You know the old joke, Why do you keep banging your head against that wall? Because it feels so good when I stop! That is a behavior pattern many of us play out in our day-to-day lives without consciously realizing it.
We engage in futile and often self-undermining behaviors and somehow still feel surprised when they don’t yield positive results. We stay in dead-end jobs, unhappy and even abusive relationships and other unhealthy environments and wonder why our lives don’t change for the better. We bang our heads against the wall and sometimes?
We forget to stop.
We forget to stop because banging our heads against the wall becomes the new “normal”. It becomes what we expect and therefore what we accept. If the so-called “definition of insanity” is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, then the vast majority of us qualify as “insane”.
We keep banging our heads against the same walls hoping things will change, and nowhere do we act more “insane” than in our relationships. We may even know we aren’t happy, but we don’t know how to do things differently. So we keep banging our head against that wall until after a while?
Our unhappiness starts to feel “normal”.
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We have all heard the heart-wrenching stories of children who, when removed from abusive homes, cry and beg to be returned to them. But we as adults often fall into the same trap. We make excuses for bad behavior, rationalize abuse, justify staying where we are because after all, we “love” each other, right?
We forget to stop banging our heads against the wall and then wonder why we are suffering. We tell ourselves, this is just how life is. We normalize a life of pain.
We normalize both our unhappiness and our unhealthy relationships.
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Remember that documentary Super Size Me? The filmmaker ate nothing but McDonald’s, three meals a day for one month. Predictably, this had serious adverse effects on not only his weight (he gained 24 pounds in 30 days and it took 14 months to lose it) but also on his general health and psychological well-being.
In other words, just 30 days spent in an unhealthy relationship with food had catastrophic consequences AND (and this is key) caused his body to initially be rejecting of healthier choices once he broke the negative cycle. For a while, healthy food made him feel sick and the food that made him sick to begin with felt “normal”. His body adapted that quickly to the abuse and normalized it.
In other words, it actually DIDN’T feel so good when he stopped.
It took willpower and mindfulness (and a vegan chef!) to help him break the destructive pattern. Of course, it was easy for him to recognize the problem because he had also mindfully created it in an effort to prove a point. For most of us, we are sitting in our unhealthy relationships with work, money, food, our bodies and each other without even recognizing them for what they are.
The worst part is, just as his body at first rejected the healthier choices he was making, so do we rebel against healthier decisions, so inoculated are we to the virulence of the ones we are in. The old adage, “better the devil you know than the one you don’t” comes into play. When you have been in an unhealthy relationship for so many years, you truly do start to believe that this is just how relationships are, so why trade one lemon for another?
And forget about flying solo!
Dysfunctional relationships are almost always co-dependent to some extent, so your sense of self-reliance is diminished to the point that being alone sounds frightening. In fact, a fairly recent study confirmed that most people would prefer an electric shock to being alone with their thoughts. When it comes to relationships, most people prefer dealing with the “electric shocks” of abuse or dysfunction to being alone as well.
Of course, as you have heard and read many times before, it all boils down to your relationship with yourself. You can’t really form a healthy relationship with another until you have your own house in order, so to speak. When you are looking for someone else to “complete” you, you are barking up the wrong tree entirely.
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So what’s the fix?
First of all, if you can admit you are in an unhealthy relationship, you are already standing on a strong platform. It is when the behavior becomes so entrenched that it is unconscious that it becomes intractable. But as we all know, realizing you need to make a change and actually making a change are two different animals.
The next step is asking yourself why you keep metaphorically banging your head against that same wall? There are going to be reasons—I’m too old to start again, I can’t afford to be on my own, I have to stay for the kids—and many of them will sound very “practical”. These practical reasons are some of the same ones people use for always eating McDonald’s—I’m too old to learn how to cook, I can’t afford to eat anywhere else, the kids like it.
They don’t sound as convincing in that context, do they?
Hey, breaking a bad habit ESPECIALLY if that bad habit is your primary relationship is hard. Studies show it takes about 66 days to make a new habit “stick”; could you commit to making one positive change in your life for that long? 66 days of healthy eating, or exercise, or taking the pottery or woodworking class you have always wanted to try?
Change begets change, and once you make one small, manageable change it will become easier and easier to take on new challenges. We don’t go from sitting on the couch to climbing mountains overnight, and that is why some people are too afraid (or too exhausted) to even get started. But if you are unhappy and you know it, doesn’t it make sense to at least try NOT banging your head against the wall for 66 days?
If you are unhappy and you know it, that means you also KNOW you deserve better.
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Happiness is never an “impractical choice”, any more than health is. Healthy choices for your body, soul, and mind are the most practical choices you can make, in fact. Not only do they ease your suffering, they also make you stronger, more productive and a better friend, mate, and parent.
When you realize happiness isn’t a luxury, your whole life will begin to change.
When you start to prioritize happiness some people, especially co-dependent or abusive partners will push back on you and tell you that you are being “selfish”, among other things. Your happiness will threaten their control over you and they will pull out all the stops to convince you to remain anchored in their dysfunction. Instead of agreeing with them and acquiescing, look at this as the clearest sign possible that you need to get away from anyone who would undermine and shame you for wanting to feel well.
Happiness isn’t a luxury; it is simply a signal that you have made good, healthy decisions about how you want to live your life and anyone who disapproves of that doesn’t deserve to be a part it.
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