Letting Go of Personalizing and Reclaiming Your Self

“Don’t take it personally!” We have all heard it. We have all said it. But what on earth does it mean? How can it not be personal when it feels so personal?

Personalizing is one way we use to try and make sense of our experience. Most of us learned it at home when the adults were struggling with their own lives and creating confusion in ours. One of a child’s most useful survival mechanisms is to make it about them. It helps them make sense of the confusion and creates a false sense of control for them by letting them believe that it is about them and therefore they can do something about it. Much easier to sleep when dad’s anger can be calmed by good grades and helpfulness, or when mom’s sadness can be lifted by taking care of younger siblings and letting her sleep. We did it then because it worked. We do it now because we don’t know anything else.

The truth of our childhoods is that we were the children, they were the adults and in charge. As adults our parents were responsible and accountable for their choices. The fact that it impacted you is also on them, but, time isn’t negotiable and here you are now. You can’t change how you learned to personalize other’s stuff, but you can change it.

Childhood tools aren’t going to be very effective in our adult worlds. They may be useful in the same way they were in our childhoods, i.e. give us a good false sense of control, but they won’t contribute to our growth or our happiness. They also derail adult communication and leave us wondering what we did wrong or why the other person is such a jerk or both. The truth is that communication is only as adult as the people involved. You can assume that there is an emotional adult on the other end of the relationship string, but that doesn’t mean there is.

Some things to remember about personalizing that may help you steer clear of it:

1. When we personalize our experience we are not in our adult selves. We are in our vulnerable child selves and possessed by our unmet need to be valued and have our feelings matter. Not that those aren’t fine things, but, the adult version is more tolerant of disappointment and can allow for other people and their lives, their unavailability and their issues. Our child selves just get confused and hurt.

2. Feelings don’t determine behavior. I know that is hard to accept. We all want to believe that if someone loves us that they will make good choices when it comes to things that may impact us. That doesn’t mean feelings for us don’t factor in, they do, but they don’t always stop a bad idea.

3. People are people, good, kind, selfish, self-centered and chronically disappointing. They usually mean well but they mess up all the time. It is not a good idea to project an idealized parent on one of them as an adult. You are going to be very unhappy if you do.

If you find yourself in an ‘it’s about me’ moment, try the ‘Pause, Look and Listen” approach:

Pause. Just take a beat before you react. Don’t pick up the phone and call a friend, don’t collapse into to your hurt feelings. Pause, breathe and then,

Look. Most likely you know the people involved with this situation if it is getting to you. Look closely at what they did, why, who you know them to be, not to be, their history with you, their trustworthiness, etc. This is where you want ‘just the facts ma’am’ and no assumptions or projections. People are who they are and not who we need or want them to be, and they have usually been that way all along. Then,

Listen. Listen to your feelings, even the yucky, vulnerable ones. No one likes to feel disappointed but it is part of life and happens to each of us daily. All we really know when something doesn’t go our way, or the way we hoped, expected or thought it would, is that it didn’t and that we have feelings about it. Good! Feel them, get to know them, and learn from them. They are part of your internal feed-back system that keeps you on your own path, not just a follower of some one else’s.