The Nine Rooms of Happiness: Loving Yourself, Finding Your Purpose, and Getting Over Life's Little Imperfections (11 page)

Every time Gwen calls Cyndi or they get together for dinner (two or three times a week), Cyndi gets a stomachache. “I always get butterflies when I’m nervous, but this is different. Worse. I’m starting to feel like I have an ulcer when I see how upset Gwen is. I’ve suggested she see a therapist, but she isn’t interested and doesn’t have the money, so I end up being her sounding board, and it’s killing me—and my stomach.”

Cyndi realizes that the role she has fallen into with Gwen is a lot like her role in her own family. Cyndi was the “golden girl” growing up, and her younger sister, Emily, constantly struggled with her grades and fought all the time with their parents. “It was my job to smooth it all out, make sure everyone was getting along (or at least not screaming at each other). At the same time I was feeling guilty about what a hard time Emily was having in school. Things were so volatile between Emily and our parents that she couldn’t get much help from them. I spent a ton of time going over her homework, helping her prepare for her exams and finish projects. I worried a lot about her when I left for college, but it was also a huge relief to just have to take care of myself.”

Catherine interjects: It’s clear that her friendship with Gwen has left the living room and has moved down the hall, to the family room. Cyndi has transferred her feelings about her troubled younger sister onto Gwen, and is relating to Gwen as if she were Emily, who she had to save whenever there was a problem. But she’s not able to help Gwen, and all of this angst and drama is taking a toll on her. Rather than Cyndi pulling Gwen out of her hole, Gwen is yanking so hard that she’s pulling Cyndi down with her. Cyndi’s stomachaches are a sure sign that she has to take better care of herself.

Cyndi needs to get to the bathroom and take a look in the mirror. She’s not being a good listener—or a good friend—if Gwen’s problems are making her reach for the Maalox. She has to take care of herself first, something she never really did growing up with her own little sister.

The key process here is “too much of a good thing is a bad thing,” since Cyndi is being “too good” of a friend to Gwen, and it is compromising her own health and well-being (not to mention her ability to help Gwen).

When Cyndi went off to college, she broke away from being her sister’s caretaker and became her own person (needs and all). She has to do that again. Just as the lifeguard can’t allow the drowning swimmer to pull her under, Cyndi must figure out how to be helpful without sacrificing her health and happiness. It’s true in friendships and in a family and in every other part of your life. Her pearl: You have to be strong to help others.

Jenna has been married for five years to Sean, a prosecutor with the district attorney’s office. She knows she should work harder at maintaining friendships with other women but is reluctant to share too much. “I’ve been burned. In high school, I told a good friend some very personal stuff and it got around the school. I was so humiliated. Needless to say, that was the end of our friendship.” She is happy that she can talk about anything with her husband, but she is feeling some stress these days because her husband isn’t always available, because he’s extra busy with a case. “It bums me out. I don’t like talking to him for the first time in the day when he walks through our apartment door.”

Jenna has a few casual friends—a neighbor in her apartment building, a fellow artist she sometimes shares space with, and a girlfriend from college who lives nearby—but she doesn’t find them particularly compelling. She rarely makes dates with them, and when she does, she feels pretty
“blah” about the experience. “We just don’t have that much to talk about. My girlfriend from college keeps up with our old sorority sisters, and it makes me feel kind of nauseated to hear from her what everyone’s up to. I liked them okay then, but I hated the gossiping, the one-upmanships, and the feeling that you had to fit in or you were a loser. I’m fine doing my own thing now, minding my own business.” Jenna is thinking of inviting her neighbor over for coffee but is afraid that if they don’t click it will be awkward whenever they pass each other in the hallway.

Clearly, Jenna hasn’t had many positive experiences with female friends. She is too dependent on her husband, who can’t always meet her every need in this part of her life—and shouldn’t be expected to. When pushed, Jenna admits to feeling jealous of her friend from college who has loads of female friends. She marvels at this friend’s ability to have intense conversations, share personal stories, and just have fun “with the girls.” Jenna will, reluctantly, admit that she’d like to have more friends, but she doesn’t have a clue about how to do that. So when Sean’s working late, she ends up alone at home with their two cats, feeling sorry for herself.

Jenna believes she has reason to be wary of sharing intimate details with a friend, but her basement full of painful memories is now keeping her from trusting all women, and she is missing out. Even going through old yearbooks and cheerleading paraphernalia brings her nothing but pain. She can’t help but relive those last weeks of school when rumors about her boyfriend cheating on her with her best friend spread, and she was so humiliated she hasn’t been to a reunion since.

Jenna’s patterns keep repeating themselves, since she is stuck in a time when her friendships didn’t work out. Her basement is rife with painful memories of gossipy or mean girls, and so that is all she ever thinks about when she tries to have women friends. But the truth is she is so insecure that when she meets a new female friend she herself starts to dish, in order to try to connect. So she ends up driving away any friendships because she comes off as a gossip herself.

Catherine calls this “identification with the aggressor,” and it happens especially when a young person is raised in an abusive household. In
Jenna’s case, her mother is fairly harsh, competitive, and doesn’t give an inch to her daughter, and never has. “I remember her telling me, ‘You’re not an athlete, you’re just like me.’ She always competed with me, whether it was over how to cook the turkey at Thanksgiving or even how to cut the strawberries for a fruit plate. She never has anything nice to say, and my husband tells me, ‘Stop beating your head against the wall. Can’t you see that she will never change? Don’t let her get to you.’ But she does, every time, and it tears me up.”

Jenna is in the wrong room and needs to go to the family room and “clean up” the mess of identifying with her tough mother, before she returns to the living room and tries to have supportive female friendships. She has to acknowledge that she can’t change her critical mom. She has to change how she reacts to her mom if she wants to alter the outcome of their interactions.

The key to cleaning it up is the equation A + B = C, where her mom is B and Jenna can decide, as A, not to let her mother get to her. Only then will the outcome, and their relationship, evolve.

She also needs to stop dragging all of her issues into the bedroom by making her spouse deal with them. He may not be telling her this, but he needs her to talk about other things (like how
his
day went). He’s her husband, not her shrink, and she must find a better way to relate to him. She needs to find a few girl pals she can go to for perspective and companionship. She’s going to feel vulnerable at first, but she can learn to do it, and
must
do it.

The takeaway from this: You can only change yourself, and that is a good thing, because the power lies within your control. Jenna has to learn to be more open and trusting with women. “I found a great husband, so obviously I have the capacity for closeness and I have to learn to let myself trust women the same way I trust him.” This will entail figuring out how to relate to women in a whole new way, and not relying on petty gossip as her currency. She needs to expose something about herself and be willing to share her own life details, not those of others. She needs to realize she’s been holding herself back from female relationships. Her pearl: Go or grow, and take a risk. It may not be so scary after all.

Linda is a gregarious, blond, and fun theatrical producer who is “connected” to everyone in the industry. She has a huge group of friends and relies on them for emotional support, since both her parents are deceased and she has no siblings. Her extended family of friends is always there for her—on holidays and during busy weekends of fun activities, and evenings full of movie screenings and dinners in her apartment, where she loves to cook.

So it’s no wonder that her friends turn to her for their entertainment. They’ll call her up and ask what’s doing over the weekend, and suddenly she feels the pressure to produce a full itinerary of events that will stimulate and surprise them. “They’ll say things like, ‘We really should get tickets for that new play everyone’s talking about.’ And I know they mean
I
should get them because I can, and because I will get better seats. And guess what? I do it! Then they’ll say, ‘Why haven’t we seen that new show at the Getty?’ and I know I need to start planning. And for the most part, I don’t mind at all.”

Though Linda does get amazing perks through her job, and loves to organize and entertain, she sometimes feels that her friends are taking advantage of her. “If I call them and say, ‘Let’s go to dinner,’ they say, ‘Great—set it up.’ It’s like I work for them. Now, I don’t mind, but I don’t always want to be in the position of
having
to arrange those fun evenings. I’m not Santa, and I’m not Julie McCoy. I want someone to take care of things for me, for once.”

The story makes us want to hug Linda…and cringe. The problem is she thinks these surrogate family members will abandon her if the tickets and fun stop flowing. But she is giving to the point of resentment and feels like no one is taking care of her. Because Linda has no family, she feels she has to continuously please her friends, or they might leave her.

The unconscious process here? Catherine explains that Linda is exhibiting a common defense that shrinks call “reaction formation,” which basically means doing the opposite of what you actually want. So if what you want is to be taken care of but feel that is unacceptable, or you’re scared to express that, you take care of everyone around you. It’s like you are hoping to get back what you give. But usually the opposite ends up happening, and you feel used and depleted instead of cared for.

Catherine says that Linda is overly solicitous of her friends’ whims and needs. Her ability to plan events should not mean that she has to do so in order to keep her relationships. Sometimes she should say no or suggest that
they
make the plans. Linda is so used to being the tour director that it’s hard to stop, even though she is feeling resentful. The key to cleaning up this room: Too much of a good thing is a bad thing. She doesn’t have to be at work all the time. She can close the door on the office and ask her friends to pour her a glass of wine, put her feet up, and let someone else plan the evening for once.

By doing so, she will be shifting the dynamic—she has to understand that if she sets some limits and doesn’t always procure the tickets, her friends will have to step up. This may feel uncomfortable at first, but the subtle change will alter the outcome—and she will start to feel cared for. Remember, too much of a good thing is a bad thing here. The giving room can give back.

As a college event planner for one of the smaller universities in her hometown, Danielle, a successful woman who loves to be social and made this trait into a career, considers herself “the ultimate people person” who regularly puts large groups together. She is always planning events, such as a dinner for the college president and his visitors, or the convocation or graduation, or preparing for next month’s open house for prospective students and families.

“I love my job. I am a natural at it, and it is very fulfilling to get to do what I really enjoy for a living. Which is why I tend to forget that when one of my best friends from college is coming to town for vacation and I introduce her to one of my closest friends who lives locally, I am always disappointed—and more to the point, jealous—when they hit it off so well that I suddenly feel like a third wheel! I hate myself for feeling this way. It’s so sixth grade, but it’s true. Like now I’m on the outside looking in. I think:
What have I done?

“And then all my insecurities from grade school come rushing back: I’m not the cool one, or I’m not the smart, witty one, or the pretty one. I’m just everybody’s best friend who they all depend on and who is there for
them. I love that role, but weirdly I feel lonely and left out when others get together without me. I mean, what did I do to make them not want me around? Is it normal to feel this way now, as a grown-up? I feel like high school just never ends. What’s that expression? Life is like high school with money. I think that’s so true.