The importance of being who you truly are

I used to have a career in executive search ("headhunting"), and I was often asked for interview tips by candidates and friends: "what do I need to say or do to make sure I land the job?".

My answer usually surprised them: don't try and fit the job by pretending to be someone you're not, because if you do land the job, it will be bloody hard work to not just do the job but also keep up the illusion...

Yes, we all need a job, more or less desperately, but for most of us, what we really want is work which suits our abilities and personality. So why pretend to be someone we're not?

In an ideal world, you show off your differences, and you are liked for them and get the job. Or if they don't like your differences you don't get the job and are better off for it.

The same goes for couples: if you pretend you love football, when really you couldn't care less, you either disappoint your partner when you reveal the truth, or you'll spend many boring hours watching football games...

If you only show your meek and mild side in order to seduce your partner, what will happen when you show the tiger in you?

If you need to pretend to be someone you are not in order to please your partner, ask yourself: are you really the right person for them? Are they the right person for you?

Be yourself, you're good at it!

And if being yourself doesn't get you what you want or what you need, therapy could help you find ways to change into a better - not different! - version of yourself... or just to learn how not to give a f*ck!

How Love is all about making the tough choices

We are sold this lie that love is all "beers and Skittles", cloud 9 or heaven, when in reality love is about making the tough choices.

When your baby is first born, you think choice is about the cutest outfit or gazing adoringly into their eyes. Yet the reality is that you must choose between breast or bottle feeding them, letting them cry or picking them up all the time, giving them a dummy so they settle or not so they don’t cry when they lose it… the list is endless.

When your child gets into toddler years it’s not about letting them decide between broccoli and chocolate or between wearing a tutu or a jacket when it’s cold - you will have to make that choice for them.

When they first start school it’s not about letting them choose whether to buy ice-cream or lunch from the canteen – you have to decide that for them.

And when they are teenagers, you have to choose for them whether to drink alcohol underage is a bad idea – because they will think it’s a good idea.

And once they are adults, you will be faced with the toughest choice of all: whether to let them take their responsibilities (and face the consequences of their actions) or to continue mothering or fathering them to the point where they never grow up…

So it is really about making children functional elements of society, protecting them - even from themselves, and yet allowing them to flourish without clipping (too much of) their wings.

It is the same in adult relationships.

We can choose the easy way, enabling* the ones we love to stay in their addictions, their dysfunctions, by giving them what they want even though we can see it harms them, or we can face the tough choice, of ceasing to be a part of it.

And this goes into the wider society - what do we permit? Is the role of the politicians to give us what we want (endless access to boozing, gambling, sex) or what we need (roads, hospitals, safety)?

Love, real love, is about helping those we love to get what they need, even at the expense of what they want. It’s about supporting them in their struggle, not just in the good times.

To truly love is to accept to sometimes be unpopular rather than people-pleasing. 

And that, in my eyes, is the toughest choice of all.

*Enabling: making someone’s life easier thus allowing them to continue with an unhealthy behaviour, for example offering an addict a roof over their head and food on the table, thus de facto allowing them to spend all their money on drugs or alcohol. See also co-dependency.

The green-eyed monster: is jealousy just another OCD?

I would like to talk about the "green-eyed monster" today: jealousy.
It is not an easy subject - it is not an easy emotion.

Jealousy is subtly distinct from envy.
Envy is "I'd like to have what you have".
Jealousy is "I don't want you to have what you have, it should be mine".

When does envy become jealousy? Usually when we think we are being deprived of something that should rightfully be ours.

In my work, I see people who struggle to overcome jealousy, even as they see how it is damaging their relationships. How is it damaging? Mostly because it comes with a side-serve of wanting to control someone else's life to an extreme degree.

In some ways the control that comes with jealousy makes it just another obsessive-compulsive disorder: in order to control our anxieties, we choose behaviours which give us the impression/illusion of keeping us safe. You can break down an OCD into several steps:

First comes the anxiety:
I'm scared of deadly diseases.
I don't want my father to die.
I'm scared my wife will leave me.

Then comes the mistaken belief (a form of superstition if you want):
If only I wash and disinfect my hands every single time I touch something, I won't catch anything.
If only I manage to walk to work without stepping on any cracks in the pavement, he will beat the cancer.
If only I can monitor everything my wife does, and prevent her from meeting any men whatsoever, she won't leave me.

This belief is reinforced every time that nothing bad happens, as we ascribe that "victory", that "phew, I'm still safe", to our obsessive behaviour.

But as always there is also a price to pay:
My hands are all raw and my skin is peeling off from being washed 250 times a day.
It takes me twice as long to get to work, I've been late a few times now, and people look at me in strange ways.
My wife really struggles with being controlled every minute of the day, and starts resenting me.

How can you stop the OCD? The answer is surprisingly easy, but includes a leap of faith (over the mistaken belief): cold turkey.

When you start not washing your hands all the time, and notice after a few days that you still haven't caught the bubonic plague.
When your father continues improving, even though you did step on cracks on your way to work.
When your wife hasn't left you, even though you have stopped checking her phone for messages from "other men".

If anything, in the case of jealousy, it is about becoming aware of the anxiety, and expressing it to your partner, making yourself vulnerable in the process rather than trying to build a wall around them.

The odds are, they will feel closer to you and have less reasons to leave you than when you were trying to control their every move.

Letting go might just be the only answer to anxiety that actually works...