Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Eduard Ezeanu from People Skills Decoded.
A lot of the Agile Living tribe are smart folks with the ability to understand abstract concepts and a deep curiosity for learning about things that most people don’t even notice. As someone with the ability to “go meta” very easily, I know it can be easy to use that to dissociate from emotion and my own lived experience (a skill that’s sometimes useful, as I found out when I was working in child protection and trauma debriefing).
Is your curiosity about abstract or global issues a sign of healthy curiosity and the ability to see beyond your little world or a sign that you’re dissociating and running away from your own reality? Have a read of Eduard’s perspective and I’d love to hear your thoughts on this!
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There are a group of acquaintances I hang out with who mostly talk about stuff like the politics in China, or the evolution of space exploration. Stuff which, in my perspective, is pretty distant from their own lives and doesn’t visibly influence them. They also have jobs they hate and bad relationships, but they never really talk about this stuff. If I meet them and ask one of them: “So, how’s your job going?” he’ll just reply with an irritated voice: “Shitty as usual!” and then immediately change the subject.
I call this running from your reality. It’s the process of distancing yourself from what’s going on in your own life, especially the stuff that’s not going well, by not thinking and not talking about it, while focusing on things which are far away from your own life – things that only affect your life in a minuscule way.
Whenever I meet people who talk a lot about subjects which tend to be very abstract or lack practical relevancy to them, I get this intuition that they’re running away from their reality. I often like to test this by bringing the subject to their and my real life, and if my hypothesis is true, they avoid talking about their life like the plague.
Running from your reality is a coping mechanism
What’s going on? I believe that running from your reality is a coping mechanism. And like all coping mechanism, there is a positive intention behind it. It’s usually something a person does when three things happen:
- Her reality does not look they way she wants.
- This is very frustrating for her.
- She doesn’t believe she can change this or she is afraid to do anything about it.
So the only available option seems to be forgetting about it, distracting herself from it. This process can happen in many ways, from talking about distant subjects like in the example above, to excessive daydreaming, to heavy drinking, to drug use, to becoming obsessed with one part of her reality which works, in order to escape all the other parts of her life.
The bad news.
Unfortunately, running from you reality can only work so far. You can’t avoid it forever and never think about it. You may choose not to think about the job you hate in any of your free time, but you will be doing that job 40 hours each week, and you will still hate it.
We all have problems in our lives, big or small, and we can all be tempted to run away from them. But it most cases, this only makes the problem get worse. Eventually, it’s like the elephant in the room that nobody is talking about.
Facing your reality.
I believe that the most effective solution is looking your reality in the eye, seeing it the way it is and doing something about it. This doesn’t imply you have to think about your problems all the time, but it does imply that you’re not ignoring them either.
How do you do this? First of all, you need to learn to accept your current reality, no matter how bad it is. This doesn’t mean that you start thinking your reality is the way you want it when it’s not. It means that you accept that this it’s the way it is and it’s not the end of the world. This is what will make you able to actually face your reality.
Secondly, you need to learn to believe that you are in charge of your life and you can change your reality. You can have a job you’re passionate about, a loving relationship, a life lived by your standards. People make this kind of stuff happen in their lives all the time.
Ultimately, for me, facing your reality and making the best out of it is a thing of acceptance, courage and responsibility. When you have these three tools in your toolbox, you are able to do amazing things.
Eduard Ezeanu is a communication coach with an attitude-based approach. He teaches people how to put their best foot forward in communication and get top notch results. He also writes on his blog, People Skills Decoded.
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Very nice article. I never thought about this before. I think many people use their favorite sports team as a way of avoiding their real life as well.
When you don’t keep struggling to improve your life and your current situation, then you are really just giving up and coasting. And that is a sad situation.
Thanks for this article. I enjoyed it.
Hey Michael,
I think this phenomenon is very subtle. Many people seem like they’re just trying to have a good time, when they are actually running away from something.
Interesting subject matter, and a topic worth thinking about. I’m not sure, ‘though, how useful it is to automatically default to thinking that someone who likes to talk about abstract subjects is running from reality. Sometimes, as Dr. Freud said (or did he?), “a cigar is just a cigar.”
Some people are simply more interested in noodling about these topics than others are and “live in their heads” more than others. I’d hate to assume that they’re cut off from their feelings or otherwise defective because they’re not particularly interested in discussing the more practice side of life.
Thanks for raising the issue and inspiring discussion.