I’m on the floor this morning.
By that I mean, I’ve woken up tired and grumpy, overwhelmed with near-constant frustrations and irritants. My inbox seems full of messages destined to mess with my feelings of safety, security and happiness. I’m struggling to communicate effectively with anyone, it’s all cross words and misunderstandings.
You know those days.
Nothing goes right, everything goes wrong and it’s all you can do not to cry.
Part of me wanted to write a blog about just how goddamn difficult this business thing is, because it seems like one minute everything is going swimmingly and the next I’m back to living off baked beans and panicking about paying my bills. Who knew that working with individuals and businesses on a problem that none of them wish they had would be difficult hey?
Then I remembered, writing a blog about difficulties and struggles when you’re knee deep in them isn’t inspiring or empowering or informative. It’s whining. It’s manipulative; putting my pain and hurt on display for everyone to see, with a very clear and plaintive ‘please Sir, can I have some more?’ at the bottom.
That has kind of been my stock in trade for years; work myself into a frenzy of exhaustion and tears and then have everyone tell me how wonderful I am in order to feel better. Think you haven’t done it?
Have you ever quit your job, feeling overworked and underpaid, for your boss to tell you how important and integral to the team you are? You’ve done it.
Have you ever shared a meme to Facebook about Monday exhaustion, or just how much they don’t appreciate you, or how stupid everyone is? You’ve done it.
I learned it early on when my mum used to work herself to exhaustion getting a project done, then, exhausted and frustrated, would load me and all her work into the car, drive to her office and slam a box on the desk telling her boss to stick it. Quite genuinely, that was my model for how to get a pay rise for the next decade or so. And because I made myself indispensable, it often worked.
One of my bosses referred to my uncanny ability to ‘snatch defeat from the jaws of victory’; I would work so hard for so long and just as I was about to be covered in glory and praise, I would collapse and cover myself with something else entirely. Far less fragrant. Far more embarrassing.
So why does this happen to me? (Please dear god tell me it’s not just me, that you understand this, that you have a version of this that you do. If not, this is the most embarrassing blog I’ve ever written)
It’s a heady combination of two things; one called an ‘upper limit problem’ and something called a maladaptive coping strategy, mixed with a touch of cognitive bias.
Everything we do, we do for a reason. Remember that.
The Upper Limit Problem
So, if you have read The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks you already know half of the answer here. If you haven’t, go buy it on amazon. Here’s an associate link for you (I get a tiny commission when you buy anything through it).
The theory of the upper limit problem is simple; we have an internal setting for how good things are allowed to be before we start to panic and freak out. It’s a little something like this…
So, some of you may have caught that the tail end of last month I shared a post saying just how overwhelmed I was because February 2020 was a brilliant month in my business. Second biggest cash received month ever (can I just add a little clarification here…. It still didn’t quite hit the salary I received when I was a lawyer. And first qualified. Five years ago. I never earned big bucks in law because hello, burnout, imposter syndrome and lots of extra shit that went with it. So, as you were…).
I had new corporate contracts flying in, we had discussions a-go-go for new work, it was brilliant. 7 days later I feel like sitting on the floor and having a cry because I’m crashing?
What’s changed?
During the upper limit problem we bump up against an invisible line that says ‘too happy, too happy! Must look for all the bad shiz that’s happening! Must get back to regular, safe limits of happiness’. And so we look for/notice/pay attention to the ‘bad’.
If you have ever used the phrase ‘waiting for the other shoe to drop’, you know this concept well. If you have ever been in the middle of a project and said suspiciously ‘it’s going too well’ like tiny ninja assassins are just waiting to jump up and screw with you? You’ve experienced the upper limit.
Ok, so I’ve hit a new level of happiness, contentment, pride, safety, security etc, and it’s too much, so subconsciously I start looking for a pain point?
It’s a subtle subconscious action that most of us experience.
If you have ever been happily driving to work and then suddenly thought of all the bad things that could go wrong whilst you’re driving and when you arrive, you’ve experienced this level of intrusive thought. We all have it, it’s part of our learning to survive.
We evolved because we learned to perceive threats and out-manoeuvre (or sometimes just plain out-run) them
Cognitive bias
Don’t think of a polar bear.
Don’t think of a polar bear
Damnit!
This right here is cognitive filtering, in particular, confirmation bias and ironic process theory.
Our brains are required to process so much information, so much of the time, that they take a few shortcuts, a bit like Brian stacking chickpeas in the health and beauty aisle of the supermarket because it’s closer. The items may not logically and objectively belong there, but still, there they are.
Confirmation bias arises when we see information and interpret in a way that reinforces our preconceived notions. Remember talking about waiting for the other shoe to drop? If we believe that things can only go well for so long then, of course, when bad things happen we pay attention to it. It’s confirming the way that the world works! This is what I deserve for doing well, right?
Yeah, sounds screwed up to me too.
But here is why trying to simply suppress negative thoughts doesn’t work. Don’t think about them.
Really, don’t think about them.
You’re thinking about the bad things even more, aren’t you?
Ironic process theory. Try to suppress something and all you’ll do is think of it more.
Maladaptive coping strategy
This is a big wordy way of saying ‘a sticking plaster on a broken leg’ or ‘treating the surface based symptom without treating the deeper underlying issue’.
Why do we do it?
Because we don’t know how to treat the underlying issue. Or it’s too big and too scary. Or we don’t have the time or energy to deal with it. We never have the time or energy to deal with it.
So instead, we paper over the cracks and muddy along, knowing full well that we have a subsidence problem and, sooner or later, the building will collapse around us. But it looks stable enough for now so let’s keep going.
Remember when I said that I picked up on my mum’s habit of working myself into a frenzy and then throwing a wobbler, and how it worked?
It did. I would work myself to the point of exhaustion and then break down crying or throw my letter of resignation at someone (or on their desk at least, I wasn’t that aggressive. Mostly)
It was a confirmation bias.
I learned, hell, I conditioned myself, from a young age, that if I worked hard and worked long hours that, even if I wasn’t appreciated at the time, I would receive a reward.
A payrise.
Unlimited overtime.
A new job title.
More responsibility.
They were rewards, sure.
They were not the rewards I was looking for
I didn’t even really know what rewards I was looking for, I was just so desperate for safety, support, validation. Working my way up Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
And this is where it comes back to.
When you are at that point of throwing in the towel, of feeling like it’s all too difficult and too hard, that the deck is stacked against you and the universe doesn’t care.
Or even when you sit there thinking ‘how can I go through another week like last week, I can’t do it, it’s too much.
Whether or not you’ve hit that upper limit (and I strongly believe that most of us are operating outside our comfort zones most of the time, otherwise burnout wouldn’t be so prevalent), the combination of intrusive thoughts + cognitive bias + ironic process filter = a pure shitstorm of ‘oh my god, I can’t do it, I’m too tired, I’m too overwhelmed, I don’t even know where to start’.
Add in a handy maladaptive coping mechanism where you have conditioned yourself to receive less and less true reward for what you are doing and you are engaged in the energetic equivalent of throwing a hat on a fire hose?
Well, it’s no wonder that we end up on the floor, is it.
What do we do about it?
For a good number of you reading this, just understanding the process of what has happened ‘behind the scenes’ will be enough to talk you down.
For everyone else, you want to be in tomorrow night’s training in The Resilience Academy, where we will be focusing on why we fall into bad habits and patterns of behaviour (this is essentially pre-reading for the session) together with how to change it.
Want to be in that and stop getting to the point of crying on the floor in exhaustion? Click here for all the details and how to join
