If a Writer Posts a Blog and Nobody Reads it …

On value, validation, and the need to be heard

A wise woman told me once that “if you don’t make time to rest, your body will force you to when it’s most inconvenient!” and it turns out that she was right on the money.

I was asked recently to reflect on the fact that “you often put yourself forward for tasks before bringing them back to the wider team for discussion” because I was signalling that I was struggling with being all things to all people at all times. I didn’t like that mirror being held up to me in that way. But reflect I did, as is my way – fixate is probably a better word.

rest: Not Chosen, but enforced

I suppose in modern parlance you would say my toxic trait is to try to make myself irreplaceable and then crumble under the weight of my own expectations.

I work in cycles, but it’s not a pattern of hard work followed by rest. It is over-exertion, working really hard, lots of hours, nonstop, can’t shut my brain down, moving from one shiny idea to the next. Creating nothing of use or value, just a nice tower of shiny things that inevitably comes crashing down because I haven’t taken time or care with the foundations. I’ve just added brick after brick after brick. Task, after task, offer of help, offer of ideas, offer of come and see me if you need anything, saying yes of course I have time for …

I have worked my way into this rut. In both my professional and personal life. My identity has become entwined with being needed. So, I make myself the go to person, the person everyone can rely on, the problem solver, the oracle. To the point where I am offended or upset if people go to someone else. And then, because I am actually only human, my capacity collapses and I am forced to stop.

guilt

When I have stopped colleagues, friends and family offer kindness, express care, tell me to take the time I need to feel better, to “be a bit selfish”. Which leaves me racked with guilt.

I have now – perhaps not in their minds, perhaps only in mine – become unreliable, unworthy of their generosity and warmth.

The guilt blinds me. Instead of seeing the pattern as the issue, I identify myself as the problem. If I am causing the trouble, I must make amends. I classify rest as indulgence instead of healing. I rally myself, get out of bed and start the process all over again.

It is like some kind of self-destructive mantra or defining value that runs through my being – If I am not actively proving my worth, I am failing, I am worthless.

What if i stop?

I have, on reflection, always done this. It’s a pattern I can see throughout my entire life. Why? Why do I have this constant drive to feel needed, to feel validated to be important? From speaking to people, I hear that some find validation to be a nice thing. Some people find it helps to stabilise them. For me it’s deeper than that, it’s like some kind of forcefield to protect me from anxiety, doubt, the overwhelming sense that this might all be meaningless.

Therapy tells me that I will continue repeating this cycle until the something that is kept submerged by busying myself with the task of overachieving, is named.

I’ve done a lot of work in therapy dealing with trauma. I am not sure I have it in me to let anything else emerge. What if I can’t deal? I am a Mum now; I don’t have the time to have a breakdown.

If I do the work gradually, if I sit with some uncomfortable thoughts like “when I don’t step in, I feel ….” “When my workload is reasonable, I feel ….” “When nobody needs me I …”

Perhaps what if I can’t deal just means what if I feel uncomfortable. Or more accurately, what if I feel … something.

The ornament

Someone once said – while I was painting the pictured Christmas ornament during an “enforced fun” workshop at work

“Look at Amie’s, it’s amazing.” (I am aware that it is not, in fact, ‘amazing’)

And then another person (much senior to me) said, “yeah but it’s Amie’s – she excels at everything.”

With my hunger for validation, you would be forgiven for thinking I would lap this up. Instead, it stopped me. And it has been eating away at me for over a year.

Is that how people see me? Really? That I excel at everything – and that it’s easy for me?

effort, not ease

I find almost nothing easy. If I excel, it’s because I have tried. Really Bloody Hard. That is what I want the recognition for. The trying, not the excelling.

Don’t get me wrong. I want to be exceptional. I want to be brilliant. I am terrified of being mediocre, of being average, of achieving nothing, of disappearing. I yearn to do something important.

But!

If I ever become exceptional at anything – which feels unlikely at this age – I want it to be noted that I became exceptional through graft and that I did not, at any point, find it easy.

People have told me I have a “big beautiful brain” and that I have a “superpower”. I do not. Geez, some days I struggle to get out of bed. If I manage to achieve anything other than making it from one day to the next, it will have been swimming against the tide; going against the grain; pick your favourite metaphor. Just know, it wasn’t in any way, shape, or form, easy.

Maternity leave and the Grief Paradox

CETC did not collapse or die off while I was on maternity leave. In fact, its provision grew.

I however dissolved into a mess of postnatal depression, losing my sense of self, confidence and competence. Which considering I now had someone who really did need me … well, the irony is not lost on me.

But I didn’t know how to do it. I was not a natural. It was another thing I found really hard, but it wasn’t something I felt I was allowed to work out by trial and error. I needed to be perfect for this little human and I failed at every turn.

Of course, I now know that is because there is no such thing as a perfect Mum. Just women trying their best, while seeing other people’s picture-perfect families and lives on Instagram – and that actually, parenting is relentlessly brutal and beautiful. Not necessarily in equal measures.

So yes, I crumpled while CETC grew and I missed out on happiness because I looked in the mirror and saw a failure. Not only was I rubbish at being a Mum, but this belief I had that I was CETC, and CETC was me, this symbiotic relationship – was actually just a fiction. I was dying while CETC flourished.

master craftsmen and the fear of producing nothing

I think we can all agree, by this stage of the reflection, that I rely heavily on output, on product and contribution for a feeling of self-worth. I find myself frustrated with some of my colleagues when they don’t try to change up their classroom delivery. I struggle to understand why anyone thinks that teaching theory to a group of young men who like hands-on practical work – is best done through the medium of death by PowerPoint.

And here’s the kicker – I am hugely envious of them. They are experts in their field. They are genuine master craftsmen at their trade. They hold tacit, embodied, craft knowledge, their muscle memory, their brilliance is quite literally beyond me.

Should civilisation collapse tomorrow, they could go out and build something. They have valuable, practical, transferable skills. I have a collection of bits and pieces of theory, philosophies and ideas that I have collected over the years, which, ultimately, amount to very little. I could not feed or shelter my family with what I believe.

If society as we know it today collapsed, would I be of value? I work with the abstract; I can’t point to things and say “that exists because of me”.

But!

The work I am doing reminds me that it is society and western cultures of performativity that says “these skills are valuable and those are not”.

So yes, I am very much jealous of the mastery of my colleagues and how they would rebuild the infrastructure of the new civilisation. I, would teach, organise, preserve knowledge, make meaning, create community. A different kind of survival. Different, not less than.

A life scoring points

The culture of performativity was instilled in me through: spelling tests; the 11+; GCSEs; A-levels; degrees; banking and now education. It explains why value and validation has always come through point scoring.

Now, it’s: intake; retention; achievement; content; likes; metrics …

While it’s taken 47 years to understand that I rely on productivity for self-worth, should I be lucky enough to reach (and be able to afford) a retirement a privilege where rest has truly been earned – where does that leave me?

By my own logic and standards, do I become worth less – not worthless – once I am no longer scoring points, no longer being productive.

Will I dissolve again?