Living In and Overcoming Survival Mode

I always feel like I’m doing everything wrong, despite everyone telling me what a great job I’m doing. Kids’ grades are up, dogs are succeeding at their training, and product sales are up – yet I feel overwhelmed by failure and that I’m never doing enough. Does anyone else ever feel this way?

Where does this misguided feeling come from? How do I correct it?

I’ve learned that feelings do not exist in a vacuum. No one is ever just happy. Or just sad. We always have a blend of feelings. Think of us like a taco. We are the shell holding all the bits together; crisp lettuce, juicy tomato, cool sour cream, hot sauce, seasonings, cheese, meat… Separately these things are what they are, but together they create something amazing.

Feeling all the Feelings

We have a lot of feelings coexisting inside of us, especially once we reach adulthood; grief, excitement, loneliness, happiness, determination, defeat… You name it. We can go to counseling and work on a lot of these feelings so we coexist in a healthy way, but the feelings will always be there – just like our experiences will always be there.

If you are like me and have had some bad experiences, especially prolonged ones, you learned survival behavior to cope. And that is often where these “misguided” feelings come from. I put that in quotes because they are not misguided at all. They are a survival mechanism. When we are experiencing difficult situations we do what we have to do to survive and get through it.

Once the difficult situations are over, and we no longer need to live in survival mode, the habits that have been drilled into us still exist. Even today, a year and a half since leaving my difficult situation, I still catch myself with a way of thinking or a response to something that really isn’t me; it’s a result of living in survival mode for so long. I believe that is where the feeling that I am doing everything wrong stems from. And I know I am not alone in that experience.

So what do we do about this? How do we get out of survival mode thinking once the threat has passed?

We acknowledge.

Acknowledge Your Reality

I can’t overstate this enough – When we want to change something we first have to acknowledge the reality of it. We can’t know where to go or how to get there if we don’t know where we are and where we are starting from.

Everyone has a different situation they are navigating, so you need to adjust this affirming mantra to fit you:

Positive Affirmation –

The threat has passed.
I am safe now.
I will be safe tomorrow.
I am healthy.
I am loved.
I am pursuing my goals.
I am in control of my actions.
I am responsible for my success.

Then, in the moment when I catch myself responding or reacting in a way that existed during survival mode, I stop and acknowledge that I don’t need to respond in that way. I refocus and move forward.

For example, I have a new puppy (Stella). She peed on the carpet. When I was living in survival mode that would have been an intensely anxious situation because my husband at the time would have become irate. I would have been blamed. The entire experience would have been awful. Instead, now that I am no longer living in survival mode, she peed and I cleaned it up with the mini carpet cleaner I have for just such an occasion. No yelling or blaming, problem solved.

When moments like that happen, I try my best to acknowledge that I get to have these experiences now without the drama and negativity. And even more than that, I make sure to remind myself that I did a good job handling the situation in a healthy way. 

This may seem trivial and small, but when you are living in survival mode and every little thing is turned into a larger, more unpleasant experience and goes on for years it really alters your way of processing and how you emotionally respond. So taking every opportunity to affirm your strength, your progress…

Take that half a second to tell yourself what a good job you are doing.
When other people tell us, it doesn’t always resonate.
We may have learned not to trust what others tell us or that what we are told has conditions with it.
But when we tell ourselves, then we are sure we can trust our motives and sincerity. 

Remember…

This is a long process with huge ups and downs, curves and stops… Don’t beat yourself up over little things. Acknowledge your successes and struggles so you learn and grow and become the absolute best version of yourself. For added help, I encourage you to open up to friends you trust, and family you know has your best intentions at heart, and even look into coaching.