Gutter Ball

What old stories have you in a rut?

Were you told something in your childhood or youth that left a mark? Some narrative that you still get tangled up in even now? Maybe you were told you were stupid, or ugly, or too much by people who mattered to you. Maybe it was how you were treated at school or in the community because of your race, culture, gender, or how your brain works.

When I was a child, my mother would buy me presents for my birthday and then within a day or two, start screaming at me about what a horrible child I was and how she shouldn’t waste money on buying presents for me. Every year, like clockwork, the August birthday, and the August screaming fit from my mother. We were often visiting her parents at the beach in the summer, and I remember the damp smell of that upper bunk and the harsh sound of her voice mingled together.

It’s not surprising that I asked her to stop buying me presents, which she refused to do. What was unexpected was how that experience has impacted my expectations of how the world and the people in it will treat me. Every good thing I get, from a person, my career, the universe, gives me that stomach clench of fear, waiting for the reaction, the other shoe, the bad thing. Since my father was often in the other room and said nothing, I am acutely attuned to who shows up for me in difficulty and who opts out.

We all have experiences that build narratives for us, that inform how we think of our abilities, capacity and opportunities. The stories may have some basis in fact, but often they are made up, projections of someone else’s fear or hurt.

We can be guided by these narratives like a dysfunctional north star and choose behavior that fits with the stories we were told about who we are and what we get to be. My therapist calls them enactments. We act out what we know, what is familiar, like the person who grew up with an alcoholic parent and then chooses an alcoholic spouse, because the chaos and drama is deeply familiar.

This doesn’t just happen in our personal lives, it happens at work.

Imagine a woman with three brothers, who is told by her domineering father that she is dumb. Since her only role is to be a wife and mother why should he pay for her college education? That’s a very specific story, and if she’s been told that her whole life, it’s going to leave a mark. It might make it hard for her to advocate for herself at work or pursue a graduate degree to advance her career. She might struggle when working with a domineering male boss, but find herself choosing those types of managers over and over again. The narrative her father tried to trap her in doesn’t have to define her, and with some help she can see it, name it, and limit its impact on her life. But she needs to understand it’s there.

Imagine a bowling alley. Imagine a lane at the alley. There’s the lane, the varnished wood that gleams in the light like a road to the pins you want to knock down. And on either side is the gutter, the trough that lines the outside edges of the lane, the one that pulls a bowling ball off the lane away from the pins.  

Negative and limiting narratives about who we are can form neural grooves, deeply engrained patterns of belief and behavior that impact our choices even years later.

Imagine a path through a canyon, the way the path gets worn down over time as people walk over it again and again, until it’s a depression in the soil, then a groove. Our ideas can form that sort of groove, only it can get so deep we are trapped.  

I have been bowling plenty of time. And I have often thrown the ball in a way I thought was going to get to the pins, but watched it wander off course into the gutter. That turn is over, you’re done until your bowling ball gets fed back up through the machine and you get another turn.

For many of us, work feels like bowling. A narrow lane, an enclosed space, florescent lighting, and a very specific objective – throw this ball and knock down as many of those pins as you can. A random game with a real score. Capitalism.

Knocking down the pins is how we get paid, it provides our health insurance, and if we’re lucky, builds financial stability and pays for all the things we need, like childcare and groceries and retirement.

If you’ve got an old narrative, or trauma, and you sometimes end up being guided by that neural groove into enacting patterns and choices that don’t serve you, you can get out of it. It took me lots of therapy, and a robust spiritual practice, but other people can access healing in different ways.

The first thing to do is to understand if you have these patterns, and if they have caused you to make unhelpful choices. If you can’t see it, your friends and family probably can. Ask them, the ones you trust. If you have repeating patterns of behavior – like always ending up being the caretaker in your group at work, or if you have the same difficulties at multiple jobs, that might be a sign of potential gutter ball territory.

The second thing to do is to get some help or perspective. Therapy or executive coaching is good for this, especially for patterns around your work or career. My book, which will be out in the spring, has a whole section on narratives like this – don’t worry, I’ll be promoting it heavily in this space when it’s available. Or you can try doing some journalling or creative work around it and see what comes up for you.

And remember, you get another turn. And another and another. Every time that ball comes up again you can change your stance, try a different technique, and learn how to reach your objectives, rolling down that polished lane with heavy focus.