- Okay,
now I wanna talk about the next category
of self-defeating behaviors
and that's our incredibly developed capacity
to fit ourselves, to unacceptable people and situations
which I shorthand here as crap or crap fit.
This is one of those double-sided coins
that served us beautifully when we were kids,
when maybe we had a terrible situation,
we had no choice, but to live with,
like a drunk parent
or kids who were cruel to us at school.
And we learned to pretend what?
That it wasn't happening.
And thank God we got good at this
because otherwise we maybe wouldn't have held it together
while it was happening.
But when this talent
for tolerating intolerable conditions
is left to keep spreading,
it gets internalized and it can consume our perception
of reality and waste years of our lives.
So this whole video is about ways
that we crap fit to terrible people and situations,
getting stuck and unable to see clearly
that our best interest is to leave.
The classic and best known form
of crap fit is what is commonly called co-dependence.
We get together with people
who have serious problems, drugs, alcoholism,
financial problems, and we fit ourselves to them.
They become a project
we can organize our lives around,
which is easy to do when you have no clear direction
of your own.
And we fancy ourselves as helpers or saviors for them.
And they're happy to feed this idea of us
until of course it starts cramping their style
and they try to push us away.
And we're like,
hey, I was only trying to help.
And I'll talk about the pain involved
in the strategy in a moment.
But something that often goes hand in hand
with helping, is blaming ourselves.
Now God knows we are sometimes the perpetrators of problems
and we deserve a share of the blame.
But when we go nuts with blaming ourselves
for things that are not our fault,
this is a crap fit too.
It's a form of manipulation and like all crap fit,
it comes from very good intentions
because after all,
if something is our fault,
then it's possible to fix it.
The guy says he doesn't love you.
Maybe that's because you did something wrong
and if you can figure out what it is and fix it,
maybe he'll become the man you want him to be.
But what if his not loving you is not something you caused?
I mean, not everyone can be the one, right?
So, sometimes it's not right
or the love isn't there.
And we can't force it by pretending
it's something we did.
Loving somebody who doesn't love us back is so hard.
And it's so understandable why we might spin out a bit
but still, to start living on a better footing,
we have to bravely look at these tendencies
that have been making us unhappy.
So are you ready to push on?
Okay.
Another form of crap fit is justifying.
I have to stick with the addict
because if I leave, he might kill himself.
Or if I leave,
I won't be able to afford my own place.
Or if I leave, his mom will be heartbroken.
Or if I leave, he won't have benefits for treatment
or I'll leave, but not until we take that vacation
we booked for the summer.
It's pretty obvious that we're scared to leave
because of how we will feel.
So we justify that by saying
we're staying for some altruistic or practical reason
and justifying is a strategy we use sometimes
on our own behaviors too.
We have to use drugs.
We have to cheat.
We have to rage at others.
We find reasons why in our case,
this kind of thing is okay or even necessary
which can make it hard to recognize
how much we're limiting our own relationships
to just those people who will crap fit to us.
Do you see what I mean?
Then just a little further,
down the crap fit continuum is psychologizing.
I know he cheats on me,
but his mother was abusive to him
and he's just trying to get the validation he never got,
blah, blah, blah,
or it's really hard for him to make a commitment
because he has Asperger's
or his parents divorce scared him
or he's just so independent
or his therapist says he needs space to heal or whatever.
Anything except a focus
on the fact that we're totally counting on someone
who cannot or will not commit.
And again, we can avoid life
by psychologizing ourselves too.
If you have childhood PTSD,
you can find a way to explain a way,
any destructive behavior at all
if that's what you wanna do.
Here's another really common form of crap fit, fantasizing.
This tends to happen more when we've been rejected
by someone and cannot or will not accept it.
So this huge relationship develops in our minds
and becomes a sanctuary where we can go when the loneliness
of our actual life is hitting us hard.
And this can go on a long time forever, really,
because so long as we have a fantasy mate,
we are giving off a very unavailable, unhealthy vibe.
And the only people who will be drawn to us,
if we're fantasy addicts are people who themselves
are emotionally unavailable and either numb to the clues
that were not there
or they actually want a relationship
with someone whose soul is not there.
From fantasizing, it's a short road
to misticizing or spiritualizing.
Now spirituality is a good thing,
but at times we can be tempted to twist it
into a way of fitting ourselves to crap.
So, one example,
when people talk about past lives,
astrology or soulmates,
I promised earlier that I'd talk again
about soulmates, right?
Now, personal beliefs are just part of who we are
and not a problem,
but since real relationships exist
in the real world in a very day-to-day way,
a hallmark of a relationship that's not working
is that it does not exist
in the real world in a very day-to-day way.
So if we find ourselves building up
a non happening relationship is something that does exist
in a spiritual realm,
we may just be crap fitting.
Some language that tips me off to crap fitting
is stuff like,
I'm just staying in this relationship
until I learn the lesson I'm meant to learn
or in a past life,
it was me who cheated on him,
and now I'm getting to experience what he experienced.
You get the picture.
If you're spiritualizing your relationship
with someone who is not
your actual committed real life partner,
and I mean, if they are less than the kind who takes care
of you when you're sick and gives you birthday presents
and returns your calls always, right away,
well, then I would say they can't possibly be your soulmate.
If there's such a thing as a soulmate,
you'll know who it is
because they are a mate to every part of you,
body and soul.
And so the painful truth is that if you want to soulmate,
you're gonna wanna clear a space
for that person to come into your life
by not having these crap fit projects,
filling up all the chairs at the table.
So to heal crap fit, the solution is good,
wholesome reality.
It's a cool drink of water.
Reality may look scary,
but it's where you already are,
an emptiness you may be feeling right now in your life,
that's the reality.
The love you now receive in your life,
that's also the reality and reality may not
have everything you want right now,
but that's mostly because you just haven't been there
to answer the door when it knocked.
Reality is our friend.
It tells us when there's a problem
and it prompts us into action.
And the job now is to stop being so good
at fitting ourselves to crap.
We want to be bad at it.
We wanna smash the whole doll house and make ourselves
incompatible with situations and people
who are unacceptable to us.
It's scary, but you are going to love the freedom
and fresh air you feel when you open up your life
and let reality come in and be your friend.
So I'd like you to go to your workbook now,
and take a look at where you have a history of crap fitting.
And when you finished,
I'll see you in the next video.
(soft ambient music)