Over the Shock and GALing 4

[Thinker]

Thanks for your continued encouragement Sandi, It really does help.

One of the best things about the boards is that they are a safe place to talk through ideas and open up - even if it is just journaling.

So the name of opening up and journaling honestly, here goes...

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Like your description of your husband, I have a deep seated feeling of inadequacy that is covered up by a shell. Acquaintances have described me as being cool, confident, focused and driven - sometimes as silent and sometimes even as aloof and dismissive. This is a protective layer that I have built up over a long time.

I also have a huge amount of confidence in my own abilities - probably too much at some times. I have always thought that I could do anything, learn anything, accomplish anything that I wanted to, and I have always been successful in school, the military, as a professional executive, etc.

My toxic feelings of inadequacy show up and hit me in social situations - mingling, small talk in a bar, party games, flirting and dating. It has taken me a long time to work through and understand where this is coming from and realize that I have to confront it, but put me in an unfamiliar social situation and all the sudden I am a scared little boy again - feeling that I'm not good enough, that I'm being judged, and that I'm going to get rejected. It hats always felt strange to me that I can stand up and give a speech to a thousand people (even in a foreign language) and not feel uncomfortable, but playing charades at a cocktail party is a nightmare to me. It's the difference between me with and without my armor.

These fears have lead me to bury myself in academics, the military, work, individual athletics, backpacking, rock climbing and cold-water night-time scuba diving -- anything where I could prove myself against one ridiculously hard challenge after another while avoiding social risks. I kept to small groups of friends - mostly related to work or activities - and maintained long term relationships with a small number of women, each of whom pursued me or from whom I thought I had little risk of rejection.

Needless to say, I conducted those relationships in a fairly risk-adverse manner, and they each died of boredom.

When I got married to my W, I never shifted my emphasis away from my work and to my W and our R. I couldn't - it was my work that was propping up my self esteem. My W felt it and felt neglected. And frankly, she was right. At that time in my life I was not able to give her the focus that she needed. She pulled away and I felt it - and suddenly here comes the little boy with his fears of rejection again. For years, I have been simultaneously on top of the world at work, and tiptoeing on eggshells at home.

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It has taken me a lot of "Thinking", a ton of emotional pain, lots of IC and a small mountain of self-help books to really understand this. I know who that little boy is and where the feelings of inadequacy and fear of rejection come from - and frankly they are all bullsh*t . They may have made sense at the time -- I was a 4-year old with a missing father and an emotionally withdrawn mother and whose leg brace kept him from keeping up with the other kids on the playground -- but they are completely irrelevant today!

That's not me any more!

I know that now!

But the gut level emotional reactions still show up, and these are the emotions that are preventing me from really enjoying my life. To paraphrase Coach, they are preventing me from being the best man that I can be.

And that's the WORK that I need to do. And that's the work I am doing.

Believe me, it's not easy.