Useless Skills! What's Yours?
The Things You Mastered That Now Ruin Your Relationships
Every adult I work with is haunted by one thing: a childhood coping skill they still believe is a personality trait.
We all have useless skills.
No, not cup stacking or whistling through your teeth — though, let’s be honest, those are borderline useless too.
Except riding a unicycle — that one definitely won my wife over! Thanks Dad.
I’m talking about the emotional kind.
The ones you developed growing up that once kept you safe… and now quietly (and unconsciously) sabotage every adult relationship you have.
And if you’re sitting there wondering, “Matt, how do these useless qualities even get there?” — buckle up.
Where Useless Skills Are Born
Quick takeaway: Useless skills are childhood survival strategies masquerading as adult relationship patterns.
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There are two things every child is hardwired with that shape their internal world:
They interpret everything personally. The world isn’t happening around them — it’s happening to them.
They create ways to control an uncontrollable environment to calm their nervous system. In doing so, they form magical associations between their thoughts, feelings, and what they think keeps them safe.
Kids don’t choose these strategies. They simply adapt. They watch, absorb, mimic, internalize. They model the physical and emotional behaviors of the very people raising them.
You learned to stay quiet to avoid triggering a volatile parent.
You learned that over-explaining kept the peace.
You learned that perfection kept the chaos at bay.
Or you did the opposite to redirect attention from someone else’s pain:
You became the jokester to cheer up a sad parent.
You acted out more than a sibling to finally feel in control.
You discovered that when you stopped eating because you were sad, your parents stopped fighting — so your hunger strike became your emotional superpower.
These were all brilliant survival strategies…
Until they weren’t.
From Useful to Useless…
Here’s the cruel joke: what worked in your family of origin usually fails spectacularly in adulthood.
I mean, really tragically.
You mastered emotional camouflage — now no one truly knows you.
You became an expert at anticipating everyone’s needs — now no one anticipates yours.
You became self-sufficient — now you feel alone even with people you love.
These are useless skills: once necessary forms of emotional self-preservation that now block intimacy, connection, and differentiation.
And I’ve seen it a thousand times:
The childhood caretaker grows into the parent who emotionally blackmails their kids while genuinely believing they’re being “selfless.” They don’t understand why their kids don’t praise them for the sacrifices they made… all while their volatility and insecurity sit right under the surface.
The Family Training Program You Never Signed Up For
Bring back your childhood imagination for a second and picture this…
You grew up in a home where no one listened. Every attempt to express yourself was met with interruption, dismissal, or “you’re too sensitive.”
So you learned a skill — silence.
You learned to guard your feelings instead of share them.
You learned that vulnerability was unsafe.
Fast-forward to adulthood:
You’re in a relationship with someone who actually wants to know what you feel. But your body has other plans.
You freeze.
You withdraw.
You overthink instead of express.
You internalize everything until resentment becomes your emotional roommate.
That silence?
That’s your useless skill — once protective, now restrictive.
The Hidden Problem: Outdated Software
Your unconscious doesn’t update itself automatically. It runs on the same broken emotional operating system you downloaded from your family decades ago.
Your central nervous system isn’t trying to ruin your life — it’s trying to protect you. The more intense the trauma or conditioning, the more rigid its calibration becomes.
So in adulthood, every fight, misunderstanding, and emotional misfire becomes a debugging session. Your system checks: Does the old strategy still work?
Bad news: it doesn’t.
And here’s the part most people don’t realize:
Unlearning a useless skill often feels like dying. Your nervous system panics, anticipating danger that isn’t real. That anticipatory anxiety is simply your old programming refusing to uninstall.
But it has to go! It feels like throwing away a nostalgic t-shirt that make you look like a homeless person in your own home…
How to Spot Your Useless Skills
Pro tip: If it feels automatic, anxious, or resentful — it’s probably a useless skill.
Start with your automatic reactions:
Do you shut down when someone disagrees with you?
Do you rush to fix emotions instead of sitting with them?
Do you over-explain to prove your good intentions?
Do you feel guilty for saying no?
Do you take responsibility for everyone’s mood?
Are you default negative because disappointment feels unbearable?
Each of these is a neon sign pointing to a useless skill.
You learned it for a reason.
You repeat it out of habit.
And habits require awareness before they can be changed.
Family of Origin Meets Feedback Loops
Family systems are emotional boot camps. You didn’t learn communication from school — you learned it from watching your parents fight, avoid, repair, or implode.
If your parents avoided conflict, you learned conflict = danger.
(Magical association!)
So in adulthood, you avoid confrontation at all costs…
Until one random Tuesday when you explode like a volcano that’s been dormant for 1,000 years.
More bad news…
Your avoidance teaches your partner the same thing your parents taught you — that your feelings don’t matter. You unknowingly recreate the very wound you swore you’d never pass on.
And because life has a dark sense of humor, your partner may have their own useless skills that fit perfectly with yours.
Ahhh true loves kiss! More like kiss of death!
Now you’ve got two wounded inner children triggering each other while the adult versions sit in my office saying:
“We don’t know how it got this bad.”
It is really fun for me but brutal for them.
Reflection: Upgrading Your Emotional Operating System
If you really want to grapple your useless quality ask yourself:
What skills did I master growing up that once protected me?
How do those same skills limit me now?
What feedback loops am I recreating — and which belief fuels them?
Who taught me that this behavior was necessary?
What emotion am I scared to feel if I unlearn this?
What magical associations may I have unintentionally created and now are a strong belief I hold?
Naming the useless skill is the first step toward neutralizing it.
You stop reacting like the child you were and start responding like the adult you’re becoming.
ORRRRRRR
You can blame everyone else, take little to no responsibility, justify all of your reactions, shame others into massaging your narrative mildly into an existence and keep getting the same shitty results!
YOU DO YOU!
The Goal Isn’t Perfection — It’s Differentiation
You don’t evolve by shaming your younger self.
You evolve by understanding them.
Every maladaptive coping mechanism was an act of intelligence — a child trying to protect, connect, or survive.
Your job now is to update those instincts.
To stop being a product of your upbringing and start being the author of your emotional life.
Because the real sign of maturity isn’t how much you’ve achieved —
It’s how many useless skills you’ve unlearned.
Checkout this other article for more information regarding differentiation
Are You Loving Your Family or Just Losing Yourself?
Most people think love is about being as close as possible. The more connected, the better, right?
Try This Week
A small shift repeated consistently rewrites your entire emotional operating system.**
Notice one moment where a useless skill shows up — staying quiet, overthinking, people-pleasing, rescuing. Pause. Ask:
“What would the grown-up version of me do here?”
Then do that.
Congratulations — you’re updating your software.