WAKING UP – SELFISHNESS

Recently I had an email exchange which went like this.  The email was from my immediate neighbour:

Hi,

Do you 0rder on Ama z0n ?

Take care, love, Jan & Teddy xxx

I replied

Hi Jan,

I try to avoid it but I do occasionally.  What are your concerns?

take care

Susie x

The email came back…

Glad to hear back from you, I've been trying to purchase a £300 Airbnb email gift card on Amazon for my niece whose birthday is today, unfortunately she is down with stage 4 mesothelioma cancer, She had lost both parents to the disease (COVID-19. and I'd promised to get the gift card for her today but I have not been able to do that because my bank said they were having issues charging my card and would take a couple of days to get it sorted, Please can you help me get this done from your end, I'll reimburse you back as soon as possible, Let me know so I can send you her email address and the link to purchase the gift cards.

Thanks,

Take care, love, Jan & Teddy xxx

I wonder how you respond to reading this?  This is how I reacted.

The first thing I noticed was a spike of unpleasant feeling in me at the request for £300.  My heart rate increased and I felt tension in my gut and jaw (very familiar).  There were feelings of contraction and anxiety.  And a strong desire to avoid responding at all.

The thoughts that came went a bit like this: ‘£300!’ then ‘I don’t want to do that’. Then, ‘Why aren’t I comfortable with lending Jan £300?  I trust her – of course she would pay me back.’  Then,  ‘I’m being selfish and unkind.  Jan has told me before about friends and relatives that she cares about with cancer or other issues.’  

At that point I was about to go ahead, reply and make the payment …

I paused. 

And in pausing, the annoying voice inside broke through ‘What about Tim? This is his money too! You should check with him.’  Fair point. I was casual, saying ‘I’m going to do this, just checking in with you…’

Tim had, of course, only seen the first email.  He said it set off alarm bells in him. For instance:

‘Why was it from Jan and Teddy.  Who is Teddy? ‘

‘Teddy is her cat’, I answered, realising in that moment how odd that was.

Then,

‘Jan never sends xxx.’

‘You’re right’.

‘And the typos?’ 

The veil fell from my mind. It felt so peculiar!  To shift so suddenly from one perspective to another.  Suddenly I could see so clearly that this was a scam.  Why had I not been able to see it before? Perhaps it was blindingly obvious to you.

My first reaction to this was to feel ashamed and stupid.  ‘Call myself a mindfulness teacher’ etc.  But I have been growing in self-compassion and that helped me become more interested in the ‘why?’ as a genuine question.

Reflecting on it, I recognised that I had interpreted the warning signs of discomfort and contraction inside me as my selfishness, instead of warnings that something was wrong with the email. Why was I doing that? I recognised an old pattern that I’d been brought with, the one that told me ‘others come first, you mustn’t be selfish.’ This is not just due to my personal childhood although I think mine was a bit intense in that regard (my mother’s was even more so). It is cultural socialisation of women. Being ‘selfish’ is generally viewed as unacceptable in a woman. We are supposed to be warm, caring and selfless. Certainly not assertive, angry or ‘selfish.’

But surely that is generally a good thing? To be taught not to be selfish.

There is a difference between being taught to share, and being taught that others come first. If we are not given equal value to other people, if their needs must come first then we are not given permission to protect ourselves.

And that makes life very, very dangerous for a woman.

I am not stupid.  My body is not stupid.  It was registering alarm bells but I was interpreting those alarm bells as unacceptable selfishness.  And that interpretation blinded me to the blinking obvious. 

Tim could see it as a scam because he was not socialised in the way I was.  Waking up to this, I now realised that of course!  Jan would never ask me for this kind of money over an email.  She lives next door.  She could just knock on the door and ask.  And she is not the sort of person who would be comfortable asking anyway.  I could have gone next door and checked.  Or rung her.

Again, a sense of stupidity and shame started to rise up.

This is where the mindfulness practice and an unjudging husband made all the difference.  Why didn’t it help me see it immediately? Mindfulness is a lifelong journey of waking up and this particular piece of indoctrination is very deep.  In this moment, mindfulness practice helped me:

 a) pause and make a skilful decision to check in with Tim,  

b) offer myself self-compassion

c) recognise that I am not stupid

d) explore what  was going on underneath and recognise that the scam appealed to a deep seam of guilt and socially indoctrinated behaviour.

Over my life span, this indoctrination of ‘selflessness’ has made it very difficult for me to be direct, to say ‘no’ when I needed to and on occasion has put me in very dangerous places.  In my 20s, I felt I should give lifts in my car to hitchhikers; At university, I invited 2 strange men into a shared flat when I was returning from a party at 2am, because they said they had nowhere to stay and they asked for a cup of tea – Why did my 2 female flatmates not get furious with me after that?

That’s just 2 examples. My children are surprised that I survived. 

Some women don’t.

Fortunately, the worst that could have happened in this case was the loss of £300.

………………..

Yes, it is scary how sophisticated these scams are becoming.  Yes, people out there will take advantage if they can.

But it is not them that concern me as much as this female indoctrination. I had passed some of this on to my daughter without realising but fortunately she has recognised much of this. It frightens me that in raising our daughters like this we are not just leaving them undefended we are denying them the right to have any defence at all.

Women are critiqued for being self-assertive, aggressive, angry – if we are not given access to these qualities, we are permanently vulnerable.  It’s as if (hmmm)  we have been deliberately brought up like this so that we remain dependent on the male patriarchy to protect and defend us.  That hasn’t gone well.

I imagine all of us as lopsided. 

Women lopsided one way and men lopsided the other way.  Men have often not been permitted to feel vulnerable, to have emotions (apparently anger isn’t an emotion!!) which means they cannot then process those feelings.  That means they are in danger of harming others or harming themselves.

It also means none of us are free.

This is where non-binary people have much to offer us men/women, if we listen. Have a read of ‘None of the Above’ by Travis Alabanza. It is a gift towards liberation.

So, now, for yourself, please pause and consider…. What are the beliefs and habits that you have been brought up with? That seems so ‘true’.  Are they fit for purpose?  Are they stifling you? Perhaps putting you in the path of danger?

WAKE UP.

And spread the word.