No one likes nagging and we get pretty tired of naggers as well. As a tool in a relational, social, connection based society, nagging has a limited ROI (return on investment) with diminishing returns which, when things dip into the negative, have dire consequences. All of which means that nagging works once in a great while, but if you do it all the time it becomes white noise and is ignored and if you escalate in order to have effect, the person you are nagging will retaliate and may come to dislike you and no longer interact with you which is usually the opposite of the point.
But take the relational, social, connection aspects out of the question and nagging becomes more effective because the negative consequences drop out. In fact this allows a new aspect of nagging to be revealed. In a social context ongoing nagging becomes white noise and it can be ignored. In a non-social context, nagging can outlast our ability to ignore it. In fact, its ongoing presence becomes a signal we eventually cannot ignore.
What I’m pointing to is the nagging that goes on inside you. Take nagging outside of the interpersonal (person to person) realm and it becomes an effect tool to get us to deal with the deep issues, the things that are most important and yet we continually refuse to face. Nagging comes from the facts that refuse to be silenced, the feelings that refuse to go away, the thing that you’ll get to someday which seems to trip you up each day no matter how much you shove it back. Nagging can drive you crazy because your brain and your will have decided to see the world in an edited form that doesn’t include this one piece, but the nagging keeps interrupting. The heart desires things to be one way, but the nagging won’t let the truth be hidden by wanting.
Nagging points us at the significant things which are holding us back in any given moment. Worse, it points to the fact that the distress and not quite right and pain and sadness, the frustration and anger and exhaustion are primarily self generated. The answer is usually not a magic wand, magic bullet, wish upon a start and your dreams come true kind of resolution. If it were we wouldn’t be attempting to not see it. But it is the way through, to get the nagging to Shut UP! And if things go on long enough, we may be driven to actually deal with the problem just to get relief.
So what’s nagging you?
