Turning learning into wisdom
Someone once told me the universe will keep giving you the same lesson until you learn it
Photo by Howie Stern
Last year at Javelina, I thought I had figured it out. I thought I had figured out the key to unlocking my own experience while running and getting the most out of myself. That race felt so easy, despite its imperfections (like not being able to eat), that I was so excited for what 2023 would hold for me. I thought I was going to level up. Instead, this year delivered me many helpings of humble pie. I tried to mitigate this through more obsessive passion, more force, more trying and yet, the harder I tried, the more things felt off track. I double, tripled, quadrupled down on the same tactic of working harder and moving on to the next thing. But that doesn’t work.
This morning I was reading an article on the Growth Equation and was struck by this passage in particular:
“Recent research explains why we keep falling for the trap, and even allure, of obsessive passion. In short, it is a compensatory response to unsatisfied needs. When we don’t promote autonomy, mastery, and belonging in a healthy and productive way, we go on a frantic mission to fill that void. We reach for the artificial candy version, what feels fulfilling in the moment but leaves us wanting, craving, and miserable over the long haul. We get trapped in a kind of doubling down. If you just work harder, obsess more, and get more serious, then you’ll fill that void. Only you won’t. It amounts to striving out of desperation, and that sort of striving causes more pressure, makes you tense up, and leads to under performance.” (Growth Equation)
That sounds about right to me. But I also had curiosity as to what the unsatisfied need is that triggered this response in me. Because as I mentioned in my (very raw) last post, this year has felt forced from the start. I have thought perhaps it was that because I am sponsored now by lululemon that I was putting undue pressure on myself to perform and prove my worth. Yet, that is pretty flimsy since the team culture is not predicated on performance. There is no pressure to perform, there is encouragement to do what feels good and right for the individual. It was easy for me to focus my attention on this relationship because my sponsorships in the past have been very painful and some even traumatizing. But this didn’t feel like the answer to why things felt the way that they did. I’ve considered stress. Stress of the year just going sideways and trying to balance a lot of balls in the air. But stress alone doesn’t explain it either.
I do think that one of the answers is chronic illness. My unsatisfied need is health and validation of my experience with ill health. One of the major psychological costs to me of winning Javelina just a month after my Lupus diagnosis is that this seemed to create a universal sentiment that if I could win the race, therefore my disease was not that bad, I was ok, that I had things nicely wrapped up and in hand. As I have reflected in my other posts, this is far from the truth. But it, unknowingly, created a belief in me that I had to be ok. This was further ingrained when anytime I expressed a struggle on social media, I was met with aggressive toxic positivity, dismissal and some people even went as far as to tell me to just stop complaining. My unsatisfied need was then my health and my ability to be heard and supported. I didn’t realized how much I internalized that. I was struggling with how to synthesize multiple new disease diagnoses, how to feel good, all while feeling like I should not talk about it. I was made to feel like I was making an excuse when things didn’t go well. And the more times I struggled, the more I felt that way. The more I felt I needed to prove my okayness- to myself and to others. I have struggled and floundered and learned lessons and forgot them, over and over and over again. And I don’t like the floundering version of me to be seen because in this sport I have been called “too sensitive” and that “I let my emotions get in the way of my running” because everyone has seen me cry in a chair once. And while I am sensitive and empathic and deeply feeling, when those things were said about me, I had never actually had my emotions get in the way of a performance up to that point. Certainly, I have emotions and they come out in races but those comments stick with you. As recently as this year’s Javelina, someone said to my face that “hopefully I won’t let my emotions ruin my run at WS”.
I can see the picture getting clearer of how I ended up light years away from where I was a year ago on the Javelina finish line. This is a lot of complicated feelings to absorb, this is a lot of pressure to resist. This is all more than I was prepared to handle. I am not embarrassed to say, I let myself be influenced by things that tread on my insecurities and I very much got to a place where I was unconsciously being guided by trying to disprove people’s unfounded or unkind opinions of me. I once had a potential sponsor do something borderline illegal to me (changing the terms of a contract and then sending the contract to me sign without telling me of the change). When I saw the change, I wrote them back that “I was very upset and this is not what was agreed”. That is all I said. The contract was never signed and this person went around the industry telling people that “I am difficult”. This was reported back to me by a different sponsor as well as others in the industry. How did I respond? By trying to prove to the world that I am no difficult. Even though I know I wasn’t being difficult at all! I bent over backwards for years to never be seen that way again.
And it seems, that the lesson of not taking on and internalizing the things that people say about me, is still in learning. I am trying and apparently failing. And that hurts me to realize because that has not served me in any way. That is not self-respect, self-compassion, or self-esteem. I have been striving my whole life out of desperation to be seen, valued and loved for who I am. Because I have spent so much energy trying to prove or disprove things to people, I have often not actually focused on what I needed or wanted. I have subverted my needs for the needs of others (which is a very classic and understandable trauma response).
A week ago, when my Lupus symptoms flared badly and threatened my race, I was extremely triggered. As clear in my previous post, after Tunnel Hill went poorly because I was feeling poorly, I was very confused on what to do. I could not see or feel what I wanted out of the situation. I could not connect with myself on what was right for me. And it was in this struggle that I could see how I had lost track of myself over the last year. I have not been joyfully deliberate in my running or in my life, I have been swept up in a state of extreme self-consciousness. I lost touch with myself in the pursuit of being anything and everything that people want me to be. It is very humbling to learn (again and again) just what this has cost me. I will feel my feelings about that cost, I will mourn my loses and then, I will move the fuck on.
The price I have paid throughout my life for trauma is high and yet, for me, the greatest thing I can do for myself is to learn these hard painful lessons and release myself from the habits born out of trauma. Growing, becoming and overcoming these obstacles means I get to turn obstacles into opportunities. I could sit here and be sad that this year had such a wild cost to me mentally, physically and emotionally. I could let myself be defeated. But the one truest thing I know about myself is that I will never let that happen, I will always have more fight, more resilience, more resolve. I am excited to work this problem. I am energized by the idea that while I may have gone the completely wrong way, that I can just as easily find a different way. I get to be joyfully deliberate in trying to find my way back to me and what matters to me. Hopefully, I can turn this learning into wisdom.
Nicely conveyed! Thanks for showing everyone a way forward .
“I will feel my feelings about that cost, I will mourn my loses and then, I will move the fuck on.”
Need that on a shirt. It has been an absolute privilege to read your last two very vulnerable posts. Have you thought about writing a book? Thank you for never sugar coating anything. I’m also sorry about your continued health rollercoaster - it’s not fair, plain and simple. Rooting for you always.