Basic Instincts

Heard from your inner banshee recently? I feel your auditory pain...

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

This week has been yet another lesson in how complicated maturity can be. One of the many things I struggled with when I became a mother was accessing my ‘inner voice’ and being able to connect to my gut instinct. Even though I was in my mid-30s, suddenly, I was missing that intuition. Wherever my intestines were, they were certainly not operating as a second brain. I had no hunches on how to stop my infant crying aside from the obvious boob and burp, no sixth sense on which nursery was the right one. My abdomen was deathly silent, and it made me feel like I must be deficient, not just as a mother, but also as a human. Psychology tells us that intuition is a muscle – if you don’t use it, you lose it and all sorts of traumas, depression and anxiety can inhibit your connection to that internal call. I guess I was spinning so quickly at the time, I just couldn’t sink an anchor in the pit of my tummy.

But as my experiences over the past five years have smashed me into pieces, then kintsugi’d me back together with liquid gold down my seams, I have connected more than ever with my gut. She bellows at me often, I find it’s like having an ASBO as an invisible friend. It can be incredibly disconcerting at times, as if there’s a secret little sprite gurgling beneath my stomach and some days, I’m not entirely sure if she might be marginally malevolent. Occasionally, the burbles come from nowhere, so out of left field that I wonder if it’s in fact, self-sabotage. Honestly, I haven’t put her to the test enough to know if I can entirely rely on her. They say trust your gut, but as yet, that trust hasn’t been totally earned. 

This week, I had my haunches raised and my sprite went into overdrive. A chance encounter with a friend and her new friend sent a literal shiver down my spine. My gut convulsed; I felt a physical repulsion which stayed with me after I’d left their company. My internal burglar alarm screamed, that chick is bad news, get the f away. Abdominal instincts are incredibly impolite; they certainly don’t come with a British accent. My quandary is now what to do with that gut punch. It’s based on nearly nothing and I first needed to peel back the layers to make sure it wasn’t either some kind of latent trauma trigger, or barefaced bias at play. I’m not a jealous person, so I knew that wasn’t it, but perhaps she was just having a bad day? After all, our conversation was brief and inoffensive.

And yet, it did offend me, I couldn’t deny it. I immediately recognised passive aggression and victimhood and compelling negativity in how she presented her opinions on everything, all of which I’ve been around the block with many times before. She asked my advice on something and treated my words as if they were Gospel-level wisdom. I’m good, but I’m not that good. I could also see leechy claws going into my friend’s shoulders and suspect her unending empathy is being exhausted with scroll-length Whatsapp messages as we speak. I don’t want to conflate previous experiences and map them on to this unsuspecting new person, but it felt uncanny. 

My fiancé used to say that I had too many ‘askholes’ in my life - people who would ask and ask and ask for advice which would never be taken, yet the demand for which would never be sated, in an unending cycle of drama. Despair was their currency and feeling incredibly sorry for these poor souls, I gave them all my time, energy and light. I mistook the intensity of our relationships for closeness and intimacy. I believed this is what true friendship looked like. That is, before I realised, I was just one face on their advisory panel. That there were six other women replying under their pillows at 1am, shattered at the beck and call of the queen bees of adversity. It wasn’t a BFFs, it was a personality disorder. Back then, I would spend hours shoring others up and offering my thoughts, to the detriment of my sleep, time with my partner, even time with my babies. I’ve learnt how toxic that can be, and my guess is that my guttural response came from knowing how hard it was to extract myself from that bear trap. My body simply can’t face a rerun.

I’ve taken a beat to think about it and I’m pretty sure in this instance, my gut is right. Now what does one do with that? (As an note, my friend doesn’t read my Substack, I’m not offended, it’s not for everyone). Do I mention that I ‘have a bad feeling’ about her new mate? Seems shady and outside of being absolutely sure about it, what real evidence do I have? Equally, I can’t bear to see my gf being drained, she has more than enough on her plate. It is like watching Final Destination: you can see the plane crash happening from the very first scene. But after chewing it over, I’ve come to the conclusion that ultimately, I’m not the police or a bodyguard and it’s not my job to stir any pot.

Speaking with another friend, let’s call her Yoda, about the situation in the abstract, she advised that I don’t have to react to these signs in as loud a way as they feel inside. I simply need to step back, avoid personal contact again and ensure I don’t direct any of my energy into building any kind of relationship. A coffee with the three of us was mooted; I’m to simply to be unavailable. Yoda counselled: I don’t always need to tell everyone how I feel about everything. It also isn’t my job to protect grown women no matter how much I care for them. It’s only my job to protect myself.

The logic of this is clear and it’s sound advice. Whenever I have ‘got involved’ or ‘shown loyalty’ it has generally ended in tears. You either waste your breath or end up stoking the flames. It does go against my instinct though, which is confusing isn’t it? My immediate, body feeling is to whisper, ‘be careful there,’ and I’m going to find it really hard not to say it, especially after a weekend’s helping of rosé. Equally, if she were to confess any reservations herself, I wouldn’t want to immediately jump to say, ‘OMG SHE’S THE DEVIL’, because from long experience, relationships like this don’t just cease, they linger. It’s exactly the same as a friend dating a wrong’un: never tell her exactly what you think, because they will probably get back together, and you’ll soon all be at dinner dying of discomfort.

It also feels so against my instinct really to speak about women in any kind of a negative light in public. I want to support women and I’m also not a brick wall. Of course, I feel for anyone who needs to draw other people into their pain in order to manage their emotions. But there has to be a line where my empathy ends, and their accountability begins.

Growing up as a child of divorced parents, I know the seeds of a lot of this were sown when I was so young. I can remember being 6 or 7 and trying to relay messages in ways which I thought would be more palatable to my mum in order to do what my dad had asked without causing fire. I didn’t have a choice but to develop EQ as a kid, it was simply survival. As I grew, I became the diplomat in my family and the go-between in the families I have become part of, operating as some kind of emotional translation service. Being able to read emotions has always meant I could see conflict coming as well as having a good idea what other people were thinking. And that has meant I have always had advice at the tip of my tongue. But through maturity, I’ve really understood that advice shouldn’t just be doled out willy nilly. When your advice becomes cheap, it hurts everyone and generally leads to an unhealthy co-dependence.

Dialling it back, it’s not that I think seeking advice is a bad thing, or negative or unhealthy. At all. In fact, as you can see, I have asked for my own advice in dealing with this situation. It’s the value we give to advice and ways in which we approach it. I seek advice to hold myself accountable for my own thoughts and actions and to gain the perspective of a long-trusted and respected ally beyond my own lens. I am not asking every single person on the street to act as a jury for my life decisions. It’s not a vote.  I went to Yoda, because she has many qualities I lack. Calmness, discretion, and an ability to fly high above nearly every battle. She has also managed to keep very difficult people in her life, very firmly at arm’s length. She is the bubbling brook to my volcano. The discussion wasn’t like a lesson, it was a two-way exchange between peers. Sometimes the advice dynamic can be an exercise in power with the advisor exerting undue influence on the advisee. With Yoda it was nothing like that and I’ve taken her very focused advice and have now moved on. We won’t speak about it incessantly, because generally we don’t speak about other women to bond or provide conversation. It’s done and it doesn’t need to be recycled ad infinitum.

If you need long-term, recurring advice and find you are asking the same questions over the space of weeks, months, even years, you most likely don’t need a friend, or even a group of friends. Instead, it’s your intuition that has gone AWOL and you might consider investing in a therapist to help you to connect with your own inner banshee (yours may be less shrill than mine). Friends are there for you to lean on, not crush or suffocate. I know how hard it is to feel adrift, at least in one context, as a mother. I have been there. But no number of parenting books or baby whisperers or experts could fix that for me. It was only ever me that could decide what felt right and attuning to the tone of your own signals, no matter how off-key they might be, is one clear route to security. In the end, perhaps my only advice is to not rely or seek too much free advice. It’s still advice, but only just.