CRISIS OF IDENTITY

In my last blog I was sharing how I realized that I had to stop doing the same thing and expect to get a different result. That kinda has been a theme for me in several different circumstances of my life. A very big and major one is the fact I was running from my own self. I did everything to keep from focusing on myself all of my life it was a pattern.

One of the first times I actually realized this was after I got promoted in May of 1993. I was promoted to Assistant Manager in Customer Service with the then Southern Bell, the home phone company. By this time Rick and I had been married almost two years. We had built a beautiful home and we were well established in our life. I will go back and cover some important parts of my life after our wedding in future blogs but this is an important point I need to share now.

I was moved to the Savannah, Ga office as one of 5 managers. I had never moved away from my family before. I was so excited about this achievement that I really had no idea at the time how much my focus had always been on others and not myself.

When I got to the Savannah office and began this new journey in my life. I had no one but me to really focus on. Yes, I had Rick and the boys but they were so supportive of my new responsibilities. They pretty much took care of each other and actually took over many of the duties I had done in the house prior to my new job. Rick was such a supportive husband. Looking back now I really didn’t acknowledge that like I should have.

Back to the major theme of this blog, all I had to focus on was me and this new job and the responsibilities that came with it. Boy, I really didn’t know myself. I thought that success was getting those promotions and moving up the latter and accumulating material things. Well, we definitely know that’s not the case and I found out pretty quickly I wasn’t really internally management material. Sure I could do the job very well but it made me miserable. I was a people person and was about making others happy and being what I thought they needed me to be not who I really was.

I had no clue who Wendy Holderfield was! (This was my first married name) I later learned that I had formed a certain attachment style within my relationships. This style was formed when I was young and growing up in a home with an abusive alcoholic mother. I had an anxious attachment. For more on this go to https://www.attachmentproject.com/blog/anxious-attachment/

I would call what happened to me next a crisis of identity. I had taken a job because I thought this is what you do to be successful in life. Now, I was really learning who Wendy was and how I didn’t like myself or even understand myself much less really love myself.

I was miserable. I wanted every day to go in my bosses office and say send me back but I knew that wasn’t possible. This was the first time I found myself seeking help from a therapist. I had always knew that my upbringing had made me be the person I was. But I really had no clue.