So today I had booked to work from home, in part because I have to go to the Dreaded Dentist at 3 and this still, even after years of therapy, makes me fuzzy and uncoordinated. It seemed like an almost perfect set up; time to get most of my work done, go, and then pick Noah up.
Except at 4 am this morning: “Mummy, I pooed.”
Err, did he ever. And again at 6:30. Stomach ailment alert! In point of fact it is now 10 and we don’t have more runny poo yet but… one of the rules of daycare to which I wish all parents could adhere is “if you suspect your child has a stomach flu, STAY HOME.”
So now I’m doing the juggling act, aided by Carl who was paged around the 6:30 event and hasn’t yet surfaced from fixing things, but will in time for the dentist. And I am working in front of Signing Time with the boy on my lap as I type this.
I’m not feeling very competent lately, work wise. A lot of this is due to the slow progress over which I have no control. But meanwhile my capacity to be upbeat and on top of things is eroding. I am hoping it comes back as soon as we can actually launch. But the side effect of this feeling of general incompetence is that I feel panicked all the time that I will be revealed as a poseur. It’s like an imposter syndrome.
I don’t think I need to lean on my years of therapy to point out that it taps pretty deeply in the multiple and abuse thing – that my WHOLE LIFE I have largely had to present as someone I am not, going through things I am not, to the point that I really have to work to feel anything else. It has handicapped me in a lot of ways that I still experience and lately I have kind of despaired that it will ever get any better than this. Not that this is terrible. But it is not peaceful, either.
That extra little tip of the scales – dentist, sick toddler – puts me in a tizzy in my head and heart, still.
I wish things could be a little easier sometimes. These are all normal everyday events, but I seem to feel them more than others. And then I think and you want another child in all this?
Any thoughts?
I don’t think imposter syndrome is restricted to multiples. I see it shared by all who’ve had to pretend through their childhoods, to assume a facade that allows survival in families who’ve lost touch with the truth.
For every little girl who finds that manipulating daddy with cuteness and helplessness wins more than resourcefulness or taking responsibility, it’s the same. And it’s shared by little boys who assume the role of victim rather than the bully they despise, or those who learn to bully rather than appear weak. It’s the case for the rescuer who can only find self approval in helping others, or for the determined little happy face poseur who has learned her problems are unimportant to carers.
There are thousands of facades we adopt everyday because they used to work when we were children, and while unlike a multiple we may not dissociate to act out these these masks, we are usually utterly convinced, until a certain point, that we have no choice in how we behave. We believe we are the victim, the nice person, the helper or the bitch and none of it is fully true. We forget that once upon a time we consciously chose to act in this way and that if we wanted the attention or the affection of carers, we had no real alternative.
Regardless of whether our conditioning is in the form of the extreme trauma that creates a multiple, or the less intense dysfunction of a normally neurotic household that simply forges social masks, an authentic life as an adult is about growing out of and eradicating unconscious behaviour patterns that are not expressive of who we truly, wholly are.
‘Not feeling real’ is a signal for greater awareness and self reflection. It’s when we would once have gone into an unconscious, conditioned behaviour pattern or a false persona. At such a time, if we see we are in fact enacting old patterns, then we have the consciousness to change how we are acting. And if instead we are being as authentic as we know how to be, we can still be grateful for the signal that makes us look to be certain.