Where to begin. Just outside of my comfort zone.
It is very easy to sit in your comfort zone and not make any changes. Definitely not talk about them.
Believe that you are good as you are – great as you are – fine as you are – achieved or accomplished as you are.

Taking an inward look and admitting, or realizing … this is not right, not normal, not benefiting me or anyone around me. Your actions might be destructive – your behaviours might hurt yourself and others.

White man, late 40s, accomplished, leader, well paid, good job, husband, father, traveled the world for business, corporate car. My life is in good order. My upbringing was perfect to achieve this – I’m doing well to achieve this. I’m just a strong introvert – man of mystery.

What you don’t see. The efforts required to stay in the comfort zone – or perceived comfort.
The chaos below, is a constant in my life, every day.

I’m an emotional immature adult and parent. I have an inner child dynamic that is controlling me. I’m a child inside an adult body

I have low self esteem and low confidence and self-hatred.

I don’t know how to be my authentic self. I’m afraid and uncomfortable doing so.

I wear a mask to appear well, to appear to be a good person, to appear to be important. To people please. Perfectionism – to try and be that good person – good kid. More towards strangers than my close friends, family and partner in life.

I fear and avoid all uncomfortable situations. From returning items to a store to having important conversations. I lie and deceive and pretend to ensure that my security and mask and myself is protected. I create scenarios in my head to prepare, avoid, imagine how people would react in order to protect.

I don’t know what emotions are, I don’t know my own, uncomfortable with them and don’t know and fear when others express emotions.

I don’t know empathy well. Self-empathy I know better – or think that I do with my habits that I’ve created.

I don’t know what my likes and dislikes are and more importantly, how to simply verbalize them. To have the confidence to express what I want. If a person doesn’t guess or tune into my needs / wants – that make me uncomfortable and pushes me to Angers when it’s my partner that doesn’t “recognize” my needs.

I don’t know what boundaries look like and I fear the word. Boundaries are not negative, they are positive. They align relationships and create clear communication points for people. Boundaries are a person’s means of expressing what they need and want.

This creates a tremendous amount of anxiety and is constantly driving my mindset. Hard to be confident, happy, expressive and centred when all this is going on. 

I’ve created protection mechanisms to deal with this in life. From childhood, avoiding saying or expressing things. Living in my head has been a constant for me. Avoiding conflict has been a constant for me. When I was a child, I retreated to my room to bang my hand – this is known as self harm. Just like when people cut or burn themselves. I did that from early age to mid to late teenager. Not sure why I stopped, I restarted my self harm before moving to my first international role. I hide it very well – I now scratch myself until I bleed.

This is done because it’s my coping mechanism to:

• replaying the events of the day, almost like a movie, to realize what was actually bothering me
• processing anger or a triggering moment
• judging myself
• using “shoulds” and “shouldn’ts”
• neutralizing self-blame
• the behaviour is an attempt to do something constructive and adaptive (even if it appears maladaptive)
• the behaviour helps me contain feelings
• the behaviour helps me let feelings out
• the behaviour is a punishment

All this contained inside. I believe, or trick myself in believing, that it doesn’t show. That no one can see the unstable, uncontrolled child within me.
Reality is I cannot hide it. It always comes out somehow – we’ll discover that more as we go along.