recent photo: end-of-winter black walnut tree branches against a transparent sky

A Lightbulb Moment Sparked by a Customer

One morning at work not long ago, a customer came into my office who needed something that involved my asking a lot of questions and clicking through a lot of tedious computer screens while I filled out his application. This process tends to feel interpersonally awkward and uncomfortable for me, even after more than thirteen years of doing it.

But this time was different.

There were three particular changes:

I thought to ask, at the beginning, whether the customer was in a hurry or had time to wait for me to complete the process. He said he had plenty of time, so I knew I didn’t have to rush.
He had a manner that was both quiet and pleasant, and this calmed me—I could sense that I didn’t have to make social chitchat for his sake.
I turned my screen so he could see what I was doing at each step. This transparency, combined with the lack of need for chit-chat or hurry, freed me to focus on the task at hand and bring him along with me in it, asking him the relevant questions at the relevant times, without explanations or other talking.

It felt so peaceful.

This helped me to realize how NON-peaceful my usual interactions have been with customers—and maybe everyone else, now that I thought about it. I realized that it’s exhausting to try to do both the task at hand and simultaneously present a performance of friendliness and convenience for the other person.

And when the task at hand is just living and navigating my experience, the added layer of filtering and performing it for others is, I think, a deep form of “masking” (as of neurodivergence—as in my case) and “people-pleasing” (or “fawning,” in reference to a basic defense mechanism). In other words, I censor or curate my experience to present a certain image to others, in an attempt to protect myself from their potentially negative feelings and behavior.

I think I’ve been doing it my entire life.

The Hypothesis

I’ve been working hard in recent times, over the past year especially, to heal and grow in how I relate to myself and to others. My direction of correction is (as I think is the case for many people, especially women) to grow more deeply connected with myself and less emotionally enmeshed with others.

The lightbulb moment sparked by that customer gave me quite a boost in this learning. For shorthand I’ve been calling this boost “transparency practice.” My working hypothesis with it is this:

It is better for my wellbeing, especially my mental health and relationships, to be transparent with people about my actual experience, rather than concealing and managing it alone while curating it for them.

Some Context

In the past, the notion of being transparent with others was very scary, because at that time, I hadn’t yet learned much about boundaries, mindfulness, or my right to mental privacy. In fact, my direction of correction then was actually away from transparency with others. I had to build up skills for protecting and emotionally separating myself from others. My song “Shut the Door” talks about this learning.

But now, hallelujah, I’ve got skills! I can set boundaries. I can hear my own inner voice and understand what I’m feeling and wanting, at least most of the time.

So now that I’ve learned how to shut the door of my mind to others, I can learn when and how to open it back up.

Initial Experimental Results

The day after the lightbulb moment, I got a perfect opportunity for practicing transparency. I didn’t feel well, and it was a day of staying home with the kids and partner after an unusually draining week.

As the day went on and I kept getting more depleted and overstimulated, despite various attempts to help myself (such as with food, rest breaks, headache medicine, earplugs and sunglasses, etc.), I began to get more honest with the kids and partner about how I was feeling and what I needed. It felt much better than trying to pretend I still had things under control.

And at the end of the day, more exhausted than ever, I asked my partner to read the twins their bedtime chapter-book chapter—which had always been our own ritual, one that I hadn’t even thought to ask him to do before—and then I just lay on their bedroom carpet like a vegetable while he read to them.

It felt revolutionary.

Further Observations

In various ways and context, I continue finding that being open with others about my honest, actual experience, instead of trying to manage it alone while keeping up some cheerful pretense, makes things better. This feels equivalent to “unmasking”—and wow did I need this a long time ago!

But thankfully, this learning is here now, and it’s been coming on for a while, as I said. The following poem is one I started last year, but I only just finished it, after the lightbulb moment. It summarizes the gist of this learning about transparency.

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     Life was something to cope with alone
     and people were as well—
     to manage, help, appease, or save—
     their heaven built my hell.

     But now life is for living linked
     with others—and myself—
     and letting my experience
     be witnessed, shared, and helped.

Conclusions

I am learning to let others see my actual experience and help me with it, rather than pretending I’ve got things under control so I can appear to be fully available for helping them.

I don’t have to be a pretend superhero anymore. Safety comes from tending to my own needs directly, not scuttling about in defensive wrangling of other people’s nervous systems.

And now, the more I can share the facts of my actual experience with people, the more connected those relationships become, and the more human I feel.

Anna’s River

🌊Practicing Transparency