The Truth about Lies about Truth: Separating Fact from Crap
Sit ‘n Spin
You know that ridiculous inner argument that gets you nowhere good quickly? The one that’s a load of bull and makes you feel crappy, but is rooted in juuuuuust enough truth that it messes with you. Likely, you do, but here’s a refresher from my vault to get us started.
A few months back, I was not working. I have earned pennies since, but I still don’t have an income. It’s been some months. My partner was at a point where he felt resentful — his feeling, his issue. He was brave enough to tell me and I respect him for being honest. I love him. I didn’t want him to be upset with me. I also don’t want to be an unproductive member of society (as in, a wastoid freeloader and a failure). I’ve always struggled with not measuring up, with not knowing what I want to be; in sum, with being a disappointment.
In the quiet moments in bed when I stop trolling Instagram and the news, those lies ring loudly true. Why? Because of the story I’m telling myself. You’ve probably heard the “story” concept from Brené Brown. It’s hella powerful.
This is what I was spinning on back in March: How do I finally pursue myself and what I love after 20 years of work (that I did actually like… mostly) with the very real “get a job, make money, contribute to the household and society, and be a kick-ass working woman” messages on rapid fire? The ol’ Sit ‘n Spin. It’s hard to believe that was a toy our parents actually bought us. Here. Sit on it and rotate… until you want to puke. Or, literally fly off the handle onto the driveway. Perhaps the key word was sit.
Braids and Mixers
The point is, we all hear messages that are rooted in fact, but also twisted in lies. Think of a braid with three strands. The strands are facts, lies, and the story you tell yourself to get from one to the other, a la Brené.
If you’re from Mars and literally don’t know how to make a braid (e.g., my husband), find yourselves your own analogy and go with it. In fact, share it in the comments; it’ll help someone else.
If the braid’s strands are all equally thick, it looks nice from any given angle. Another thing about braids is that they’re strong. The three strands woven together give it muscle. Three pieces of puny string side by side are not the same as three pieces of puny string all intertwined and acting as one. There’s a verse in the Old Testament that says that a cord of three strands is not easily broken. News flash — it’s not. Go ahead and test it.
Why am I going on about braids? When we’re spinning on something in our heads, we’re hurting ourselves. We’re stewing in half-truths and ugly stories about ourselves, our jobs, our friends, families, spouses, etc. It impacts how we show up in life. This wouldn’t be the end of the world if we lived in a vacuum. But, the fallout sprays all over our friends, co-workers, spouses and kids. Don’t make me insert the GIF of the kitchen mixer at full speed going into a giant bowl of ingredients. The batter flies, fast, far and literally everywhere.
One or two mishaps with a mixer, and you learn to curb its enthusiasm. It’s the same for us. We tend not to explode all over everyone every day because we’re not a fan of the padded room and straight jacket. In other words, we learn to keep the mixer on low. Our minds spinning on low creates a nice steady hum that albeit dizzying, becomes white noise. This my friends, is called coping. The better you are at hiding your crap, the quicker and more reliant you become on coping.
Coping Experts
Coping, you ask? You know what that looks like for you: video games, Facebook, sleeping pills, pounding the pavement, porn, diet control, mindfulness apps, yoga classes, hibernating with Netflix, being with people 24-7 because you’re afraid to slow down. It’s all so much a part of our routine that it doesn’t even seem like we’re using it to numb, distract or fix anything at all.
Once the lines between living and coping are sufficiently blurred, coping is routine. It feels normal. Because in some ways, it is the new normal — for everyone. The 24-hour news cycle is spin in all its glory. It’s spin, re-spin and attempts to de-spin. We live distracted, anxious and somewhat half-present lives. We even become practiced at rationalizing the time and energy spent spinning. We’re pros. Sadly, the pay sucks, and the toll it takes on our bodies can be pretty rough. For example, I struggle with headaches, chronic neck and shoulder pain, trouble falling or staying asleep, and being tired during the day. I could keep going, but it’ll sound like a bad drug commercial, and we all have enough of those in our lives.
It’s a Spade!
Sometimes you gotta call a spade a spade. And sometimes you need to be willing to be vulnerable to do that. And sometimes when I use the “royal you,” I’m hiding behind it and need to use “I”.
We all know this. It’s not news. Why am I bludgeoning this poor, braided, metaphoric horse with electric mixer paddles? Because I think we (I) can actually do something that not only curbs the spin-splosion, but starts to deal with the root(s) of it… the roots in the little corners of our minds that would prefer to stay hidden. And maybe I’m a little more hopeful than practical here, but bear with me; I’m in progress too.
We have to intentionally stop the spin (turn off the mixer) and examine our braid closely. We need to make sure our facts are indeed factual and our truth is true. And we must check the story we’re telling our self. Edit that thing hard and honest.
What does that look like? Well, let me pull my head out of my ass and get dispassionately objective for a minute. The less crass translation to advice might be: stop navel-gazing, take a deep breath, look up and out, and judge the situation unbiasedly — as if you were truly an outsider.
When All Else Fails … Spanish
The Spanish language nails this distinction between a temporary feeling or state of being and a permanent characteristic. It’s estar vs. ser, people. Maybe it confused you in high school, but it’s ridiculously profound, accurate and truthful in a way that the verb “be” in English can never be.
Let’s go with the well-worn example of embarrassment. At any given moment, you can be hugely embarrassed about something you did, said, saw, participated in, etc. You can feel it in your cheeks, racing heart and sinking gut. As a permanent state of being however, there’s a good chance you’re not an embarrassing human. You might be tempted to pass that trait off on your father and his jorts (look it up, Dad), but even that isn’t fair.
If we look at this same example in Spanish, we see that momentary embarrassment uses the conjugated verb estoy (from estar) while the permanent trait uses soy (from ser). Both mean “I am.” And spoiler alert, don’t use “emabarasado” in the Spanish for embarrassed, you big rookie. It means a pregnant man. The Spanish language uses avergonzado for embarrassing, which in my opinion, is more accurately linked to shame or being ashamed.
Shame. That’s the key word in the spin-cycle. If there’s shame in your braid, you won’t find it in the fact strand. It’s deeply embedded in the story you’re telling yourself, and it spawns lies.
Let’s look at the braid from my spinning example.
Facts:
- I am currently sans income. I don’t have a kick-ass, fool-proof plan to change this.
- My husband works full-time. He feels resentful he’s the only one bringing in dough.
Messages/Lies:
- You’re not a productive member of society and won’t be until you have a steady income. Nothing else you do really matters.
- You are a disappointment. You’re useless.
- You’ll never find your path. Your dreams aren’t valid. And even if they were, you probably couldn’t pull it off.
Story:
I was clueless coming out of college while all my friends had big career plans. I have always been a disappointment so here I go again. I’m so ashamed. The further I prolong this “discovery” charade at this advanced age, the more I am jeopardizing our marriage with some half-baked idea of who I want to be. It’s not realistic. I need to get a job now regardless of how I feel. I need to prove my worth.
Now let’s get in there and find the facts and edit the hell out of this story. Am I a grand disappointment for being in a messy season of life? Hell no. Am I disappointed that I feel so messy and unsure in this season of discovery? Yup. Is that OK? Yeah, it is. Does my partner think I’m a disappointing human with no prospects? No. Is he disappointed I don’t have an income and my plans may take a long time to come together? Probably, yes. Is that legit? Yes. The fact of the matter is, it’s one thing to feel disappointed; it’s another thing entirely to be a disappointment.
Here are some notes on braid examination that will help you examine your own. Facts are actually facts. They hold no judgment. They are neutral and unbiased. For example, let’s haul out the old adage you’re either pregnant or you’re not. You can be a just a little pregnant. You can feel a little pregnant after you eat the tub of ice cream, but the fact is, you’re not actually with child. Got it? Food baby doesn’t equate to human fetus. Be brief and brutally honest here.
Lies are the messages you are “hearing.” They are negative and often mean. They’re stuff you wouldn’t say to someone you love, yet, you tell them to yourself quite easily. They are often rooted in old wounds from childhood, youth or even yesterday. They are effective because they feel familiar, worn, true and strangely comfortable. Like your dad’s jorts (they’re jean shorts, Dad). No wait, those are a fact.
The story fills in the gaps. It jumps you from point A to point B almost seamlessly, so you don’t even question how you got there. And that’s its purpose. It explains why the messages/lies are right and feel so true. It brings “evidence” to the table. It proves you “right” based on all your previous encounters with this same or similar issues. Sadly, the evidence is bogus. Use the fact test.
So What?
Where does this leave us? Well, hopefully with a lot more awareness and a few basic tools to start to deal with our sit-n-spin lives in healthier ways. We can choose to be aware of when we’re spinning and how we’re choosing to cope. It is a choice — even if we’re not yet fully aware of it. That’s why this is actually a good place to start. Call it out and look it squarely in the eye. At first, you may not choose to do anything with the information, other than be aware. That’s OK. That may look like saying this: “I am choosing to spend time playing a game on my phone tonight because I had a stressful day at work and I don’t want to deal with the internal fallout right now.”
OK, you’ve identified that you’re engaging in a coping mechanism, and you’ve identified the underlying issue that’s driving you to numb. That’s better than three hours passing by, wondering what happened to your entire night, and being grumpy about it. Think about when might be a better time to deal with it. How? Maybe a walk tomorrow morning before work to clear your head and get your endorphins activated? Maybe a phone call to your sister to hash it out verbally? Schedule it. This is self-care. We often suck at it. But we can get better.
Once we’re able to identify and name what we’re doing and why, we can try to employ some tools to begin to unbraid the mess. Walk yourself through the example above asking yourself what the facts, the messages/lies and the story are. If your head is too full, pick up a pen and get it down on paper. Think about the story that connects the facts and lies so you can get a basic understanding of how you got to believing what you do.
You’re going to feel something. The stuff you’d rather squash or numb. Expect it. It’s OK. Under anger there’s usually some grief, loss or shame. Acknowledge it. Just pushing it away or trying to “push through it” doesn’t make it go away. Own it and speak kindly to it. Only then will it simply be a small part of who you are, rather than the part that owns and drives you. If I just got too Marie Kondo for you, suck it up and give it a try. There’s a reason she went from random book to Netflix. Her methods work. Tidy up your home. Tidy up your mind. It’s amazing what some wide, open space will do.
That leads us into the big “so what”? If you haven’t quite made the leap of why we should bother to separate fact from crap, here are some reasons. Spinning is soul-sucking and energy-draining. Coping helps us get by, but it doesn’t deal with any of the underlying crap that haunts us. Truly doing the work to deal with our baggage does. Working on this stuff helps us live in a better truth. A more accurate truth. A more compassionate, balanced and loving truth. So that we can spin less and be present more.
At the end of the day, that’s all there is. The gift of being present to our surroundings — our friends, spouses, kids, jobs, and the stuff we actually enjoy. And that can be that cell phone game. Choosing to play from a place of fullness and fun is way different from doing it out of necessity and pain. (Read that last sentence again so it sinks in.)
If you choose to give any of this a shot, let me know how it’s going. If you’ve got other methods that are working for you, share. It takes some hard solo work, but it also takes a village. The more we share, the more motivated we’ll be to keep going.
