Lemony Snicket & My Quirks

I recently met a wonderful woman at an event who told me that she’d read an article where someone had owned up to a part of their personality that they’d previously tried to cover up (well, compensate for) and that in doing so it had given her an amazing amount of freedom. This lovely woman I was talking to said that it made her reflect and decide to own the fact that she was ‘The Drama’ - rather than using this as an excuse, she used it to recognise her patterns of behaviour and mitigate the affect she had on others. This included things like going to events the night before, so she wasn’t late or putting processes in place in her day to stop drama escalating.

I loved this idea- owning a part of yourself that might otherwise be seen as negative or something that should be hidden from the outside world.

So, I had a think, what part of myself affected my day to day and was something that I felt I needed to hide?

Then a series of very unfortunate events happened. I was massively overwhelmed with work due to a number of projects reaching their crunch points all at once; I had the usual December crazy to handle, and the phone wouldn’t stop ringing. I was just feeling like I was drowning and then one person made a comment which really upset me and just tipped me over the edge – I stopped everything, laid down and had a good cry. It was incredibly cathartic, and I did feel 100 times better (especially after I’d got up again and made a plan of action).

I spoke to my family and friends after this, I talked through what had happened and they said that this happens every 6 months or so – I work and work and work and then a burnout, have a little emotional flip out, make a plan and start all over again!

So suddenly I knew what it was, this thing I’d been fighting. It was the stress. I’ve always had it- I use the adrenaline caused from it to work harder, faster, better. It creates massive peaks and troughs in my emotions though and although I work through all of these and create stability in my life it’s still something that’s inherent in me and it’s still something that can cause me issues.

I mentioned this to someone else and they were surprised, they said I never seemed stressed- must mean I hide it really well… I’m like a swan, all calm on the surface and paddling my little swanny legs under the water!

I honestly don’t know what this means for me – I need to think about things like downtime, saying no and finding support when my workload gets too much but for now I’m happy to admit that I am The Stress and now I’ve got to work on a plan! So how about you, what’s your hidden superpower quirk?