The Imaginary Person I Think I Should Be

I spend a surprising amount of time in therapy telling people to stop “shoulding” on themselves. And apparently I need to start listening to myself. Lately, I have become aware of just how many shoulds are running through my head on any given day. Most recently, they have attached themselves to parenting. We are potty training our one-and-a-half-year-old right now, which has been particularly fertile ground for this.

I shouldn't have reacted that big to that. I should be more patient. I should be more mindful when I'm with my kids. I shouldn't be annoyed that he shit on the floor. He's one and a half. He's having a hard time, not giving me a hard time. I know this. Actually, I know all of it. I'm a psychologist. I know about emotional regulation. I know about development. I know that toddlers don't have the capacity to regulate themselves the way adults do. I know about mindfulness and nervous systems and repair. I know that being present matters. I know that children learn how to relate to their emotions partly by watching us relate to ours.

This should make me an extraordinarily calm person to shit on the floor around.

It does not.

And I've realized that sometimes knowing all of this actually gives me more ways to criticize myself. Because now it's not just, “I'm frustrated.” It's, “I shouldn't be frustrated because I understand why this is happening.” It's not just, “I lost my patience.” It's, “I know better than to lose my patience.” It's not just, “I've been distracted today.” It's, “I know how important presence is, so I should have been more present.” Somewhere along the way, psychological insight can become another standard against which we measure ourselves. We learn the language of mindfulness and then criticize ourselves for not being mindful enough. We learn about nervous-system regulation and become ashamed when we get dysregulated. We learn about attachment and start analyzing every interaction with our children. We learn about boundaries and wonder if every uncomfortable relationship means we aren't setting enough of them. We learn about self-compassion and then somehow manage to think, “Jesus Christ, I should really be more compassionate toward myself.”

We can turn almost anything into another way to fail. And the more I notice my own shoulds, the more I think they aren't really about the word “should” at all. They're about an imaginary standard. Somewhere in my head there is a version of me who knows exactly how to do all of this. She's patient but has boundaries. Present but productive. Attuned to everyone else's needs without neglecting her own. She works enough but not too much. She exercises, sees her friends, answers her texts, drinks water, puts her phone away, appreciates how quickly her children are growing, makes thoughtful career decisions, and responds to toddler bodily fluids with warmth and curiosity. She is also apparently in a good mood most of the time.

I have never met this woman. But she follows me around constantly.

And I don't think this is unique to motherhood. Maybe your imaginary person thinks you should be further along in your career by now. You should make more money. You should care less about money. You should exercise more. You should be better at resting. You should have more friends. You should call your parents. You shouldn't care what your parents think. You should be over what happened to you. You should be happier in your relationship. You should leave your relationship. You should be grateful for your relationship because other people have it worse. You should know what you want by now. You should take the risk. You should be more responsible and absolutely not take the risk.

The details change, but the basic premise is the same: There is a correct way to be living my life, and I am currently failing to do it. I think that's why shoulds are so compelling, especially for perfectionists, high achievers, caregivers, anxious people, people who are very attuned to other people's emotions, and people who have spent a lifetime being rewarded for getting things “right.” Shoulding feels responsible. It feels like self-awareness. It feels like accountability. It feels like we're keeping ourselves on track. But underneath a lot of it is something much more uncomfortable: the belief that if we can figure out the correct way to behave, maybe we can protect ourselves from the uncertainty of being alive.

If I parent correctly, my children will be okay. If I make the correct career decision, I'll never regret it. If I'm attentive enough to my marriage, nothing will happen to it. If I take good enough care of my body, it won't betray me. If I'm thoughtful enough, emotionally intelligent enough, mindful enough, financially responsible enough, maybe I can arrange my life so that nothing really painful happens. Of course, none of us would say it that plainly. But I think a lot of our shoulds are attempts to negotiate with uncertainty.

I've been doing it with work lately too. I should just keep working for Vanderbilt. What if private practice doesn't work? What if I leave something secure and regret it? What if I make the wrong choice? Again, hiding inside those questions is the assumption that there is a right choice available to me and that my job is to somehow know, from the present, which future will turn out best. I can't. That's not wisdom. That's fortune-telling.

And I think there's something else hidden inside should that I'm finding increasingly interesting: a quiet argument with reality. This shouldn't be happening. I shouldn't feel this way. He shouldn't act like that. She should know better. My spouse should understand what I need without me explaining it. My body should look different. My career should be further along. My child should be behaving differently. My life should look different by now. But reality is remarkably uninterested in our opinion of it. If I am exhausted, I am exhausted. If my husband is in a bad mood, he is in a bad mood. If I don't know whether my business will succeed, I don't know. If my toddler has shit on the floor, there is, unfortunately, shit on the floor. My insistence that any of those things shouldn't be true does not change them. It just means I have to experience reality twice: once as it actually is, and again as the version I think I should be having instead.

And I notice myself doing this to my husband too. He should use his phone less when he's with the kids. He should anticipate what we need more. He should be more present. He should be in a better mood around them. Some of those thoughts might contain useful information. Maybe I do want to ask for something. Maybe there is a conversation we need to have. But “he should” skips over something important. He is also a person. Not a supporting character in the idealized version of my life. He gets tired. He gets distracted. He gets irritated. He misses things. He has needs that don't perfectly align with mine. And I think that's part of what shoulding does: it leaves very little room for anyone's humanity, including our own. Everyone is constantly being compared to the version of themselves we've decided they ought to be. It sounds miserable when I put it that way. It is miserable.

Because the more shoulding I do, the less fun I have. I notice it physically. I am scanning all day. Am I being present enough? Did I handle that correctly? Am I enjoying this enough? Was I on my phone too much? Should I be doing something productive right now? Should I be working more? Should I be working less? Is everyone okay? Am I doing this right? It feels like someone is following me around with a clipboard, quietly evaluating my performance in my own life. And at some point I realized: I don't want to spend my life supervising myself. I want to live it. That doesn't mean I stop reflecting on my behavior. It doesn't mean I never hold myself accountable or try to change. It doesn't mean every reaction I have is justified simply because I'm human. It means I want to stop confusing self-criticism with self-awareness.

There is an enormous difference between “I shouldn't have reacted like that” and “I don't like how I reacted. What was happening for me there?” There is a difference between “I should be more present with my children” and “Being present with my children matters deeply to me, and lately I've been distracted.” There is a difference between “I shouldn't be scared to leave my job” and “Of course I'm scared. Security matters to me, and so does building a life that feels like mine.” One is a prosecution. The other is information. And that's what I'm trying to practice now. Letting my feelings be information instead of evidence.

Frustration doesn't mean I'm a bad mother. Fear doesn't mean I'm making the wrong decision. Annoyance doesn't mean I don't love someone. Doubt doesn't mean I shouldn't move forward. A bad mood doesn't mean I'm failing to appreciate my life. Sometimes a bad mood is just a bad mood. Sometimes being overwhelmed means there is too much happening. Sometimes uncertainty means the future hasn't happened yet. Sometimes being annoyed that someone shit on your floor means you would prefer there not be shit on your floor. We don't have to turn everything into a moral issue.

And I think this matters especially in parenting because I don't actually want my children to grow up believing that being emotionally healthy means never being irritated, impatient, distracted, sad, anxious, or overwhelmed. I don't want them watching me perform some impossible version of emotional perfection. I want them to see that people have feelings. People screw up. People apologize. People repair. People get overwhelmed and come back. People can deeply love their lives and occasionally not enjoy the moment they're currently in. I think that’s a more useful thing to model anyway.

Because if I leave no room for my own humanity, how am I supposed to teach them to make room for theirs? I don't want them to inherit an imaginary person who follows them around someday saying: You should be doing more. You should be happier. You should know better. You should have figured this out already. I would much rather they learn to meet reality where it actually is. This is hard. I'm disappointed. I'm scared. I wish I had handled that differently. I don't know what's going to happen. I love this person and I'm annoyed with them. I love this life and today wasn't particularly fun. I know better and sometimes I still don't do better. All of those things are allowed to be true.

Maybe that's what I've been missing when I tell people not to should on themselves. The goal isn't to replace every “should” with some nicer vocabulary. It's to notice the entire imaginary world the should is asking you to live in. The perfect parent. The perfect partner. The perfect career. The perfectly regulated nervous system. The perfectly optimized life. And then come back to this one. The imperfect one. The one where you don't know what's going to happen. The one where people disappoint each other and repair. The one where you know all the psychology and still occasionally lose your shit. The one where you are allowed to be deeply grateful and kind of pissed off at the exact same time. The one where there is no invisible audience keeping score. The one where nobody is following you around with a clipboard. The one where you get to be a person instead of a project. I'd like to spend more time there.