True confession here: I'm a tennis nerd. I took up the sport about three years ago and, over time, it has met multiple needs in my life. Friendship, adrenaline, exercise, strategic thinking, and plenty of room for growth.
This past week at a tennis clinic, my instructor said something that really struck me. He said that so much of the game is a mental game, (which I already knew, somewhat, thanks to book The Inner Game of Tennis). But he also reminded me that when we make a mistake in tennis, we keep ruminating about it. Our mind gets stuck on the thing we did wrong. And then we keep making the same mistake. (Guilty!)
When our minds close in around one thought (in this instance, our mistake), our bodies follow, and we tighten the grip on our racquets. And this really messes with our ability to hit the ball well. Playing loose = playing better. So the solve, he said, was "Loosen your grip. Let go of the mistake."
We can all "tighten our grip" on ourselves in light of our imperfections, or on the people or situations in our lives in an effort to get things back under our control, but often, that backfires. It creates tension and anxiety and prevents spontaneity and playfulness, which is the whole point (at least, in tennis).
Whether we're clinging too tightly to a racquet, a pattern, or to an outcome, we can end up inadvertently blocking something new from happening.
All of this got me thinking about a different kind of grip - the kind that has nothing to do with a racquet.
A lot of us learned, early on, to hold on tight. Not to a ball or an outcome, but to other people's moods, comfort, and approval. We learned to monitor, anticipate, and accommodate - to keep a tight grip on ourselves so nothing went wrong, so no one got upset, so we stayed safe.
There's a name for this. It's called a schema - and the specific one I'm talking about, the self-sacrifice schema, is one I see constantly in my work with women untangling themselves from narcissistic family systems.
I just wrote about it - where it comes from, what it looks like in adulthood, and why it can feel less like a habit, and more like your whole personality.
I'd love for you to check it out: I Used to Call It Being Low-Maintenance. It Was Self-Abandonment.
Because just like on the court: sometimes the bravest thing isn't gripping tighter. It's loosening your hold and seeing what's actually possible when you do.
Where's your grip too tight right now? Reply and let me know - I'm collecting stories for something coming next.
Until next week,
Responses