It is The Endurer that Holds Us Back

Did you ever find yourself blessed with an original and amazing idea? Did you find your mind fleshing out how you could develop it and bring it out into the world? Did you feel your body filling with feel-good chemicals as you saw the possibilities? Did you begin to plan it all out? Did you get ready to take the first step?

And then, out of nowhere, just as you were about to begin, did some doubting voice enter your head and hijack the whole thing?

That was the voice of The Endurer and each of us has one inside. Over-concerned with feeling safe and not being seen, The Endurer believes that it is only through “staying small” that we can survive life. It doesn’t expect for much.

Can we dare to imagine how life on this planet would be if all of our Endurers would agree to just stand down for a while? Can we dare to imagine how our life would be if our own Endurer would just take a break?

Let’s take a closer look at this character and understand the roots of this behaviour.

Like most of the Reichian Character Types, one of the things that is fascinating about The Endurer is that it can be tracked back to a specific aspect of our infancy.

Have you ever seen a 2-year old really kicking off? Perhaps they were screaming and shouting in their pram outside the supermarket. Perhaps they were hurling their toys all over the place, refusing to be pacified from their rage. Maybe you’ve had to deal with many such situations yourself, as a parent or carer.

It’s actually natural that kids do this around the age of two. The act of refusing to go along with whatever it is that our parents wish us to do allows us to begin to create a sense of our own selfhood. Without this vital phase of infant development, a proper, mature personality will struggle to take shape within us later in life.

But, as a parent, being faced with a raging 2-year old on a daily basis can be a huge drain on our resilience. The child actually needs a good sense of boundaries to be placed around its extreme volatility at this age. But it also needs to feel that these boundaries are being applied with love and care, not with mere force. The Endurer aspect of ourselves results from our first meeting with our parents’ applied boundaries.

Although, in the mind of the parent, they may not be being overly harsh in how they are relating to their child at this age, the brain of the child may not see it that way. It may perceive that the parent is actually threatening to withdraw care, should they not obey, and that they will be left to fend for themselves. This happens because, at that age, there is a huge power imbalance between parent and child. Although raging externally, the child still understands deep inside that they are utterly dependent on the parent.

Our infant nervous system is calibrated to deal with such a perceived threat by completely surrendering. The rage will stop. We will become peaceful and compliant. Perhaps, on one level, the parent can breathe out. But, deep inside, we will have learned that being ourselves is not acceptable. And that, in order to survive, we must comply with authority. Such a belief, once integrated so early on in our development, will shape our destiny.

When push comes to shove, we will not take a position for ourselves. We will comply with whatever we believe authority needs from us. This is because, inside of us, that two-year old who felt terrified into submission still lives.

Endurers disproportionately value safety and place it way above the need for exploration and development. They believe that their own feelings about a situation do not matter, rather that they must comply with what they believe is expected of them. And that this is simply how life is.

In reality, we all have an Endurer side. The scale of it, and the degree to which it affects our personality, depends both on our childhood experience and our genetics.

Our Endurer shows itself whenever we contemplate taking a risk. Beginning a new project, asking for a date, seeking a promotion - anything that involves personal risk will trigger its activity. It will be the voice urging us to play it safe, telling us especially that we’re just “not good enough” to go for it. That’s The Endurer.

So what is the way forward?

The bottom line, when seeking to treat our Endurer side, is that we must value our own feelings. Our feelings about a situation - the emotions that arise from within - guide us to our authentic self. Without them, we will inevitably become machine-like and mechanistic - compliant, to feel safe.

I recommend facing yourself in the mirror each morning and repeating sentences like the following, sufficiently loud that you can hear yourself:

“What I feel matters”

“My feelings are important”

“My feelings show me who I am”

Look yourself gently in the eyes and take these words in as you hear them from your own lips. Over time, you will bit by bit begin to access your own personal feelings more deeply. You will let go of The Endurer inside and step forward into having a better, and more authentic, life.

Thank you for reading.

Devaraj

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