Clarity and inner space came once I noticed in myself I had a lot of unprocessed stuff still lingering in my inner basement. Once I started to confront and clean out the 'clutter', it provided me with so much freedom, space and time. I felt recharged like a formerly drained battery and creativity returned to me. And like you I also sleep better now. The stress has vanished. I feel more aligned.
I had ignored how people around me treated me for probably all my life. My (catholic) parents had always taught me 'forgive people who treat you badly and keep hanging around them so they can continue to treat you badly'. Then I listened to one of Stef's shows about reciprocity. Suddenly I discovered a pattern.
Since my childhood I had had friends who wanted me to do things for them. And however I never asked anything in return from them, I had always expected, assumed, they would be there for me, when I ever needed help or a favor myself.
I'll paint a few examples, because they might be helpful and relevant to others as well.
The person I considered to be my best friend during my highschool years, asked me to go with him to 'Open Door Day', to check out this military (I know this sounds bad) academy he was thinking about joining. I didn't feel like that at all, but he guilt-tripped me into it by saying: I am asking you this as your best friend. Will you do this for our friendship? I don't want to go alone and if you do this for me, I promise you I will come with you too when it's your turn to check out your university of choice. So how could I refuse this plee. I ended up going with him because we were friends. And perhaps you can guess already, that when it was time for me to remind him of his promise and join me on the Open Door Day of the university I wanted to check out, he came up with an excuse to not having to go with me. I think he said something along he didn't have time that day, but would definately be there on the next university open door day. But also the next one, there was of course another excuse.
One of my lifelong friends is now a lawyer. I helped him out during many occasions with all sorts of things friends help eachother out with. I helped him find a new place to live, helped him move, was there for him when his girlfriend broke up with him, when he had cancer, I was there for him. All this time, I never once asked anything back for our friendship. And I attended his wedding. He always said I would become his best man, but guess what, at the last moment he switched to someone else, I didn't even know the guy, which is at least strange if you're supposed to be best friends. Then later in life at some point I needed a lawyers advice. He said he didn't want to advise or help me, but as a favor to me, he would direct me to one of his interns with at most three months experience, where he had always boasted to be one of the top in his field.
This pattern of me doing stuff for people, thinking we have a great friendship, has haunted me throughout every social relationship or business contact I had. It even reflected back at me in my relationships. One example here too. When I was writing my final university paper, my girlfriend at the time also was writing hers. She struggled with it, and her struggle always was the talk of the day. I quit writing on mine, started to help her writing her paper. I listened patiently to her complaints, I dived into the material, read it and gave rewriting tips. When the thing was finished, she didn't even mention me in the People I'd Like To Thank section. Then, when I asked her to read my paper, which at that time had been delayed from helping her, she said she didn't care to read it.
Also a work example. I helped out a creative artist who needed texts written for his website, and brochures. Up front he had told me, his budget to pay me was really low. So i told him to keep his money, but make me an artwork instead as payment. I liked this free market quid pro quo solution. You want my texts, I want an artwork from you. He agreed happily. I spent over 100 hours on Skype with this man, interviewing him, then writing out all the texts, which was even more hours work and then he called me and asked me if I also could translate it for free for him from Dutch to English. Which I did, although I told him I wasn't an expert in English. But since I'd do it for free... he didn't care. In total we made 10 brochures for 10 artworks and he was extremely thrilled, happy and thankful. It took about three months work for me. Then I was eager to see the artwork he had promised me and told me he had been working on during this whole period. I couldn't see it of course, he said only the finished product. Then I didn't hear anything from him for several following months, and when I informed there were always excuses. He hit his head, his wife had a cold, he had another assignment in between, he had to go on a trip, etcetera. Short story, I never got the promised artwork and when he finally contacted me, it wasn't even about the artwork he owed me, but he boldly asked me if I could write some more texts for him. Which, I almost felt like doing, feeling my old habits kicking in from my parents: forgive this person and continue working for him. But thanks to Stef, this time I dodged these bullets matrix-style and will never work for this man again.
What I have learned is to look for reciprocity in the beginning of any new relationship. I also applied this to my parents (saving the best for last). From early (abusive) childhood on, they taught me to make myself invisible and when you're invisible you don't ask for things in return nor express any needs. They never took interest in me, never asked me questions, it was always about them and their religion and their needs. I felt more like an unwanted burden to them, except when they needed something from me. They talk in commandments: Help your Mother with the Dishes. Help your Father in the Garden. Send Money. Send More Money. Help with this PC Problem. They also talk in Don'ts: Don't quit your job (even if you're unhappy and exploited there). Don't date this girl (=less money for us). Don't start your own business.
Whenever I tried reasoning with them, they get mad and blame me for everything. When I tell them all I want is them to listen to me and find out who I am, they make it about them. When I wrote my first novel, my father didn't even want to take the effort to read it, he said 'I don't have time, watching sports on TV is more important to me and there's always sports on TV'. My mother did read it, then said 'I am ashamed of this, what will the neighbours think. What will the people in the street think.' Later it all escalated in extreme shouting and threatening from their side and me finally deciding to defoo.
Timur,
you write that you haven't identified your parents as a major problem (yet), but at the same time you did feel the need to seek out therapy. I am wondering what made you decide that you need that? Can you tell me more on how you came to that decision?
OzTrAlien,
what helped me to walk away was a show in which Stef asks one of his listeners something along like 'If your father/mother wasn't family, would you go out for a nice coffee or drink with this person(s)?' Walking away was made easier when my parents blew up in my face about me telling them who I am and want to be. I said to them if you want a good relationship with me, you have to stop shouting and start listening to me and ask me questions.When I tried discussing the abusive in my childhood with them, they said 'this never happened'. We never hit you. We never shouted at you. And even if we did, that's only because our parents hit us and shouted at us too, and thats normal. In another show Stef mentions that its hard to convince a lifelong smoker to quit smoking and that it might be too late for that person. And I decided I don't want to spent the next twenty or so years pretending to be someone else and doing chit-chat when I'm with my parents. So that's what initialised my defoo. How is your relationship with your parents currently?
greetz,
Pat
