The Perfect Nurturer
- devabritow
- May 4
- 6 min read
I was nurtured as a child by good (though naturally flawed) parents. They were present, diligent, and engaged with their children in a way many lack. Good values were instilled in my siblings and me, and while we went through financial hardship, we never went hungry, were well-kept and mannered, and were taught respect. My mom was primarily responsible for our day-to-day needs, while my dad focused on our mental, intellectual and psychological development. He made readers out of us and encouraged us to dream and to strive to go beyond the limits that kept him back. They were a terrific tag team when they were apart because I remember my mom heading to Germany for a couple of weeks (when I was about seven or eight years old) and my dad taking over the household duties. That was the only time I remember seeing my dad cook, but I do remember that he provided us with everything we needed while Mom was away. Similarly, when Dad headed off to Harare, Zimbabwe ahead of us, Mom took on the role of both parents for a while, too.
So, yes—I was nurtured as a child, and while I entered adulthood with a solid base of essential life skills, I only recently learned of a significant deficit in my development.
Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before?
This is (yet another) remarkable book. I wasn't familiar with Dr Julie Smith before listening to her on The Mel Robbins podcast in an episode titled: If You're Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This. Dr Smith spoke so directly to my own experience that within a couple of days, I headed to my favourite bookstore and bought her first book, Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before and her second, Open When.
I'm looking forward to exploring Open When in a few weeks. Google Books describes it as a "break in case of emergency" handbook, so I will bookmark all of the chapters relevant to my experience.
But, back to Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before. The book is a practical guide to managing mental health, and it is founded on Dr Smith's experience as a clinical psychologist. It is an easy read with clear, actionable guidelines on how to deal with everyday problems and challenges. It's a relatively hefty book, but what I like most about it is that it is written in nine overarching chapters with succinct and straightforward sub-chapters contained in each. So, Chapter 6. On Fear (for example) includes the following sub-chapters
Making anxiety disappear!
Things we do that make anxiety worse
How to calm anxiety right now
What to do with anxious thoughts
Fear of the inevitable
Of course, I was going to use fear/anxiety as my example, right? Of course!
I have had a lot of ups and downs over the last few weeks, and I have questioned my purpose and considered the entire point of self-help literature and whether this exercise carries any weight. While I haven't written a blog in two weeks, the reading and introspection have not ceased. I've also just come out of a six-week course of therapy sessions that I chose to end. In one of my first posts, The Black Dog, I mentioned that I had been in therapy before. My first stint in 2002 lasted for two years and three months, during which I had weekly sessions with the same therapist. Through no fault of hers (or the person I saw this year), I found that I wasn't getting anywhere. There's so much truth to the idiom "you can take a horse to water but you can't make it drink". I'm the horse in this scenario, and my thirst has not been quenched. At least not yet. Therapists have shown me the way, but I have not adopted their wisdom. I've been given all the tools known to psychologists, life coaches and self-help gurus, but I haven't fully embraced the knowledge. The bottom line is that the buck stops with me, and my journey continues.
The Looking Glass Self
In a post preceding the one I'd written on The Courage to Be Disliked (by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga), I jokingly stated that the book would likely be an eye-opener for a people pleaser like me. The Courage to Be Disliked slightly differed from what I expected, but that knowledge didn't make me less of a people pleaser. Referencing the work of Charles Horton Cooley, in Chapter 5: On Self-doubt, Dr Julie Smith writes that:
"We develop our sense of self and identity, not only from our own experience and how we interact with others, but also through what we imagine those other people really think of us, the ideas and perceptions they might have of us."
Writing this blog has opened my eyes to many new and fascinating concepts rooted in psychology, sociology, and social psychology. Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before introduced me to two more. Since they're linked, I'll briefly discuss them in this week's post.
The looking-glass self is a concept from sociology and social psychology introduced by Charles Horton Cooley. It suggests that our self-image is formed based on how we 'think' others perceive us. Essentially, we view ourselves through the eyes of the people around us, using their opinions as a mirror to understand our own values, behaviour and worth. Whether imagined or real, these evaluations by others shape how we assess ourselves. Lesley University broke down Cooley's three steps as follows:
An individual in a social situation imagines how they appear to others.
That individual imagines others' judgment of that appearance.
The individual develops feelings about and responds to those perceived judgments.
I've been trying to fade into the background for as long as I can remember. In my post Only Ever Look Forward, I briefly discussed my feelings of inadequacy in childhood, which continue to plague me as an adult. Dr Smith continues that:
"We can fear and feel disapproval even when the other person never says a word. When we don't have that information, our mind starts to fill in the blanks for us. The spotlight effect is a term originally coined by Thomas Gilovich and Kenneth Savitsky (2000) to describe the tendency of humas to overestimate how much others are focused on us. We are each at the centre of our own spotlight of attention and we tend to imagine that others are focused on us too, when in reality, everyone's spotlights are usually on themselves."
Enough already! In my post That Funny Feeling, I quoted the wonderful Louise Hay, who said, "You've been criticizing yourself for years, and it hasn't worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens." This brings me to the second concept I learned while reading Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before?
Compassion Focused Therapy
Doesn't that sound lovely? 'Compassion Focused Therapy'. I almost feel like I want to melt into it.
Compassion-focused therapy (or CFT) is a psychological approach developed by Professor Paul Gilbert. It's designed to help people struggling with self-criticism, emotional regulation, and shame by fostering compassion for oneself (and for others). CFT combines principles from neuroscience, Buddhist, and evolutionary psychology with cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT). It suggests that the human brain is comprised of multiple emotion regulation systems and that mental suffering is caused by an imbalance in one of these systems. CFT focuses on three regulation systems, which are explained nicely in this link. What stood out for me (of course) was the Threat and Protection System, which:
Is associated with anxiety, anger, and disgust
Focuses on detecting and responding to danger
Is fuelled by cortisol and adrenaline
I often feel like I've been in fight or flight mode for years, with my adrenaline and cortisol constantly up, even if the threats or perception of others is imagined. Over the years, I have dipped my toe into countless theoretical approaches to managing feelings of anxiety, insecurity, stress and the like, but I have never tried Compassion Focused Therapy. It is the developmental deficit I mentioned earlier, and I think it's time to change that.
The Perfect Nurturer is a crucial concept in CFT. It relates to an internalised or imagined figure that symbolises compassionate qualities. It reminded me of Lila, the anxiety creature I wrote about in That Funny Feeling, a post dedicated to Martha Beck's book, Beyond Anxiety. Lila is the embodiment of the feelings of anxiety that I go through more times than I care to admit, and Beck advises us to employ Kind Internal Self Talk to our anxiety creatures (aka ourselves) in moments of stress, anxiety or fear. What Lila needs is a Perfect Nurturer. She needs me.
"What we need to do is provide ourselves with a new, healthier and more helpful voice, then start practising. In the same way that you made time to see and hear the inner critic, let's invite the compassionate side of you to the party. The side that wants the best for you and recognises the harm that the self-attack causes. That part of you still wants you to grow and achieve, but from a place of love rather than shame."
Coming Up Next Week
I'm deciding between Eckart Tolle's A New Earth and 'LIT (Life Ignition Tools) by Jeff Karp (with Teresa Barker). Watch this space.
#anxiety #depression #mentalhealth #mentalhealthawareness #mindfulness #selfhelp #selfcare #youarenotalone #thereisnostigma
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