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I was raised in an abusive atmosphere by a woman who had, herself, been abused. It meant that she panicked easily, or she didn’t react much at all. She would work herself up into near hysteria if a family member that had promised to drive her/us somewhere was late. She’d be convinced they weren’t coming, or something bad had happened, so that by the time they arrived she’d pretty much ruined her mood and the outing. The more she panicked the calmer I became. I’m damn good in a crisis because I was raised in one. The older I got the more she allowed herself to be hysterical, because she counted on me to be calm, to think. Many of us raised by abuse victims even if no actual abuse occurs are very good in a crisis, but suck at ordinary things. So, we create crisis, because we understand that, and we’re good at it, or at least it’s familiar. Familiar things, even bad familiar things, can be very reassuring. Unless you get therapy or have an Epiphany, or both, you will repeat this pattern for your children. I hit therapy and had several Epiphanies, so didn’t think I’d repeated this pattern. Trinity, my daughter, is a much happier kid than I was by this age. Though she asked me the other day, “How did you get to be so strong?” (she wasn’t talking lifting weights)

“I had to be strong to survive and get myself out.”

She basically is concerned that by not being raised in a crisis, or having bad things happen, she’s somehow not as strong as I am. I didn’t know what to say to that, really. In a way, the bad things make us very strong, but the price can be very high. I am only now recovering some of the joy that was lost in my childhood.

But, one thing I congratulated myself on was that I didn’t make crisis happen just so I’d feel safe. I did not catastrophize, or so I thought. One of the ways I cope and don’t catastrophize is by thinking things to death. I will knaw and worry at something months, or years, in the past if I don’t understand it. In that vein, I recently asked my husband, Jon, “Why do all the men I’ve ever tried to be intimate with follow the same pattern? They are very close, very happy to be with me, and then they begin to retreat. Emotionally, physically, in some way.” I finally realized if the only consistency is me, and they’re very different men, then it’s me. So what is it? What am I doing consistently that illicits this response. Jon did it when we were dating, and now, ten years later, I could ask, “Why did you do it?”

His answer, “Most people aren’t as intense as you are. It can be scary to have that kind of intensity aimed just at you.” And he added, “It actually can raise the hairs on the back of your neck, and men remember a time when that level of intensity meant something was looking at you to eat you.”

I blinked at my husband. “You mean the intensity makes you worried I’m going to kill you and eat you?”

He shrugged. “A little, but I know now that you aren’t planning to leap on me, bite through my skull and carry me off to your cave and devour me.”

“Good that you know that now,” I said, perplexed.

He then compared me to Galadriel in the “Lord of the Rings” movie, beautiful, lovely as the morning star, but terrible all the same. He’s also compared me to the Eye of Sauron in business dealings, but this was personal life, and I was a little puzzled. But I’m a big believer that if I ask, I want a honest answer, if I didn’t want it, I shouldn’t have asked. So I went away to puzzle at it.

I finally realized that though I don’t make crisis in my life so I feel at home from my childhood, I do still bring the intensity level that most people reserve for true life and death crisis to almost every aspect of my life. It’s a behavior that has allowed me to succeed beyond my wildest expectations, and certainly beyond the expectations placed on me by my family. This intensity has been one of the keys to my success in business and to an extent in my personal life. But, I believe now it is part of what cost me my first marriage. My ex just couldn’t stand up under the level of scrutiny and intensity that I brought to our relationship. It was too much for him. I was too much. He didn’t do therapy like Jon and I do, so he didn’t have the ability to explain what was wrong, so he retreated emotionally, physically. He shut me out, because he was burning to death under the glare of my spotlight. I’m lucky with Jon, because a part of him is flattered and enjoys that level of attention, but even he when we were courting, would retreat emotionally, physically. Once I reassured Jon that I loved him and was keeping him and it wasn’t just about sex, he was cool about it. It’s one of the reasons we’re married. I have yet to have sex with a man for long without having to reassure him that I’m not just in the relationship for the sex.

I grew up only seeing two ways of dealing with life. My grandmother was either panicked, afraid, and not dealing well, or she was cool, calm, and so unemotional that it was almost unnerving. There was no middle ground for her, and none growing up for me. I learned to be calm in a crisis, emotionally distant even, and then only fall apart after the crisis, sometimes years after. But the intensity level is a crisis level. I bring to almost every thing in my life the level of energy that most people reserve for car accidents, tornado’s, physical violence, and other genuine emergencies. I didn’t know I did that until yesterday. It is both an amazing character trait, and a great strength, and a way of still living, always, in crisis. It is exhausting, and uses up way more energy than is needed for most things. No wonder I’m tired.

In business I’ve been told many times that I’m intimidating. In “dating” I’ve had a pattern of men being very intimate and happy to be with me, and then retreating in some way that left me confused and hurt. Their retreat made me persue them harder. I realized it was the metaphor that Jon, my beloved husband, used. The men fled, and the chase response kicked in, because I’d seen something I wanted and I freaking went for it. In business this is good, in a personal life it’s only good if it makes sense to the other person. The truly sad part is the men didn’t know why they retreated or what bothered them, they just knew that it didn’t feel good, it scared them. I scared them. Well, fuck.

I went back to Jon and said, “But I can’t stop being this intense it’s who I am.”

“I know,” he said, “and I love you just the way you are, but you are intense.”

Give it a few more hours, and a night where I dreamed of my grandmother, and woke anxious and afraid. I realized that for a main relationship, a marriage, that the intensity is what I am, and what it has to be for me, but for other relationships it doesn’t have to be do, or die. I finally understand why I’ve made waitresses cry, when all I asked for was the fries I ordered on the side. It’s not what I say, it’s how I say it, because this level of intensity hits a lot of people’s radar as anger, or crisis. Either way, it makes them feel like somethings wrong. All I wanted was my fries.

I’ve worked my anger issues and I’ve worked at being lighter, having more fun in my life for the last few years. I’ve made great strides, but my intensity level, well, I didn’t see it as a problem. In most things it is still who I am, what I am, and people will have to deal, but in other things I will strive to monitor myself. I will try to make it not an emergency to do ordinary things. I will try to give the appropriate amount of energy to things, and let the last of my crisis thinking go. How do I do that? Honestly, I don’t know yet, but I’ll work on it.