“I’m a terrible person.”

#TransparentTuesdays

A client recently admitted to me that she is secretly a “terrible person.”

I adore this woman, so I had to catch myself before I blurted out my surprise or contradiction, both of which would undoubtedly have felt invalidating and disconnective for her, and stopped our important exploration in its tracks. 

In that particular moment, my client didn’t need me to act shocked, or to disagree with her. 

She just needed me to listen, and try to understand.

“That’s interesting,” I said. “What makes you say that?”

“Well you only see me here,” she responded. “And I’m generally a pretty good version of myself here. I might cry and get upset, but I don’t, like… attack you.”

I nodded, tracking, and waited for her to continue. 

She took a deep breath and said:

“It’s different, behind closed doors, with my wife. 

I love her, and I know we’re supposed to try to treat the people we love better, but with her I’m like this feral animal. She’ll do something so small, like try to rub my back when I’m doing the dishes, or show me something on her phone when we’re watching TV, and I just lose my shit. I know she hasn’t done anything to deserve it, but from the way I react, you’d think she killed my dog or something. I lash out at her, and sometimes it escalates until I’m screaming or crying. 

I know I should try to just calmly tell her what I feel or need, but in those moments I can’t seem to control myself.”

I listened to both my client’s words and to her pain. 

• Her shame and guilt about being so mean to someone she loves. 

• Her anger and frustration that her wife keeps doing things that send her into this feral place. 

• Her fear that if she can’t get this part of herself “under control,” her marriage will end.

When I reflected all this back, my client seemed relieved that I understood, and also that I wasn’t judging her. (Quite the contrary in fact, since this is a pattern I know well in myself… and I told her so!)

What I found most striking about this conversation is how easy it is for us to ascribe character attribution to our own patterns of behavior (which is to say: how easy it is to jump from “I did something wrong” to “I am a bad person”), especially when it comes to those out-of-control behaviors that rise up to protect us when we feel unsafe. 

We’re often able to have more compassion for other people than for ourselves, which means sometimes it’s easier to interpret other people’s behavior in a charitable way than it is for us to do for ourselves. 

If your best friend is always running late, for example, you might be kind of annoyed and tell her the dinner reservation is half an hour earlier than it actually is, but not necessarily attribute some kind of horrible character defect to her as a result. 

If you are always running late, however, you might come to think of yourself as incompetent, selfish, or impulsive, and draw devastating conclusions about yourself like “this is why I’m not successful” or “this is why nobody likes me.” 

Sure, sometimes we all jump into character attribution mode when it comes to other people too— like how we might see someone speeding or not using their turn signal, and immediately cast them as a complete asshole in our minds. But in general we tend to save our harshest criticisms (and fastest leaps from “regrettable action” to “shameful character flaw”) for ourselves.

And never is this more on display than when we’re hijacked by our automatic protective mechanisms and coping strategies. 

The truth is that we all have triggers: situations that poke at, or stir up, our deepest core wounds and fears. 

We also all have automatic self-protective responses to those triggers. These responses are the specific patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that rise up and take over when those deep core wounds get poked. They tend to make us feel out of control or immature, because they’re our brain and body’s way of trying to keep us safe, and they’re generally based around whatever strategies we developed as children to cope and survive.

In those moments, we’re essentially just adults enacting the automatic self-protective strategy invented by a child, so our automatic responses are often completely out of alignment with our current values and identity. 

Given this, it’s no wonder we feel confused and ashamed of ourselves when the moment has passed, and we’re back to our normal, calm, mature selves… or when we have to deal with the consequences of our behavior.

I pointed all this out to my client, and reminded her that based on her particular life experiences, it makes sense that being startled or interrupted by her wife would feel threatening. I also reminded her that lashing out was how she learned to establish power and agency, protect her boundaries, and affirm her right to exist.

This conversation helped my client access self-compassion, and allowed her to start separating her identity from her behavior.

There are very few places to go (or grow) from “I’m a terrible person who attacks the person I love most for no reason.” 

It’s a death sentence; the final moral judgment of a lost cause. 

Why bother getting curious about yourself, or investing in personal growth and healing around an issue when there’s clearly no hope for you?

But there are endless opportunities and invitations for growth, healing, and change with a story like “I’m a good person who lashes out when I feel threatened.”

Thinking of it this way doesn’t excuse our behavior—we’re still accountable to work on ourselves, especially when we’re causing harm to others—but it does give us somewhere to go. 

Once we can see ourselves and our behaviors a bit more clearly, and through the lens of moral neutrality, there are endless opportunities and invitations for growth, healing, and change. 

This powerful shift in our narrative helps us cultivate self-compassion, pushes back against shame and despair, and actually makes it a lot easier to work on the parts of ourselves that still need healing.

Big hug,

Jessi

PS I currently have a few open 1:1 coaching spots available, and I’m considering running another small coaching group on body image soon, so feel free to fill out a coaching application here, or hit reply to learn more!