A Chink in the armour

I’m the youngest of 3 children, and the only girl. My brothers are a fair bit older than me as well. As many of you in the same situation will know this leads to a few quite distinct personality traits:

· Wildly competitive with an almost heroic like ability to hide it

· Able to walk away from anything at any time

· The thickest kind of skin imaginable.

· Fiercely independent and often emotionally unable to seek assistance

For a long number of years I thought my brothers were the enemy; that so much of my many hang ups in life were as a result of my brutal childhood. I mean we watch films now as a family and if the elder brother character does something to a younger sibling; farts on their head, tells tales to mum, tells them Santa isn’t real - we have a running joke in my family because I’ve suffered it all.

You can even tell in my language the depth of the feelings I have towards my family, which is weird as it’s coupled with a deep bond of loyalty, love and admiration. My brothers could do no wrong in my eyes. I adored them both, they were the coolest people I knew and for years their approval was all that drove me. It drove me down some misguided paths true, but the blame does not lay at their doors.

Anyway now in lockdown we are seeing the extended family once a week, as many of us now are, via some online activity, ours is a family quiz. It’s both wonderful and brings us closer, and for me often emotionally difficult as I have done so much of my growing away from my family that I often feel quite disconnected from them.

Quiz round 3, me and my family have won 2 weeks in a row, top scores on some rounds. And then came this week, and a lot of sports, we are no good at sports, and the one brother throws in this “ oh yeah look a chink in the armour” and I feel the heat in my face instantly. Luckily being so far away from the screen I think I am able to hide it. I am immediately taken back to a younger version of myself being made to feel foolish and like I’m not big, strong, clever, funny, pretty…..(fill in your own words) to play with them. I am outside of it all and they deliberately want to keep me there. I mean I sound quite unhinged right, to have read so much into one simple comment. But don’t we ALL do this, all the time?

How often do you leave a meeting and dwell on a comment made by a colleague? Or worse a superior? When your friends ask questions about your family, husband, work, child rearing – you add a heavy dose of judgement to those questions don’t you? I believe in some ways it’s quite natural to do this, and yet at every single opportunity I believe we must stop.

7 days passed, quiz round 4 was upon us, I had felt low and lacking in confidence all week and did not want to play. I had reverted to a teenage rebellious mode because my behaviours were linked to this belief that I wasn’t good enough and they knew it! As I lay in the bath the night before I got to wondering what would cause me to make a comment like that, why did they have to be so cruel? I actually said the words out loud and then started laughing. My husband came rushing in to see what was so amusing. I told him how daft I was and that the comment did not have malicious intent, it was not a derision, something to make me feel bad – it was a reflection of the fact that we had been on a winning streak and they were hopeful of a chance to regain some ground themselves.

Instead of hearing the comment as threat, it was actually said in victory – we might be able to beat them because so far they have been so good. Actually a compliment hides in that comment right – “a chink in the armour” is a sigh of relief from your opponents that they might be able to take down this seemingly undefeatable beast. Meaning actually instead of thinking I was some dim silly girl, my brothers viewed me as an equal, or even as someone who might challenge them, how could I have been so wrong!

In that moment, as I stepped from the bath, I realised that where I had taken negativity, derision and shame actually I could have taken confidence, love and a healthy dose of sibling rivalry based on them viewing me not as a younger, sillier, dumber sibling – but as an equal. 7 wasted days and a whole load of emotions that I need not have felt if I had just taken a moment to consider the comment from their context.

How many other comments from others do we put into a category and allow ourselves to run away with the behaviours and actions before considering the context of the comment. CBT using the idea of behaviour cycles, here is a nice image of one: https://www.emotionalintelligenceatwork.com/resources/behaviour-cycle/ .

I wonder if some useful steps towards creating a new behaviour cycle might be something like this:

1. Did someone say/do something that caused me to have a negative feeling?

2. Can I say that thing out loud?

3. What would my emotional context be if I made that comment?

4. Does that emotional context make sense for the original speaker? How does that rational knowledge effect your negative feelings?

5. Is there a way of eliminating all these steps in future?

Sometimes the steps between hearing, believing, feeling and acting are all too quick to step in and make any adjustments but maybe when that first flush comes, the heat in your face, or anger or a negative emotion we can just pause right there and not take any more steps. Allow that emotion to subside before jumping to the next one and give yourself time to rationally consider what was going on – you might just find more love and support in the world.

So this week I will be my usual non-competitive competitive self, I will enjoy playing with my family and I will know that in the comments and the banter there is the potential for love and support…I’ll also hope there’s no sports round!!!