It's time to Adapt Your Adaptations

As human beings we have a remarkable capacity to adapt to our environment. Usually, we make adaptations because they help us feel better in some way. I like to think of the natural personalities we're born with as being like an amoeba - not well defined, kinda free-form and readily changeable to suit the environment. Changing and adapting our natural personalities is something that we all do during the course of growing up. It's part of learning about who we are, our place in the world, and what the world is like.

The thing is the changing and adapting we do as part of our maturation process may not be the best thing for us in the long term.

Let me give you an example. I am the oldest of 5 kids. One of the things I learned growing up was that as the oldest I was responsible for my younger siblings. Like many people who developed a strong sense of responsibility as a child, I learned to be over-responsible. I "over" adapted to be responsible for virtually every situatio
I found myself in.

There are times I really took my adaptation of over-responsibility to extremes. My sense of over responsibility allowed my first husband to be under-responsible in a lot of way because he knew I would take care of things. This weird balance is one of the things that contributed to the demise of our marriage.

That's the deal with these adaptations, like being over-responsible. You tend to choose to be with other people who allow you to continue using your adaptations. For most people, at some point, the adaptations tend to become VERY uncomfortable. When things are uncomfortable, somethings gotta change. Yet, if you're not aware of what is making things uncomfortable, it may not be obvious exactly what needs to change.

Being unaware of adaptations is one of the things at the root of many of the arguments my clients tell me about during workshops and private sessions with me. Because I spend so much time working with people around this idea, I want you to become aware of adaptations you may have developed. Here are a few of the more common ones.

-- Perfectionist -- The perfectionist adaptation often shows up for someone who ALWAYS has things and events just so. In fact, when things aren't just so, the perfectionist can feel quite distracted and upset. If you were to ask a perfectionist to not make their bed for a day, simply not to make it, they would probably be VERY uncomfortable and may not actually be able to leave their bed unmade.

-- Over-Responsible -- Someone who has the over-responsible adaptation, will take responsibility for just about every situation they find themselves in - whether or not it's appropriate! If an over-responsible person decides to get something done, they're likely to get it done at almost any cost. One of the toughest things for an over-responsible person is to not do something when they see something that has to be done.

-- Pessimist -- A person with the pessimist adaptation will often expect the worst so they eliminate the possibility of getting hurt if they were to expect something in the least bit positive. The challenge for the pessimist is to realize that they have some control over how things do turn out and if they shift some of the negative expectations to even a small positive then they can actually work to make a little positive happen.

-- People-Pleaser -- When someone has a people-pleasing adaptation, they often lose touch with their own needs and wants. They focus almost all of their attention on taking care of others and making sure that everyone else is happy. People-pleasers have a VERY difficult time saying "no". They think that if someone asks for something and they can do it (at almost any cost), they should.

The first step in learning about your adaptations is to identify them. That's exactly what you'll have the opportunity to do in this week's Functional Divorce Assignment.

Your Functional Divorce Assignment:

What kinds of adaptive behaviors did you learn as a child? We all learn lots of different behaviors from all the people and things we interact with as children. Some of these behaviors are helpful and some have ended their usefulness. Identify as many different adaptive behaviors you learned as a child as you can.

What influences taught you these adaptive behaviors? You might be surprised that your family members aren't the only ones from whom you can learn adaptive behaviors. You might have learned some from TV, or school, or synagogue, or church, or your friends, or your friends' parents, etc. It can be helpful to know where you learned adaptive behaviors because it can help you get a different perspective of which adaptations you might choose to release or adapt to something more helpful to you now.

What kinds of adaptive behaviors did you use in you marriage? What kinds did your ex use? Answering these two questions can go a looooooooong way toward helping you move on from you divorce and not repeat history.