A client once asked me, “Why do these bad things keep happening to me, especially when I try so hard to prevent them?” This client had just been fired. They were actually quite good at their job, but because they were so terrified their boss might think them inadequate, they’d behaved in ways that ultimately led them to being fired.
As a therapist, I’ve witnessed so many of these seemingly ironic situations: fearing their partner will leave them, a client behaves in a way that causes the partner to do just that. Or a parent who tries so hard not to repeat the mistakes of her own mother only finds that she has inadvertently behaved just like her mother.
Despite our best intentions and efforts, why do we create the very thing we are most trying to prevent? Why do we get stuck in cycles that only repeat themselves over and over? Is it simply our fate and bad luck, or is there something we’re doing?
A narrative is at play
In each of the above examples, someone is motivated by fear—a boss will fire them, a partner will leave, a kid will get screwed up—but in each example, the person goes too far trying to protect themselves from what they fear most. They overreact.
Let’s look again at the first example in which someone, trying to impress their boss, ends up getting fired.
Despite knowing that their work was very good, this person feared their boss would find it inadequate. As a result, they repeatedly missed deadlines because they wanted their work to be perfect. Their fears were driven by an underlying narrative: as a child, their parents repeatedly treated them as if they were lacking and inadequate. Now, as an adult, they assumed their boss would have the same opinion.
Ironically, when they were fired for delayed and missing work, they felt even more incompetent which, in turn, fed the initial narrative. They were caught in a negative feedback loop and couldn’t get out of it!
The takeaway here? Whenever we overreact, our behavior is almost always the result of a childhood narrative which we develop in response to intense or overwhelming experiences. Years later as an adult, these same narratives will determine how we act and what choices we make.
The key is in our overreaction
Imagine a parent who, raised in poverty, never got any birthday presents. To undo this upbringing, they spend a thousand dollars they don’t have on their four-year-old’s birthday presents. “I may have gone a little overboard,” the parent admits, “but there’s no way I’m forgetting my kid’s birthday!”
In our attempt to psychically reverse intense childhood experiences, we tend to overreact. We spend a thousand dollars rather than fifty or a hundred. We strive for perfection rather than accept good enough work.
The intensity of our initial experiences often causes us to react irrationally, and in our attempt to undo the initial experience—i.e., no birthday presents—we go too far in the opposite direction.
How to break the cycle
- Figure out the narratives that restrict you. This isn’t easy, and it’s best done with someone like a therapist who has training. You can also explore and try to change your own narratives.
- Examine your own reactions. Put aside judgment here. Just be curious. Does your rational, intellectual mind think you might be overreacting? Are you doing the opposite of what you experienced as a child?
- Move to the middle. If you’re overreacting, temper your response a bit more towards the middle. For the client who wants perfection, they could turn in an assignment that is good but not perfect—and then see how their boss responds.
- Remind yourself that the present is not the past. What was true when you were little—and when the narrative developed—is not necessarily true now. We expect people in our present to act and think exactly as people from our past, but they don’t. It’s important to repeatedly recognize the present is not the past.
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1 thought on “How We Bring About the Thing We Most Want to Avoid”
Great points. This resonates! Not for me, necessarily (of course not! 😇) but for people I’m close to. Thanks!