Six books for self-acceptance and fighting one’s demons.
I first wrote this post way before we were asked to stay at home to #flattenthecurve. It's a very personal recommendation list and might give you food for thought to come out of this Corona crises much stronger.
Here you go. Stay healthy! <3
When I first thought about what to speak about in my TEDx talk, I knew the team at TEDxLend was expecting a talk about writing books or freelancing. However, I decided to talk about social media instead. I’ve gained so much in life because of the social web, and I wanted others to see the benefits of it, too.
I generally don’t compare myself to others. I mostly have some sort of a priority, value, or goal in life that I pursue at all times, and I know that, while others perceive me as successful (at all times), there often are things I’m working through and trying to solve for myself. The inside of success doesn’t feel all that successful really.
But let’s talk about the internet again.
I know that without the internet I wouldn’t be where I am today. I was the daughter of a single mom. I spent most of my childhood with my grandparents. My sense of what was attainable was very limited. Simultaneously, and looking back from where I am today as I’m writing these lines, I also know that, while it might take longer for someone without privilege to get to where the privileged are, you can eventually get there. And I also know it’s much easier to worship every second of it once you have faced your demons, as I did over the years.
Everyone has baggage. So here are the books that helped me confront mine.
What a bullshit kind of title. Yes, indeed. And I have to say it took me two years after reading this book to understand how true this title is to what the book does.
It all started in a Kundalini yoga class.
That day I was the only one who showed up.
Maybe some cosmic energy wanted me to receive a life lesson that day. Maybe.
At some point, my teacher turned to me and said: “How is your relationship with your mother?”
It came out of nowhere.
“Non-existent,” I replied.
That came out of somewhere I guess.
She got up and left the room. Just like that. A few seconds later she returned holding a book in her hand: “I want you to read this.”
It was with this book that I learned the answer “non-existent” was very typical for someone with my wound.
Early in life, we already experience things that hurt us. Everyone does. And we all learn to cope with them. However, it’s our coping mechanism that often hinders us and lets us repeat the same patterns over and over again. And it’s our coping mechanism we accept as a part of ourselves. It’s just how we are. We don’t question it. And we don’t question what it is we’re trying to cover up. My fear of rejection, for example, made me do things in the past that made rejection almost impossible. Because I’d still have control of a situation. And so subconsciously many things would remain unattainable because of how much I made sure I’d stay in charge of situations. Because, clearly, how can someone potentially reject me if I made sure they did?
According to the book, there are five common masks/coping mechanisms that help us cover up our greatest fears. It’s only once that mask gets identified and the root cause is uncovered that you can heal from it and finally break out of your patterns. While that might take years, too, it’s incredibly empowering to look your fears in the “eyes” and be like: “I know exactly where this bullshit is coming from.”
My parents had me a few weeks after they both turned 21. If you’re reading this and you’re over 21, you can probably imagine how much someone is ready to have a child at that age. And so, I kind of do understand where a lot of my childhood issues came from.
“Lacking adequate parental support or connection, many emotionally deprived children are eager to leave childhood behind. They perceive that the best solution is to grow up quickly and become self-sufficient.”
It was these two sentences that made me read this book in just one day. I hated being a child. Life was so incredibly difficult. There are so many people in society who find adulthood difficult, and I always think to myself, “They have no idea how hard life can be if others decide for you, and the decisions are at your cost.” I’ve learned to become self-sufficient quickly.
I had my first apartment at the age of 17. I started working at 16 and had up to three jobs simultaneously to make ends meet. The time leading up to my A-levels was the most stressful in my life, and I’ll forever regret how nasty I was to the people who supported me during that time. I was so stressed out, I had no mental space to be a nice, supportive person. And I wasn’t able to give anything to anyone. I had nothing to give. I was exhausted.
And then I learned to better manage my time, my energy levels, my money, and how much shit I’d take on or just not care about. I’ve learned to cope. But reading Linday’s sentence “I have a special place in my heart for people like Sophie (she talked about a Sophie in the book), who function so well that other people think they have no problems” hit very close to home.
Going through such emotional hardship leaves many traces and impacts how adult children of emotionally immature parents relate to others. And it was this book that helped me identify my patterns and hardships, and open up to let people into my life and my heart.
This is a great book for those who notice they run up against a wall but can’t put a finger on what causes it. I can only say it helps solve those feelings. At least it did the trick for me.
Silently Seduced: When Parents Make Their Children Partners – Kenneth M. Adams, Ph.D.
“Covert incest occurs when a child becomes the object of a parent’s affection, love, passion, and preoccupation. The parent, motivated by the loneliness and emptiness created by a chronically troubled marriage or relationship makes the child a surrogate partner. The boundary between caring love and incestuous love is crossed when the relationship with the child exists to meet the needs of the parent rather than those of the child.”
And being a daughter, it means I am one of the women that outwardly seem to be able to do it all. They also are capable of being others’ emotional caretakers. They give the impression that they have few cares of their own, and, if they do, they handle them just fine.
Whenever I was sad, people would be astonished and tell me things like: “I don’t know you’re like this.” And it’s the most painful comment you can say. Being denied the right to sadness by assuming everything is fine is just plain wrong. Assuming people are doing great because of some posts on social media that just highlights a nice moment is also plain wrong.
It was this book that made me aware of how I would emotionally exploit myself. What carried my success in my career also made a success in my private life unattainable. I do feel like it’s been these three books that helped me get to where I am today. And thus I’d recommend it to everyone who’s the child of a single parent, is a single parent, or felt like a partner to one of their parents. The book is confronting. But so helpful.
Have you ever heard about the books “The Game” and “The Truth” by the pickup “artist” Neil Strauss? It’s a bland exploration of exploitative relationships. Reading the book, you’ll feel like everything feels plain sick, and you might be reminded of situations you ran into. You might have that friend who’ll repeatedly tell you stories of emotionally unavailable men and looks for faults within their own character. While they might be right, there are things that they do themselves, there are probably also signals they respond to positively while they should probably keep the object of interest at a distance.
The book Attached examines unhealthy patterns and points out the toxic signals worth acknowledging. Being aware of these helps to distinguish between people worth investing in emotionally and people you should keep at an arm’s length. Great book!
Denken. Fühlen. Handeln. Grundlagen der Psychologie – Dietmar Friedmann
If you speak German, don’t miss out on this book. Dietmar Friedmann divides people into three different types: the doers, the feelers, and the thinkers. Each of these three types feels most comfortable at “whatever their type’s called” and aspires to become better at another aspect of this triangle. A doer wants to become better with people. A feeler wants to be perceived as a strategic thinker. And a thinker wants to become faster at making things happen.
Once you identify your type, which you can do here, you can learn how to best become more balanced by consciously practicing the things you want to master.
This book will change things for you and give you more self-confidence in how you approach situations but also teach you how to master what you might not be good at just yet.
The Comprehensive ENFP Survival Guide – Heidi Priebe
There has been a lot of criticism on Myers-Briggs tests. But if reading the results helped others as much as it helped me I think it’s a pretty useful test.
As I was growing up, I noticed very contradictory behaviors that I was never able to rationalize. How can I get so much energy from people, for example, but then always hit a moment when it feels like too much? Or as Heidi Priebe would say: “Why you often feel introverted when you’re processing ideas but extroverted when you’re planning ideas.”
I laughed out loud reading words such as:
“Introverted feeling is the ENFP’s executive assistant. Extroverted intuition is constantly compiling new experiences, new challenges, and new events – all of which it dumps in a pile on Introverted’s Feeling’s desk and says: ‘Sort through this.’”
The things I couldn’t understand about myself suddenly started making sense. Mostly, we think what we know and do is general knowledge and common behavior, but having a writer point out your intuitive strengths and systematic weaknesses provides a lot of value and makes it much easier to not just accept them but to celebrate them too. And so if you haven’t done the 16Personalities test, it might be time to do that now.
This truly might be the most personal article I’ve published yet. If any of the stories resonated with you, I hope you’ll pick up the book, too.
Let’s #flattenthecurve together!
