“I’m being good, aren’t I?”
This question from my childhood brings up a whole range of emotions:
- Sadness for the little girl who needed constant reassurance of her behavior. Reassurance from outside herself because inside herself wasn’t a reliable barometer.
- Anger for the little girl held to ever-changing, hence impossible, standards of “good”.
- Grief for the little girl who would catch only brief glimpses of the joy and freedom of being her authentic self before being snapped back into reality.
- Compassion for the little girl who just wanted to feel safe, sure and capable.
Setting the Stage
As I sit here at my desk, a fully grown-up adult woman, I can still picture myself asking this question.
I’m sure I said it elsewhere, but the image that comes to mind is in church, weeknight church to be specific. And we didn’t go to the kind of church where kids got to go off and have some sort of children’s church, learn by fun experience.
The only thing close to that was a room at the back of the church that was ostensibly available for crying babies, but more often than not, utilized to spank children who were “not being good” during services. If you wonder how I know this, let’s just say, it wasn’t anywhere close to a soundproof room.
I Tried
I can picture it so clearly. Sitting next to my mom. Legs dangling. Doing my best to sit still until the last amen and we could go home. I killed a decent amount of time doodling on scrap paper, asking to go to the bathroom or to get a drink of water and sometimes actually listening to the service.
Almost inevitably, at some point I would sense a shift in my mom’s mood. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what caused the shift. It may have been a glance, a sigh or a change in posture. But it was palpable. Suddenly I felt that sinking feeling in my stomach and a prickle of hyper awareness on the back of my neck and head.
I would look up at my mom, tap her arm until she looked down at me and whisper,
“I’m being good, aren’t I?”
Half hoping to get the reassurance that I wasn’t going to the crying room, half trying to convince myself that she wasn’t unhappy with me. Sometimes she would answer me outright, usually, she would shush me and say we’d talk about it after. That was never a sign of my goodness.
It’s All Coming Back to Me Now
I hadn’t thought about this question from my childhood until it popped back on my radar during a recent coaching session. I was having a hard time managing my emotions around the loss of a friend who I’d been close to for the last decade.
Truth be told, I hadn’t seen her in person for a while, so when she came up in a conversation, I went to her social media profile to see what she’d been up to. I saw we were no longer FB friends and was puzzled. I tried reaching out to her a couple of other ways to no avail.
Suddenly, that old sinking feeling came over me and the questions started coming fast and furious:
Was it something I did?
Was it something I said?
Didn’t do, didn’t say?
Did something happen I don’t know about?
How can I fix this?
I stewed about it off and on for the rest of the day, then finally brought it up to my husband on our dog walk that evening. He was sympathetic but didn’t really have any more insight into the situation than I had.
Coach Is in Session
Back to the coaching session. I usually feel silly bringing up things like this in a coaching session because it seems like high school drama, but it really was bothering me. I gave her a little background and then she asked,
“What do you think is troubling you most in this situation?”
“Well, I think that I don’t know why she’s not responding to me.”
“Why that in particular?”
“If I knew what the reason was, even if it was something I did, then I could stop worrying about it.”
“If it WAS something you did, do you truly think knowing would allow you to stop thinking about it?”
“Probably not” I said, smiling sheepishly.
“So, it doesn’t seem like knowing would be much better than not knowing, right?”
“Right”
“What do you think you are really looking for?”
“Reassurance, I guess.”
“Tell me more about that.”
“Oh, geez! How much time do you have? Enough to tell you about all the therapy sessions I’ve had on this.”
“Go on.”
“There is a version of myself as a child that pops into my memories every once in a while. This little girl who wants so hard to be good, but never quite hits the mark. She just wants someone to acknowledge that she’s trying. She just wants to be told that she is good, even if it’s a big fat lie. If she can hear that, then she can stop worrying about it.”
I paused, took a deep breath and tried not to burst into tears.
“I can see there’s emotion coming up for you right now. Want to tell me about it?”
“Yeah, I just hate this insecurity inside me that won’t seem to go away. I haven’t been that little girl in decades, but when I even get a whiff of disapproval or rejection, she comes roaring back, demanding that someone reassure her and tell her that’s she’s being good. It just feels so damn needy.”
“It makes sense that your brain would offer up fear as a reaction to rejection, right? Even though losing a friend doesn’t put you in real danger, it sets off that primitive part of your brain that fears being excluded from the tribe.”
“Yes, that DOES make sense, but it’s still hard to let it go.”
“Can you acknowledge that little girl and her need for reassurance? Even if you never know the whole story, even in the face of fear, real or otherwise? Can you show her compassion and maybe even give her the reassurance you’ve been seeking all these years?”
“I can try. Not sure if that’s good, but it’s good enough.”
Betsy is a certified life coach and blogger who helps midlife women find satisfaction where they are now and inspiration to go after their big goals.
For more about working with Betsy, click here.