I would like to talk about how fear of failure and fault impact relationships. We all witnessed something that we thought we would probably never see from Will Smith when he walked on the stage during the Oscars and slapped Chris Rock dead in the face after telling a joke that he did not approve of. Will Smith’s fear of failure and fault rooting back to his childhood may have played a role in provoking him to respond in the manner that he did. I have been wanting to comment on this situation for a little while, but I wanted to be delicate with it. I don’t like to get too much into the details of people’s individual personal relationships unless of course, the individuals are in counseling. But I think there are some components, some things to that we need to understand and learn that can be beneficial and not necessarily paint a negative light on Will Smith or his relationship situation.
So I’m going to break a couple of things down that I think are very practical if you are dealing with marriage and relationships. I am going to start like this. Many times in life we create our own realities in the world to deal with pain. When we no longer deal with our realities and in a sense check out into a new reality, this is what I call Unreality. Unrealities are many times established to help us to deal with pain and I’m going to talk a little bit about this.
Examples of Unrealities In Relationships
So how do we create an unreality to deal with pain? In other words, we create an alternative situation many times that doesn’t exist in order to deal with the present situation that we are in. A prime example that I always use is if we look at the example of an abused woman. What is the reality that she continues to paint in her mind to stay in that abusive relationship or marriage? Her reality of the situation when she’s being physically abused may be grounded initially when she is being harmed. She may think that it’s a really bad situation, “I need to get out. He’s no good for me.” But if you give it just a little bit of time, that reality unfortunately changes.
Adverse Childhood Experiences What We Know
What’s interesting is that she learned how to think this way somewhere. She learned how to process realities in her mind and then change them to something very different. Adverse childhood experiences (ACE) occur when you have experienced trauma when you have seen things that you shouldn’t have seen. The adverse childhood experiences or trauma that survivors of trauma have witnessed are often unbearable. The ACE has been such a blow to the mind that the mind has to find a way to manage the reality and exposure to the trauma.
For instance, if someone has been sexually abused as a child and raped, at some point, they can predict when they may be abused again. They know when the abuse is coming. The ACE may be so horrific that they have to take themselves into another reality. In order to cope, they have to move into an unreality. A survivor will often “check out” or take themselves into an imaginary world that is more pleasant as a mechanism to deal with the stress and pain of the moment.
One thing that is very compelling is that many of the survivors of trauma, the survivors who dissociate from the experience of pain and trauma, often use this same mechanism to cope with situations of pain that are less traumatic. Something as simple as an argument, being blamed, shamed, or yelled at can cause them to unconsciously be removed from the situation. The survivor will often learn to “check out” during intense conflict-oriented exchanges in their relationships. Exposures to trauma build insecurity and can cause basic realities to be confused due to the body taking action to protect us from pain.
Unrealities Often Ease The Pain of Trauma In Relationships
I think this is the situation that has been primed and built with Will Smith and Jada Pinkett. When you experience trauma, the mind needs a way to ease itself or convince itself that things are different from what is actually occurring. I mean, you create a whole new reality from what’s actually going on in order to make yourself feel better about the situation. This is a subtle way of pacifying and relaxing the mind from the core beliefs that we have established many times as a result of the trauma.
So our core beliefs are pretty much the things that come to our mind that we start to believe about ourselves as a result of a particular situation. If you study the pattern or the story of Will Smith and his father, because of what happened and just real briefly the situation with his mom and her getting beat, him not being able to rescue his mom. He observed it from his father and his father made him feel somewhat unworthy as a man because of the things that were occurring in that relationship or marriage. Many times when we’ve been faced with experiences of trauma, whether it occurred directly to us or whether we witnessed the trauma, it builds up insecurity within ourselves. That’s a whole other conversation there, but just take my word for it. It often builds up insecurities within ourselves just because we’ve experienced the trauma or witnessed the trauma.
As a result of that, we have the tendency to compensate for feelings of not being enough. He developed a core belief that he was a failure in a sense, and that he failed to rescue his mother, and that he was a coward. So failure and fault is a big core belief in the mind of Will Smith, especially concerning his fear in marriage. The other core beliefs that also exists that are very common.
How Do The Uns Impact Marriages and Relationships?
Have you ever gotten the Uns? Have you ever experienced feeling unwanted, unloved, unaccepted, unimportant, unattractive, unworthy. These Uns are developed in the mind as a response to trauma or when someone has experienced inappropriate bonding in childhood relationships with either their parents or caregivers. So what we do is we create unrealities and it pacifies the situation. You can be in a situation where you don’t feel so good, and you can switch your mind out, make it feel better, and create an unreality where you stay there.
When we create these false realities, if you’re in an abusive marriage or in relationships that are not the healthiest for you, it’s really easy for you to justify the bad actions of others whom you are in relationship with. I’m not necessarily speaking of Will Smith, but let’s just think about the situation maybe that someone might experience if they are a witness to domestic violence. Let’s use the example of Crissy. Crissy gets beat repeatedly, and then she has to compensate. In her world, she’s created another reality as to why this man has been physically abusing her. So she’s no longer with us as far as what’s actually going on in the real world.
This is easy to do and I believe that this has been a part of what Will Smith has been experiencing. I believe that this is the reason why he has had difficulties in marriage and relationships in general. He has made the statement that he felt that he had failed every woman that he has interacted with. How is it that you have failed every woman you’ve interacted with and don’t even know them like that? Because this is often what trauma produces. It produces a core belief that something you have done or will do is wrong. Therefore, if there’s any trouble in relationships, guess whose fault it’s going to be first in your mind? And this is an example of an unreality. So many times we come up with the idea that it’s up to us to fix every problem that we encounter, but not often enough do we consider that the other party may be equally at fault. Let’s share the responsibility of the trouble of the relationships.
What Is The Cure For Fear and Fault In Relationships?
So what’s the cure for all of this? Well, the cure is we have to obviously establish a new set of core beliefs. Once both Will Smith and the abused woman, reestablish the core belief about themselves, realizing that everything that happens around them in relationships or the marriage is not their fault, the dynamics of the relationship change. When feelings such of being unworthy, unwanted, unloved, unlovable, unaccepted, unimportant, unattractive, unworthy, a coward change, then we can therefore live in the reality of the situation that we are experiencing a lot easier.
We have to stop being so easily manipulated by the influences and opinions of other people. This is the cure. A lot of us have been consumed by negative influences, and this has to end. Once we change that core belief that’s in the mind and alleviate the obsessions about what others think of us, then we become strong and then the whole game changes, including our marriages and relationships. Many times we have been choosing people to be in a relationship with individuals we should not be in a relationship with because they’re okay with us feeling unworthy.
So then they don’t try to build us up, they choose to manipulate and control. I don’t know if you’ve ever been in relationship or marriage where you feel like you keep choosing the same type of person who is emotionally or physically abusive repeatedly, and in each relationship you are thinking that it’s your fault? I think Will Smith may have experienced this to a degree, and you may have experienced it as well. The cure is to cure the insecurity. The mind has to be reshaped, the thinking has to be restructured. Once we are able to renew the mind, the negative, irrational, blaming thoughts that you have about yourself will fade. When the mind has been renewed, and the insecurity obliterated confidence and a love for self will be restored in your marriages and relationships. Be there for yourself. If you’re there for yourself, then you can build strong constitutions, relationships and intimacy with others.
I hope this has been helpful. Take care and have a blessed day.
