Loosening the grip of old rules.

Most of us carry a collection of rules about how we are supposed to be, even though we may never have consciously agreed to them. Be strong. Get it right. Don’t make a fuss. Keep going. Be useful. Don’t let people down. Work hard. Look after everyone else. On their own, none of these sound especially problematic. Some may have served us extremely well. The difficulty is that over time they can stop feeling like choices and start operating more like instructions.

We usually pick them up gradually. Perhaps approval came when we were capable or helpful. Perhaps avoiding mistakes was important. Maybe showing emotion was uncomfortable in our family, or achievement mattered a great deal. Sometimes the message was explicit, but often it was simply what we learned from watching how the people around us behaved and what seemed to be valued. We worked out what helped us belong, avoid difficulty or gain recognition, and some of those conclusions stayed with us.

Years later, the circumstances may be completely different, but the rule can still be running. We may have people around us who would happily help, yet asking feels uncomfortable. We may be doing work where experimentation is welcomed but still find ourselves trying to get everything right before anyone else sees it. We may have relationships in which disagreement is entirely acceptable, while still finding ourselves smoothing things over because upsetting somebody feels somehow wrong.

The rule itself can be difficult to spot because it often sounds sensible. Of course it’s good to be dependable. There is nothing wrong with wanting to do something well. Caring about other people matters. Working hard can bring satisfaction and achievement. The question is not whether these qualities are good or bad. It is whether we are choosing them in response to what is happening now or obeying an old instruction without recognising that it is there.

That distinction matters because a rule can keep operating long after the reason for it has gone. ‘I want to do this well’ is different from ‘I can’t afford to get this wrong.’ ‘I’d like to help’ is different from ‘I can’t say no.’ ‘I can handle this’ is different from ‘I must handle this myself.’ The behaviour may look almost identical from the outside, but our experience of it can be very different.

We often notice these rules most clearly when we break them. Saying ‘no’ produces guilt. Asking for help feels exposing. Stopping before everything is finished leaves us uncomfortable. Someone else being disappointed can feel far more significant than the situation seems to warrant. We may then conclude that the discomfort means we have made the wrong decision, rather than considering whether we have simply gone against a rule that has been in place for a long time.

There is also a cost to following these rules without question. The person who must always be strong may find it increasingly difficult to let anyone close enough to support them. The person who has to get things right may spend far more time than necessary trying to remove uncertainty. The person who cannot disappoint others may repeatedly make commitments that leave little room for themselves. None of this has to become extreme before it affects the way we work, relate and make decisions.

Choice only becomes useful once we have noticed what is influencing us. Until then, the rule can feel like the only reasonable way to behave. Naming it creates some distance: ‘I seem to have a rule that I have to sort this out myself.’ Or ‘I notice I’m treating somebody being disappointed as something I must prevent.’ We may still make exactly the same decision, but we are now making it with more awareness of what is contributing to it.

That does not mean replacing one rule with another. ‘I must always ask for help’ is no freer than ‘I must never ask for help.’ The value is in recovering the ability to respond to the situation in front of us rather than automatically following an instruction formed somewhere else. Sometimes we may choose to push through, take responsibility or put someone else first. At other times we may decide not to.

Perhaps the useful question is not simply, ‘What am I doing?’ but ‘What rule am I following while I do it?’ We may discover that some still fit very well. Others may have belonged to a different time, a different relationship or a younger version of ourselves. Once we can see the difference, we have more say over which ones continue to shape the way we live.

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