
3) Think about whether or not those skills work for you or against you in your personal life.
Sure you have a spotless home, but is your Need For Clean driving everyone around you crazy? Is your Need For Speed exhausting to the people around you? Is your ability to make decisions and Be The Boss making it so that you expect everyone in your home to do exactly what you say all of the time? Or maybe you are feeling out of control or chaotic in your own home because you are so used to being the decisions-guy at work and it’s excruciating that you don’t get to call the shots at home?
4) Ask around
Reality-test by asking your loved ones what they think. Do they notice what makes you so successful at work? Do those same qualities or traits drive them nuts at home? Or do they notice your perfectionism leads to suffering in your personal life and if so, can they point out some examples?
5) Commit to differentiating your experience at home from at work
Notice when you feel yourself getting tight, feeling out of control, burning out, and taking on way more than you have capacity for. Remind yourself that while this may work for you at work, it doesn’t work so well at home, and give yourself the compassion to explore/experiment with a new mode of being. The house is not on fire (unless it is- in which case, you should take care of that!) so treat this as a Grand Experiment to learn more about yourself! And who knows? Perhaps having a bit more flexibility overall will actually help you at work too!
The good news? Therapy can help you explore your coping skills and qualities, where they came from, how they are working for you, where and why they are working for you, and situations where they need some updates. Contact us today to get started with exploring all these juicy topics.
Warmly,
Becky, LMFT
