On survival rules, borrowed courage, and what it means to finally stop getting back in the car.
He told me I had beautiful eyes.
I told him I got them from my mother, slid my sunglasses back on, and watched the Uber driver glance at me in the rearview mirror, wondering how long I had until I would get back to the hotel. My husband and I had flown in for a wedding to Lake Como, he was the best man, and I was alone in the backseat, taking in the view and sightseeing while he was getting ready.
The driver asked if I wanted to stop and get a photo in front of George Clooney’s house. I hike past Clooney’s house back in LA, so it wasn’t exactly a bucket list moment, but when in Lake Como, sure. He pulled over. I got out. He took the photo.
Then he asked if we could take a selfie together.
I mean, it’s a weird request, but why not?
And that’s when he tried to kiss me. On a cliff. On an overlook. In a foreign country.
I stepped back and said, what are you doing? Stop.
He said: Your husband wouldn’t mind.
I told him that yes, actually, my husband would very much mind and that I minded too. I felt completely violated. And then, underneath that, something else: powerless.
Here’s the thing: I had my phone in my hand. My husband would have answered. He was the best man, yes, but he would have come. I knew that.
I didn’t call him because a rule older than my marriage told me not to. Don’t be inconvenient. Don’t be dramatic. Don’t be a problem. Handle it. You’re a badass. You can manage this.
Instead, I stood on that cliff with my internal wiring system running in the background on autopilot.
So, I got back in the car. I was on high alert, but I told myself I wasn’t going to ruin the wedding or cause drama by being dramatic. I minimized what had happened the way I had been taught to minimize a thousand other troublesome feelings in childhood.
And the rationalizing started, for me, this is a form of self-protection. The wedding started in 90 minutes. Ubers are hard to find in Lake Como on a summer weekend. My husband had a job to do. I told myself I was safe. I told myself nothing would happen. I told myself I could handle it, because I have been handling unsettling things my entire life.
I grew up in a house where the police came regularly. Danger was a part of our everyday lives, and I became desensitized to it. I learned fast how to read a room, how to make myself safe, how to become the solution to someone else’s emergency. I learned that my needs were a disruption and inconvenient. So I learned to ignore the danger signals.
I have a brother who struggles with severe mental illness. This past Thanksgiving, I stood between him and my stepfather while my brother raged. I put my body in the gap, so that they wouldn’t hurt one another, thinking I was untouchable. Thinking I could handle it. Maybe even fix it.
That’s not bravery. I know that. That’s a kid who learned how to survive, who wanted the fighting to stop and for everyone to get along. The problem, I am not a kid anymore.
These rules were genius once. They kept me alive. They kept the peace. They made me the person everyone could count on, the one who didn’t flinch, the one who handled it. And they followed me, into my marriage, into my career, onto a cliff in Italy, running so quietly I didn’t even clock them in real time.
When I told my husband what happened, he called Uber and got the driver fired. Then he looked at me and said: I don’t care what I’m doing, nothing is more important than you. Call me. Always call me.
I heard every word.
I couldn’t feel them.
That’s the thing about old beliefs. They don’t update just because someone says the right thing. They don’t dissolve the moment you intellectually know better. I have coaching certifications. I have done years of work on myself. I teach this framework for a living.
Narrative → Label → Rule → Belief.
Something happens. The mind names it. A rule forms. The rule calcifies into a belief you carry everywhere, into boardrooms, into relationships, into the backseats of cars in foreign countries.
Here’s what the old system told me: nothing happened. I backed away. I said no. I got in the car, made the wedding, held it together. Nobody was bothered. Nobody had to interrupt their day for me. That’s a win. Except I was afraid. I was shaking on the inside the whole drive back. There was danger, I just had decades of practice making it invisible.
And that’s exactly the problem.
The repression is the event. The minimizing is the cost. Every time I’ve said I’m fine when I wasn’t, every time I’ve made myself manageable so someone else could stay comfortable, every time I’ve asked of myself what I would never in a million years ask of my own child, that was something happening. That was the wound.
I am not that kid anymore. I don’t have to survive or save or fix anyone but myself. And the work, the real work, is learning to feel that truth, not just know it.
That’s what we’re going to do together this July in my Free to Lead workshop. We are going to look at our old operating system, what it says, how it was created, and where it keeps you in survival.
A Practice for This Week
Think of a recent moment when you talked yourself out of asking for help, speaking up, or making a fuss, even when part of you really wanted to.
Trace it back through the four layers:
Narrative: What did you tell yourself in the moment?
Label: What did that story make you?
Rule: What rule was running underneath?
Belief: What does that rule say you deserve or don’t?
You don’t have to do anything with it but notice. Noticing becomes the awareness that causes change.
The driver was quiet for the rest of the ride. I sat behind him and looked out the window at the lake.
I was angry. I was shaken. I was already coaching myself back to regulated so I could show up for the wedding.
And I was, if I’m honest, a little bit grateful, because I know what it means when the old patterns surface. It means there’s still work to do. It means I haven’t arrived somewhere final. It means I’m still in it.
We all are.
With love and some righteous Italian fury,
Gretchen
