The Tyranny of the Shoulds

By Charlotte Sheridan, Featured Writer.

How often do we do things because we feel we should? Once a month, once a week, every day? If we look closely enough, we may find too many of our decisions are driven by expectations. These are not things we want to do. These are things we feel we should do.

It’s hard to admit it, but we might make a momentous decision based on remarks our parents made when we were 12. Choices on what to study, where to live, who to marry… may be centred on the views of our friends, our work colleagues or our community.

“The Tyranny of the Shoulds” is a phrase psychoanalyst Karen Horney coined in the 1950s. She believed we split ourselves between our idealised self and our real self. We bounce between what we are and what we believe we “should be.” We’re forever beating ourselves up when we remember our failings, weaknesses and foibles, bumping into the same “shoulds,” like a fish in a bowl with a short memory. It’s an eternal battle for perfection.

These “shoulds” can be monumental: “should I stay in this job, even it makes me really miserable?” Or they can be minute: “should I offer to buy another round of drinks?” We get so used to all the shoulds that we forget they aren’t our first choices. We’ve lost touch with why we work in healthcare (because our teacher once told us it was a good career); that we’re trying to lose weight (because our friends think we should); that we’re planning to have kids (because it’s weird not to…. isn’t it?).

We’re driven by the social expectations, forever chasing this ideal self. We fall into this trap because we’ve lost sight of who we really are. We’re no longer content with our real self. We’re too worried about what other people think. We end up tumbling into the same “should holes” all the time. You may have come across the poem Autobiography in Five Short Chapters by Portia Nelson (featured in the book There's a Hole in My Sidewalk: The Romance of Self-Discovery).

Chapter One
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I fall in.
I am lost . . . I am helpless.
It isn’t my fault . . .
It takes forever to find a way out.

Chapter Two
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don’t see it.
I fall in again.
I can’t believe I am in this same place. But it isn’t my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.

Chapter Three
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I see it there.
I still fall . . . it’s a habit . . . but,
My eyes are open.
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.

Chapter Four
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I walk around it.

Chapter Five
I walk down another street.

If this sounds like you, don’t worry… you’re not alone in this world of “shoulds”. I’ve interviewed over one hundred people going through transition – in their work, relationships or life. The word “should” came up over 100 times in these conversations. Shoulds also hide beneath other words. “Ought”, “must”, “duty” and “obligation” also appeared over 80 times.   

One of my interviewees worked in education for years but wanted to break into acting. “For most of my life, I've been caught up in what I should do versus what I want to do. I hate that word should. I ‘shouldn't do this, I should do that’ instead of what I want to do. I'm still struggling with that today.”

She would like to move into acting full-time but worries it’s a really tough life. When I asked what helps her stay calm, she talked about a number of things, including meditation. But then she said “I don't do it as often as I should.” More helpings of shoulds.

Another interviewee worked in finance where everyone was expected to do extremely long hours. “It’s a crazy, crazy way to work. Nobody should be doing it.” She said there were stories of colleagues having unexpected heart attacks. “People collapsing on the stairs because they've worked too hard.” These were normal stories that weren’t strange to the people around her at work. She started to think “this is madness. We are killing ourselves.”

One person I spoke to encountered resentment when she got pregnant. “The idea of having a career and having children was me being greedy.” The first should: choose one or the other, she can’t have both. She also encountered objections too. “You should stay at home and look after that child. Having a child and giving it to somebody else to look after while you're at work? That's absolutely unacceptable.” The second should: she ought to do all the childcare.

Another interviewee was pigeonholed all the time in his organisation. He was always being asked to work on things he wasn’t interested in or qualified to do. His co-workers said “you've got a law background, you're the person we should be asking to do this.” But he doesn’t have a law degree, just a short amount of training. He feels it was their way of “passing the buck and giving me stuff that they should be doing themselves.” Shoulds both ways – his and theirs.

Someone else became very ill with stress because of all his shoulds. “I was that proverbial square trying to fit into the circle and trying to force myself in because that's what I felt I should be doing.” He’s much better now, but it’s been a long road to recovery.  When I asked him what advice he might give his younger self about work he said “do something that fits you better. You don't have to be following this role, that expectation, even if it's a self-imposed expectation of what you should do through life. And what success means can be in very, very different forms - it’s better if it's something that fits you inside. That's what I’d tell myself.”

Some of this is about belonging. We worry that if we go against the flow, we’ll be thrown out of our social groups, out of our families. But sometimes we need to swim up-river if we want to do magical and wonderful things in our lives. What I like about Portia Nelson’s “hole in the sidewalk” is that she’s saying it isn’t inevitable that we fall in every time. We can learn to spot the holes before they trip us up.

To avoid the “Tyranny of the Shoulds”, it’s helpful to be truly honest with ourselves. First work out what things we’re doing out of obligation. Next make a decision. Ask what are we prepared to carry on doing and what do we want to stop? If we decide to stop some of the shoulds, then we’ve taken back control. If we choose to continue, it’s still our decision to do so.

It’s useful to do this quite often. Review how much of our lives are about shoulds. Then check what we’re willing to continue vs. what we want to stop. If we make this part of our routine, if we do this often enough, then we’ll see the holes up ahead. Better still, we might even walk down a different street.

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By Charlotte Sheridan, Featured Writer.

I’m Charlotte and I'm a writer and coaching psychologist. I help people find meaning, purpose and direction, so they can make real shifts in their lives. In 2020 I interviewed over 100 people going through change and 72 hours of conversation has given me a fantastic research base for my weekly blog, Spoon by Spoon.

I'll be writing and podcasting about career psychology and how our work can help us feel well and happy but can also impact our mental health. If you’re at a crossroads in your own career or life check out my website here to see if coaching could help you too.