EXPECTANT EXPECTATIONS….

Basically life is pretty frustrating eh?! We always seem to be waiting for something to happen: a vaccine for coronavirus, the next ‘perfect’ Government to sort out the economy once and for all, the mortgage to finally be paid off, to lose that half inch of fat stubbornly hanging around our middle……. Waiting, waiting, waiting for that day of utopia when we can at last sit down and say…. ‘I’ve arrived!’

Whoever said ‘life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans?!’ And the Dalai Lama who insightfully reminds us that we live our lives as if we’re never going to die, and then die having never really lived!’

That puts a whole different gloss on the waiting game. We can wait our whole lives to be ‘happy’; to ‘arrive’. And then panic when we get a sense of our mortal ‘end’ in sight. That timely reminder that we’re not here forever. So often this happens when we lose somewhen close to us or we have an illness that knocks off us our feet. Perhaps that’s another hidden layer of ‘threatening opportunity’ that the current coronavirus pandemic has come to teach us? Do we really have time for inauthenticities, for games, for only doing what others or our conditioning expects of us?

As a therapist I am intrigued by psychological game playing. For when people, including myself, try to get what they need but without directly asking for it. Be that attention, love, credit, acceptance, help…..

After months of lockdown it’s been hard to escape difficult family dynamics. Many of us have had to face up to them where we would normally just tolerate them for a while before escaping back to the sanctity of our separate home or workplace. So the virus has presented us with another ‘opportunity.’ Face up and try to be more authentic or just sit tight and wait for things to sort themselves out. But the latter leads to frustration, resentment and ‘dis-ease’. Isn’t life too short, too precious, for that?

I’ve been aware of some building resentment within myself recently because of unresolved historic family dynamics. I rehearse in my head what my angry ego wants to say to enact justice and reap some sort of revenge for the unreasonable way that I feel I’m being treated. Then I realise that this leads to an inner emotional turmoil that upsets my own sense of well being. How I am allowing someone else’s own inner conflict to become my own?

That brings me back to checking in with my own expectations. I realise I suffer when I expect others to behave in a certain way. A way in which I believe I would do, ‘if I were them’. But I am not them, and they are not me. So why am I projecting my own hopes and aspirations onto them?

I have no idea of the pain and fear that they may be carrying and how they may be trying to deal with it. But that does not mean that I should not be as authentic as I can be in sharing how other’s behaviours affect me? I realise that I empower myself when I can be authentic without attacking. And I suffer less when I release others from the expectations of my controlling ego agenda.

Being authentic means entering into vulnerability. And yet when we feel resentful and rageful vulnerability is usually the last thing on our minds. When I summoned the courage to let the family member know how they were affecting me, I was aware of exposing myself. Of being vulnerable.

But if I was to speak from my heart then I had to be vulnerable in order to connect with my own inner truth. I accepted that I could only be responsible for my own truth and not theirs. The nagging knot of resentment I had been carrying around melted into a kind of care. A care for myself and for the other; who had no idea how much their behaviour had been unsettling me….

This experience has taught me that fixed expectation can only lead to frustration and resentment. It impacts my own emotional well being. Why am I judging how other’s emotional well being should be in order that I can maintain my own?

Being authentic is not just about being ‘real’ and being less prepared to play games. It’s also about being aware of our limits, of our fallibility. Of our vulnerability which knows that we deserve to be at peace, despite how others may be dealing with their own pain.

My authenticity knows that I cannot, and should not, try to change others. Simply to be honest in the expectations that I have of myself and to communicate those to others as, and when, I can. And to check in from time to time that I continue to honour my own personal expectations. Because I know in that endeavour is the key to my own inner peace and self care.

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