Four Lessons I Needed 40 Years to Learn
What My Hardest Years Finally Taught Me
I turned 40 years old this past Wednesday, which is a big milestone.
It typically garners lots of introspection:
“Am I where I want to be in life?”
“Doing what I want to be doing?”
“With the person I want to be with?”
“Am I happy?”
Turning 40 wasn’t quite as dramatic for me because I’ve had a head start asking myself these questions.
I’ve had multiple mid-life crises before I reached 40. Once when my Dad died. And a long, painful one when a relationship ended.
I’ve spent some time reflecting on my life, especially hard-fought lessons I’ve learned over the last few years.
Here's what the last decade has actually taught me.
Lesson 1: Your Body Tells You The Whole Time
We’re not taught what stress and anxiety feels like in our body, especially as kids.
What we are taught is how to mask everything. How to numb.
“Hard day at work? Have a cocktail!”
“Feeling stressed? Go binge Netflix and have a pint of ice cream.”
It took me until I was 38 to realize my body had been trying to tell me something the whole time. It wasn’t there to hurt me. It was telling me when I was living out of alignment with who I actually was.
For me, the solution wasn't to numb it away. It was to dive inward and understand where that anxiety was coming from.
It came from deep fears like not being enough, being abandoned, not being lovable, and not having mattered in this world.
That’s the work I’ve done in therapy that has changed my life.
My therapist has helped me to identify core beliefs that are flat wrong, and to build more accurate and positive core beliefs, like I matter because I’m human, not because I’ve achieved anything of substance.
Lesson 2: Intimate Relationships Are Mirrors for Your Inner Child Work
Nobody can trigger you quite like your partner.
As I mentioned in Lesson 1, we all have core beliefs that are built from deep fears. These live under the surface in our subconscious and we often don’t know they exist.
Understanding your relationship patterns is important to identifying and then working through these fears.
I have a lonely boy part inside of me that was severely triggered when my last relationship ended. This fear of abandonment and loneliness caused my inner critic to pick me apart, making me feel unworthy, unchosen, and hopeless in finding another partner I was so madly in love with.
I’ve gone through most of my life single and I’ve often felt like women never wanted to really know the true me. They were only attracted to my external factors that weren’t really who I was.
Because of that, I’ve not had many women that have fully seen me and loved all of my parts.
In past relationships, I’ve always been the avoidant partner who learned to shut down and dismiss because that’s how I’ve seen most men in my life act. And it was much easier for my anxiety to run away than sit in the fire and talk through hard things.
For the first time in my life, I'm learning to actually sit in the fire instead of running from it.
Lesson 3: We All Get Healthy Masculinity Wrong
Neither men nor women fully understand healthy masculinity. And it's not entirely our fault.
The version of masculinity that has been sold to us is a lie. Us men want to be the big, gruff, movie hero types that are ass kickers. Think John Rambo (Rambo) or John McClane (Die Hard).
Men learn that women are attracted to these types and women learn that these types will keep them safe.
These characters embody the essence of toxic masculinity and it’s worth calling out that we don’t live inside a movie. We live in reality, where we have responsibilities, needs, and wants.
John McClane is divorced—a bad husband and father. A functioning alcoholic. An asshole that pisses off almost everybody he comes into contact with.
This is who we want our men to be?
Many of us men are constrained by what we think society expects of us: be strong, be stoic, avoid vulnerability and deep connection, etc.. And so we refuse to change.
It’s time we all recognize what healthy masculinity is and support that version: Men that show up for women consistently, respectfully, protectively, and supportively are the men that are good husbands, good fathers, and good community members.
Lesson 4: The Habits Were Never the Point
I used to think that healing my nervous system from the anxiety I was running from was strictly about the practices I was doing.
If I do enough hot yoga, or meditation, or journaling, or this or that, my nervous system gets healed and I have no more anxiety.
Part of this can be true. These practices all help to lower my baseline level of stress and anxiety. That’s certainly been helpful in my everyday life.
However, I was just hoping doing enough things would change my life.
What I realized was these habits were part of a larger journey where I learned to show up for myself.
I learned that I can control so much more of my life than I thought. I wake up every morning now and do the work because I've learned I'm worth showing up for.
The habits were there to help me lower my regular stress and anxiety. But building a better relationship with myself was the real work.
Finally
None of this came easy.
Sobriety, therapy, my continued journey with antidepressants, learning to actually feel things again. It’s been a long road to get to 40 feeling like myself.
But I’d take this version of 40 over any earlier version of me.
Whatever age you’re at, the work is worth it.
What’s one thing you’d tell your younger self? I’d love to hear from you. Leave it in the comments.