One of the questions I’ve asked myself in recent years is why did things get so difficult for me later in life? Things like my imposter syndrome turned into a full-on crisis. The things I did to protect myself, like hiding from people, had me acting in completely unreasonable ways. I was afraid to speak up at my own family table. I spent years on stages and somehow got to the point where I felt anxious introducing myself to a room. I gave into my fears all the time.
Through my work in psychotherapy, I began to learn that these techniques of hiding and running from my fears was learned from the trauma I endured as a child. Making myself small, cowering, hiding, not speaking up, these things all kept me safe.
In my memoir, Requiem for My Rave, I reflected on how those learned trauma responses served me in the face of huge adversity and challenges. I managed to soldier on when most other people would have quit.
I called them “Beneficial Malfunctions”, named after a pinball term, when something in the game breaks and benefits the player, like an obstruction.
And yet, something changed, as I grew from my 20s, and into my 30s, and then 40s. The beneficial parts were shrinking as the malfunctions continued to grow. The malfunctions took over my life.
Someone recently shared with me something called the “igloo metaphor”. Igloos are built to protect us. They can save our lives. However, once inside, under its protection, we continue to exhale our hot breath. With every breath, steam forms on the inner walls, forming ice, and that igloo begins to shrink. In the very slightest of ways. Measured over years and decades, that igloo begins to shrink to the point where we can’t even move inside of it.
The thing that once protected me has become my tomb.
Seeing it this way gave me so much clarity on why things became untenable for me in my later life. It happened so slowly, I hadn’t realized it was even happening.
I functioned much better when I was younger, and then something changed.
But I see it now. I finally took action. I don’t need the protection of the igloo. I’m not a little boy cowering anymore. There is nothing for me to fear. I have left it.
And now I share my story with others, so that they can reflect on whether they have been sitting inside their own igloos.
How about you? Ask yourself where in your own life might you find yourself within your own igloo. An igloo once created to protect you, and now it’s constricting you, and you don’t even need it anymore.
Realizing you’re in it is the first step.
