Weird Coping Mechanism- day 68

"If you mess up and someone calls you out on it, act stupid. Just pretend you don't get what you did wrong and that you didn't know better."

Everyone has a weird coping mechanism. We learn them when we are young to navigate and survive life. Some of us are born into chaos, and we cope by becoming self-reliant perfectionists. Some of us are born with emotionally unstable parents, so we cope by turning our emotions off, shutting down, and becoming numb. Some of us born with mediocre intelligence, and we learn to cope by pretending to be smarter, or dumber, than we actually are. 

That, is me. 

I am not smart. I can read a book, and love every minute of it, but am unable to summarize the plot for you. I can listen to a podcast about a topic that really interests me, but I won't be able to retain the facts and information provided. My attention span, retention rate, and ability to analyze, are painfully weak. 

So the way I got through elementary, middle, and high school- act dumb. I found that by acting stupid, people gave me a pass. I was safer if everyone had low expectations of me. I also found this worked when I got in trouble. I would act like I didn't understand what I had done wrong, I would pretend to be confused or simple minded and just shrug off what I did because, I dunno, I couldn't help it, I'm an idiot. Additionally, people thought my dumbass act was funny. I would get a laugh, an eye roll, an "Oh my goddd" and it made me feel secure. Playing the fool was the best armor I could ever make. 

I learned how to manipulate people and it felt....kinda great. 

When you act stupid, people will do things for you. They'll take care of the finances, they'll read the contract, they'll make sure everything is squared away for you. 

However, by constantly acting weak and helpless, it became who I really was. My go-to function was to hand over my problems to someone bigger, better, and smarter. So I never exercised my brain. I never challenged it, never created an intrinsic trust in self, never trained myself to have courage in my own abilities. 

I stunted my own intellectual growth for years, and it is going to take years to recover. 

Deciding to deal with this coping mechanism happened when I got pregnant in 2018, when I was 28 years old. I wanted to be an honest and helpful partner to Andrew, and an admirable role model for my son. The first thing I did, was tell Andrew. I laid it all out there for him. I was like, "Look, I do this horrendous thing where I act stupid to get out of doing hard stuff, please don't fall for it. Hold me accountable." I also would tell him my deep thoughts at dinner or in bed; how I felt about world views or my take on a spiritual topic, how I could read body language and had special powers when it comes to understanding people... and he listened. And he replied, and dug deeper, and asked me questions, and validated my voice. And it has helped me so much, because he is the first person to really know me. 

I still use my acting dumb coping mechanism a lot. I am working on unlearning it on all the fronts I use it; work, family, friends, finances, health, faith, you name it.