Anxiety, Conflict, and Perspective: Part 1, the Perception of Lack
My Experience With Lack and Conflict
Money can be the cause of serious stress in any relationship. When my wife and I got together, I was the one in charge of the finances (it was my understanding that this was part of the man’s role). Because I knew everything 😉 I was a person of judgement (more on this in a future post). I also thought it was very progressive that we were pooling our resources into one bank account and sharing our bills. From my judge’s bench, I examined all expenditures like each one was life or death. I questioned each grocery bill, clothing, and personal purchase. I was worried about money and having enough for our future.
My behavior caused serious conflict in our relationship and fueled my own anxiety. Additionally, this mentality negatively affected our family, including my children. This was part of my own stressful experience with a perception of lack (in my case, of money).
How We Got Here
We grew up in an environment in which competition was encouraged and achievement was rewarded, therefore conflict was a natural result. We were implicitly taught we would not have enough if we did not struggle. With this teaching came the fear of lack, fear of not having a share of finite resources. Anxiety naturally follows fear, and this pattern was ingrained in us. This began in our lives as children, with our parent’s worry about development goals (height, weight, when we began speaking and walking, and how much we were eating) and continued with our school’s rules regarding measurements of success (grades (grade school), academic and athletic awards). Winning was good, losing was bad. Our parents, our teachers, our coaches, by encouraging us according to these rules and measurements, were doing what they thought was right. They wanted the best for us, which meant having every opportunity to “succeed”. Darwin’s survival of the fittest was presented as a theory in our schooling, and our schools held the yardstick we were measured against. Were we fit enough to make it as a human? Our high schools perpetuated the breakdown between “good” and “not so good students” by being divided into honors, college, and remedial classes, with each type of class having its own judgements and expectations placed upon it. There were a series of well-known consequences to not “doing well”. If you didn’t get good grades and good scores you wouldn’t get into college (or the college you wanted). If you didn’t get good grades in college, you wouldn’t get the interview, or the job you wanted.
Was this structured approach to development and learning the only way to find joy, to find something to do with your life that you are passionate about? “What do you want to do with your life?” The high school student in the Twisted Sister video was voicing many young people’s unhappiness with society’s competitive solution to “finding fulfillment” with this reply – “I Wanna Rock!” Why do we believe in this idea that there is one path to fulfillment, and why do we take it so seriously?
How the Perception of Lack Manifests in Our Lives
As children and young adults, we embraced this way of life as the means to an end. Is the end happiness or having enough? Our thought processes, molded in our early lives, carried forward into adulthood. What we perceived as a necessary competitive struggle has become a quest for dominance that manifests in much of our everyday lives. Have you been cut off by someone driving on the highway? Has someone taken your parking spot, or cut in front of you in line? Have you ever been wronged by an institution, like the company you work for, your bank, or the government? Maybe your company is not giving raises this year. Why do these actions result in conflict? It is because we have been programmed throughout our lives to stay ahead of the next person, and to scramble for that finite resource. When we perceive that we have lost a spot in line, or we have not received a raise, we are not receiving our share of the finite resources. When these things happen to us as men, we see ourselves in failure, because we have been taught that happiness and fulfillment are to be measured against society’s expectations of what a man should be.
When actions happen to us that cause anxiety, we transmit this to the people around us. Maybe we even pass some of the blame for our own perceived situation to them. As parents, whether we realize it or not, we often cause stress and anxiety in our children. In addition to our personal struggles, we worry about our goals for them, how they measure up against society’s expectations. This worry is transmitted to our children through our words, actions, and energy. They feel this and are shaped by it.
It’s hard to see when you are in the middle of it. It’s hard to gain perspective when the baby is crying, and you haven’t slept in a week, or you received a late payment notice, or when you were laid off. It’s ok - you’re human and living this life, working with the information you have at this one point in time. When you can step back, take a breath, and reassess what is truly important to you. What makes you feel good? Do we need to be seen as good by others, by society, to find satisfaction?
Next Post: Anxiety, Conflict, and Perspective – Part 2, Reframing