Too Good For Her Own Good

Our friend Janet had a dream. It came during a period of greater than usual stress."As the dream began I was trying to completely renovate a building a major apartment building. I was doing the whole thing by myself. The next thing I knew, I had to go to Africa for a business conference. I didn't know where I was supposed to go, to Capetown or Johannesburg. I was uneasy, frightened. My best friend just kept telling me, 'Get on the plane and go. You can do it, somebody on the plane is certain to know.' Then the dream shifted to home. I was trying to get Jimmy to bed. I kept saying to myself, I have to get this child to sleep. But Jimmy was screaming, he wouldn't go to bed. He screamed, and then Adam started yelling at me because Jimmy was screaming. Finally, I started screaming. I just put my hands over my ears and screamed. The screaming was real. Adam woke me up. I realized I was dreaming, or screaming, the story of my life."Janet is a woman who worries continually, never feeling good enough about who she is or what she does. She ministers to her family, she does her best to be there for her many friends, and she pushes herself to achieve more and more in her business. What seems obvious to us is totally hidden to her: She's too good for her own good. Yet her response is to try frantically to do and be better. When we try to tell her what a good person she is, she says, "Yes, but you don't see me when I get mad."A few nights after the dream I woke Adam up at four in the morning. I was feeling overwhelmed, and I hadn't slept at all. I said to him, 'You've got to give me more help. I can't get up this morning and, if I don't get up, you won't know what to give Jimmy for breakfast or what to pack in his lunch.' Adam looked at me and said, 'You must be depressed or something.' For a minute I thought, maybe that's the problem. I'm just crazy. Then I got mad. I said, 'I'm not crazy or emotionally disturbed, damn it, I need more help. You've got to do more!' He turned over and said, 'I'll try.'"You have to understand, in my family, being good meant doing what was expected. If you complained, there was something wrong with you. It still feels that way to me. When I do anything for myself I say to myself, 'this must be bad.' When I get mad, I feel crazy. If I need anybody or want anything for myself, I feel bad.""Does anything that you do ever make you feel good?" we asked her."I only think about how good I am as a mother. But it doesn't run through my head to think I'm a good person. Like in the dream, I'm always feeling panic that I can never do enough, never get it done. Sometimes I get furious about all this pressure that's on me. Yet I know if I express that, I'm going to make more work for myself. So I just keep doing what has to be done. I feel I have a moral obligation to see that certain things are taken care of.""Doesn't Adam help at all?" we keep asking her. "Certainly he would do more if you did less and expected more from him.""Sometimes it's hard for me to took to Adam for emotional support or help. It's hard for me to trust that it will really be there. Often I'll send Jimmy to Adam for something, and he'll run back saying, 'Daddy's too busy, Daddy doesn't want to do it.' Adam is busy. But sometimes it's just hopeless with men. One day I was entertaining people from his office. I was getting ready and he was out playing tennis. When he got back, I asked him if he would make the coffee. He said, 'I don't know how to make coffee.' So I said, 'Well, then, go down and put the wash in the dryer for me.' He said, 'I'm not sure which clothes go in which load.' A few days later, I'd decided I'd had...