Stop expecting unrealistic things

Image by ©HEAVENLY PHOTOGRAPHY/DESIGN ©CAPTURED AS SEEN via Flickr

Sometimes we stay in relationships for too long because we have expectations that may not ever have a chance to be met. We keep hoping for a change in someone’s behavior, in someone’s attitude and every time we are let down, we choose to hold onto hope because we so desperately need that thing that we hope will be provided – perhaps tomorrow, perhaps next week. Depending on the kind of relationship we’re having with this person who keeps letting us down, we can either drop the relationship entirely or change our expectations and let go of unrealistic hopes.

If for example we’re talking about an adult child/ parent relationship, we might have expectations about how this parent should treat us – we might feel we need to be appreciated more, to be hugged, to be told “you make me proud” now and then and it might be a constant struggle trying to manipulate this behavior in the other person. It can be a very stressful way to live life, to constantly think “if I do this, if I say that, if I act this particular way, perhaps I will get what I need so much from this person“. The result we need might never come. Fact is, we can’t change other people but we can change how we perceive other people and how we choose to live our own life.

The person who causes you stress might also be a romantic partner who fails to live up to your expectations. Stress arises when we are put in situations that we feel out of control of and we fall short of finding an answer to fix the problem. Maybe you’ve got a partner who enjoys getting you into situations where you lose control – a lot of times fights are not about whose turn it is to take out the trash or what we’re going to spend the next paycheck on; fights are very often power battles, a way to determine who wears the pants in the relationship. Perhaps your partner shows unpredictable behavior which leaves you constantly trying to calm the situation, finding the best way to act without causing another rapid change in behavior. Maybe you live every day like that: trying to balance everything and living through so much stress that you wonder what happened to “the old you”.

That’s when it’s time to stop and think about your expectations. If you expect something from a person which is totally out of character for them: perhaps you expect them to suddenly start hugging you and giving you praise or you expect them to be able to know your innermost feelings before you say them out loud, it might be time to stop and consider what you’re going to do. Are you going to stay? Keep hoping for a change, keep changing your own behavior to manipulate somebody else into changing? Or are you going to get that thing you need so badly – only from somebody else – or perhaps from yourself?

Do you need a hug? Do you need praise? Do you need to be told “I am so proud of you”?
Then look for people who are not afraid to tell you so, people who are not afraid to hug you and say they love you. And most importantly, love yourself. Be your own best friend and give yourself the things you need – all those things that other people might not be able to give you.

You can give it to yourself.

And don’t be hard on people. Just like you, they struggle.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Stress Management Complete (slideshare.net)
• Mike Robbins: Distract Yourself in Healthy Ways (huffingtonpost.com)
• Social Media: Status, Stress and Personal Definition (socialmediatoday.com)
• Marnia Robinson: Relationship Advice: De-stress With Your Mate Using Bonding Behaviors (huffingtonpost.com)

The final achievement

I need simplicity. Because my experiences so far have been anything but simple, I become anxious when I see signs of complications in a relationship. I feel the need to get away, run fast in the opposite direction. I have had enough drama to last me a lifetime and along with the experiences I’ve had came a realization that it is always – always – better to be happy alone than miserable with someone else. I don’t need to be in a relationship at any cost. It’s simply not true that I can’t live on my own. How do I know this? Because I am living on my own and every single day I wake up, do the things I need to do, without a man around. I am so glad I learned this lesson although I feel bad that I had to learn in such a hard way.

Along with the lesson also came scars that will probably never go away. Mistrust in other people. That’s the down side; I tend to look for hidden agendas in people. My thought process is very complicated like so many strings entertwined in a big ball of yawn. I get stressed quite easily, partly due to a long stretch of depression, anxiety and this ever present mistrust in my surroundings. It’s stressful to always look behind my back, always having the thought: “If you mistrust people, they can’t hurt you”. With this theory you isolate yourself and that’s what I do – but I am not yet ready to let go of the mistrust and instead embrace my own trust in myself. Because that’s the thing: It’s not really about other people. It’s about trusting that whatever comes my way, I can handle it. I am not there yet. There might be something coming that I won’t be able to handle.

It’s strange. I have come through so much, so many bad experiences and the hardest experience – which I will not relate here – was something that I thought would kill me. It almost did but I still made it. I have to remind myself – I made it. Now I may have bad days when I can hardly get out of bed but I made it, by God I made it! And I will be around for many, many years to come.

But can I really handle another let-down? Can I handle someone walking into my life? I may still be here but I stress easily, I get highly anxious and I am nervous about moving forward into this territory that has never meant anything but unhappiness and disaster for me. Is there any chance at all that it will end well? I ask myself, maybe I am just not cut out to being in a relationship. Maybe I am too complicated, too nervous. Then again, I am not THAT special – millions of people have personal problems and they still seem to maintain relationships.

I need to trust myself. My own decision-making. My own ability to now look beyond the surface and dig for certainty. I need to be my own hero.

Honestly, what I want is a life so simple and predictable that I stop fearing. I know, I am probably just fooling myself. There’s no such life.

How about you? Have you been through a stressful event in your life and come out so mistrusting that you isolate yourself for your own protection?

“Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.” ~ Frederic Chopin.

Combining two opposites

How do you cope with stress?

Let me tell you something really personal – some people love when bloggers get down to the nitty-gritty stuff, I know;

When I was a little girl, I was a highly anxious and emotional individual. I was also a real loner because of my intense shyness and when I felt bad, I used to cope by closing my door, covering my head with a pillow and just letting the tears run freely. I have never outgrown the anxiety and the tendency towards melancholy.

I also still cope in the same way. I have formed a kind of relationship with my anxiety where we have no space for other people. It’s an old friend, part enemy, that I can’t get rid of and what we have between us cannot be shared. I find myself defending the anxiety, shaking my fists at well-meaning people who only wanna help because they care.

I know nothing worse than when I feel anxious and someone wants to hug or comfort or say “It will be better in the morning”. I have no desire to be comforted because I know my anxiety well and we have a deal: If I keep quiet, if I keep the anxiety company for a bit, it will subside when it has had enough of my company.

But when an intruder tries to break this relationship and get in the middle, I become aggressive and defensive.

It’s a little hard for me to put myself in that person’s place. My anxiety attacks are strangely enough not as scary as they used to be although my body trembles and my throat feels tight. I know my anxiety. But the outsider doesn’t.

The attacks don’t last long if I am allowed to cope in my usual way. I occupy myself, I let my anxiety run wild until it gets tired and that’s usually the way it subsides the quickest. It is always hard to watch loved ones be in pain and not be able to do anything but it is also hard to be anxious and have comfort forced upon oneself. It’s not a personal thing: I would gladly knock out anyone who dare hug me during an anxiety attack when my stress level is high. I know, I know, anger management bla bla bla..But the respectful thing to do is to allow anyone to cope the way they see fit.

I don’t think anxious people are easy to live with. I am not alone in my strange habits and ways to cope; I am sure thousands can tell a similar story. So how can we unite the caring person who wants to help with the anxious person who wants to be left alone during the attacks?

It’s a tough one. There’s nothing wrong with either one: It’s perfectly natural to want to care for someone and it’s also natural to stick with the coping mechanisms that work.

How can we live together and not lose part of ourselves in that situation? I am asking in general. The care-giver must not care and the anxious is not allowed to withdraw. I’d be interested to hear your opinion on this.