I remember a very specific therapy session that I had last year. We were uncovering some of the emotions I’d buried a long time ago surrounding my parents’ divorce. Long story short, I buried those feelings and became a workaholic student, who eventually graduated into a workaholic.
Hard work and achievement became my way of avoiding those hard feelings. But like people that build walls around their trauma, eventually the cracks started to show.
During that session I talked about the person I became back then. The hyper vigilant one that did everything to protect his feelings, his ego, and avoid the hard emotions. How I was still acting in that way, 20 years later, and the toll it was taking on my relationships.
I was angry at who I was and wanted to let that part of me go.
My therapist suggested something else.
She said I should talk to that version of me. Maybe write him a letter. Thank him for what he did, protecting me when I was a scared young man unable to face those feelings. Tell him good job. Then ask him to take a seat on the bench.
I struggled to know what she meant or how to do it.
Ok, but how?
Here’s the thing. I’ve been a high achieving student for as long as I can remember. Not always the best student (I was too lazy for that) but always one of the best who maximized results for minimum effort.
When my parents split up, and I was forced to move into an apartment and grow up really fast; I was processing a lot of pain. I’d had a very rough year in my last year of high school (over a girl, of course), we’d put my childhood dog down and my family was breaking apart.
I was feeling a lot of emotions I didn’t know what to do with. The high-achieving part of me got to work. Rather than face the emotions, I buried them in work. In university had a full course load and two part time jobs.
I chased achievement and efficiency and performance to show how “fine” I was.
But I wasn’t. And eventually it caught up to me.
Fast-forward a few years and I’m a dad. That over-protective, high achiever was snapping at his kids, alienating his wife and sabotaging his relationships.
How could I thank that version of me if it was making my life so much worse right now?
It’s been a year since that session. And now I get it.
The version of me that got me through my early twenties was what I needed back then. He overstayed his welcome – no doubt about that – but without him I might not have been able to do what I did.
Yes, I buried myself in work and school, but by the time I was in university I was paying rent, living life without any financial support from my parents and needed to work those jobs to live. Could I have applied for school loans? Probably but it never even crossed my mind.
That version of me let me graduate with a degree, free of debt.
Saying thank you
I can thank that version of me and still recognize that he no longer serves me at this stage of my life.
We’re all growing and adapting to the circumstances around us. Sometimes we need to be a certain way to get through tough periods.
It’s like surviving on energy drinks and coffee during university finals. For short periods, this is not causing any real harm. Over the long haul, that’s probably not a great idea.
The important part is acknowledging the value of past versions of yourself and not judging yourself harshly, even if that version stuck around a bit too long. At the time, it was who you needed to be to thrive or even just survive.
As we shed our skin and evolve, those versions of us that came before are no less “us.” They’re a step on our path without whom we likely wouldn’t be where we are.
Those dumb choices gave us lessons to learn that helped us grow. Those mistakes helped show us a better way in the future.
Sometimes it’s easier to accept events that shaped us, and harder to accept versions of ourselves that made decisions or behaved in a way we no longer like. But at the time, they were just us, doing the best the could in that moment.
And for that, we can thank them and then continue growing into our next self.