on consistency

Needing consistency is a trauma response. 

One of the things that has always throttled my personal expression and keeping me from being fully ‘out there’ has been wanting to be consistent. 

To be seen as trustworthy and predictable and therefore never ‘crazy’. 

I grew up with a lot of chaos and maybe over time I’ll write more about this. But one thing I decided very early on was that I needed to be measured and controlled in my emotional and artistic expression. 

I didn’t skip from thing to thing. I committed- to one instrument at 6 years old. To one career in 7th grade that I saw all the way through to my mid thirties. I used to say once you were my friend ‘you were stuck.’ I was loyal to a fault, even when people were clearly not true friends in return. 

And I realized over the last couple of years that I really like others to be consistent- I wanted to know what to expect from them- to be able to put them in boxes and know what they were about. To know that it wouldn’t change. 

I felt betrayed when people decided our relationship wasn’t serving their growth and judged harshly when people were ‘out of their lane.’  “They shouldn’t comment on that, that’s not their expertise.” “They shouldn’t go into that field, they don’t have qualifications.” 

All of this is my own need to know about others what I thought I knew about myself- if I was predictable and trustworthy- why weren’t they? When really it’s that I felt stifled by my own rules that were just a trauma response in the first place. 

My own distrust of the fluidity of being a human. 

My own need to feel secure when there is actually no such thing. 

I actually have extremely diverse interests and like to do a little bit of a lot.

I don’t know if I’ll ever know mastery in one silo and there’s a part of me that’s so unsatisfied in that. But it’s not an adult part of me. It’s a traumatized little girl saying if I’m really really good at something other people value I’ll be seen, recognized and validated. I can be an authority, I’ll be important. 

I can give this girl a voice but she can’t run the show or throttle my expression. Her needs aren’t based in the now. 

How do you relate to consistency? To change? Who is it that needs one or the other?