I always felt safe playing this role as my bonding priority. I used to distract my mother by
pretending to have an unlimited capability to solve her complex problems and make
her forget her misery. As a traumatized person, she felt delighted and encouraged
me to play more, forgetting how manipulative this reaction can be. This way of managing
others’ communication has made me assume capabilities I never had. On the
bright side, it evoked my analytical and investigative interests at a very early age. Gradually, I was uncapable of having small talk with classmates and spontaneous conversations with coworkers. Everyone I met became a potential “client” that I might accommodate. I eventually was able to help my mother to marry again after
her painful divorces, support my brother to handle his heart surgery, and help
my father to remarry. I also learned a lot about objectivity and bias and became a successful instructor who teaches resolving conflicts techniques and mastering negotiations.
As I reflect onthese events today, I can appreciate the role of pain created by unrealistic circumstances in making me move forward in my life in a survival way. As a father, I paid a lot of attention about how to distinguish between being raised by abusive parents and raising responsiblechildren. I was able to notice that accommodating children demanded that I needed to avoid needing them to satisfy my urges and take responsibility for my
own problems away from involving them. This realization took me on a journey of
recovery and offered me a chance to grow up. I kept being an analyzing
specialist while parenting, and this has made me a very critical spouse. I also
turned my spouse communication to a fixing project and dedicated years to making
her become a trauma free person. The problem of playing an accommodator role is
how the person who play it assume authority over others with a justification of
“Everyone want to get better, and I have a good idea to help them do that”.
This process starts inside the accommodator brain without having the consent of
others who are entitled to choose to change. As for me, helping my spouse was a
survival to what I thought necessary to make her love me. This survival agenda has prevented me fromfeeling relaxed around my own life partner. I can see now how complicated our conversations are and made me quote her more than she would accept. How hard did I make her feel about being silly around my analytical attitude of every
word, every gesture she would innocently make. I gradually started to see how exhausting
being an accommodator is for both of us. We were fine and life was way more manageable in the absence of this obsolete approach.
I learned about accommodation coping mechanisms from an article that highlighted a collection of other avoiding reactions that a child learns and tends to repeat as an adult. Other reactions included being an overachiever, a pleaser, an escape artist, a fighter, a
victim, and a denier. I think I have had some of these reactions during my over
45 years of living. For example, I also played a fighter role at many jobs that
I worked in which made my daily routine a toxic dose of stress with little gain.
Sometimes I used to visualize historical figures while going through meetings
with my superiors. It was a painful way to achieve any meaningful results.
Empathizing with myself and understanding lack of resources I had as a child, has offered me a sense of tranquility. I also started recently to value more why I kept
holding to my accommodation approach and still find it attractive to use. My
journey of recovery from my childhood painful experiences was a game changer. I
found my authentic self-hiding behind the accommodator mask, waiting to release
its essence and become my favorite aspect to share with others. Being authentic
was scary as it meant holding words and face expressions that I used to play with
carefully to pretend my lack of basic needs of being accepted and valued. I
have not seen anyone in my upspring practicing. I assume everyone surrounding
me then was adapting to one of the above-mentioned reactions because of disappointment authenticity might bring in risk of losing resources. I was terminated from one job because of my authenticity. I also struggle financially for years due to
expressing my authentic self and ending several toxic relationships. I faced a
smearing campaign, and I felt alone. These hardships have taught me that
promoting authenticity concept is much easier than practicing it. Also, I began
to see how fragile my old network was and focused on rebuilding every aspect of
my life, brick by brick. This is not a nice story with a glorifying end to
amuse, it is a sincere narration of being naked in front of a life full of
uncertainties and luck. Six years of practicing mindfulness has taught me that.
Being able to resistfamiliarity for the sake of increasing quality is a struggle like no other. In my experience, accommodating society issues was another area that required my
mindful attention. When I was viewing tragedies of strangers as individuals and
groups alike, I developed this sensitivity about how much suffering other
people go through locally and globally. The more I became aware, the more I
felt helpless. This struggle was welcomed by many forces of change in society
and seemed a legitimate path to peruse. I developed my artistic expressions out
of paying attention to their varying manifestations and became a poet and a
story writer. However, accumulation of burden about how much wrong needs to be
right was suffocating me. Being aware of my accommodation’s state of mind
helped me to shift my perspective. Now, I see limitations of my resources as evidence
to let go of romanticizing false capacity and creating a new source of unnecessary
disappointment. Alternatively, I allocate time and other resources to
contribute to human society within my limited capacity in absence of any
expectations. I also remind myself regularly that limitation of understanding world
issues would always limit how I frame my contribution to improve it. These alternative
views of accommodation offered me a deep sense of salvation that I cherish and
hold now dearly.
