Be disappointed

I love going to the therapist. Where else can you be completely, recklessly honest and not care about offending anyone? I also love trying out new therapists, so that I don't get into a rut of putting anybody's perspective on a pedastal. So thank you, employee assistance program, for providing me with 3 shiny free sessions with a new therapist, whose office is located conveniently right across the street from my apartment!

Growing up in an alcoholic home where the standard rules are to ignore the elephant in the living room and "don't talk, don't trust, don't feel," I learned how to pretend everything was okay when everything was really the farthest thing from okay. Keeping an ever-vigilent eye on the ticking, drunken time bomb and surviving the day was the main priority; I knew so little about myself that up until 2 years ago I couldn't even have told you my favorite color. I'd simply never even considered what I liked or what I wanted. The focus was always on keeping the alcoholic happy so that I could avoid the screaming; I was a stranger to myself. When I got to college and got some distance from the craziness and began to see how messed up it all was, pretending everything was okay became impossible. One Thanksgiving break I sat scowling on the couch and my mother snapped at me, perhaps intuiting that I was on the brink of throwing her precarious dance of denial off kilter.

"Slap a smile on your face and be nice to your family" she leered, and this threat became the mantra of my conditioned life.

When I spilled to the new therapist today about how my job is consuming my life and taking away from the time I need to spend on my own recovery, she asked me, "Why don't you just start asking for stuff? Ask for less work. Ask to move deadlines out. Ask to move your desk. And if they don't give it to you? Be disappointed. Look cranky and upset. Stop acting like it's your job to make them happy. Look disappointed the way they'd be disappointed if they didn't get what they want from you" In essence, stop slapping a smile on my face and be as irritated as I feel. What a freeing thought. One that I've been told to do dozens of times already, but was never ready to hear. As always, lessons are repeated until learned. Maybe I'm finally ready to learn it.

I always say I want to have a job where I can be authentic; what happens if I start being authentic in the job that I have now?