WRITING in the 70s, a psychologist called Kahler found that each one of us has set ingrained patterns which run underneath many of our ways of thinking and behaving. He called these patterns “driver behaviours” and gave them catchy names that pretty much sum up the pattern they describe. Getting to know your drivers is a good route into self care, read through the drivers below and see which ones feel familiar to you.

The Be Perfect Driver

You might read the title and already have an inkling that this might be you. If you have this driver you are going to be somebody who has grown up needing things to be just so. Little details, achievements, the expectations you have for yourself are important. It might be that you consider yourself house proud with everything in its place, you might get caught up in getting small things perfect and then struggle to complete the bigger picture, you might get overwhelmed by detail or place such high expectations on yourself that they feel crippling and anxiety provoking. 

Don't get me wrong, this driver can be really helpful as long as it’s kept in balance and doesn’t start causing you anxiety. The be perfect can often be accompanied by a critical internal voice, one that keeps pushing us to do better. If this is you, start to notice when your be perfect kicks in, let yourself know that you are good enough, that good enough doesn’t have to be perfect, try and ease off the self criticism and move towards having a bit of compassion for yourself.

The Please Others Driver 

People with a “please others “ will put the needs of others before their own, they can be popular, the type of person you want to have around, they listen to your jokes, go the extra mile to be helpful and can be counted on in a crisis.

What’s happening behind the scenes is often far from healthy: For the person with a please others driver they are forgetting or denying their own needs, keeping their own potency pushed down so they can focus on the other. Please others can fear the conflict and loss of others if they don’t tow the line, they can often feel secretly resentful of their relationships.

If you recognise this driver, it’s important that you start asking for what you need from others and take note of what you really want for yourself. Through making yourself  important you start to feel “seen” by other people and less resentful.

The Try Hard Driver 

The “try hard” will go at things full force but get bored, frustrated or feel like they are failing half way through and give up. The self deception is in the word “try “, it really means you will have a go but probably fail. This can set up a vicious cycle where the person feels they let themselves down all the time and this in turn undermines their confidence and makes them give up.

If this is you, try to change your language, avoid the word “try” and instead make a firmer commitment with your words. Watch what you take on, make sure you don’t also have a please others driver and are saying yes to things that you just can’t do.

The Be Strong Driver 

We often see this driver in men, in fact it underpins what we now call toxic masculinity. If you have this driver you will be very critical of your feelings, phrases like “pull yourself together”  “No point crying over spilt milk” are all examples of the “be strong driver”. This driver keeps your emotions locked in, you don’t have permission to feel your feelings and in turn you can become annoyed when others get emotional around you, you are far more comfortable when people keep their feeling to themselves. 

The problem with this driver is that it causes us to disconnect with our feelings and when we force our feelings to run underground they can play havoc, popping back up as low mood or feelings of numbness. 

If this is you, start to see emotions as useful things that are essential for wellbeing.

The Hurry Up

If this is you it’s likely you are very fast paced. You might find you speak/eat quickly, you can fit hundreds of things in your day and you get frustrated when people are slower than you. As with the others drivers, this driver can be helpful until it gets out of kilter and you become so fast and dysregulated that anxiety looms on the horizon.

If this is you, slow down! It’s going to take practice, you will need to gradually expose yourself to tolerating slow, idle periods.

Catching your drivers in action is a great way to improve your wellbeing!