Success -- Are We Holding Each Other Back?
Posted May 4, 2001
I was chatting a while ago with my friend Mary in Florida about her weight loss of over two hundred pounds and encouraging her to write about it. Hers wouldn't be a "how to" article because she didn't do anything but finally find a doctor who was able to regulate her thyroid. What she is experiencing, however, is not what you'd expect. There's a lot of rage and a lot of fear. Issues like Being thin and being happy means my mother was right, and How will I now tell those who like me for myself under any conditions and those who would have rejected me before?"
There's also another issue. Mary is a talented psychic, and one of the things she is feeling as the pounds melt away is that people -- other psychics, in particular -- don't feel as safe with her as they did when she was heavier. It was as if her socially unacceptable appearance balanced out her great talent. People didn't used to relate to her as competition. Now they do.
Mare makes good bucks. She also has five children. She has known some real lean times, desperate times, even; and although she is extremely successful now, she never makes much more than she needs. The house is nicer, the car is nicer, a daughter got a college education, but maintaining is always a scramble, and there's never much slack. In our conversation about the fat issue, it was a quick jump to the money issue and whether the same sort of stuff pertained. She said, yeah, that during the spates where she did super well financially, she felt conflict in certain relationships. People were used to Mary as a poor person, you see. When I met her she lived in a cramped, rented house with one bathroom and the five kids, whom she carted around in a broken down old station wagon. Now she has her own spacious home and a new SUV. There was jealousy and an underlying energy of "Hey, who are you to have all this cool stuff?" Her growth blew her out of the model of who she was that people carried around in their heads.
This got me thinking about the whole issue of haves and have-nots and what is left behind when we move beyond our place. People who have are expected to have. More than likely, their friends have and their relatives have. Let's face it. The people we hang out with are pretty much in similar circumstances. You rarely see the drop-dead gorgeous woman with a homely, overweight best friend; the chairman of the board's wife doesn't usually go play gin with the girls in the trailer park. There is a balance of power that is established, and there are roles. When someone gets a whole lot thinner or a whole lot more successful, this balance of power gets upset.
It's natural that the people we shared poverty with are going to have abandonment issues when we break free of that cycle. Something shared is no longer a commonality between us. The same kind of crack happens when someone who has always relied on our advice or our charity gets strong and doesn't need us in the same way. Whenever we change, it impacts our relationships.
Therein is the rub. Most of us probably want to feel that we're happy for our friend's good fortune, but is that the whole enchilada? Does it bring up other stuff? Our own judgments about where we are in life? Fear of losing that person? Does it trigger competitive urges that weren't there when we were secure in our position relative to our friend?
Success that takes us beyond where we are seen to be is difficult. Two women console each other in their loneliness, then one meets Mr. Right. Two people are great at their job, but one is a lot better looking or a lot thinner. Then, suddenly the other one loses a bunch of weight and gets a facelift or sprouts well-developed pecs. How do you deal with the buddy with whom you scrounged the junkyard for spare parts when he's still scrounging and you've won the lottery and just brought a Porsche? We've accomplished this exciting thing, but sharing it feels awkward. People who were close as skin suddenly drift away.
I have to ask is this, rather than those insidious parent tapes we're all aware of, the real reason for so much of our self-sabotage? Belonging is such a strong issue for almost everyone. When we look at poor people who don't seem to be doing enough for themselves is unconscious fear of what will come with success a factor? Are there pressures not to rock the boat from those they have always relied on? Just something to chew on before we pass judgment.
Copyright Jae Malone, 2001
Wanna Share?
