Things like that don’t happen to people like me ~ challenging the snake

‘Things like that don’t happen to people like me’ is a thought that wrong-foots so many of us throughout life’s journey that it might easily be coined as a syndrome and added to a diagnostic manual.

It is a creepy customer too – so insidious that challenging it rarely happens outside of the confines of therapy or while reading pages written by psychology moguls urging readers to break habits.

Ironically, this particular mental snake will often rear its head or sleep in the jungle of your unconscious when life presents a really glittering opportunity – the kind necessitating a choice between two proverbial paths…

Perhaps it’s an opening at an organisation you would love to work for, the prospect of taking time off-grid to travel, a competition with the promise of reward and further support …pursuing someone who might just turn out to be a life-partner.

At this point, the change-averse or unconfident among us will find a million logical reasons why the glittering opportunity can’t possibly work, and that snakish thought winds a tighter grip on life in the present and the future.

‘Things like that don’t happen to people like me’ is also a highly controversial position to cling to – not because it warrants a reality check (what steps can you take to make it untrue?) but because it is often a position reinforced by those we love. By nature, the idea is steeped in cultural hang-ups passed down and sideways between our families, friends and communities.

I personally think that, although not uniquely British, People Like Me’ does thrive in the remains of the British class system and the economic categories Brits have fallen into since the age of steam and coal.

So many of us brought up by the working class babies of the war generation and the war generation itself, will be familiar with stock phrases such as ‘Don’t get your hopes up,’ ‘Don’t tell her that, she’ll get a fat head,’ and indeed ‘Things like that don’t happen to people like us.’

And in Britain, historically, there have been many good reasons to believe that love, wealth, success or self-expression were prohibited to certain individuals and groups. A girl growing up in a family of factory workers in the nineteenth century would be hard-pressed to develop a career as an international Geologist. The daughter of 1950s aristocrats would likely face being disowned if marrying ‘beneath’ her into trade.

Happily, social mobility has evolved in leaps and bounds since and organisations such as The Social Mobility Foundation, and The Sutton Trust are trying to both enable it and measure progress.

Much of this work is about the education system – trying to get young people from lower income backgrounds into universities that will give them the edge in a competitive job market, and result in better representation from all walks of society at leadership level.

When I was eleven, my Dad, who left school at fifteen to work in the same factory as his parents and siblings, was in the final stages of retraining as a Further Education teacher. Timing would have it that the private school he was gaining experience at was holding its entrance exams that Summer, and it was suggested I have a stab at gaining a Grant Maintained place.

Navigating school alongside girls with broader, and more impressive life experiences was difficult. I didn’t go on foreign holidays, eat out at restaurants or buy high-street fashion. But the cultural and critical knowledge I gained helped me navigate bigger life challenges, such as how to make a living in the pandemic.

Women like myself and the young women I’ve worked with have benefited from the UK’s education system in ways that have opened doors previously unopened by parent-guardians, grandparents and sometimes great grandparents, and it was arguably the previous Labour Government’s focus on: Education, Education, Education that accelerated this trend.

But that doesn’t mean that cultural beliefs die easily. Despite having waded through barriers to do things most would consider gossip-worthy, I catch myself thinking there are still specific limits to what I’m allowed based on my background, age, appearance – you name it. I don’t imagine I’m alone.

Some of this is simply down to the world of rejection we open ourselves up to when we pop into the world and start screaming, and some of it is certainly a learned response to the rejections of a particular enclave of people and places – the UK arts and media particularly being both hugely oversubscribed with talent and also reliant on personal relationships in the way it is organised and evolves.

This isn’t just a problem contained within each of us. It is delicately related to how others see and interact with us, and these two things can tell very different stories to our sensitive brains.  How often have you assumed that a new acquaintance or colleague didn’t rate you only to find in conversation, months later, that it wasn’t the case at all?

While travelling through the media as a younger woman, I was at times under the illusion that peers who presented as more middle-class, confident and stylish, in the kind of expensive-casual way the industry is known for, could X-ray right through me and identify all the cultural differences, or specifically, my personal balance-sheet of effort versus success.

The smoke and mirrors of ‘Things like that don’t happen to people like me’ is so dependent on seeing and hearing signs that reinforce this belief, even if reality tells a different story.

While becoming an international human rights lawyer may still be an insurmountable mountain to climb for a working-class girl in the Amazon, or training as a ballet dancer may not be an option for someone growing up in an orthodox religious group in the UK, within the culture of popular British society, we can do many things, independently, to knock people like me’ syndrome on the head.

Recognising it…as the thought snakishly slips into the monologue of daily life is one of them. Seeking out the stories of women such as Vivienne Westwood, Angela Rayner, Oprah Winnfrey, who have sufficiently challenged it to lead remarkable lives is another…