The most difficult form of parenting to deal with as a child is when the caregiver is inconsistent in their behavior.
Psychologists say this leads to a ‘disorganized attachment style’ for the child. In other words, the child is unable to predict the behavior that’s coming at them and therefore fluctuates from hiding away to clinging too tightly to being despondent. This can show up as depression, loneliness, anxiety, disconnectedness, fearfulness, and rage.
(Do you see where I’m going with this?)
I think we are all experiencing disorganized attachment right now.
If we think of our authority figures as parents — or at least influential people who are dictating what happens to us — our “parents” are pretty goddamn unpredictable right now.
We never know what to expect from them.
The president is the poster child of inconsistent parenting. Even his most loyal followers and his staunchest enemies would come together on this: you never know what he’s going to do next. This indecision, this waffling, this gift stealing, this oh-on-second-thought… it’s exhausting.
But it doesn’t stop there. Politics isn’t the only sphere of uncertainty that’s draining us of our lifeblood.
Right now, our bosses are inconsistent too. We can’t tell if they’re going to praise us or fire us. We can’t take that last performance review seriously. However great we deliver on our promises, we feel like we’ve got a target on our back.
This lack of certainty, this unstable foundation, runs right up the chain of command. Our boss is probably uncertain of what’s coming. They really may have meant that they appreciated you.
But as they’ll tell you on your last day before you walk out the door, it’s out of their control.
Can you believe them? Maybe. It’s uncertain. Everything is.
If you’re unemployed, it’s no different; you’re drowning in an Olympic-sized swimming pool of uncertainty. Is my resume going anywhere? Will they call me back? Are my skills going to be valuable in a month? Will I ever work again?
Uncertainty is the word of the year. Last year too.
It’s like there’s no safe place.
Our leaders — the people above us, whether we put them there or not — are unpredictable as hell.
And we’re all suffering because of it.
The suffering and the abuse wind their way up through the chain. Above and below the President. Above and below your boss. And up further. And down further.
So that’s, like, everyone.
It’s not just a fog. The path keeps changing. The boundaries keep moving. We can’t find the walls. And when we finally do, they’re not there in the morning. And no one is there to tell us where they are or where they’re going to be.
How can you trust anyone?
How can we believe anything?
Putting on the news, going to work, looking for work, it’s like hearing the car rolling into the driveway, feeling the vibration of the footsteps coming up the stairs.
Whether we cower behind the couch or stand tall in the doorway, in our heart of hearts (the only place where truth resides)… we don’t know what’s coming.
And, as any child who’s cowered behind a coach or stood tall in the doorway will tell you, that’s the scariest thing in the world.
Because, unlike our quickening heart and our short, fragile breaths… the door, the stairs, the couch, the gravel in the driveway, that is to say, the house, is not ours.