Today’s TRAINING: Anatomy of An Alpha, Part 2
What Do Alphas Want?
I could easily give you a list that would seem very obvious to you: to love and be loved, to have money and travel. Well, duh right?
I’m going to weave you a tale, a tad complex, to explain our dark side. This is part of our continual struggle for love, so hang in there while I untangle this for you. The main actors are Freedom (big, known want), Choice (the unsung hero) and Trust (our super heroine’s weakness).
We’ll introduce these folks first and then I’ll show you how in the pursuit of what we want most, many Alphas commit a crime that is always punished. It’s why we struggle.
Fair warning, you won’t like what I explain but you’ll see how it fits. Like any large group of powerful people, the history of how we came to power is not very pretty. If you’ve got wine, drink now!
Meet Freedom
When you peel back the layers most Alphas find or say that they want Freedom. Freedom to travel, to love, to be creative, to try new things, to solve problems our own way. Much like my Alpha symbol, the American Eagle, Freedom is what we want. Well guess what? Freedom never exists without CHOICE.
Freedom and choice are pancakes and syrup. Choice is a stack of perfect fluffy hotcakes (panencooken in Amsterdam) coated with the warm syrup of Freedom. Delicious. Take away the choice and all you have is a plate of sugar – not so good anymore.
Choice Enters
I have discovered our biggest want that we don’t put a proper name on is….CHOICE.
We want to chance to CHOOSE our everything and anything. From things as small as where our cars get serviced to our employees and our mates. The ability to choose makes us feel safe. Gives us power. Let’s us feel in control and creates that freedom we dream of. Choice is luxury.
Alphas want power, control, safety and freedom. The lynchpin to all these is choice. Power without the ability to choose anything is like being a figurehead leader, not worth much. If you cannot choose between one thing and another, being in control is meaningless also. You can’t even enjoy your feeling of safety if you aren’t free to choose a danger.
Yep ladies, it is CHOICE that Alphas really want. Unfortunately, CHOICE is also what screws us. Stay tuned for how.
Hello Trust, Who Are You?
To feel safe with others choices, you need trust. Well fudge!
We don’t have it. The trait that Alphas are weak in is TRUST. We do NOT trust others easily or at all. (We’ll talk about where this comes from in the Forging of An Alpha – Our Origin Story, in Part 3.) Life has proved other people untrustworthy.
It gets a little worse – we are all taught that if you first trust God, everything else will work out. One tinsy, tiny problemo. No one told you that in order to trust God, you must first trust YOURSELF. Can you skip that step? Nope. No and Hell No. The order you’ve been taught to do this in makes it VERY hard to do. You have to learn to trust yourself FIRST because only after that can you really trust God.
Imagine God as a car manufacturer and you are a car. How do you learn to trust the manufacturer of a line of cars? You experience and trust the CAR first, then you extend that trust to the car’s maker. No one decides to trust the new bakery until after they trust some of the bread!
Sell Me Some Trust
Ahh, but we DON’T trust ourselves. That puts a real crimp in the benefits that flow from fully trusting God. What to do? What to DO? Well. Alphas are fixers, remember? We promptly look around to see who or what can FIX this pesky “self-trust thing” for us.
We don’t believe we have to fix it ourselves. We’ve heard gurus tell us it’s an inside job – but hell, we don’t trust them either! We decide that if we can get someone ELSE to declare our car wonderful and assure us that our bread is fabulous, then WE can start believing too.
We Need Love NOW (So Just Give Me Some)
If we can just get someone else to love us, THEN we can love us. More than just Alphas make this logic based mistake. It attempts to rewrite the law as “As without, so within” (crud, it was even hard to TYPE that, it’s so wrong!).
We need that love. We need it now. We are starving for it. Someone needs to trust and love us as soon as possible. We deserve it. We earned it (Yep, gonna talk about earning love in Part 3 too).
Alphas Don’t Trust Others, So We Control Them
So if you are keeping score, Alphas don’t trust ourselves, don’t trust others and though we want to, we don’t really trust God. Since we trust NO ONE, we find it necessary to tell everyone what to do. We make their choices FOR them to try to ensure our own happiness and safety.
Alpha Challenges: Low Trust Breeds High Control
We are controlling and bossy out fear of what other people will choose if we don’t “help them” choose US and our needs.
We are a danger to many relationships (family, employees, clients, friends and lovers) because we demand and fiercely protect OUR choice while at the same time, trying to ensure we are able to guide THEIRS.
It is our failure to trust that leads to our need to control and control always removes choice.
The challenge of an Alpha is to understand that so long as she controls and removes the choice of others, by Universal Law, life will attempt to control and remove HER choice.
This is the eternal struggle we fight. Left uncoached, most Alphas tend to establish semi-benevolent Dictatorships instead of relationships. It is why we are often better at work than at home.
How Alphas Evolved Into Rescuers
It is tiring to always fight for control, so we subconsciously attract those to us who will willingly submit in exchange for our protection. The ego is proud of this toxic and temporary fix. What if someone GAVE UP their choice? What if they LET us have it? Then we aren’t to be blamed. We didn’t TAKE it. Perfect!
Enter Victims and Rescuers. Alphas are Rescuers because we NEED victims – people who do NOT want to exercise any responsibility. They are happy to surrender their responsibility, i.e., CHOICE, to us in exchange for our care. Alphas, if they look closely, often discover many they have called friends are closer to projects, wards and dependents.
We Often Rescue Instead of Love
Oh, this does suck. I discovered during my miscarriage (when I FINALLY needed my best friend) that notwithstanding my 15 year friendship investment, being there for me was too hard for her. It broke my heart to finally admit I was her rescuer more than friend. I’d never stopped to look or I’d have seen it sooner. I enabled her. Alphas are on permanent give and that tends to attract the needy like ants to sugar.
We are protectors, providers, caretakers, masters, rulers and she-who-must-be-obeyed. This, understandably drives off true Alpha men and leaves men who are weaker than us. Men who are often passive-aggressive. They give up their choice but it still pisses them off periodically, so they make us pay for that in small and horribly aggravating ways.
We do not trust that we are worthy of love. Our confidence is not as deep as most believe. Alphas are women afraid that no one really loves us as we are, so much as loves what we can do or give. So, we DO and GIVE.
An Alphas greatest need is choice and her greatest dream is to be choosen, safe and loved as her true self. After years of struggling at this, we are driven us to find the right combination of people to rescue, because we believe these victims “choose us” and are happy to keep doing so.
Sadly, that’s not true. Victims resent rescuers and they are likely right to do so. Why?
Alphas enable victims to stay weak so that we have people guaranteed to not leave us. Consciously? No. But subconsciously? Oh yeah. This our dark, unseemly underbelly. We make our daughters Alphas and are sons, weaker than us, so they will love us because they always need us.
All this Ick Came from Choice?
Now you know how what we want – choice for ourselves – combines with our lack of trust to lead us to try controlling others’ choices out of fear.
You see we LOVE having choice ourselves, we just don’t really want those AROUND us to have it. Yes. I just said that.
Alphas do not want people in relationships with us to make choices AFTER they choose us, because we do not trust them to choose us again. Because you don’t trust their choices, you don’t want them to CHOOSE.
You dream of relationships with true equals but fear that too.
You want to love and be loved just as you are Alpha. Your challenge is to allow others to have their choice to love or NOT love you. Almost all common Alpha problems come from our attempts to control situations or other people to guarantee the love that we don’t trust is coming. (Thanks Mom & Dad!)
Now you know the crime we commit – control. Is our story dark? Maybe. Truth is stranger than fiction they say. I shared it without sugar coating so you can understand your deep wounding and why beneath it all, when you are alone, you don’t like yourself as much as you say.
I have been guilty of all of these sins and I am now an Alpha redeemed, happy, heart based and loving. I have broken my Rescuer cycle. You CAN have a life without struggle, away from control. I am proof and I love helping other Alphas have this too because you are worthy of love.
Next time, Part 3 Alpha Origins and Alpha Self-Sabotage!
a Women Entrepreneurs How to Stop Struggling in Your Relationships, Own Your Potential, Build Your Business and BALANCE IT ALL.
– so here they are: