Are You Compliant?
by Jennifer Delaney
Let’s face it – not everyone is going to like you.
What?
That might be a daunting thought if you’ve grown up as a pleaser due to a traumatic childhood.
Think of a baby raised by a parent with narcissistic tendencies oblivious about how to attune to their child. The child gets the message that what they need or how they feel is unimportant. And if they don’t comply with the parent, they are rejected. Compliance becomes a given.
Often, compliance is an intergenerational survival imperative. Let me give you an example.
Compliant to Live
My Lithuanian grandmother, my mother who was 4 and her brother who was 2, were all starving in a German refugee camp during WWII. My grandmother walked up to a German soldier and in broken German told him that she could look at his wife and sew a dress without a pattern.
He took her up on the challenge and brought her to his home. My mother and her brother were seated at a kitchen table and given toast with jam. They didn’t dare move or make a sound while my grandmother sewed a dress. The officer’s wife was pleased with the dress and they paid my grandmother.
Can you imagine a 2 and 4 year old sitting silently at a kitchen table? Compliance was an imperative for life.
My mother, who almost died of starvation several times during the war, immigrated to the States in 1952 at the age of 14. She married at 21 and gave birth to me at 22. She was divorced by 23. I was thrust into two distinctly different environments. Given my intergenerational, intrauterine and infant trauma, chameleon may as well have been my middle name.
I went to a Catholic school for my first 10 years, which further perpetuated compliance. Critical thinking was not encouraged.
Critical Thinking
It wasn’t until my mother married my stepfather when I was 10 that I began to realize the depth of my compliance. The public school required more of me and my stepfather gently asked me why I didn’t have my own opinions. When we spent time with my stepfather’s east coast family, I witnessed children with minds of their own.
In college, I studied modern dance, an art form sourced in rebellion and individual expression. I felt like a baby bird pecking out of an egg as I explored who I really was. At 22, I moved to New York City which also exposed me to a whole new world where critical thinking was expected.
Privilege
It has been a lifetime evolution of self-discovery. I do not take for granted my privilege. I was privileged enough to be afforded trauma counseling early in my life and permitted to pursue a degree in modern dance. Eventually, I obtained master degrees in creative writing and counseling. I have crafted a joyful life because of support I received all along the way.
I think of my grandparents thrust into lives of running from Russians and then Germans, leaving their families behind. My grandfather did not want to come to America and, ultimately, died of cancer due to asbestos poisoning. Where was their support? They sacrificed themselves to carve better lives for their progeny.
I think of the many in poverty and/or who are racially suppressed who will never have the opportunity to overcome. It inspires me to give back.
Becoming Who You Came to Be
Clarissa Pinkola Estes, author of the wonderful Women Who Run with Wolves, says, “To be ourselves causes us to be exiled by many others, and yet to comply with what others want causes us to be exiled from ourselves.”
The family system tends to expect compliance. School systems expect it, and so do social peer groups.
People won’t like you because you’re a rebel. They won’t like you because you’re happy or because you have kids or don’t have kids. People won’t like you because you’re successful or because you curse. They might not like your religion or political affiliation. You might not fit the mold.
What’s important is: do you like you? Are you emotionally intelligent enough to realize your impact on others while also being able to be yourself? Do you draw boundaries that might disappoint someone while also honoring yourself? Do you have reciprocal relationships and friends who support you for being you?
Sometimes it’s difficult to differentiate want we actually want from our core versus what our egos are telling us we want. But your body will never lie.
Ask your body and she/he/they will tell you what direction to take. (Here's my self-Brainspotting video that will help you listen to your body.)
And Dr. David Grand’s book Brainspotting: The Revolutionary New Therapy For Rapid and Effective Change, includes Chapter 13: “Self-Brainspotting: Harnessing Your Visual Field.”
We all have the capacity to live a more joyful and anxiety-free life if we are willing to grow beyond the trauma-based survival imperatives and open ourselves up to the messages from our bodies.
References:
- Grand, D. (2013). Brainspotting: The Revolutionary New Therapy for Rapid and Effective Change, Sounds True
- Pinkola Estes, C. (1996). Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype, Ballantine Books
