Pedestal Syndrome

*** I wrote this piece about a year and a half ago as part of my Master Coach Training. Recently I felt compelled to send it to a couple of friends. And, when I reread it I thought, “What was the big deal about this?” rather than cringing like every other time I’d read it. So I figured it was time to pull the trigger.

And, if you’re wondering about “Kate” — we’re cool.****

I wanted her to like me, really like me—Sally-Fields-at-the-Oscars like me. I hired Kate to mentor me. She had everything I wanted as a coach; a booming practice, supreme confidence, and mad coaching Kung Fu.

My new coaching gig was by far the most challenging thing I’d ever done. I was spending a lot of time curled up in a ball under my desk–I’m not being figurative. If Kate liked me and told me I was a good coach, preferably repeatedly and effusively, that would mean I was indeed worthy. I began a campaign of attention-grabbing that made Britney Spears’ head shaving incident look mildly needy by comparison.

I was in the grip of Pedestal Syndrome again, the phenomenon of glomming onto someone you admire and dysfunctionally hero-worshipping them. If you’ve ever put someone on a pedestal, chances are you’re already cringing in memory of your clingy behavior and cringe-worthy antics.

I was acting like a lovestruck 12-year-old. I would send Kate emails and immediately overanalyze everything I said. The grown up equivalent of “Does she like me?” and “OMG I’m so lame!!!” Truth be told, I was not acting very grown up. And, like any obsessive 12-year-old, these questions would keep me up at night, my mood soaring or plummeting with every response—or non-response.

You know you’ve got a case of Pedestal Syndrome when you spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about your object of worship and more importantly, what they think of you.

You may find yourself:
- Working overly hard to be funny and charming.
- Oversharing intimate or shocking details of your life.
- Obsessing over the meaning of their every move.
- Making their actions about you.
- Analyzing everything you say.

If this sounds a little creepy and stalkerish, you’re right. That’s the irony, the whole idea of putting someone on a pedestal is to get them to like and approve of you, but by doing it, you become less likable.

I was looking for approval and confidence in the wrong place. I didn’t believe I had these qualities so I desperately wanted someone else to tell me I did. But, when you’re looking for approval from someone else, they could back up a truck filled with approval and dump it on you and it would never be enough.

Approval is an inside job.

Until you believe you are worthy, no amount of external approval will do.

Recovering from Pedestal Syndrome isn’t about knocking your object of worship off the pedestal, but about raising yourself up and standing tall as an equal.

Here’s how to raise yourself up and make that pedestal disappear.

1. Spot It, You’ve Got It
Usually “Spot It, You’ve Got It” is used to explain the idea that what we find annoying in others is what we don’t like in ourselves. But it’s also true for positive qualities. If you are hero-worshipping, realize that you are drawn to those qualities because they are innately present in you. The reason I was drawn to Kate is because I’m a strong, confident, highly insightful woman who has her own kickass coaching Kung Fu. I was using Kate as a mirror, only I couldn’t see my reflection.

Cultivate belief in yourself. Instead of focusing on how great your object of worship is, start finding evidence that you already have the qualities you are waiting for the object of your adulation to bestow upon you.

2. Mind Your Own Biz
When I was focused on Kate, I was in her business. I raised myself up when I started minding my own business.

When you mind your own business, you are focused on what you can control. For me this meant continually bringing my straying mind back to me. Getting back to my business meant creating my own opportunities, seeing and congratulating myself for my own wins and focusing on my healthy and supportive non-Pedestal relationships.

3. Gain Perspective
Putting someone on a pedestal blinds you from seeing who they really are. All you can see is your story about them through the filter of your own skewed perception.

When I removed the filter of making everything she did about me, I could see that she had a full life and other things to think about. She was not interested in coddling my emotional needs. She was very aware that I had put her on a pedestal and was not playing my game. My ego put me at the center of her universe when I was actually a small satellite.

Gain perspective by starting to see that your object of worship’s behavior might not be about you. Might they be human too? Might they have their own insecurities and problems? Might they be focused on something besides you? Is it possible they’re intimidated by YOU? These kinds of questions are the beginning of the shift.

You rise up as an equal when you:
- Understand that you put this person on a pedestal because you’ve spotted qualities in them that you already possess.
- Stay focused on your own business and start actively finding evidence for your own worth.
- Gain perspective by seeing your object of worship as a flawed human being, just like the rest of us.

Stand up within yourself, give yourself all the approval and attention you’ve been waiting for someone else to hand you. You will see the world with clearer eyes. You may not decide to continue your relationship with your former object of worship, but if you do, the relationship will be right-sized—eye-to-eye, human-to-human, heart-to-heart. Equal.

Gloriously Flawed   

I was talking with a friend the other day about getting massages. She was hesitating to get one because she’s kinda hot for the massage therapist and was worried that she would see her cellulite and be grossed out. (Yes, girls who like girls worry about this stuff too.)

So I said, “Let me ask you this, do you care when you see some cellulite or other flaws on an attractive woman?”

She said, “No. It doesn’t even cross my mind to be honest. I don’t see any of it. I see their inner beauty and feel their energy.” [I contend she notices some outer beauty too. ]

I replied, “We are all human. We have bumps and weird stuff–especially if we’ve been around for a while. It’s part of our humanness. You’re in the beautifully imperfect club too sister.”

Here’s the thing:

I am flawed.

You are flawed.

Physically, emotionally, mentally flawed.

Our thighs jiggle (Wouldn’t it be weird if they didn’t?), we fly off the handle, and sometimes we believe our horrible thoughts about ourselves are true.

It all goes awry when you believe that being a flawed human being means there’s something wrong with you.

I am here to tell you there is nothing wrong with you.

Nothing.

Zip.

Nada.

Zilch.

Contemplate that for a moment…

This is the point where most people shut down and say things like:

“If I don’t believe there’s anything wrong with me, then my thighs will always be big.”

“If I don’t believe there’s anything wrong with me, then I will fly off the handle again.”

“If I don’t believe there’s anything wrong with me, then how do I motivate myself to change so people will like me?”

Those thoughts are like saying, “Let me bring war to where I most want peace.” WTF??

Try these concepts on:

“If I believe there’s nothing wrong with me, I will respect my body as it is and want to take great care of it from that place of respect.”

“If I believe there’s nothing wrong with me, so the fuck what if I fly off the handle? I can sincerely apologize… or not. Because sometimes I lose my shit and that’s ok.”

“If I believe there’s nothing wrong with me, I may realize that my mom/boss/friend who’s the master of the backhanded compliment is just plain mean/crazy/a bitch. I may decide I like me enough to walk away from that crap.”

Notice that I didn’t say we are spiritually flawed. We are humans–flawed, vulnerable and beautiful for it. It is the totality of who we are, including what we think of as the flaws, that make us spiritually perfect.

That is why being kind, compassionate and respectful of yourself is a profoundly spiritual act.

Coming Out

My life has been a series of coming outs. I always imagined myself as a conformist (stop laughing!), until the universe conspired to show me that a) I will never be “normal”, b) that normal does not exist, and c) that I’ll have a hell of a lot more fun as a conventional nonconformist–a practical radical if you will. Each time I came out, I peeled off another layer of my social self–that part of me that wants to fit in and not make waves.

Because I was born to make waves.

My first coming out was the result of a moment of clarity: I saw the beer in one hand and the mirror with the cocaine on it in the other, and in that moment knew that as long as I drank, I lost the ability to Just Say No. And more importantly, the ability to create the life I wanted.

I came out as an alcoholic and addict.

Not so I could wear a label for the rest of my life, but so I could clearly and decisively leave those playgrounds, playmates and playthings behind. And, so I could ask for help. I needed to come clean so my addiction was no longer my good girl’s dirty little secret. After all, we are only as sick as our secrets. I learned that my truth is more important than looking good.

Then, after much hilarity ensued while trying to date men sober, I realized that I was er, not exactly straight.

I came out as a lesbian. (I prefer “gay” but tomatoes, tomahtoes…)

Talk about an upset to my conformist self! Crap, now there was no way I was going to blend in and do all the right things that society expects like marry a man and have children. What I got from this coming out is that I don’t have to be what I think people want me to be for them to love me (or for me to love me). And that if I’m unashamed of who I am, people won’t be weird about it either. Or if they are weird about it, it is really apparent it’s their issue. I learned that honoring myself is more important than conforming.

Next, I knew I was dying a slow death-by-career, but my mind wouldn’t even let me consider such a radical action as getting a whole new gig. I had to get heavy enough and miserable enough to again go the nonconformist route.

Then I came out as a life coach.

This coming out was just as traumatic as the others! I thought life coaches were a bunch of wacky rainbow chasers and unicorn trainers–I was so not down with that. What I realized is that I bring ME to whatever I do. I define the title, the title does not define me. I learned to speak with my authentic voice–the voice of an irreverent, saucy, feisty, swearing, funny, recovering alcoholic, gay life coach.

Now, I feel another coming out coming on. It has to do with complete acceptance of what I’m thinking and feeling in any given moment. It has to do with feeling more than a little ranty about the self-help idea that we’re flawed and need to be fixed. It might just have to do with rainbows and unicorns… I’m not quite sure yet, but I’ll keep you posted.

In the meantime…

What are you becoming?

My So-Called Emotional Life

I’ve been at war with my emotions. I’ve spent my whole life trying to stuff them down, or my more recent nuance, trying to shift the bad ones away and create the good ones. I didn’t want to feel negative emotions because I believed I’m supposed to feel good–that feeling happy was the end goal–and if I wasn’t happy I should be actively finding my way back to happy. What I ended up believing was that something was wrong with me. And thinking something is wrong with me–which creates alternating feelings of anger, fear and sadness–was not something I wanted to think or feel either. So I distracted myself with overeating, over-Facebooking, overanalyzing, overtv-ing, over-you-name-it. This was not happening in the distant past, I was doing all these things NOW. And sometimes still do.

While I intellectually understand the concept of feeling my feelings, I didn’t understand the true nature of my emotions and how to feel them. I remember asking my coach years ago how to feel my feelings and she said just lean into them. That sounded sage and true, but it took me a year of practicing feeling my feelings before I deeply understood what she meant. This instruction was not specific enough for me to understand how to feel my emotions. I always say the weight loss gurus tell us to “eat less and move more” and that if it were that simple to put those concepts into practice, I would be out of business. The same applies for “Feel your feelings!” Sure! I’ll just feel my feelings after spending my whole life reflexively repressing them. I’ll get right on that. I needed more specifics on how this whole feelings-thing works.

I’ve been looking back over my blog posts for the last year and seeing how most of them are about some flavor of how to feel, live with or shift your feelings. Basically it’s been me trying to figure out my own emotional life. In the background I continued to struggle with allowing my own emotions to flow. I didn’t tune out emotionally anymore only to check back in six months later, but I still beat myself up for not being a happier person. (Which is funny since I’m a pretty happy person–I didn’t say my beliefs were logical!) I didn’t fog out by eating whole plates of nachos anymore, but I would eat just a little bit too much at dinner to try to keep that fear of uncertainty at bay. Things began to shift for me as I became willing to delve deeply into my emotional life. Here’s what I’ve learned so far.

It’s not about Fun, Happiness or even Delight
Yeek! Did you think I just took a Debbie Downer pill? Fear not my friends for I am a big fan of fun, hilarity, and happiness in all its forms. I’m just going to stop chasing it. Happiness in its healthy state is a passing emotion. Its role is to show us when a particular thing or event is joyful and then it passes. Happiness is not intended to be a static state. Shifting my emotional quest from fun to delight as I talked about in this blog post was getting warmer, but what I’m really looking for is the state of peace. And this to me is great news. I no longer have to try to create an emotional state I’m not experiencing.

I can feel fearful and peaceful.
I can feel insecure and peaceful.
I can feel resistant and peaceful.
I can feel decidedly unpeaceful and peaceful.
I can feel angry and peaceful.
And, oddly enough, I can feel happy and peaceful.

Because now I know if I’m not feeling HAPPY! or JOYFUL! or GRATEFUL!, there’s nothing wrong with me. When I feel happy or joyful, I can relish that moment, knowing it too shall pass and that I don’t have to freak out and chase it when it does. Each of my emotions (even the “negative” ones) are here to help me. All I have to do is listen.

(Hang in there, I’ll tell you how to listen below.)

It IS about Peace, Groundedness and Flow
I now have a deeper understanding of The River of Your (and My) Emotional Life. I still think of our emotions as a river, and now I know that underlying that river is the foundation of peace and groundedness. Our emotional river is meant to flow, yet we try to dam it up by repressing our emotions and/or expressing our emotions in unhealthy ways. When the river is backed up, it floods over our peace and groundedness, making our foundation hard to perceive. The foundation is still there–it always is, we just have this little flood situation to deal with now. In my previous blog post I said it was things like overeating, overshooting, over-anything that causes the river to dam up. This is true, but we distract ourselves with these things because we are resisting some emotion. The other thing we do is try to constrict the river when we feel strong emotions–we try to squish our anger, fear or sadness into the narrowest stream possible in hopes it will go away. But you’ve seen what happens to large volume of water in a tight channel right? Raging rapids and flooding! The counterintuitive thing to do is to make your channel wider–allow more room for those swift emotional waters to flow.

Emotions are Here to Help
I thought I understood how emotions are here to help, but I was missing the boat. I understood that our “negative” emotions alert us to something that needs to be attended to. But REALLY deep inside I believed they were something to be banished as soon as possible and preferably avoided. After all, they don’t call them negative emotions for nothing. Except they aren’t negative. Again, I probably read that in some self-help book somewhere and said to myself, “Yeah, yeah, nothing’s negative, it’s all for the good. Blah, blah blah.” But I didn’t really get it. Now I look it is this way–strong emotions are there to get my attention, and each emotion has a specific useful purpose that helps me deal. I’ve been reading a book recommended to me by my fabulous friend and fellow coach, Abigail Steidley, called “The Language of Emotions” by Karla McLaren. I’m not sure I buy everything McLaren says, but she sure knows her shit when it comes to emotions. Here’s what she says about the so-called “negative” ones:

“I can also see quite clearly that happiness and joy can become dangerous if they are trumpeted as the only emotions any of us should ever feel. I’ve seen so many people whole lives imploded after they disallowed the protection of anger, the intuition of fear, the rejuvenation of sadness, and the ingenuity of depression in order to feel only joy. In short, throughout my life I’ve found that what we’re taught about emotions is not only wrong, it’s often dead wrong.”

She goes on to explain how anger allows us to determine what is acceptable to us and what is not.
Fear activates your focus and intuition.
Sadness allows us to release that which isn’t serving us.

Pretty frickin’ cool.

When you allow these emotions to free-flow, they deliver important messages into your consciousness and move on.

How to Feel Your Feelings
Here’s where we get down to it.

I was onto it with this blog post, but I’ve got better tools now.

Use the below questions to keep your emotional river flowing–check in with yourself several times a day. (Another shout-out to Abigail for sharing these great questions!) This allows you to build your emotional-acceptance muscles and create that feeling of any-emotion+ peace. I’ve been keeping an emotion journal to help me keep close to my emotional ebbs and flows. I’ve noticed that by doing this I don’t feel the need to overindulge in food or engage in as many distractions.

Question 1: What emotion am I feeling right now?
Build the habit of naming it. I like to try to boil it down to one of these four basic emotions: mad, glad, sad or scared. Don’t get all rule-bound about it, but see if you can capture it in one word. Then write down anything else that occurs to you about this emotion such as:
Where you feel it in your body
Details on what it feels like (hot/cold, spiky/smooth, dull/sharp, etc…)
Ranting about the emotion or the circumstance (It’s ok to rant! Ranting helps the emotions to flow.)
Thoughts related to the emotion

Writing anything beyond the emotion is optional, the main thing is to keep this simple so you keep doing it. If you forget to do it, no problem, don’t make it a thing–that only causes more resistance.

2. Can I accept whatever I’m feeling right now without judgment?
The answer is yes or no, but either answer is correct. The idea is to explore why you can’t accept the emotion and find out what you can accept about it.
If you can’t accept it, can you accept your resistance of it? Great! Start there.
Can you accept that you’re pissed that you’re angry? Awesome.
Can you accept that you’re sad that you’re afraid? Excellent.
Can you accept that you can’t accept any of it? Aha! That’s perfect too.

Here’s another little tool to use here. I want you to try it on yourself real quick:
- Think back to the last time you felt anger, anxiety or fear.
- Notice if there’s any tightening in your body. Usually there is because we’re taught to try to suppress the emotion, hence the tightening.
- Imagine a container around the emotion.
- Now make that container bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger.
Did the sensation of the emotion change?
Most people report still feeling the emotion, but that it is more manageable. This is the sensation of allowing the emotion to flow. It’s still there, but now you can again sense the peace and groundedness underneath.

Neat, huh?

3. Ask the emotion what message it has for you.
Seriously. Say, “<Emotion name here> what message do you have for me?”
Then listen.
The message will be in the small quiet voice that speaks to you right before your mind tells you what you should think about this emotion and a few other things while it has your attention.
Tune out the mind and put down whatever pops into your head from the small voice no matter how trivial, weird, ridiculous it seems.

That’s it.

There’s nothing to resolve, nothing to “work” on. This is simply you feeling your feelings, creating peace and accepting your full human nature.
I can tell you that I feel much more peaceful now that I’ve let myself off the hook for being happy all the time.

UPDATE! Download this handy worksheet with the three questions.

Fun is a Four-Letter Word

I’ve been struggling with having more fun. Sounds kind of weird, right? I mean after all, fun is fun. And, I’m someone who’s changed her whole life just to have more fun. I coach people about having more fun so I should be all over it, right? To top it off, I’m kind of a funny person so shouldn’t I be living in a perpetual state of FUN? Yeah, wasn’t exactly working out that way. Welcome to my work.

My coach-friends were actively coaching me on having more fun using great tools like making lists, making time for fun, exploring my beliefs around why I’m not having fun–all that stuff we know to do. None of it was sticking. And worse would be when one of them kindly asked, “What do you really WANT?’ That question was enough to make my brain seize up for days.

Then, with the help of another coach-friend, I accessed a higher source–call it Spirit, God, my Higher Self, Guides–I think of it primarily as a power greater than me; greater than my own mind. And what I found there was a very funny and kind message:

Fun is a four-letter word for me.

I was making the concept of “fun” mean a bunch of stuff. “Fun” had to rise to some impossible standard of good times, raucous laughter, excitement, or adrenaline rush. “Fun” was like a drug fix, a pleasure-seeking activity to give my brain a big ol’ hit of dopamine. Turns out “fun” was not what I was looking for. So when I tried to think of fun things, I would get nada–because nothing met this high yet crappy definition I was holding in my mind. I could redefine fun, but honestly that word and I had baggage, it just wasn’t going to work for me anymore.

Time for a new word.

Delight.

Ooooh.

I mean, OOOOOOH!

The word brought tears of joy to my eyes. Now I was onto it.

Delight is relaxing, it’s easy, it does not come with any standard. It just is. And it is fabulous for me. I can easily think of a TON of delightful things. And even better, my new question to go with my new word:

What would be delightful right now?

Turns out doing the dishes is delightful sometimes.
Writing this blog post is delightful.
Watching my dog Scruffy play with her new toy is totally delightful.
Funny email and Facebook exchanges–delightFULLLLL! (That’s me saying it like Oprah.)
Deleting emails I decided not to deal with because they didn’t feel delightful–delightful!
Afternoon Delight (the song and the concept)–delightful.

Turns out, I’m surrounded by delight. I do delightful things all day long. Now that I let go of this lofty concept of “fun,” I see the delight all around me. It was always there, I was just so busy seeking “fun” that I didn’t notice it. And even better, I’m using my super new question as my guide through the day–if it’s not delightful, I’m not doing it.