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In our interview with Jenny Moix, we’ll discover a dimension that will help us be a little happier: flexibility. Being flexible means questioning many of the things we do and say to ourselves. It means, for example, becoming aware of how our self-demands erode our capacity for growth and well-being.
The psychotherapist Albert Ellis said that our self-destructive thoughts and schemes are installed in our minds by habit and practice ; in fact, we sometimes even inherit them from our parents and our own upbringing. With them, these inflexible mandates laden with guilt and fear, we cut off our creativity and the vital impulse to be freer, safer to create the reality we want.
Interview with Jenny Moix
Jenny Moix (Sabadell, Barcelona) carries a passion for psychology in every fragment of her being from an early age. She is Professor of Psychology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) and member of the Research Group on Stress and Health. She specializes in chronic pain, awareness and mindfulness.
She is well known for her publications and books such as Manual da Dor (2006), Face to Face with your Pain (2011), Flexible Happiness (2011) and Minha Mente Sem Mim (2018). He has written several scientific articles, has collaborated for years with El País Semanal, as well as in various media, such as Catalunya Ràdio.
Jenny Moix is also a great communicator. She lectures on different areas of psychology and personal growth. Talking with her is a pleasure for her human quality, enthusiasm and remarkable ability to make us think, discover and understand much better how we are and what we could do to be happier.
Q. What is self-demanding?
It is an order or mandate that we give ourselves. There is usually a more or less unconscious thought form that starts with “I have to…”.
Q. When do we tend to be more demanding?
We tend to be more demanding in situations where deeply held values and beliefs come into play.
For example, the thought “only people with excellent grades are successful” leads you to be self-demanding with grades, or “only thin people can attract others” leads to self-demanding with weight.
Q. Does self-demand have any benefits? Can we get something out of it in our favor?
Self-demanding itself is not bad. What makes it dangerous is its rigidity. To simplify, if we classify self-demands into rigid and flexible, rigid would be bad and flexible would be good.
Flexible self-demands allow you to get out of the routine, the day’s schedule, leave the dirty dishes in the sink, and even let you drop some things when you realize they don’t make sense. The rigid ones make you feel tremendous guilt for the slightest deviation and, in addition, paralyze you.
In life, we need to have a meaning, a “where I’m going”. Without that, we would be disoriented, we would not know what to do. Our values and beliefs give us that meaning, that orientation. From them derive certain goals and requirements that drive us to reach them.
It’s the game of life. We make the rules ourselves and follow them. We’re playing. But sometimes these goals, these rules of the game are too rigid, and instead of guiding us, they only cause us pain: if we follow them, we will suffer because they are too harsh, and if we don’t follow them, we will feel guilty. This happens when we forget that, in reality, these beliefs, values, goals or rules of the game are relative ; but we firmly believe that they are almost sacred.
Self-demand can be guiding and motivating, since deep down we are very aware that we are the ones who make the rules and, in the same way, we can get rid of them. In other words, they are beneficial as long as they don’t make us lose our freedom. When we say “I can’t say no” or “I can’t stop…” it’s because we forget that we’re the ones who put these self-demands.
Q. How does a person become demanding of themselves? What factors are involved?
Our parents, family, teachers, friends and society in general are responsible for programming us, although this programming does not always give the same results. Some people, who we normally classify as “well adapted”, have more self-demands than those we label “non-adapted”.
In a society that values money, professional success, a stable marriage, being thin, looking young at any age, a well-programmed person, adapted to this crazy society, is full of self-demands.
And, deep down, it looks good! Their self-demands are rewarded by society, so some people brag about being very self-demanding. Society programs us so efficiently that self-demands already come with a built-in maintenance system.
Then there are other more atavistic and more primitive factors that are inscribed in our genes. Evolution etched them into our chromosomes. Homo sapiens did not survive alone, we are a group that survived thanks to the tribe. Thousands of years of evolution marked this fact in all our cells.
Therefore, we like others to share our point of view, not judge us, accept us, love us; many of our demands come from there.
From the enormous pressure we feel for our bodies to adapt to the models of beauty of the time, to the repression we make of our feelings so that we don’t create conflicts, the self-demands are there to ensure that we stay in the tribe. That’s why they are sometimes so rigid, because deep down we think (wrongly) that they are necessary for our survival.
Q. Is it possible to manage high levels of self-demand? Like?
The word “manage” is another result of our square society. The idea of “managing” our emotions, beliefs and feelings is in fashion, as if it were managing an office business, as if we could put our subjectivity in an Excel spreadsheet and correct all fields.
Just today, a guy told me that he wants to end his self-demands in two months, as if he could set a time for self-demand. We put one self-demand on top of the other; humans have no remedy.
Behind self-demands are our goals and values, side by side with the fear of guilt. The target value tells you: “Take care of your sick mother at all times, even if you have to give up everything” and the fear of guilt: “If not, you will suffer with guilt until the end of your days”.
Beyond that is the fear of emptiness. If there was someone who, with a magic eraser, could erase all values so that we wouldn’t have self-demands, what would guide us? Who would we be and what would we do?
Imagine a person whose entire existence revolves around self-demanding care for their mother. She doesn’t do anything else and that causes her a lot of suffering; your physical and mental health is very deteriorated. Why did she act like that? Why did you cling to this value so intensely?
Maybe there’s fear of emptiness, maybe fear of what to do with one’s life, maybe fear of being free. The question of self-demands can reach these depths.
Q. Is being a perfectionist the same as being self-demanding?
These are two closely linked concepts. We can demand that the house be perfectly clean, the shirt neatly pressed, the hair perfectly cut, everything perfectly groomed.
As we’ve already said, self-demand can have degrees, some are more flexible and therefore healthy. Others are more rigid and make us suffer. Desperately seeking perfection is talking about rigidity, the desire for reality to fit a mental ideal. In this case, we suffer a lot because reality and ideals are never adjusted.
Q. Are self-esteem and self-demand related in any way?
Yes, they are related. Many self-demands arise from the need to demonstrate something to the world, to yourself or to “be better” so that others accept us. Therefore, the lower the self-esteem, the more needs of this type.
Likewise, people want to be better in order to love themselves, but the love for ourselves must be unconditional, like the love that mothers feel for their children. True love is loving and accepting ourselves as we are.
A child loved and accepted is happier and transforms their life into something much more beautiful. The same happens to us. Accepting our uniqueness would be easier without the constant presence of social ideals. Being aware of the pressure of these ideals is the only way to be less influenced by them.
Q. Are happiness and self-demand compatible?
The word “self-demanding” sounds ugly to me. “Requiring” is very hard and direct. The phrase “my boss demands that I…” implies that if you don’t, he will fire you, lower your salary or create some kind of repercussion. If we had to choose our boss, would we choose the demanding or the motivating one?
I think most of us prefer the motivator. That is, the one who recognizes our qualities and strengthens them, the one who applauds us when we do everything right and forgives us when we make mistakes, the one who teaches us.
We would be happier with this type of “outside” boss, because the same is true of the “inside” boss. The motivator is much better than the demanding one.
Q. Finally, could you give us some guidelines or keys to consider regarding self-demanding?
I think that, for a start, we must accept our self-demands. “I am me and my self-demands”. It would be the starting motto. It’s normal to have them, some more, some less. We are programmed. Fighting this would be like demanding to eliminate them: one more demand.
How about just watching them? Watch them as a mother watches her child or when we watch a cat or dog playing a prank. Observe them without judging them.
To observe them, we have to recognize them and, often, they come in disguise. Many of them disguise themselves as external demands. We feel obliged by our family, our colleagues, our partner to do something. And we live this as a demand that comes from outside, external. But in reality it is internal! Nobody is pointing a gun at us.
If we asked a group of people how they got rid of some of their self-demands, we would probably find an answer like “one day I realized that…it didn’t make sense”. And what made them realize? The lyrics of a song, a movie, a book, a conversation with a friend, a pencil that fell to the ground, a bird that crossed your garden…
As we can see, there is a lot to reflect on in the universe of self-demands. Without a doubt, after this interview with Jenny Moix, we have to think about how they influence us in our daily lives and what we can do to eliminate the weight they have in our lives. What do you think?
