As the topic of what is or is not appropriate within civil discourse circulates the miasma of outrage that suffuses the Internet, I think on the days when I called for civil discourse within my smaller communities.
If you’re a fan of astrology, you might know that recently Uranus, the planet of revolutionary change and innovation, had until very recently spent the past seven years in Aries, the domain of self-assertion, leadership, and courageous and foolhardy impulsivity. As someone with Sun in Aries, I’ve come to appreciate that this sign carries with it a sort of perennial crankiness, impatience, and tendency to see disagreements or obstacles as a personal attack.
With this lens, I observe that Uranus in Aries presided over an era of increased mistrust and polarization, along with the increased politicization of identity. While this politicization has been widely noticed and critiqued on the Left—for example, the explosion in bespoke gender and sexual identities—the rise of “white identitarianism” and Men’s Rights activism on the Right, or the twin arising of “Blue Lives Matter” as an identity-based adversary of “Black Lives Matter,” suggests that the politicization of identity is not a unique feature of one political ideology.
Photo by Jonathan Harrison, courtesy of Unsplash
Perhaps there is relationship between so much emphasis on the validity and rights of identity and the Aries-flavored combativeness that has grown so much that jokes about a looming civil war feel more like gallows humor and less like referencing an absurd impossibilities. The language of “allyship” in identity-based movements carries this Aries flavor—a sense that we’re in a conflict, and you need to pick a side.
What seems noteworthy to me is that the language of allyship and identity-based conflicts places those in the position of allies in uncomfortable roles of practicing quiet discernment around ideological conflicts within those communities. There are valid yet conflicting guidelines in allyship, one for example being to trust and defer to those within the community that they know their experience; another being not to treat people within one identity group as a monolith who agree on everything.
Both of these are reasonable suggestions that are true for every human community—people are authorities on their own experiences, and there is always a diversity of opinion within groups. (In some groups that diversity gets tamped down under collective pressure for conformity, but you’ll find it coming out in unguarded moments of gossip or body-language.)
But for an ally who wants to support a particular community, at times they must decide which faction of a community to support. Any time a politicized identity gets put forth as though it has a coherent set of political interests and values, there’s going to be someone or many within that group who disagree and get let out of the picture. One might think of pro-war and anti-war veterans.
“Allyship” thus cannot be about uncritically and unequivocally supporting all members of one community. Within terms of politics and war, one’s allies are the people who are fighting against the same enemy. The Soviet Union and the United States were allies in World War II, and once they defeated their shared foe, became adversarial.
If I am to be an ally of a political community, then it behooves me to name the specific values, principles, and political goals that I want to achieve in alliance.
Without this personal work and distinction, without a sense of collective purpose, what we have are conflicting personal interests. That some of us lack that sense of discernment or ability to tolerate conflict is not necessarily a failing of the identity movements themselves—Black Lives Matter groups, for example, have advocated for white victims of police killings—but it does seem to get in the way of having honest conversations about what we’re for and what we need.
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If reality is a hallucination created by the brain from our environment, biological processes, and learning history, then one cannot escape the questions of whether one’s apprehension of reality is correct, and to what extent that matters. While our neurosystem is able to build a coherent sense of “ego” that believes itself to be consistent across time and experience, practice in self-observation leads us to begin to see all the inconsistencies and vacillations that occur throughout at day.
My personal favorite these days is making plans. When I make plans, I feel excited about them—but they’re far away. When it’s time to do the plans, some days I spend the morning hoping they’ll be canceled. If they’re not and I do the plans, I usually end up thankful that I did. In these sentences I’ve used “I” to denote the brain-body-bucket that had all these experiences, but with so much vacillation there does not seem to be a consistent character to that “I”.
At times our “I” becomes what Internal Family Systems would become “blended” with parts, each of whom have their own distinctive worlds and subpersonalities. That blending could be momentary or pervasive. At times I might be blended with a part that feels sensitive to rejection, and perceives in those around me all these signs of rejection. Maybe that part of me is right—these are little rejections. Or maybe it’s projecting its rejection fear onto others.
Either way, when that rejection-sensitive part runs the show, I’ll respond to these with all of my rejection “stuff.” These reactions often tend to foster greater experiences of rejection in me, either because they gravitate toward rejecting people or they wear down my loved ones into finally rejecting me. When in that rejection-sensitive part, we may have the same conversations with the same people, seeking the same reassurance that they’re not rejecting, but find the conversation never lands, which exhausts everyone.
These experiences of rejection, and all the thoughts and sensations that go with them, are in some sense actually occurring within the organism of the self. Whether the other person believes they are rejecting or not, the person “in” rejection experiences all the pain of it.
Where growth and maturation happens is whether that person can be with the pain but not identified as the pain—to see that what they feel is real and valid, but the story about the pain may not be. When we agree with the story, then we have to fix the story, but the story is not the pain. The story might be “My partner secretly hates me,” no matter how often the partner provides evidence to the contrary, until they get wearied of explaining themselves and show even the mildest moment of impatience that confirms the story for that part.
If we can be with the feeling without trying to fix the story, if we can get access to the consciousness that surrounds and is greater than the part, we are in touch with a greater selfhood that helps the pain of that part to move and heal. Perhaps this pain is activated by an actual rejection, perhaps not, but either way what we need to heal is presence and supportive people in our lives who can validate our feelings but give us space to work through the stories.
Jung often spoke of synchronicities, and the Jungian therapists I have worked with and admired often speak to these moments when we make contact with the greater Self and either heal or free ourselves from the complex, which seems to transform reality itself. After years of anger, I finally forgive my sibling, and then they call me out of the blue. I work through fear and decide I’m ready to step into power, and suddenly an opportunity arrives to do it.
Perhaps there is a mystical dimension of this, or perhaps having freed ourselves of that particular painful hallucination we are ready to see a greater field of reality. Perhaps these opportunities were already there and we weren’t ready to see it. Perhaps we live in a field of social energy and intuitively sense when openings arise. No matter what, it’s really cool when it happens.
Photo by Keagan Henman, courtesy of Unsplash
As the phenomena of “gaslighting” and “spiritual bypassing” become more popularly understood as a form of abuse, I find myself often reflecting on the relationship between these behaviors and the psychoanalytic defenses. Projection, repression, denial, bypassing, and other defenses may be said to be a form of self-gaslighting—constructing reality in a way that denies or mitigates certain troubling truths.
At the same time, these defenses lend themselves quite easily to deployment as gaslighting tools against people. I suspect that is one reason I see them less widely used in popular discourse. Popular connotations around the defenses are that such experiences are “not real” or not valid in a meaningful way. One can imagine the enlightened guru saying, “You’re just projecting your anger onto me!” after spending ten minutes telling you how shameful your behavior has been and how un-enlightened your objections are.
I notice that the intrapersonal, intrapsychic model of spiritual growth and development that seemed so prominent since the 1970s, which gave rise to The Secret, seems to be giving way in younger generations toward a more external attention to systems and abuses of power. Now talking about how freeing one’s self of a projection lead to a new job opportunity would be met with the valid counterpoint that focusing only on the internal process ignores the material systems in which one lives. To ignore this allows us too easily to blame people for “manifesting” their misfortunes and focus exclusively on the personal.
This is a view that Jung himself critiqued in his long essay “Answer to Job.” In this excerpt, Jung speaks of Job being allowed to suffer and have all of his wealth and family be destroyed, and then having his friends and family wonder what it was he must have done wrong to deserve such suffering:
“Job’s friends do everything in their power to contribute to his moral torments, and instead of giving him, whom God has perfidiously abandoned, their warm-hearted support, they moralize in an all too human manner, that is, in the stupidest fashion imaginable.”
There is no simple answer to whether one is projecting or being gaslit, at least not at present. In a sense, I believe we tend to project onto people who have something in them that we can “hang” that projection onto—meaning there is a little both/and. But then we could also say that to be gaslit, we must allow ourselves to receive the gaslighting—a little both/and.
That both/and is not wholly helpful in working through circumstances on the ground. If one is actively being gaslit, then stopping one’s internal gaslighting is a necessary and healthy step toward breaking away from the abusive relationship. If one is actively projecting, then recognizing the validity of one’s projections but also finding the psychic roots of the projection is a necessary and healthy step toward having a mature relationship with others.
We need both, and we need to fumble our way toward competency in both. We need validating, supportive, safe relationships, and we need internal self-awareness and ability to discern. We need to take risks in having scary communications, and we need clear boundaries. We need the awareness that we live in a context, and we need to remember that we only know that context through our subjectivity.
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Cosmology inform psychology. What we believe about the universe’s nature and purpose, if any, affects our base understanding of our own purpose and nature.
Before getting into a “nature versus nurture” digression, I simply want to say that the debate has been roundly dismissed as too reductive to be useful. Humans have a nature that is enculturated and those factors are constantly interacting with each other and pushing personal and collective evolutions.
Cosmology, then, is one of those cultural factors that comes out of an observation of the nature of the cosmos and the human, but also leads to teachings and practices that shape both the human and nature.
Mainstream religions appear to have a fairly established, unshakeable cosmology to those of us who do not pay very close attention. It is easy to paint with a broad brush and say, for example, Christianity has a very specific cosmology that one can understand by reading the Bible and taking it literally. This is, of course, specific to one subset of Christianity. Over the millennia in which the followers of Christ have been active, thinking about the nature, purpose, and direction of the universe has been itself unfolding and changing, with conflicts and deliberation within and between sects.
In my early days as a spiritual seeker, I wanted to know the Truth about the universe. I still, in fact, feel that as a desire, though increasingly I see that as a very costly desire that does not necessarily lead one to have a happier, healthier, or wealthier life of itself. My Catholicism of origin provided one particular cosmology that included teachings which appeared to exclude me, and I went on a path of spiritual seeking—looking at many religious and philosophical frameworks to find what teachings they had to offer.
Here I’d note—each religious and philosophical framework arises from its own unique history and cosmology, often coming from a specific cultural, historic, and geographic framework, and responding to the needs and adaptations of those peoples. The belief that one could look at multiple frameworks and find a meta-narrative of “universal” spiritual truth is, itself, a position that comes from a Western cosmology.
Not only a Western cosmology, but one that is hard now to separate from the political needs of empires. The early Romans would take the indigenous gods of the lands they invaded and bring those gods to Rome, formally declaring that the conquered peoples’ gods are now also Roman gods. When Christianity became the dominant Roman religion, the Catholic church modified this practice by incorporating indigenous practices, images, and deities into its own framework in a multiplicity of ways. Some now laugh and say that Christianity has all these “pagan” practices, like decorating evergreen trees at Christmastime, unknowing. This was by design. The Holy Roman Empire blended its culture with its conquered peoples’ cultures.
After the Enlightenment, when Western minds became convinced there was a universal truth that we could arrive at through reason and science, the practices of empire shifted from that of adopting and blending to instead imposing and forcing assimilation. The cosmology became that Christianity or Western Science were the “truth” and it was beneficial to the conquered peoples to have their “primitive” practices erased and replaced with this framework.
“God is Real,” photo by Martin Jernberg
Later reactions to this erasure of indigenous cultures that were unwilling to break entirely from the dominant mold instead shifted toward the rhetoric of universal truths that transcend cultures, and conveniently those universal truths tended to correspond to Western ideas and practices. Jung’s theory of the archetypes and collective unconscious is one such model, which was at its time radical in its willingness to consider indigenous and non-Christian myths as equally valid with Christian myths, but also in some ways became problematic as people inspired by the theory started to create correspondence charts and argue that all female-bodied goddesses of sex and love across history and culture were all basically the same sort of homogenized Venus archetype.
In truth, these practices are of benefit to the dominating cultural group. The practice of homogenizing multiple goddesses to a Venus archetype is not so much damnation of archetypal theory, which I find far more nuanced in practice, as it is the homogenizing and assimilating needs of modern empire. To strip away multiplicity, pluralism, and conflict is to make a diverse set of peoples more manageable.
To believe one group with political, economic, and military superiority has a universal belief system or structure that needs to be brought to ignorant people is to override those peoples’ particular cosmologies that teach them that their relationship with their land, language, and practices are deep and sustaining and worth protecting at all costs. Thus when a white developer wishes to build on a piece of land sacred to indigenous people, for example, their claims to meaning, rooted in their own cosmologies, get ridiculed or pushed aside in favor of the need for profit, or growth.
Sadly, the loss of a cosmology rooted in connection with the divine or with the natural world has left the primary driver of Western culture as essentially profit and growth at all costs.
Some of us are prone to inhabiting multiple cosmologies, or required to cultivate their own from the multiplicities available. This has been my experience for the past ten years, still believing in a transcendent “Truth” that I could find in every spiritual tradition, even knowing the limitations and problems of that. I feel a constant tension of sensing contradictions within different cosmologies and attempting to reconcile them within and for myself. This is along with being a white Western man who believes that the scientific method is a valid and useful form of inquiry into the nature of the physical world, though not as useful as phenomenological inquiry when one wishes to explore the realm of meaning and psychology.
Cosmology is of particular interest to me for those who do any kind of deep spiritual work and seeking of gnosis, the knowledge of spiritual mysteries. People who want to be dismissive of others’ cosmologies often imply that all other cosmologies are “made up,” invented, without fully appreciating that all cosmologies are made up. But “made up” implies a certain slapdash lack of discipline that does not really create an effective, compelling cosmology.
Insofar as it applies to a spiritual worldview, we live in a field of mystery in which most contact with the intangible, ineffable dimensions of reality occur through the medium of the imagination. Far from being easy to dismiss, the imagination has enormous power over our bodies and lives. Imagine arguing with your partner, and before long you’ll find your body tensing up in stress. Your body reacts to the imagined scene as though it’s truly happening. More interesting, though you might be imagining both sides of the argument, you might notice that not everything you imagine comes from conscious deliberation. You don’t sit and think, “What might my partner say in this situation?” Your imagined partner comes up with responses almost on their own.
Much spiritual work relies upon and deepens this capacity of ours, to envision or en-sense scenes and occurrences that are not physically happening to us. Such daydreams are the shallowest level of this capacity, closest to the ego consciousness, but the capacity extends into our unconscious dreamstates where the content arises wholly on its own without our intentional directing. As those who work with their dreams can attest, these seemingly random images and events often communicate their own kind of meaning, a broader and deeper perspective lacking from the waking ego awareness.
Between the shallow daydream and the unconscious dream is a state that is called trance in certain Neopagan traditions. Being in trance is like being Alice in Wonderland; the waking ego retains its consciousness and coherency but moves into a world of intriguing beings and fantastic scenes that are so suffused with meaning and depth as to be almost inscrutable except upon reflection. Those met in the trance journey offer profoundly important insights, some of which are easy to apprehend, some of which take years and years before they finally make sense.
For some, the trance state is being in the deep unconscious of the Self. Others believe they are out of the personal Self and in the transpersonal realm, interacting with autonomous beings. I think this is the realm in which the personal contents of the Self interface with those ineffable realms.
It is as though we approach the unknowable mystery of reality with a set of plastic action figures that correspond to our best guesses of the personalities contained within that unknowable mystery—guesses which may have emerged from traditions passed along for centuries, the wisdom of teachers, our own dreams, our popular cultures. The figures are our cosmology. Perhaps for a time we play with the toys ourselves, having conversations with them and miming responses that come from a profound but still personal part of ourselves that we could not access any other way. (Raven Kaldera originated the idea of internal mental “sock puppets” that one speaks with in lieu of the actual gods, a metaphor that I am adapting here.)
At a certain point, however, the figures begin to move and speak themselves. Or figures we didn’t consciously bring show up. Or the figures explain how they’re actually the wrong action figures, or need to be modified. This is the moment when something greater than our waking egos, perhaps greater than the Self itself, have finally noticed us and decided to work with us, using the cosmological language we have available. Superman might show up to dispense wisdom, but it does not necessarily mean Superman is a real god. It may mean that whatever qualities you associate with Superman are meaningfully related to whatever entity or part of self is showing up as Superman. Too stringent an adherence to an inherited model may lead one to rigidly ignoring important gnosis that wants to come through when the toys come to life and begin giving you information that goes against what you’ve been taught.
In my early days, I thought the kind of traditions that were formed entirely out of spiritual wisdom and revelation were the valid ones, and those that appeared to be constructed from pre-existing models such as the Tree of Life were more fake. I’ve since come to think that was a limited and unfortunate view. For spirit communications are notoriously vague and misleading, and simply receiving information from a spirit does not guarantee that the the information is relevant, usable, or even that the spirit knows what they’re talking about.
Having a clearly defined model does seem to help us focus our inquiry and frequencies to invite only the kind of aid and information that corresponds to the specific issue or topic we want to work with. In Western esoteric traditions, a wand is a symbolic tool of fire in some traditions and a tool of air in other traditions. Contemplation reveals that in some ways the wand meaningfully teaches us something about air, or meaningfully teaches something about fire. The blade, similarly, offers us meaningful but different lessons about air or fire. Finding the “correct” tool for the element is less important than sincerely engaging with the associations one has, so that those toys have a language we understand that they can use for communication.
It is the practice of holding a wand with the intent of it being a tool of fire, with the further intent of Fire corresponding to qualities such as will, vitality, purpose, and value, that makes the tool psychologically and spiritually effective. In the book It, the children of Derry are able to defeat a monster who uses their fears against them by harnessing imagination and intent with confidence. The original movie shows this when one of the children sprays his inhaler at the monster while saying, “This is battery acid you slime!” In doing so, he hurts the monster.
This touches the polarities of meaning and meaninglessness. In a sense, this piece of stick is meaningless until infused with meaning. Yet rational and scientifically minded folks, as well as those who believe there is objective Truth that is knowable and unitary, might see this as a sign that the stick remains meaningless. If its meaning is conditional, how could it be valuable? Yet if there is only one correct meaning known to a small group of elect, that too seems lacking in value for the rest of us.
My thinking these days is that the world of inner meaning, both psychological and spiritual, follow different laws than the world of outer objects and relationships. What is true internally—if I believe something hard enough, it can change my consciousness to experience it as though it were true—does not work on the external level, where we have to do more work to manifest a reality, and that manifestation is subject to so many variables outside control.
Where I see errors between the psychospiritual on one hand versus the materialist-rational on the other hand is believing that either the inner laws or the outer laws must be true. If waving a stick in the air could not generate a physical fire, then it must not be true that there is an inner meaning of Fire that one can evoke. Simultaneously, so much spiritual bypassing is about believing that changing one’s inner experience will automatically and universally lead to material changes in ways that do not really work for most people in the world.
That said, invoking qualities of Fire in my self, or praying to my god for their strength and support, makes a material difference within my experience of self and the world, which may lead me to show up differently. Strange acausal experiences occur, which Jung called “synchronicities,” that feel as though they are confirming and guiding my inner experiences in a way that feels like a larger intelligence is organizing my life. There are moments when the inner and outer worlds blur, and yet I wonder if that blurring arises when we have clearly delineated the boundaries between the two and learned the proper skills and interventions for each.
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I envision a Temple of Air, nestled on the cliff side of a mountain. Great open portals face east, toward the rising sun, allowing that light to filter into the spare, open space inside. It is a temple of stone and tile through which the wind sweeps constantly. Crisp and chill, a bracing cold that keeps one awake and alert.
Near the portals are poles of planted prayer flags and wheels inscribed with symbols and words wishing fo calmness, spaciousness, and consciousness. As the wind flutters the flags, spins the wheels, he prayers blow like dandelion seeds into the wider world. Wind chimes clank and chime in never-ending and never-repeating music.
The temple gates bear the inscription: “The sky is the mind of the earth.”
On clear days, one can see the span of mountain ranges and valleys surrounding. The sun’s rays are sharp and well-defined. At night, stars are brilliant, deep, and dense, instilling wonder at the bigness of the world. The source of light is visible.
Other days, fog fills the temple. The light always shining from the sky becomes obscured and refracted, its source diffused. A dense gray sky where light is everywhere and nowhere, and nothing is clear. Instead of expansive wonder the pilgrims and priests of the temple feel smothered, bound up inside.
In the eaves, birds make their nests. One can sit in observation as they go out into the world to gather food and materials and return to sustain and nurture their offspring.
One does not go to the Temple to be taught a truth. The Temple itself is the teaching. As one polishes the mind, cleansing it of garbage information, beliefs, and constricting ideologies—so too pilgrims spend time cleaning the bird shit off the ground. Sweeping away detritus carried in by wind and visitors of the human or animal variety. Mending and washing the prayer flags.
Fluttering dreams, by John T, courtesy of Unsplash
The priests of the temple walk with an aloof demeanor, and yet equanimous in their kindness. They look upon all with the same curiosity and warmth, whether murderer or charity-worker. While some say these priests become refined contemplating tree and branch, others say they pick up the blade and practice a martial art both beautiful, precise, and deadly. To watch them dance in conflict, however, is as to watch a leaf fluttering through the air—always spiraling out of reach, evading capture, exhausting opponents through evasion and a light, effortless body.
There is a center in which one sits in meditation, surrounded by invisible movement made known by the cacophony of sound and brilliant flapping textures. A place for things to come and go, to be known, to be prayed, to be sought, and to be revealed.
One might see eagles soar across the mountains, almost unreal in their capacities from the vantage of the primate pilgrim. Yet at one point or another, once these creatures have accomplished their aim, they come to rest. To live too much in the air would afford little time for rest, little to eat. Earth’s gravity calls the creatures back to its touch, for the briefest contact and exchange of energy. Birds build their nestson the ground, where they can create new life, new possibilities, allow those younglings to grow strong before pushing them back into the demands of air.
In one corridor of the temple are narrow passageways that cause intense gusts of wind to blow one about. These rigid portals and passages have labels: “shoulds,” “expectations,” “stories.” The pilgrims encourage each other to, at least once in their visit, walk this corridor. They spread rumors that experiences of exquisite beauty, ease, and celebration lie on the other side of the corridor. Attempting to cross, one finds one’s self quickly confounded by the redirecting intensity of wind. Going forward, a gust pushes rightward. Turning to the right, a gust blows one back. Turning leftward, the wind spins around until the pilgrim finally finds a respite at a calm portal, only to despair in realizing that this was the entrance where they had started. Having gone nowhere, they are exhausted.
In a corridor of the opposing wing is an orchard of trees, whose thick intertwined branches slow and steady the flow of wind. Pilgrims may climb upon them or rest beneath them, feeling the strength of the trees engendered by years of yielding and repairing the damage of yielding to strong gusts. Their rootedness, their connected community offers a deep, powerful grounding of the powers of air.
Another enclave, a butterfly garden, allows the pilgrim to experience the wondrous vision of fluttering beauty that one must simply admire and wait in the hopes that it will alight upon one’s head or outstretched hands. Those pilgrims too eager to catch the wonder find themselves either empty-handed or, worse, with a beautiful creature squashed within their fingers.
Twice a day the temple becomes illuminated with solar light, radiating from the ground and activating mirrored surfaces on the ceilings, the pinwheels, bathing the temple in rainbows and vibrating bright, beautiful light. With this warm, orange glow, myriad arcane symbols appear inscribed in shadow along the ceilings and walls, suggesting a mystery. For early pilgrims, this illumination is a mystery. Those who have spent time dwelling and meditating in the Temple, however, eventually discover the secret.
For there are stairs that spiral beneath the Temple into a narrow cylinder. Descending, pilgrims pass a huge chunk of hanging quartz rock semi-circumscribed by openings cut through the rock to expose the sky outside. Beneath the rock is a sitting place upon which one can look upwards and see the Temple through its floor. What was translucent tile now appears to be clear glass, and from the still, quiet depth the pilgrim quietly watches the active, energetic, fluttering actions above. The riot of colors and vibrations, the movements of birds and pilgrims, all that excitement simply moves and occurs while the observant pilgrim watches.
And, for those lucky pilgrims there when the sun’s ascent or descent meets those cut openings—when the light penetrates the cylinder—that quartz rock becomes illuminated with the sun’s rays. For brief moments, before the rock becomes too dazzling to look at directly, the observant pilgrim might believe that rock has been hewn into the shape of a heart. The bright, brilliant heart of the temple, illumined by the truth of the sun, glowing so brightly that it warms and lights the entirety. If the pilgrim dared to look and risk blindness, they could see the symbols inscribed in the translucent tile floor of the Temple, the symbols cast by this light upon the space above.
Perhaps you, too, will come visit the Temple of Air and speak to the humans and creatures who partake of its wisdom. Perhaps they will tell you their secrets, the insights gifted to them in their work of listening, observing, seeking to understand.
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A while back I wrote about studying a martial art and confronting my challenges in learning to fall safely. At the time, I’d had a personal discovery, realizing my lack of full commitment and daring was an obstacle. That, however, was not enough to move the story forward.
Five months later, I continued to struggle with thumping my low back or shoulder, neither of which are ideal impact points. My continued failures tested my will to continue. Each thump reinforced that moment of fear and intimidation when I was about to do the roll. I’d tense up, go into my head, worry that I was going to hurt myself, and then my tension would make me even less effective. I sought personal guidance and feedback from four or five of the teachers, and each had different pieces of advice that did not seem to cohere for me. I would try so hard to get my body in all the postures that each one independently suggested, and I’d still thump or flail.
After a while, I watched some of the peers that started studying around the same time as I appearing to progress in their practice and execute some beautiful rolls, while I flailed. For most of my life I’d thought of myself as “not competitive,” even a little dismissive of other people’s competitiveness.
Now I realize that was a defense strategy of denial and trying to make myself feel subtly superior. I didn’t feel competitive when I’d be doing really well. When I’m struggling and doing worse than others, especially when others can see me struggling, it turns out I am very competitive. It would have been more accurate to think that I hate losing and thus avoided any competitions in which I might lose.
When I was younger, I was prone to giving up when things got tough. Any sign of struggle or failure was a confirmation to me that I’m not “supposed to” do this thing. Struggling with coördination in my body and with teammates, I determined athletics simply weren’t my thing, and did everything in my power to avoid them.
My late adolescent and adult life, however, thrust me into circumstances in which the real consequences of giving up were far worse than the feared consequences of trying to keep going. I started to find I could push through the doubt and failure and still do things. But a part of me always wondered, “When do I give up?” If things were tough, I’d wonder, “Can I give up now? Am I supposed to keep going?”
Moving through some significant adult struggles, my mindset has shifted. Now I’ve come to believe that I can accomplish many things so long as I keep going. That doesn’t mean I can accomplish everything. It requires that I have the resources and capacity to keep going. But now I can give up as an intentional way to re-evaluate my values and re-allocate my energies to what’s important. Not simply throw up my hands and believe an arbitrary deity was denying me this path forward.
So by the time I started studying the martial art and saw the advanced practitioners with their graceful rolls, I sensed that I wanted to be like that, and believed if I kept trying, I would get there.
Photo by Jyotirmoy Gupta
A few weeks ago, though, with my frustrated competitiveness, I decided to try practicing at the level of my peers that were doing better than me—let myself be actually thrown—and nearly hurt myself. The teacher stopped me, and I felt humiliated.
All my childhood athletic “stuff” was up: That I’d failed in front of people. That I was holding others back by not being able to keep up. That I was embarrassing myself. The teacher was kind and skillful at acknowledging it, checking in with me and noting that everyone gets stuck. They also kindly reflected that they’d seen me have successful rolls in the past, but they hadn’t progressed with the rest of my technique.
Leaving the dojo, I checked in with my emotional self and had the image of a humiliated, angry, resistant younger part of me screaming, “I can’t!” It felt like that younger me that believed he was incompetent and afraid to try again for fear of humiliation or harm. I wondered if this was the part of me that tensed up before the rolls, trying to stop me from putting myself into danger. It would be dangerous to keep going without befriending this part, I thought, because his determination that he can’t was a self-fulfilling prophecy. Pushing him to progress only means he would pull harder against me.
But neither was I willing to stay stuck and give up. On my own, I found video tutorials on the movement and discovered one that offered both a description of the physical mechanics of the movement and a basic, introductory roll that was very easy, gentle, and nearly impossible to hurt one’s self doing.
At the gym, I found a padded mat out of sight from most people and started practicing the baby rolls. In this way I was able to honored the scared part of me’s wish not to be publicly humiliated and not to put myself in danger while also pushing him to take a gentle risk. Those baby rolls went well, and sooner than I expected I felt ready to move a little further, take a bigger risk, with more success.
I did this for a week—starting with the really easy rolls, then moving to the more challenging ones and getting the feeling of it in my body. I arrived at my next class early to practice, and one of the teachers saw and came over to give me more advice. Instead of feeling embarrassed and defensive, I felt eager to hear the advice. Even though they’d given me some of the same advice before, this time I could hear it differently. I was able to understand what he meant and integrate it into what I was trying. Some really good, smooth rolls happened during that, and I felt really excited. And when I still lost the movement and messed up, I didn’t feel so discouraged because I felt I was making progress.
What I suspect occurred to me on the day when I felt humiliated and defeated was akin to the “prelearning temper tantrum” that Karen Pryor discusses in her book, Don’t Shoot the Dog:
For the subject, the prelearning dip can be a very frustrating time. We all know how upsetting it is to struggle with something we half-understand (math concepts are a common example), knowing only that we don’t really understand it. Often the subject feels so frustrated that it exhibits anger and aggression. The child bursts into tears and stabs the math book with a pencil. Dolphins breach repeatedly, slapping their bodies against the surface of the water with a crash. Horses switch their tails and want to kick. Dogs growl. … I have come to call this the “prelearning temper tantrum.” It seems to me that the subject has the tantrum because what it has always thought to be true turns out suddenly not to be true; and there’s no clear reason why … yet. In humans prelearning temper tantrums often seem to take place when long-held beliefs are challenged and the subject knows deep inside that there is some truth to the new information. The recognition that what has been learned is not quite true seems to lead to the furious comeback, to excessive response, far beyond the disagreement, discussion, or querying that might offhand seem more probable and appropriate. … I have come to regard the prelearning tantrum as a strong indicator that real learning is actually finally about to take place. If you stand back and let it pass over, like a rainstorm, there may be rainbows on the other side.
Louis Cozolino, in his book The Neuroscience ofPsychotherapy, updates and provides slightly more explanation when he explains that the brain requires a moderate amount of emotion to become “plastic,” that is, able to change and learn. He doesn’t specifically discuss a temper tantrum, but he indicates that a certain amount of discomfort and emotional activation is useful for the brain to learn new things.
Somehow that period of feeling all my childhood stuff, really letting it surface and acknowledge it in front of other people, helped me to begin to get distance from it. It also began a process of cognitive shift. Up until that point, I’d been following the literal guidance of all my teachers, trying to get my head in the right position and move my leg this way. I didn’t have an integrated sense of the entire movement, how each little behavior comes together.
It was like being in Elementary school and learning my “multiplication tables,” simple memorization of formulas like 2 X 2 = 4; 3 X 3 = 9. All of this was mere data to me until one day I began to think, “Oh, three sets of three things means nine total things.” Suddenly it wasn’t a bunch of disparate facts. I began to understand the deeper relationship between those numbers and formulae. When I got what multiplication “was,” I could begin doing my own multiplications without necessarily memorizing the result.
Getting a movement into my body is more challenging to me than learning an intellectual principle, but increasingly I notice those movements in the practice. First I try to get all the individual pieces right, and suddenly I have this flash of realizing how all the pieces cohere into one movement. When I sense how the movement in its entirety is supposed to feel, then refining those smaller movements makes a different kind of sense. I can feel how if I twist my hips more at this point in the movement, I’m better set up to turn and execute the throw in the next part of the movement.
Since those two weeks, I found myself having more and more moments of smooth forward rolls. And, furthermore, I was better able to understand for myself why I failed when I failed. Now I have a clearer idea of how the movement is supposed to feel, and what I need to do to get it consistently into my body. Perhaps in the future it will become its own instinct, one that does not require so much thought and effort, while I continue to develop more advanced and sophisticated movements. The story doesn’t end.
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My clearest lesson on entitlement came from a coworker in an earlier career. We traveled together for a work trip, and as we prepared to get on the flight she “expensed” a number of snacks, magazines, and a bottle of water for the trip. When I learned she planned to get the company’s reimbursement, I was a little confused and horrified.
Not saying I was without entitlement, though I might have claimed to be. I simply hadn’t encountered it in this way before. If it was for her own personal comfort and entertainment, to me it seemed separate from what the company should pay. Nor did I have a moral condemnation, I was simply worried about getting into trouble.
“Tony,” she explained. “When you act like you’re entitled to things, people let you have them.”
It was a revelation. On that trip, I didn’t go full out buying magazines and expensing them, but I did dare to get myself a martini with dinner that would go on the reimbursement receipt. And I didn’t get in trouble.
Entitlement is our sense of having a right to something, whether it’s legally conferred or a socially expected kind of treatment. At best, entitlement helps us walk through the world with confidence and a certain sense of safety. At worst, entitlement empowers us to act recklessly and harmfully toward those we consider less important.
As my coworker explained, when she acted entitled, people responded to confirm her sense of entitlement. If you’ve been alive in this culture for long enough you’ve likely seen or expressed the shadow of this—when that sense of entitlement is injured.
Not only is such disrespect discomfiting, people often seem to experience this as an assault of one’s sense of personal integrity and the natural order of the world. You are guaranteed to see self-righteousness, anger, and meltdowns. Entitlement and fragility walk together in the world. The person’s troubled sense of entitlement erupts in a display of child-like (meaning: big) emotion that causes so much discomfort to those around them that often others will simply cave in and try to tend and soothe that person’s distress. It’s an emotionally centered, mature person who is able to self-regulate and stay grounded during another person’s entitled acting out.
“Summer Resplendence,” by Jesse Schoff
Power influences this, of course. If the entitled person has wealth, influence, or other forms of power, then the urge to soothe and placate them increases, with the risk of other costs if they are allowed to be unhappy. Without that power, the wounded sense of entitlement is more likely to be ignored, criticized, or punished. “Who do you think you are?” It festers, becoming self-righteousness, envy, jealousy, spite, or deep rage and powerlessness.
The worldview that frames and supports one’s sense of entitlement, or lack thereof, also informs one’s ideas of justice. Those who grow up believing they would be given a high-paying career by doing well in school, who then graduate with severe student debt and a minimum wage job, would have a wounded sense of entitlement. The world didn’t work the way it was supposed to, either the worldview was wrong or someone is to blame.
Other people might grow up believing that, as a member of a marginalized group, their hard work will not necessarily be rewarded and it’s not their fault. That person might graduate with the same situation and experience their own anger and hurt about it, but lack that explosively violent sense of outrage. They were prepared to live in this kind of world.
Self-righteousness, envy, jealousy, and rage are bright fires that eat up attention and energy. Even coming from a place of entitlement, they are personally disempowering. They focus our awareness on perceived slights and wrongdoings, on an overwhelming sense of “wrongness” outside of us that needs to be rectified and will not.
Most folks who’ve dated long enough have at least one ex that hurt them deeply, who still goes about life dating other people and having friends. Depending on our sense of entitlement and justice, this is infuriating. How can people like them when they’re so obviously a piece of shit? How can they be happy when I’m stuck with all my anger and woundedness over their behavior? How is this fair?
The aggrieved sense of entitlement comes from a place of genuine pain that needs grieving, feeling, and healing, but self-righteousness will not allow us to go there. It will instead fixate on the outer problem, blaming the perpetrator and blaming the deity or society that somehow set up this dilemma. If that self-righteousness continues to deepen and fester, perhaps fed by people around us or ideological terrorists finding this opportunity to exploit that naïve sense of unfairness, then it makes sense that someone would act out with violence or bullying.
What is intriguing is that self-righteousness often comes with a sense of rejection and refusal. People too identified with it often seem unable or unwilling to sink into acceptance and grieve the pain they’ve experienced. It is in this grief that they will find healing, release, and true freedom.
But in so grieving, they also experience a sense of defeat. The defeat is, perhaps, that their worldview was incorrect, or that they too played a role in the harm done, or that simply they live in a world where people can hurt each other and not always receive the punishment they expect. Without that grief, however, the self-righteousness and outrage are like marionette strings bound to our emotional systems.
Recently I found myself spending far too long reading the comment sections of particular Internet articles, working myself into a fuming anger about a particular person’s apparent unwillingness to be accountable for their actions, and all the ways their supporters dismissed and ridiculed the charges brought against the person.
After a while, I had to ask myself what good I was doing. I had no way to control these people or stop these dismissals and denials from happening. I was simply gorging myself on more anger and toxicity and letting myself become reactive—a reactivity that would undermine my ability to engage. All I could do was speak my truth from my perspective, and move on. Either people would listen, or they would not.
Anger, justice, and even entitlement are not intrinsically bad qualities, but they do become toxic when partnered with righteousness and blame. Expressing anger about harm done, holding people accountable for their words and actions, and insisting on a certain kind of treatment are necessary components to healthy relationships. There comes a point when I have to acknowledge that my efforts are failing, or hurting me more than bringing healing to the relationship. Working this wound means both feeling the pain of it and working through the spiritual implications of it.
“Spiritual implications” have much to do with beliefs about the cosmos and human purpose within it, even for those who do not think much about such matters. Even atheists in modes of self-righteousness or self-blame will make comments about how life “should be” or how things are “supposed to go,” as though there is an external authority who is intentionally organizing and influencing the world and has deliberately targeted them for harm. This does not disprove the person’s atheism. It seems, to me, a psychological artifact of an earlier stage in our development that we all need to face at some point. Our early experiences of infancy and childhood, when we did have caregivers who appeared to be organizing and influencing the world with personal attention to us, shape this view of the world.
In several pre-Christian societies, one could petition a god for help, and if the god failed to follow through on their end of the bargain, punish the god by refusing further devotions or burying their statues head-first in the ground. That is a deeply personal relationship to a god, an ego-to-ego relationship.
Some threads of monotheistic thinking shifts the dominant theology to a different framework, in which there is an omnipotent deity that is simultaneously concerned for our lives and remotely organizing the world according to a mysterious plan. Depending on one’s level of development and spiritual community, personal affronts are due to either you or someone else failing to adhere to the deity’s needs and expectations. Or they are simply signs that one must take responsibility for living the deity’s energies—that justice does not come from without, but rather comes from us behaving in a just way.
A related theological framework is something along the lines of us living in a nihilistic, meaningless world, yet also being surrounded and interpenetrated by a world of spiritual meaning and purpose. In this framework, it is the role of consciousness to bring that purpose and meaning into this empty world. Expecting the world to behave according to that purpose and meaning is a recipe for failure. Resenting the world for failing to live according to my dictates of justice only interferes with my work of becoming more spiritually connected and being a conduit of justice.
Yet another framework might be that everyone and everything is a facet of a grander divine being, that our personal struggles are no more or less favored that the struggle of the bacterium to survive its infestation of our bodies. We term that struggle an illness, because we prefer our own survival, but the bacteria may have their own gods they petition for favor, their own sense of entitlement to inhabit and hijack the functions of our bodies. In a sense, it is a world so filled with meaning that it is functionally indistinguishable from the other frameworks that do not rely on an omnipotent and personally invested god. We’re still essentially on our own, trying to survive and express our highest potential, perhaps with the help of some very strong allies.
What so many religious and spiritual traditions seem to offer is the insight that we have a veil between our experience and reality. H. P. Blavatsky, the esoteric founder of the Theosophical Society, said that, “The mind is the great slayer of the real.” In this aphorism, which is the contents of the mind—our thoughts, biases, analyses—are in some way actively opposed to our experience of truth and reality. Christian thought speaks of us living in a “fallen” world, divorced from its divine origins—or it may be that humans ourselves have fallen out of alignment with its innate divinity. Buddhist meditation practice trains the being to see past the veils of illusion.
In a sense, we do live in a constructed hallucination. Our brains automatically complete sentences, even with incomplete information—so successfully that at times we may receive only the information we expect to hear, and fail to understand or take in information that is unexpected. The structures of thought that shape our experience of life extend into the realms of behavior and social interaction.
In a sense, our brains create structures of order and predictability and attempt to impose them upon a world that does not have any obligation to live according to our beliefs about how things should be. This incongruity creates an ongoing friction and tension as we attempt to reconcile, integrate, or reject experiences that do not fit our worldview—a first order change, trying to keep up the structure in spite of evidence. A second order change—reconstructing the structure entirely—is much more costly and disorienting.
I see people in Recovery groups whose constant efforts to control, manage, and force life to happen according to their own expectations contribute to their painful and overwhelming feelings of self-righteous anger and addictive behavior. In the 12-Step community, surrender to a more powerful being is a step toward healing and recovery—connecting to a worldview in which we will be cared for and don’t need to control and manage everything is what brings liberation.
People who believe in one, many, or no gods may feel themselves equally to be at the mercy of larger powers outside of themselves, to whom they must entreat for beneficence or placate to avoid malevolence. At other stages of development, they may come to find more refined senses of nuance, justice, and causality. There are certainly Christians out in the word who believe their God has a very personal and precise influence in the world, rewarding and lifting up the righteous while condemning and punishing the unrighteous, even though one of their foundational texts reminds them that God “causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” (Matthew 5:45).
Feeling entitled encourages us to advocate for ourselves, take up space, stand tall, be our fullest and loudest selves. Feeling entitled supports us in not allowing others to step on us, to dismiss or disrespect us, to use us for their gain or self-satisfaction. Entitlement also encourages us to accept, justify, and defend unequal treatment that benefits ourselves even when it hurts others. It discourages us from acceptance of difficult truths about life, which would allow for greater creativity and responsivity. It interferes with having open-hearted relationships with others, and it may disempower us into thinking that someone else’s gain is our own loss.
To grow out of our entitlement, both the way it limits us and the damages it causes, we must be thrust into a world that does not have a personal investment in our wellbeing. We must accept the possibility that this universe is not designed for us, but rather we are in a collaborative relationship together, and that we are surrounded by other agents that could help or harm us, and we may not know which. In this world, we may experience intense distress and want to be saved, or want to hurt and punish others for our own pain, but that is a false and destructive path. What we need is courage, containment, and help in meeting our distress and learning to tolerate and transform it.
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A physical object, a symbol. Insofar as it relates to the body, the word “head” encompasses that extremity that generally sits at the top when one is standing or walking. Before we become bipedal, the head is that part that guides our movement—we move toward the head, crawl toward the head.
The head contains four major sensory apparatuses—the eyes, ears, nose, and mouth—encompassing the majority of our interface with the outer world. Thus it is tempting to prioritize head-based information.
The head also holds the brain, which we understand currently to direct our primary capacities to organize and enact movement, direct internal autonomic processes, process information and language, and execute the will. In history, in other cultural contexts, the seat of the personality and will might be in another organ, but today we situation it entirely in the brain, in the head.
Mannequin Parts, photo by Edu Lauton
In a culture that further values analysis, thought, logic, reason, timekeeping, and language, and situate all these functions in the left hemisphere of the brain, the head becomes the most important part of the body. Everything else in the body exists to serve and support the head—though all the rest of the body requires its own maintenance, and has a lot of sensations to offer as well.
When the head feels unsafe in the body—due to perceive threats and overwhelming sensation—we retreat into these linear capacities of the mind. Anxiety is both process and result of this retreat—attempting to meaningfully construct security safety in a world that feels unsafe. We go up into the lighthouse tower and look down, trying to make a plan to make it safe to go back downstairs, but unable to execute it because it’s too unsafe to go downstairs.
At this moment, culturally and economically, head-based activity seems to be more highly depended upon and more highly rewarded. Tech developers spend hours in front of a computer in their heads, and at times struggle to remember they have hearts or bodies that need attention.
Organizationally, the head is the leadership, the organizing structure, the directing structure, that which coheres all the parts of the body into an integrated whole. Yet within this hierarchical metaphor, the head easily becomes detached from the conditions on the ground and might prioritize cold rational choices on issues of principle or profit. We do not have to look at the head for this purpose, we could easily (and informally do) look to what is the “heart” of the organization, or further we could contemplate the center of gravity. Both of these concepts, arising from named functions of the body, have qualities of organization and coordinating homeostasis.
The Enneagram is one system of personality, one arising from esoteric and contemplative traditions rather than empirical scientific analysis, that looks to these three organizing centers as predominant in the personality. There are nine personalities organized in three triads. The head triad—5, 6, and7, all share fear as a predominant trait. Fear, again, in a relationship of circular causality with the mind. We retreat to the mind out of fear, our gaze narrows, we have a hard focus on what the head can perceive and mistrust in the wisdom and instincts of the body. Because the head removes itself from relationship with the body and environment, fear increases. Thus the fear compels one to analyze to death, run toward or away from the fear, or simply turn around and have as much fun as possible to drown out the fear.
8, 9, and 1 would be the triad most associated with the body, its center of gravity in the gut. In these, sensory information and instinct drive much activity. The predominant trait is anger, that which arises from frustrated impulses and unmet needs, the anger of wanting a thing right now and not being able to have it. Thus the anger compels one to push forward, numb out, or become rigid and exacting.
2, 3, and 4 are the triad associated with the heart. In these, image, connection, and relationship drive much activity. The predominant trait is shame, that which arises from feeling rejected by others and an innate sense of one’s badness and unacceptability while longing desperately for acceptance and inclusion. The shame compels one to create elaborate romantic fantasies and a unique sense of self that seems not to care about acceptance, to go the other direction and bend one’s self into the most successful and acceptable image in any community, or to make sure that one is needed by fostering dependence from others.
The trick with all personality systems is that we each have all the capacities and experiences within us, but certain tendencies and problems are exaggerated and imbalanced. Thus those whose personalities are centered in one particular organizing principle do well to get access to, develop, and align themselves with the other two. Rational analysis works well in connection to gut instinct and the heart’s reconciling and connecting wisdom.
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He only says, “Good fences make good neighbours.”
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head: “Why do they make good neighbours? Isn’t it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.” – Robert Frost, “Mending Wall”
Certain spiritual teachings promise transcendence of the limitations of humanity for those who sincerely engage their practices and experience a certain amount of luck, grace, or favor. Why otherwise engage in a challenging, confrontational practice if not for such promises? Eternal life, boundless selfhood, connection with the limitlessness of the divine, or freedom from the mental limitations and turmoil of mundane psychology? It is in people to long for experiences of expansion, limitlessness, freedom and resent experiences of defeat, failure, frustration, containment, or endings—particularly death, that most non-negotiable of endings.
“Jar Full of Hope” by Aaditya Kalia
On the other hand, on a psychological level, we crave containment. Once, doing contemplative work, I sensed an ocean of light behind the material world. My sense was—this light was the world, was the truth of our existence, and yet we could not fully know the experience of being in its limitlessness while in this hard, limited, meaningless plane of existence. At the same time, I sensed how much we need this limitation and separation to know anything at all. If there was nothing between us and the light, we would be consumed by it wholly.
When experiences of emotional intensity or physical sensation become too intense and overwhelming, we instinctively seek or create a structure to contain them. The psychodynamic “defenses” are such strategies of containing and managing excruciatingly painful experiences. We deny a painful reality is happening so that it won’t overwhelm us. We dissociate to contain the distress.
I hear people who are reluctant or unwilling to process an ongoing problem because they are afraid of falling apart. I hear people who are afraid to start crying for fear they’ll never stop. “Once this is over, then I can talk about it.” We want to know how the story ends first so then we can know how to feel about it. But there is so much richness in the midst of the story, and so much stress, and so many opportunities to intervene and transform the story.
What we instinctively fear most is eternal torment. In a sense, we already experience it. Emotional distress lives in the symbolic, intuitive right side of the brain, where we have pure experience and depth. It is the other hemisphere of the brain that brings the qualities of language, logic, and time. Often these two hemispheres are not in effective communication—particularly when disrupted by traumatic experiences or other stressors. Indeed, they are more at war, striving to assert their experience and not helping the other to process and transform experience.
Bringing grounded, centered presence into that torment helps the braiding and integration of the two hemispheres. Putting our emotional experience into language is itself a kind of containment, making it a story and not pure experience. And while this languaging and storying carries its own risks of detaching from the psychic roots of the right brain, together they are a potent team.
Folks who run marathons or ultra-marathons inspire a kind of awe and terror in those of us who wouldn’t run ten yards to catch a bus. How can someone run that long, that far, endure the physical discomfort and psychological effort of continuous work? One help is the knowing that this will end. We can tell ourselves, “only a few more miles,” “it’ll be done soon,” “I’m going to make it to the top of the hill.” Framing the pain in a time-bound context makes it bearable. We understand why we’re experiencing it, and for what reason.
Even if those smaller ends stack up in a larger process, they ease movement. Writing is this way as well. We need the punctuation at the end of the sentence to contain the content. We look for the white space between paragraphs to help us frame and interpret the meaning.
So often I notice that therapeutic sessions become richer and more intriguing toward the end. Clients bring up important material while the clock runs out. At times when I’ve needed to have planned terminations with clients, some have had moving breakthroughs in those last weeks. There is a mutual disappointment when the hour or the treatment episode ends. “We were starting to get somewhere.” Yet I suspect that we “got somewhere” because on some level we both recognize the end is close. We have the courage to go into charged, intimate territory because we know we will not have to sit in it together long.
As clients, we intuitively avoid opening up really charged material until we have a sense of the boundedness and containment of the therapeutic hour. When there is a confidence that we can open this material and close it effectively, that we won’t become overwhelmed and devoured by the experience, we can deepen.
In my practice, I am thinking on this need and exploring strategies to bring containment and closure to our distressing material. For some, a ritual to begin or end the session helps. When out in life, a person might write overwhelming experiences and placing them in an envelope or a box that closes, with the knowledge that we will open them later and explore the feelings. One evidence-supported practice for emotional soothing involves setting a timer for 20 minutes and committing to writing about one’s feelings for the entire time, then stopping when the timer ends.
Occasionally a client points out that 20 minutes is an arbitrary amount of time to give to our feelings. It is. The specific length of time is less important than making and keeping the agreement with ourselves. We agree to be present to these feelings for this time, and when the time is done then we move on to other things. Without this agreement, our emotional distress has no other option but to seek attention in any way it can, at war with our defenses. With this agreement, we take our emotions seriously and give them loving attention but in a way that is structured and contained.
In my younger days, I intuitively did this work by blogging on the kind of personal oversharing journaling system that was popular. While I did not set a timer, I would write out all my complex and confusing thoughts and feelings, then publish them to a locked group of friends and peers who could witness and give feedback. Often my screeds were long and incoherent and I was never sure if anyone read them. What was more important, perhaps, was that I’d put the material into words, put the words out of my head and onto an external medium, and then closed the medium firmly with a publish.
Other times, when working on an academic paper that was not yet completed, I would find myself unable to sleep at night—my mind racing, thinking of more I wanted and needed to say. As a writer, I continue to find a mystery here. When I have written a draft of a piece of writing that is unpublished, I cannot read it with anything but the mind of a critic—does this work? How can I reword this?
But when the writing has been published, I become able to read my work for the first time. The critical mind pops in, but with that is a sense of surprise and awe—I wrote that? Are those my words? I see implications and meanings I hadn’t consciously considered while writing. My guess today is that the closure of publication makes this possible. Now I know this is a made thing, no longer to be modified. Now I can encounter it as though it were another person’s work.
All endings are arbitrary. If we were to tell the story of the first atom of matter, we would see that story is still unfolding—and may well have touched your life. Perhaps that atom was in a piece of food you ate, merging into your body, and ultimately released. If we were to tell the story of your family, we would see that while people die, the family continues, evolving and expanding upon its genetic and historical themes. Your great-grandparent’s life continues in some way through you and the descendants of the people they knew.
All endings are true and final. This moment, once gone, is gone forever. If you’ve ever been a member of a group—even a group you were thrown into, which you felt ambivalent about, like a high school class—you might have experienced those awkward lingering moments at the end of the group’s work. Awkward small talk while saying goodbyes, feeling deeply connected to a few folks, making compliments you don’t really mean to people you didn’t care much about before this moment. “Let’s keep in touch!” “Let’s have dinner sometime!” “I’ll friend you on Facebook!”
“For Dear Life,” by Mitchel Lensink
Each gesture an effort to avoid the awkwardness of saying goodbye. Little rebellions against things ending, ways to soften the pain. Attempts to convince ourselves that we can hold on to the feeling of closeness and purpose we shared and not face the pain of knowing this is ending and will move into the past. Not that you won’t have such feelings again, or even keep these connections, but the specificity and power of this experience is over.
If experience is a river—an endless stream of sensations and time flowing—our psychological containers are the bottles and cups that hold water still. In the stillness, we can look at the water closely, we can savor it, drink it slowly, or if we like pour it back out. Like water, however, keeping the experience contained indefinitely loses its value. Stagnant experience stops being nourishing and in its way becomes toxic—whether it’s buried traumas, unacknowledged limiting stories, or even nostalgic experience we cling to at the cost of having new experience.
Contemplative practice supports us in drinking in our experience, integrating it, processing it, releasing it. With contemplation, I have that structure and ritual containment that allows me to move into the feeling and out when I’m ready.
With mindfulness, we build the capacity for experience to simply flow through us without holding it too tightly. This observer part of me already senses that all experience changes, and thus the distress of the moment becomes less distressing. Instead of feeling a sense of endless torment, we are able to feel the subtleties of the movement. Even in pain, sensations vary, arise, and pass away.
And I wonder how it would be to love what limits me. To see in each ending, obstacle, and limitation a loving hand that keeps me from moving too quickly, taking in more experience than I’m ready to digest. To see what refines us even in the straining against limitation, the way that lifting a heavy weight at the edge of tolerance tears apart muscle, so they may regrow in strength.
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When you become who you are,
the stories you’ve told are leaves
browning and shriveling in fall
when your reverence withdraws.
In winter you stand exposed,
vulnerable, undecorated, cold,
bereft of those justifications
and names that shaded you,
equipped only with the truth
of your bark, your heartwood,
your roots interweaving among
those of your copse, yielding
nourishment according to need.
When returns the sun and heat,
your truth emerges anew, fresh
with green expressions of self,
boldly thrusting into weather
to feed, flower, fruit, and seed,
and spread your knowingness
to where it might flourish new.
Until, again, these bolder truths
desiccate in obligation, stories
told too often, ready to be shed.
Returning to silence, heartwood,
the winter source of the self.
To feel guilt about causing harm is a healthy and productive emotion that leads us into healthy, self-responsible relationships. Without guilt, we would have no sense of ethics, no concern for the harm done to another person, no capacity for intimacy. Guilt tells us when we’ve fallen out of integrity with our values, and it leads us back to self-respect.
Unfortunately, guilt sometimes also serves to bind us in automatic deference, to make ourselves smaller, to sacrifice our needs and deep values for the comfort and well-being of others. Guilt makes us vulnerable to control, and at its worst makes us controlling of others.
When we feel responsible for all of another persons’ feelings and needs, any action we take that makes them uncomfortable, upset, or inconvenienced begins to bring up feelings of guilt. One person’s disappointment in me feels like a direct assault on my sense of self. I have to avoid it at all costs. That is when guilt becomes toxic and oppressive.
Strategies of control and dominance
This one feels disappointed but doesn’t blame you. Photo by Matthew Henry.
If I cannot differentiate others’ feelings from my own, it’s inevitable that I begin to figure out strategies to manage or avoid feeling guilt. Often this comes out as efforts of control. I must manage myself so that I never hurt, anger, disappoint, or grieve another person—which quickly becomes overwhelmingly stressful, surrounded by people with wildly different responses. I might also try to control those around me so they don’t have those feelings, through bullying, placating, flirting, lying, double-dealing, or exploding in response to any kind of accountability.
To be in a healthy relationship, I need a clear sense of my self, my edges, and the edges of the other person. I need enough distance from their feelings and behaviors to soothe and know myself, so that I can meet them authentically. When I fear disappointing someone, I lack the distance to think about on these expectations. Who appointed me the job of keeping them happy? Is this what I honestly want, or something I’m doing to avoid bad consequences? Is this a task I gave myself? Are the expectations to which I hold myself, or to which they hold me, ones that I can live with?
Perhaps their expectations, hopes, needs are fully valid but still not correct for us. In the early stages of a romantic relationship—okay, in nearly every stage of a romantic relationship—these differences in expectation become clear. Our partners get upset at us for behaviors that are innocuous to us. In Elisa’s family, you ate whatever was in the fridge, but in Jacob’s family you never eat the last of anything without asking. Both expect this behavior of their partners because it’s normal to them, not realizing that family cultures are different. Then they clash, because someone has to be right. Eventually, perhaps, they arrive at the point of seeing these as different and equally valid beliefs, and find a compromise that works for both.
But if Jacob reacts with intense anger and shaming every time Elisa finishes something without asking, and Elisa feels guilty and believes she’s in the wrong, both become smaller and disempowered in the relationship. Elisa starts walking on eggshells, not sure what will set Jacob off. Elisa feels uncomfortable even asking Jacob what he’s upset about, thinking with Jacob that she should simply know and understand and something must be wrong with her for not getting it.
Jacob’s anger might run from a deeper wound. Perhaps he expects that Elisa should be able to know his desires without him needing to ask for them. He feels embarrassed about having wants and needs and shy about asking for what he wants. When Elisa does not magically know what he’s thinking, he feels a deep, years-old disappointment that he is invisible and unseen. While Elisa could spare him from this by being accommodating, in the long run it might be necessary for Jacob to feel this disappointment as his own. Until he begins to face how much this pattern of expecting his needs to be known without him asking for it, he will continue to feel disappointed, disempowered, and heedless of how much he sets up his partners to fail.
Rather than accepting responsibility for others’ feelings, I can focus on cultivating my ability to respond. This is separation that enables connection. Rather than internalizing another’s opinion of me as something threatening and needing control, it behooves us to work on making our inner experience a safe place to experience all of our emotions and thoughts.
When it’s okay to feel disappointed, hurt, angry, fearful, joyous, it’s easier for me to realize that other people can have these feelings without dying. And, indeed, maybe these feelings are necessary. Nobody’s feelings are “wrong,” they are information. When a person feels betrayed by my actions, that’s important information for them in deciding what they need to make this relationship work. If I feel remorse for my actions, that’s important information for me about what I’m willing to do to repair the relationship. If I feel that I was acting in integrity, that is information too.
Without this differentiation, we feel as though we should and must control someone else’s emotional experience. We feel bound to their feelings, that any upset or anger they feel toward us is another binding that keeps us from being ourselves or doing what we want. We have to stop everything and fix them, even if we don’t feel we did anything wrong. We feel reluctant to share our perspectives and act.While this is primarily for our own comfort, to avoid the feelings that come up when there is anger or hurt directed toward us, it becomes a hook. This person’s disappointment, anger, or hurt develops its own power of control. Unconsciously or otherwise, the relationship becomes a struggle for dominance.
Liberation from guilt and oppression
Here is an important truth, emerging from social justice discourse: “You are responsible for your impact, regardless of your intent.”
Here is another important truth: “I can only be responsible for my experience.”
While paradoxical, both truths are valid. I like to joke and throw out random witticisms in conversation. When I’m lucky, people laugh. Other times people respond with irritation, upset, or anger. My intent was to have fun, my impact was that the person became upset. I might have made light of a topic that is sensitive and important for the person. I failed to meet them where they were, I took up space when they needed it, or I poked a sore spot. When I was younger and stupider, my humor had racist and sexist overtones. Even when I thought I was satirizing racism, the Black person who didn’t know me and didn’t need to hear that felt upset.
My impact did not line up with my intent. To know this is a gift. It helps me to think about what went wrong and how I can better align the two in the future. In the meantime, it is worth acknowledging that I caused harm and making amends.
Where privileged folk—white middle to upper class people in particular—get stuck is in toxic guilt. When we’re confronted or called out, we are in the dilemma discussed above. We do not fully understand the harm we caused and want to keep it at a distance
Photo by Zulmaury Saavedra
Being ruled by guilt is not healthy for anyone. It is stressful and narrowing. Marginalized people often experience pressure to contort themselves for the comfort of the socially, politically, and economically powerful, that the feelings of the powerful are more worthy of care and concern than their own. This reinforces fragility in the privileged, who do not have enough practice tolerating emotional stress. In these cases, the consequences of the marginalized not doing emotional labor for their oppressors tend to be more costly than feeling bad for disappointing someone.
In this writing, I speak of ”marginalized” versus “privileged” as relative positions rooted in how much social power one has. Young children are less powerful than their parents. Employees are less powerful than their bosses. In the United States, immigrants, Native people, and people of color are generally less powerful than white people.
The current moment of #metoo is rife with questions about guilt and expectation. As stories come into the light, we see more clearly how much the subjects of patriarchal violence have had to endure, swallow, and allow to poison themselves to get along. Now is a moment when the anger has broken this pattern of denial and minimization. Women and other victims of sexual assault, coercion, and harassment are sharing their stories and pursuing action.
This is the kind of behavior that a sense of toxic guilt would normally bind, and we see that guilt rising to meet the outpouring of anger. Repeated injunctions to think about the harm they may be doing to the men they are accusing. Redirecting the conversation to looking at how those who experienced the harm might have taken more responsibility to avoid it or stop it.
Privileged people struggle, I think, to step out of dominance relationship with regard to feelings. There is a sense that someone’s feelings have to be right and another’s wrong, so a white person working on being “woke” may look at being called out as a sign that they need to throw out all their feelings and perspective and wholly embrace the truth of whomever is calling them out. Complete submission, which is rarely asked for nor appreciated.
My observation is that part of this is that dominance in relationship is so ingrained that the privileged person is unable to see the difference between engaging in honest conflict versus defensiveness or stonewalling. A person early in interrogating their own perspective gets feedback on their defensiveness or stonewalling and then assumes that means any kind of disagreement or difference of opinion with a person of color is racist.
Men regularly told they are “mansplaining” are unable to fully understand the difference between that and having a conversation. This naturally engenders some frustration which then leads to demands for emotional labor from the marginalized person.
As a white man, I’ve gone through phases where I’ve been called out by a woman or a person of color and responded with a conciliatory, “Thank you, I’ll go think about it,” response that did not engage the critique and mostly seemed to leave the other person feeling grossed out.
These days I practice staying in the conversation, staying with the discomfort and trying to understand what is being said to me while also standing in my perspective and experiences. I am in a place where I do not automatically agree with every person who calls me out or challenges me—but neither do all women or people of color agree with each other. One thing that I do believe, however, is that these folk know about what it’s like to live their experience than I do. There is something I can take in from their perspective that would enrich mine, even if I don’t agree with everything they say. And as I want to move toward my liberation, I would prefer to support others in seeking their own liberation and not thinking I know what they need to do.
As I explore my relationship with guilt, I find there is not a clear maxim that will guide me through each interaction gracefully. Nor do I want a carcereal model in which acknowledging guilt results in exile or imprisonment. What I seek is a way of working with guilt that brings justice to those harmed, reconciliation when possible, and liberation for all involved.
The Restorative Justice movement employs strategies such as group sharing of stories and experiences to process the harm of a crime and lead both the perpetrator and victims of the crime to find a workable resolution. This model inspires me in its integration of healing and justice for both victim and perpetrator. I believe such a process would further help us to discern who is guilty but capable of returning to the community from those who lack conscience or remorse and will not respect community agreements. For such people, whether on a social or interpersonal level, we do need the capacity to set and defend our boundaries.
Working through hurt without someone being wrong
When I explore patterns of toxic guilt with clients, we often find deep wounds arising from childhood experiences in which disappointing, hurting, or angering one’s protectors and caregivers was experienced as a life-threatening risk. Children depend so much upon their caregivers for emotional regulation and basic needs of existence, and sometimes our experiences of learning are such that people internalize a belief that it’s literally dangerous for a person to be angry or hurt. This becomes a vulnerability in the psyche that activates even as adults when we are better equipped to deal with whatever life throws at us.
Photo by Keem Ibarra
Stepping on an emotional landmine or triggering a trauma response are circumstances in which the paradox of “I am only responsible for my experience” and “My impact is more important than my intent” come into play. The person who is experiencing the trigger or emotional upset may want to blame their partner, but this leaves them disempowered and dependent upon their partner. The partner who stirred up trouble may want to dismiss or blame their partner, but this would be unhelpful and make the problem worse.
It is a difficult dance, but understanding this is our partner’s personal struggle empowers us to be more compassionate and emotionally supportive. When I am not struggling with my guilt and shame, I have more room to be caring and understanding, to acknowledge how they experienced my actions. I don’t have to agree with their interpretation of reality, but I can understand it.
In relationships, these kinds of negotiations are frequent and necessary for a healthy system. Perhaps Jacob tells Elisa that she’s allowed to do whatever she likes on her date with Rhonda. Then, say, Elisa decides to spend the night at Rhonda’s since it’s getting late, and texts Jacob the information before turning off her phone to go to sleep.
Jacob suddenly feels betrayed and angry. On some level he expected Elisa to come home after her date, and maybe he was not fully conscious of that expectation until now. Perhaps he thinks it’s “obvious” and that Elisa deliberately crossed a line. When Elisa comes home, thinking she’s been abiding by the “do whatever you like” rule, she suddenly finds herself being angrily insulted or berated for breaking an agreement that was never overtly made.
If Elisa feels a sense of toxic guilt, she might then stop seeing anyone and resenting John, because he’s so inconsistent. Or she might start hiding, skirting rules, or demanding legalistic rules and insisting Jacob cannot be upset if she follows the letter of the law.
Jacob could have handled things differently. Perhaps her coming home is actually not that important to him, it’s that he felt taken off guard by her texting him right before going to bed. Perhaps it touched on some old pain of his, fears of abandonment. Perhaps this experience has caused him to realize he does have a need to have Elisa home at night, though he’s otherwise okay with her doing anything else.
A way he could communicate that would be to own his experience and share it. “When you did this, I felt angry, hurt, and scared. I think I need you to come home at night, or I would prefer if you had called me so we can talk about it and not you deciding and then turning off your phone.” Instead of internalizing guilt over his feelings, Elisa could acknowledge his experience and feelings and share her own. “We had not talked about it, so I assumed it would be okay. I didn’t think I was going to stay until we found out how icy the roads had gotten.”
In this conversation, harm happened but no one did anything “wrong.” Both partners find a solution through understanding what happened and their own feelings. If they create a rule now, it will be one that works for both—“I will call if I want to spend the night,” or Jacob will realize it isn’t that important to him after all, he mostly wanted some reassurance that she considered his needs.
Safety and mutual accountability are necessary in working through these situations of guilt. Each person involved needs to have the relational safety that it’s okay to discuss their experiences and feelings about the event without being judged, shut down, shamed, denied support, thrown out, assaulted, or otherwise attacked. Each person needs to have the inner safety that it’s okay to experience all of their feelings—especially the painful ones—and to be honest about what they understand of their motivations. Each person needs to be willing to hear and say things that might be difficult.
This accountability is deeply helped by speaking from and of our own subjective experiences. We cannot control our partners, but there are many ways we can talk of our feelings and needs that decrease the friction of the conversation.
It helps to set up rules, such as one person shares their experience while the other person simply listens, quietly, without making a noise, giving commentary, or making faces, only asking for clarification and understanding. Then the other participants get their turn.
Rules for talking are as important as rules for listening. One thing that seems to engender the most defensiveness and anxiety is when one person makes accusations of the other. “You did this, you made me do this.” We’re all walking around in our own subjective worlds, privy to our own inner thoughts, feelings, and motivations, but only able to at best make an informed guess about another person’s. Most of us hate being misrepresented, too, and feel an urge to defend ourselves against any kind of impugning of character.
One strategy to defuse this is to focus on naming your observed behavior and then speaking of my experience. “When you sent me a text saying you were spending the night, I felt angry and hurt. I tried to call you, and your phone went to voicemail, so I figured you’d turned it off. I wondered if you were upset with me. I had a hard time sleeping, and I felt scared.”
For those of us with toxic guilt, these conversations may bring us into a deeper level of affect, the part of us that fuels the patterns of guilt and social control. We may feel terrified, for example. Rage. Some primal emotion connected to a childhood wound, an experience we’ve been trying to avoid since. Scared of being punished. Scared of being abandoned. Rage that our needs were unmet, or ignored. Feeling that is an opportunity to plant our feet on the ground, feel the steadiness that meets them. Breathe deeply, imagining that you can give space to those big feelings, that you can become big enough to hold them with ease. And then we get through the conversation and find that the worst hasn’t happened. Or perhaps it did, and it wasn’t so bad. Something needs to change, but our adult selves are able to manage it. We learned something deeply important that we’ve needed to learn to keep growing. We showed up and were held to account, and now we can be more conscious, more effective.
The path of transformation
Here people begin to have some discomfort. “What if we make a rule, or set a boundary, and my partner continues to break it?” The discomfort connects with deeper fears around addressing toxic guilt. What if we are truly honest about ourselves, and our partner cannot accept it? What if we stop placating or accommodating? What if our partner feels betrayed by our actions, and we have to admit we caused harm? What if I stop doing everything for my community, and our event fails because no one else stepped up?
Essentially: “If I stop controlling others, how can I control them?”
To be empowered, we must accept responsibility for our thoughts and feelings, and let go of the idea that we can control others’. To stop saying “you made me angry” and start owning “I felt angry.” “You made me” feel a feeling binds you to me, and me to you. I have to make you different so I can feel differently.
I’ve noticed a backlash to this wisdom, but I believe the backlash is to the abuse of this wisdom. Too often folks conveniently twist this insight to dismiss and belittle others for daring to have feelings. “You need to be responsible for your feelings.” That truth needs to be balanced by the truth of “I am responsible for my impact.” Feelings are valid sources of information about my needs and values. Anger tells me that I have a boundary you’ve crossed, or a need going unmet, and that needs to be addressed. My responsibility is to explore the feeling, figure out what need it’s pointing toward, and communicate that to you in a respectful way. If you think my responsibility is to never feel or express anger or hurt, you are welcome to go fuck yourself.
If we set a boundary or express a need and our partner persists, then we’ve learned a lot about what they’re capable of and what kind of relationship this is. You get to decide what to do with that information. You get to decide if you are safe to stay, and what you need to create more safety for yourself. You might have to find resources and allies. You might have to make some hard decisions.
Photo by Ross Findon
This is often scary, and feels unfair, but it is the cost of personal power and freedom. When we accept responsibility for ourselves, and stop trying to control, we have so much room for greater honesty, deeper intimacy, more authentic alliances. If another person’s guilt tells them they are out of integrity, then they have all the motivation they need to do the work of coming back to you, working with you to repair.
We are bound to unsustainable patterns out of a fear of death. Not the death of our bodies, but the death of a way of life that is familiar to us, reliable, known. We can fear it like we fear our mortality, for too often we prefer the known misery to the unknown. To change our relationship to guilt will lead to other changes. Maybe the event fails. Maybe the relationship ends. Maybe people do step up and we find the community is able to hold us. Maybe the relationship deepens and becomes better than we’d ever imagined. Maybe things end, but we find something even better.
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