All stressed up and no place to goBy Lisa Earle McLeodwww.forgetperfect.com The shrink test said he was motivated, creative and flexible. Surely this thing wasn’t talking about my husband. A few months ago, after 23 years of selling his soul to corporate America, my upwardly mobile man decided enough was enough. He quit his job and began spending quality time contemplating his true purpose in life. As part of the “discovering himself” process he started working with a life coach and took a whole battery of shrink tests. He came home one day after a session with his coach and handed me the results of his personality test. As I read the summary about the energetic, talkative guy who could “change directions quickly based on new information” I thought, “I can’t believe it, he lied on the test!” I thought these things were supposed to be foolproof and yet the person being described in the report bore little resemblance to the always tired, rather morose, “I don’t want to try anything new” guy I’d been living with for 18 years. I wanted to be supportive, I really did. I knew he has his finer qualities, but this test was way off the mark. Selfishly, though, I also knew it wouldn’t be too smart to start eroding the confidence of the guy who’s trying to support our family. So for once I kept my mouth shut. Instead of telling him we should get our money back for this obviously flawed report, I asked him what he thought of the results. “I think it describes me to a T,” he said. “I’m really glad I did it.” Nodding and smiling in a nice, wifely way, I silently wondered, “How can a man be so clueless about his own personality?” And then he handed me the other report. “I didn’t spend much time with this one,” he said, “but it shows how I behave under stress.” Ahhh. Moody, distant, withdrawn, “quits when frustrated and tends to take things too personally.” Now that was the man I knew. As I contemplated the two reports I had an epiphany: Maybe he really is that creative expressive guy, but he’s been under so much stress over the last few years I didn’t even know it. I wonder if it’s that way for a lot of people. Do we really know anyone? Or is everybody walking around so stressed out, the personality we see on the outside has little resemblance to what lies buried within? That positive report rang true for my husband because it described what he had always known himself to be. What I had assumed was his grown-up personality — uncommunicative, grumpy and tired — wasn’t his personality at all. It was his response to 12-hour days, heavy travel and years of mind-numbing corporate crud. It’s been three months since my husband took that test, and after leaving his job, working on his health and starting a new business, he’s turning into that positive person described in that initial report. Or, I should say, now that he’s gotten rid of some of the stress, that creative exciting person he’d always been on the inside is finally showing himself to the rest of the world. He’s not Mr. Sunshine all the time, but I see it often enough to realize it’s the real him. That other guy — the stressed-out one who dragged himself through the door every night and never wanted to do anything fun — wasn’t the real person. He was just a collective bunch of anxieties looking for a place to land. Everybody has different responses to stress and none of them are too pretty. My husband withdraws. I prefer the control-freak reaction: tense up and start barking orders at everyone. Other people make bad jokes, talk too loud, stay silent, collapse on the bed, work too much, work too little, cry, whine, drink, or watch too much TV when they’re feeling anxious. The point is, there’s often a stark contrast between the self everybody else sees and who we really are. And the more stress we’re under, the greater the gap. It doesn’t matter whether your stress manifests itself in being tired and grumpy or high strung and screechy, if you act that way most of the time, people are going to assume it’s your basic personality. In hindsight, I wish I’d been more patient with my husband during his corporate years. And I wish I’d spent more time helping him deal with the situation, rather than wasting all my energy being annoyed at the way it affected him. Funny thing about stress, once you strap on your anxiety mask, the world looks different to you and you look different to the world. It’s such an effective disguise, sometimes even your own spouse doesn’t recognize you. Lisa Earle McLeod is a syndicated columnist, a nationally recognized speaker and the author of “Forget Perfect™: Finding Joy, Meaning, and Satisfaction in the Life You’ve Already Got and the YOU You Already Are.” (Penguin/Putnam) She has been featured in Real Simple, Essence, and The New York Times and seen on Good Morning America, Lifetime and FOX. Contact Lisa at www.ForgetPerfect.com. Editors: If you’d like to run Forget Perfect™ in your paper contact Lisa@ForgetPerfect.com. Column must include byline and photo.  |
