A while back, I wrote a post about how much we need the art of civil discourse. Since then, I’ve heard more about the need for this kind of approach to dialogue and conflict in a world that feels increasingly fractious and polarized. We know we need to have hard conversations but struggle to do so with diplomacy and tact. No single blog is going to turn the tide, but for the next several weeks I am offering posts with the premises and practices that help me in navigating conflict.
According to Merriam Webster, diplomacy is “skill in dealing with others without causing bad feelings”. A synonym for this is “tact.” Diplomacy is not about conflict avoidance or being a doormat. Indeed, diplomats stand for something, rooted in loyalty to a core set of values or a community; they are simply willing to extend themselves in dialogue and effort across lines of conflict. Diplomacy enables us to meet hard truths and advocate for change in ways that include, that call people into the process. Diplomacy is a set of practices as much as it is a path. We are all capable of developing these capacities.
Image of a person from behind wearing a metal crown and a red cape with furry white fringe. The person is facing a backdrop of trees. Photo by Pawel Furman
What we seem to default to, however, are shame and alienation. When someone does something wrong, it’s too easy to pile on, call out, shame, and chase people out of our social circles. Everyone who’s left behind feels momentarily satisfied, having been an “us” against a different “them,” but then all live under the threat of being the next person to step out of line. There are times when people’s behavior is toxic, disruptive, and intractable and the community must be unflinching in its rejection or face dissolution. I do believe, however, that we can become so guarded and protective that we assume bad faith too quickly. I have also noticed that toxic and disruptive people become adept at using shame and alienation against others.
Diplomacy offers us a set of practices to invite in more good faith in our interactions. “Good faith” is the assumption of honesty and sincerity. Whether we think someone is coming to us in good faith or bad faith tremendously changes the way we experience another person’s behavior. If you behave in a way that feels disrespectful, but I believe you are acting in good faith, it is easier for me to manage my reactivity and let you know how your behavior affected me. I assume that you do not want to hurt me and did so on accident. Good faith elicits harmony, respect, and coöperation. If I believe you are acting in bad faith, I am going to wall off at the first sign of disrespect. Maybe I’ll explode at you with a barrage of insults and shame, or maybe I’ll behave in a completely friendly and civil way to your face but go around to all of our friends talking badly about you. Bad faith fosters division, discord, and distrust.
The next few weeks will feature posts on principles and practices that I find helpful in developing diplomacy. These include:
Where I come from: I am a cisgender White gay man who is able-bodied. I have a history of painful shyness and conflict avoidance, yet I’ve often been inspired by the great reformers. People who stand for justice and change in ways that pushed societies to transform, although there is always more work to do. I’ve worked hard to become more conscious of issues of power and injustice in my communities, and I continue to push myself to engage the hard conversations. I do not believe unfriending someone on Facebook is an act of courageous activism, though sometimes it’s what I need to do.
And I’ve messed up and embarrassed myself. I’m not being self-deprecating. I’ve said and done things for which I now feel regret, and I’ve been called out for it. I’ve responded to call-outs with defensiveness and self-justifications, making matters worse. I’ve confronted the limitations and consequences of my privilege. I am not “done.” I will say embarrassing things in the future. I will say things that are worthy of critique. I will likely respond at times with defensiveness, but hopefully less and less often, with less damage.
For your ease and wellness, I have recorded a guided meditation practice that I do often with clients. This meditation has been useful for people struggling with PTSD triggers, anxiety, chronic pain, and other overwhelming physical and emotional experiences.
The meditation is not about eradicating uncomfortable experiences, rather finding our inner capacity for spaciousness and presence with discomfort, distress, and pain. When we have spaciousness and presence, much becomes possible that is not when overwhelmed.
I recommend you use the meditation in a space where you feel safe and will not be disturbed for about ten minutes. I recommend that you practice with the full meditation the first few times when you are relatively calm—not in an urgent crisis. As you get more comfortable with this, you can very easily simplify it and draw upon it during your day.
This is freely offered. I ask only that you share it with attribution to me, and not use it for your own profit.
I was a fat kid for most of my childhood. When I look at old pictures now, I see that the range of my weight fluctuated throughout childhood, but when I was in it I just thought of myself as fat. I ate lots of food with high sugar and fat content and little nutrition. Coordination was a challenge, and often when I played sports I felt humiliated by how terrible I was at them. Until my dad and my Boy Scout Troop got me into hiking, I avoided most physical activities.
I remember in particular a music teacher in my elementary school, who for some reason always seemed to go out of her way to point out that I was fat. One time she was teaching us a particular line dance, and dancing was one of the few activities I’ve always enjoyed. She came up to me while I was practicing and said, with this syrupy sweet patronizing concern, “This is hard, isn’t it?” I wasn’t winded at all, I didn’t feel tired. I had no idea why she was saying this to me except to point out I was fat. I was probably about nine years old. Kids aren’t stupid.
These days, I am not as fat as I was. Others don’t believe I was ever that kid; part of me may never believe I’m not still that kid. I’ve been through lots of phases: wearing too-tight clothes as “motivation” to lose weight, shaming myself for what I ate, feeling guilty for eating “bad” things anyway, calorie restriction, and more. I’ve been recently reflecting on the great irony that some of the most thin, muscular people I know still fixate on their food choices and the specter of becoming fat; while some of the people who most fervently indulge in all their desires struggle with discomfort and dissatisfaction in their bodies. Doesn’t anyone just get to enjoy food and love their bodies?
Upon the urging of several peers and clients, I recently picked up Dr. Bacon’s Health at Every Size (HAES). The introduction alone inspired feelings of deep discomfort and tearfulness. Her approach suggested that the impossible was possible: we could learn to love and trust our bodies to regulate themselves while enjoying food and movement. We could become more deeply acquainted with the body’s instinctive weight-management system and worry less about external measures of what and when we’re supposed to eat. That sounds so wonderful, I thought. And then the fear: But will I be thin?
HAES takes its name from a larger movement of fat acceptance and body positivity, people who are challenging the shame and bad science around body weight and size. This movement questions the idea that being fat is intrinsically an awful, undesirable experience. They point toward the consequences of bariatric surgery and oppression against fat people as greater health risks. Dr. Bacon points to the increase in life expectancy that occurred during the same period as an increase in average body weight in the United States.
Dr. Bacon spends several chapters addressing commonly held beliefs about obesity, diet, and weight loss, and lays out for us the science that undermines and contradicts those beliefs. Instead, she lays out a convincing case that our efforts to manage weight are more harmful, such as: widely practiced dieting habits trigger the body’s instinctive mechanism of putting on more body fat to compensate for famine. One of the things I appreciated, too, was her exploration of all the different biological, social, economic, and genetic mechanisms that contribute to body size and body fat. If anything, this was my greatest challenge with the book: she spends so much time, necessarily, addressing and challenging all of our beliefs that I kept wanting to skip ahead to the part where she tells me what to do. Just tell me what to do!!!
A cursory reading of her approach may leave some thinking she’s saying not to have any concern about exercise and what we eat, but that isn’t what she’s doing with HAES. If anything, this movement is leading us toward a way to honor food and movement while also giving up the “war on obesity.” She provides structured practices and suggestions to follow, all of which help you become more deeply acquainted with your body and its unique needs and signals.
This is not about externally regulating ourselves by eating only these kinds of food, doing X amount of exercises per day, or only eating Y amount of calories. This is about learning your body’s signals for hunger and fullness, and more importantly, respecting them. This is about learning what kinds of movement you enjoy, things that are fun for you. Dr. Bacon argues, with scientific evidence, that taking pleasure in the foods we eat increases our body’s efficiency at absorbing and processing their nutrients. This is not simply about eating foods that taste good; it’s about slowing down and being fully present while eating, truly savoring the food.
When we tune into our bodies, Dr. Bacon suggests, we arrive at our “setpoints,” the body size and weight best for our own health. This means some of us may find ourselves in thinner bodies because we’ve eaten past our setpoints for years, while others may find themselves in fatter bodies because they’ve been under their setpoints. Our bodies have all these wonderful instinctive mechanisms to help us move toward wellness, but the overculture teaches us not to trust them. Instead marketing programs sells us ways to “hack” them, ignore them, overcome and subvert them. We devalue our emotions and then wonder why we’re empty inside. We don’t take naps when we’re sleepy, we drink more coffee and then can’t sleep at night. We deny ourselves when our bodies crave food and then we indulge past the point of fullness.
The approach promoted by HAES resonated deeply with me and my therapeutic approach to lasting change. Shame, in my opinion, is a terrible strategy for creating healthy long-term change. Shame at its worst keeps us stuck in unworkable patterns. As someone who has emotional eating patterns, feeling shame about my eating only leaves me feeling defeated and like “What’s the point? I might as well keep eating even though I feel gross.” Shame says, “I am worthless, so what I do doesn’t matter.” Even when Shame leads us to change a specific habit, often we end up in another unhealthy pattern, like people who exercise to the point of severely harming their bodies. Healthy pride says, “I am worthy, so I will do the things that help me to feel good, energized, attractive, and healthy.” HAES to me speaks to an inside-out relationship to my body: what matters is that I am happy in and with my body, not about how much fat my body has.
HAES has shown me that there’s conditioning that I still need to question and unpack, and yet it also connects with the practices that have helped me to feel good in my life. Years ago I decided it was unhealthy to wear clothes that made me feel unattractive, so I started buying pants that I liked and fit me comfortably. I also started doing the exercises that I enjoyed and changed my food habits away from chips and soda and toward carrot sticks and salads. I went out dancing and had fun. In the end, with all those healthy behaviors, does it matter what number was on the scale? If your answer is “Yes,” then the next question to wrestle with is “Why?”
“On ‘tough love’ and your fat friend’s health.” – by Your Fat Friend. An excellent article about living as a fat person subjected to constant unhelpful, oppressive shame and scrutiny.
We are a world in need of healing, living lives in need of healing. Our communities and families need healing. I need healing.
Sometimes when clients come in for therapy, they feel overwhelmed when laying out all their problems. There seem to be so many, so varied, so extensive that it is unclear where to start, what to do. They have psychological houses in need of new plumbing, a new roof, extermination of the bedbugs, a fire extinguisher for the stove that keeps igniting, and they have to live in these houses while doing this work.
This guy wants to hide out a while. Photo by Matthew Wiebe
Perhaps you are in good health, but you are looking out to your communities in need and finding a similar dilemma. The temptation is simply to abandon the house. The temptation is to run around screaming making inept efforts at all the problems. It is horrible to think about living in this place; we sense it could be so much more but the work of repair seems so big and so costly.
Where to start? If you were sitting with me, I’d ask you to take a deep breath, filling your belly, and then let it out. Breathing doesn’t solve anything. Breathing helps us to slow down to figure out what needs doing. We must live in our houses to work on them. Many of us wish that we could simply avoid our houses and then come back to find them all better.
The good news is; in some ways you can start anywhere. All of these things are problems, but working on any of them will immeasurably improve your house and make the other projects easier. What feels most pressing when you slow down? What problem is most urgent? What can we do to slow down the damage? If the stove is spontaneously igniting, then disconnecting the gas or electricity seems like a good first step. Things aren’t better, but they’re not getting worse.
Now you’re thinking about all the other things to do, but remember to breathe again. What is your body telling you? What do your feelings tell you? What does your mind tell you? What’s the next step? If you become paralyzed trying to figure it out with your mind, acknowledge those thoughts and drop deeper.
The challenge of deep, long-term healing is balancing the urgent and the important. What helps is diving inside and reconnecting to what I want to manifest. What kind of house do I want to create? What is the next step that will make my house more like my vision? Emergencies arise and want our attention. Sometimes it is necessary to address the emergency–the curtains are on fire. Other times the emergency is a distraction–the neighbor doesn’t like the color paint we’re using on the walls. No one can tell you which is which, they can only offer feedback and help you figure it out.
Holding the big picture, the vision, helps but focusing on all the ways our house is not that vision paralyzes. It is a difficult skill, holding the vision while keeping our focus small and practical. We take the steps in front of us. We make the phone call to the exterminator. We wash all the bedding with hot water. We do a bit each day and the house improves. Emergencies arise, we deal with them, we get back to work.
Where to start? If you can’t decide, just pick something and spend some time with it.
In the past few weeks, I’ve written about the experience of mistrust and the work of identifying trustworthiness. Today I will talk about repairing broken trust and accessing the virtue of Hope. This is a topic much bigger than a simple blog post, however.
Repairing Trust
As human beings, we will inevitably disappoint, fail, and hurt each other. We will have lapses in attention or ethics. We may cause harm without knowing we’ve done it until someone brings it to our attention. Rather than committing to the impossible goal of being or finding a perfect partner, we can explore the more workable and profound practice of repairing damaged trust in relationship.
Put simply, the process of restoring trust involves: addressing the upset or harm; re-validating trustworthiness; and then making amends or releasing the upset.
Address the upset or harm. Oops. Someone messed up, and now you feel hurt, angry, overwhelmed, abandoned, betrayed. Simply ignoring this doesn’t go very well. It may simmer in the background and erupt at the worst times. We may end up looking like the asshole because we’re expressing appropriate anger in an inappropriate context. Then we’re dealing with the other person’s justified anger with our own buried resentments.
You don’t have to address every single problem at the moment you have it. Indeed, it is okay and sometimes really helpful to take some time away to reflect and then bring up the issue to discuss later, when you’re all in a state to have a constructive conversation. What helps with all this is learning to be with your feelings, validate them, and then discuss them in non-blaming ways. For first offenses, I work on bringing up the issue while giving the other person the benefit of the doubt. “You did this, and this was my experience.” Not blaming the person for “causing” the feeling or accusing them of doing it on purpose, simply giving information so they know how they affected me.
photo by Adam Willoughby-Knox
Re-validate trustworthiness. Now we observe how the person handles the confrontation. If they can take some measure of responsibility and apologize or make amends, that validates their trustworthiness. If they can explain where they’re coming from in a nondefensive way, that validates their trustworthiness.
If they ignore your confrontation; attack you for bringing it up; apologize but repeat the behavior; or offer a confusing rationalization that doesn’t take any responsibility, that erodes their trustworthiness. These aren’t necessarily deal-breakers but they’re not good indicators for a strong partnership long term unless you can address and improve them.
If they minimize your hurt, insult you, call you crazy, flagrantly repeat the behavior and taunt you while doing so, or reject your experience outright, those are RED FLAGS.
Release the upset. Based on how trustworthy the person has proven themselves, we need to check in with ourselves. Is there lingering resentment or hurt. You might ask this part of you: is this all related to the current situation? Is any of this from the past? If it’s related to the current situation, what needs to happen for this part of me to feel okay with re-committing to the relationship?
Is there mistrust? Ask this part of you what your next step needs to be. Perhaps the resolution is that you’re not okay with re-committing to the relationship, instead you need to distance yourself, change the terms of the relationship, or end it safely.
Either way, resentment is not a desirable long-term feeling. It is an indicator of unresolved issues.
Finding Hope
I have been using “relationship” in the most generous interpretation, because issues of trust and mistrust come up in all of our relationships.
Once we no longer depend on external caregivers to meet our needs, the most important relationship becomes the one with ourselves. We behave inconsistently, we doubt ourselves, we make promises we don’t keep, we engage in behaviors we know are harmful to other parts of ourselves.
Becoming trustworthy stewards of ourselves is a journey, and it supports everything. The work is to cultivate more qualities of trustworthiness in how we relate to our parts. How can I be more consistent in response to my needs? How can I be respectful of my feelings? What promises can I honor?
I believe this is the virtue of Hope: I trust myself to work through the upsets of living while creating the life I deeply desire. If it is your desire to cultivate this, I wish you strength.
Last week, I wrote about how we experience mistrust, its value, and the barriers it creates to meaningful connection. This week, I want to write about trust.
photo by Michael Hull, via Unsplash
Qualities of Trustworthiness
As a Boy Scout, we frequently stated the Scout Law, a series of twelve qualities to which we aspired. The first point is to be Trustworthy.
What makes someone trustworthy? Think about people you trust and why. Connect to the feeling of trust you have around them, but more importantly think about what it is about them that makes them trustworthy. What did they do or not do that helped you to feel trust?
In brief, I think a trustworthy person behaves with consistency, genuineness, respect, and integrity.
Consistency – This person responds in a way that feels reliable. There might be some fluctuation in mood, and certainly the person will grow and change, but in general you feel confident that you know how they will respond to you. You don’t have to guess and worry about how they’ll act.
Genuineness – This person’s words, personality, and behavior all align. They may have multiple facets of Self that vary depending on the situation, but you sense a coherent core that is there in every situation. You know where you stand with them. When they smile, it reaches their eyes. When they are angry, they tell you what they’re angry about.
Respect – This person treats you with dignity and consideration. They do not put you down, coerce you to do things you don’t want to do, or take advantage of your vulnerabilities. When you set a boundary, they show willingness to abide by it. They listen to you. Even if they disagree, they do not minimize your thoughts and feelings.
Integrity – This person follows through on promises. They do not promise what they are unwilling to do. If they cannot keep promises, they acknowledge this and do what they can to rectify the situation. They don’t engage in confusing negotiating tactics or put the blame on you when they make mistakes. They take responsibility and apologize for problems. You feel that they behave the same whether in or out of your presence.
These qualities are about character rather than personality. For example, a person who is cheerful and bubbly might be as trustworthy as a sardonic, dour person, or as untrustworthy.
In the past I avoided sharp-tongued, confrontational people until I met some that were as direct with me about problems as they were about compliments. I found I could trust their praise since I knew they wouldn’t hide their concerns.
In contrast, I used to love hanging out with gossipy, back-biting people until it occurred to me that we were talking about whomever wasn’t in the room at the time. This meant that I was behaving in an untrustworthy way, and I couldn’t trust my “friends” not to talk badly about me when I was out of the room. This has become a guiding principle for me: pay attention to how my acquaintances treat others, and think about how it would feel if I were treated in that way.
Trustworthiness is not a fixed, innate quality. We develop these qualities through intentional choice and personal effort. If you picked one of the above qualities to develop and made a commitment to it, you could improve your trustworthiness. Others may not recognize your growth at first, but with continued effort they will begin to notice and treat you differently.
Next week, I will write about repairing damaged trust in relationships.
In my communities, and it seems in my country, I have watched increasing polarization and the lines of demarcation run sometimes very close to home. When conversations become polarized, it becomes very easy to forget that you are talking to a human being like yourself and instead imagine yourself fighting a righteous battle against an insidious, cunning, super-human villainous horde. As the climate escalates, it becomes more tempting and “justifiable” to let go of emotional containment, reflection, and dialogue with the desire to understand. Parts of us get activated by the conflict, begin to feed it and feed upon it.
This guy’s laying low until the argument dies down. Photo by delfi de la Rua.
As an outside observer listening to a lot of arguments (like a therapist who works with couples, or someone who reads the comment sections on the Internet), and a person who has participated in several arguments (and later wondered “Why was I so mad about that?”), I’ve noticed a few things:
20% of conflict is about the thing you are discussing, and 80% is about the emotional experience of the relationship.*
If you are accusing another (person/group) of bad behavior, the likelihood is that (you/your group) have participated in behavior that the other (person/group) perceives as similar.**
When you are the person accusing the other of behavior you’re engaging in, it is very hard to stop and admit this.
At times both parties will make parallel arguments and accusations of each other, but each will focus on a different facet. To offer an oversimplified example: Republicans and Democrats both share Liberty as a value, because America. Democrats point toward socially liberal attitudes as pro-liberty, and accuse Republicans of being anti-liberty for socially conservative policies. Republicans focus on economic and financial liberty and point toward reduced taxes and free markets as pro-liberty, and criticize Democrats as anti-liberty for taxation and regulation.***
We need the art and discipline of civil discourse. It is worth reading and rereading about logical fallacies, as they characterize the worst habits of rhetoric. What I want to focus on is what to do when things get heated. My observation is that escalating emotional reactivity occurs when we feel misunderstood, disrespected, or dismissed.
Think about a time when you felt misunderstood, disrespected, or dismissed. How did you respond? Did you stay in the conversation? Did you stay civil and rational? Did you say something you later regretted?
Think about a conversation where you felt understood, heard, and treated with respect. What was different about the experience?
We’re social beings and we are constantly seeking to be understood. Unfortunately, at least in the United States, the dominant cultural norm is to treat other people’s emotional responses as manipulative, irritating, or a sign of weakness. (Whereas our own emotional responses are always completely correct and justified.) It is when we dismiss, ignore, or patronize other’s feelings that they tend to become more intense and reactive. We do it to ourselves, too. But when it happens in relationship, we can give ourselves the plausible deniability that the other person “lost it for no reason.”
Defensiveness is a great example. We understandably become defensive when we feel attacked, but from the outside it usually looks like we’re attacking, which makes the other participants become defensive. Defensiveness shuts down effective communication and leaves everyone feeling guarded and hurt.
This makes for bad communication. By which I mean, we actually make it harder on ourselves to be understood when we dismiss and belittle others’ feelings. Instead of listening, that person’s mental and emotional energy goes toward managing their reaction. I find this to be true even for those who seem calm and collected. They might have developed some effective skill and flexibility in coping with their reactions, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have them.
I want to offer some phrases to help you think of ways to try this out. When you read these, you might find these too simple, but I think we need simple, easy go-tos when we begin to get emotionally reactive:
“I see your point.” Or, better, try to accurately summarize their points. If they correct you, accept their correction.
“I can appreciate why you’d feel that way.” Here, you are not agreeing that the other person’s version of reality is completely accurate and yours is wrong. You are acknowledging that their response makes sense based on where they are coming from—their background, their beliefs, their position in the discussion.
“What do you mean by this?” In this moment, you have just caught yourself about to launch into a defensive counterattack and asked yourself, “Am I hearing them correctly?”
“I am feeling [a feeling] when you say that.” This is about sharing your subjective experience and helping them to understand the impact of their words and actions on you. It’s not about accusing the other person of making you feel that way.
“…” This phrase is the long pause you make when you are about to accuse someone of behaving poorly and stop to reflect on whether there has been a time in which they might have felt that you’ve acted this way toward them.
You may be so polarized that you feel reluctant to step back from the hard, accusing stance. There is vulnerability in seeking understanding, particularly if the other parties do not offer it in return. It is also true that making this effort will not always result in increased safety and respect, but I believe that a great way of finding out if someone is willing to act in good faith is to give them the opportunity to do so. If you earnestly try this and find that it is met with disrespect and hostility, then of course figure out what you need to do for self-protection.
I have seen tremendous changes occur when all parties in a dialogue commit to this kind of conversation, particularly when a neutral party supports the process by holding both sides accountable to it. I aspire to the wisdom of Sun Tzu, to whom is attributed the statement: “The greatest victory is that which requires no battle.” This quote speaks to me of conflicts avoided, relationships not destroyed, friendships sustained, all because of a willingness to address and resolve conflict before it escalates into war.
****
*Source: I made this percentage up.
**I have mixed feelings about the way I’ve phrased this bullet point as it lacks nuance with regard to conversations between people in different states of privilege and oppression. For example, some people argue that the Ku Klux Klan and the Black Panthers are equivalent because they are nationalist groups based in racial identity. I fully disagree, as the Ku Klux Klan emerged to preserve white supremacy and the Black Panthers emerged to address the harms white supremacy does to Black people. The problem I am trying to speak to is that we get locked into defending ourselves and our groups at all costs, and unwillingness to acknowledge that the other party has ever been hurt or we have ever acted poorly interferes with finding resolution. For lack of certainty about how best to rewrite these statements, I want to emphasize that this is a perceived subjective equivalence.
**What’s interesting to think about with regard to the difference in where each group prizes Liberty is that they are also arguing about the shadow virtue of Restraint. Unfettered Liberty is not conducive to a group identity and somewhat implicitly at odds with any kind of centralized government, so Liberty must be balanced with Restraint (or, more negatively, Control). You could look at the argument as a difference in belief about where Liberty and Restraint should occur. Social conservatives say people should be free to spend their resources as they wish, but should also participate in monogamous sexual marriages and be financially responsible for their families. Social liberals say people should be free to live their lives as they wish, but should also be involved in an equitable distribution of resources so that all may be financially supported. Since Restraint is not a well-loved virtue, however, it is politically more effective to focus on where one is pro-Liberty. I think this is worth thinking about in any polarized argument. What virtues do the arguing parties share overtly and covertly, and where do they disagree about the implementation of these virtues?
Have you ever said that? What does that mean to you? Where do those “issues” come from?
When I explore trust issues with people, we often discuss all the ways they’ve been failed and betrayed by people they trusted, or wanted to trust. They might also talk about the ways they leap into trust with every new relationship, hoping this one won’t disappoint, only to be bitterly crushed again. Others feel terrified of trusting their relationships at all, afraid of that seemingly inevitable disappointment.
More deeply, they may feel unable to trust themselves. They’ve disappointed themselves, feel they’ve set themselves up to be hurt, believe they deserve the pain, engaged in self-defeating behaviors.
In every relationship, we must reckon with the issue of trust. How much do I trust? Does mistrust keep me safe? Are the benefits of trust or mistrust worth the costs?
Trust vs. Mistrust
Erik Erikson described one of the first Western psychological models of development that encompass an entire life. The first stage he called Trust vs. Mistrust. This begins from birth through infancy, in which the child learns that their environment may or may not respond to its needs appropriately. If the infant expresses need and the need is met, then trust in the world grows. If the infant’s needs are met sporadically, neglected, or punished, then mistrust in the world grows. When both ends of the spectrum are felt and integrated, the virtue of Hope becomes possible.
Problems reconciling the developmental crisis of Trust vs Mistrust leads to imbalances that affect later stages of development. We can very easily name undesirable consequences of too much mistrust—anxiety in relationships, irritability, paranoia, constantly feeling on guard and reluctant to let someone in due to believing eventually they will screw you up. But those who have lived through mistrust-engendering relationships could tell you the dangers of too much trust—opening themselves up to being taken advantage of, the deep pain of betrayal, and excessive credulity leading to the premature forgiveness of abusive and disrespectful behavior.
People with extensive relational trauma or deep-seated mistrust cannot simply set these aside to trust in a loving, benevolent universe. They know the universe is vast and includes pain, abuse, and evil. People who have experienced relational trauma often need to learn how to find trustworthy people and repair damaged trust while also maintaining healthy protective boundaries against people who would hurt and abuse them (clinically known as “assholes”).
photo by Oscar Keys, via Unsplash
The Experience of Mistrust
It took me a long time to recognize “Mistrust” as more than simply “the absence of trust.” Mistrust is its own attitude with collections of feelings, thoughts, and behaviors. Mistrust will look differently based on your personality and the experiences that sparked it, but here are some qualities that often appear in some form:
Guardedness – Stand-offishness, unwillingness to share your experience and thoughts openly without getting a temperature of the room or other person. Giving brief, curt answers to open questions.
Suspicion – Constantly feeling “on edge.” Irritability. Regular concerns that the other person is acting deceptively, setting you up for some harm, or talking about you behind your back. Needing to constantly check out the other person’s claims for truth value. May include some deceptive behavior like snooping or testing the person.
Anxiety – Tension in the body. Constantly going through the same cycles of thoughts over and over, regardless of any evidence for the thoughts. Difficulty relaxing, especially around people. Going “blank”, fearful, or hostile when asked direct questions.
Holding Grudges/Building a Case – Keeping a mental list of all the failures, abuses, and oversights committed by others. Sometimes you might dwell on these and bring them up to the other person when angry or afraid, even if the other person has apologized and tried to make amends. Other times you may keep this list to yourself, “building a case” not to trust the person, until you finally explode and throw all these accusations against the person who didn’t see them coming.
Cynicism – More broadly, mistrust generates a worldview that no one is trustworthy, there is nothing worth aspiring toward, and there is no reason to exert any effort to improve one’s life or community.
One thing I find interesting is that inwardly the person is experiencing a desire to know if they can trust the other person, but outwardly they behave in ways that undermine their own trustworthiness. Guardedness often elicits guardedness; if I wonder why you’re being self-protective, I may become self-protective. Being suspicious and holding grudges may well inspire the other person to respond in turn.
This becomes a internally coherent cycle of creating relationships that validate the mistrustful attitude. These behaviors are not conducive to the process of making amends and restoring trust.
That said, these behaviors and feelings aren’t “bad” and you’re not “crazy” to experience them. If we were to look through your history, we might fully understand why you’d be protective of yourself and why it’s hard to trust. Feelings of mistrust might be completely valid intuitive warnings from the part of your brain that isn’t wholly logical but nevertheless is picking up on subtle signals of danger.
I do not think eradicating or suppressing feelings of mistrust is useful to grow as a person and forming meaningful attachments. We might need to take some time to befriend and get to know mistrust while also exploring when and how to build trust. Next week, I will write more on the qualities of trustworthiness.
do you think just like that you can divide this you as yours me as mine to before we were us? if the rain has to separate from itself does it say “pick out your cloud?”
– Tori Amos, “Your Cloud“
Identity is not who we are, though our English language around identity suggests it points to something essential. There are many identities to claim, as many as there are ways to complete the statement: “I am a/an …” Today I am a son, brother, husband, therapist, and mentor. I might be deeply invested in these identities, deriving significant meaning from them. Is identity who I am, though? There is a Vedic practice known as “Neti Neti” (or “Not this, Not that”) in which one asks one’s self, “Who am I?”, waits for the answer, and then rejects the answer. For example, “Who am I? I am a man… No, I am not a man, that is a gender role assigned to me. Who is the I that is gendered male?” This practice continues until arriving at the answer that feels correct, which for me corresponds with a sense of knowing, a sense of Yes, this is it. (And the answer that was right ten years ago is not the answer that is right today.)This and similar practices lead us toward the Self, greater and deeper than we can fathom, a creative center of each person’s existence that expresses itself in the world. Identities, in this way, are names for various expressions of this Self. Some identities are names for things the Self has experienced—like “survivor.” Others are names for systems of belief that resonate with the self—like “Stoic,” “socialist,” or “Christian.” Identity is how we put our understandings of Self into language, making it possible to analyze, explore, and understand ourselves and communicate with others.
Identity is also relational. Those words “son,” “mentor,” infer relationships that “I” have with others—one is not a son without claiming someone or something as a parent. To identify as a “Stoic” is to put one’s self in community with others who ascribe to Stoicism, or have a stoic personality. Here we reach the more complex and political dimensions of identity. To claim an identity is to claim membership in a community of those who share the identity. A lone person who has thoughts and feelings unlike anyone else around them must struggle with feelings of alienation, confusion, shame, or fear that something is deeply wrong with them. The choice seems to be either accepting this alienation or cutting off the parts of them that don’t fit the majority. If those thoughts and feelings have a name an identity, suddenly that person has an opportunity to experience dignity and pride as they are. Thus, the “alphabet soup” of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, asexual, questioning, intersex, and increasingly more identities that are sexually, romantically, or gender non-majority is so vital and continues to expand. Each letter of the LGBTQIA acronym is a declaration of existence and validity for each of those communities, and hope for those who realize their feelings match one of those identities.
Here, in the facet of relationship, is also an opportunity for deep wounding. If I say I am this thing and everyone around me denies it, undermines it, rejects it, or simply ignores it, then that part of me suffers and collapses. Perhaps I can maintain its health through personal work and sheer willpower, but that drains the energy I might spend on other things. I may become defensive, hostile, fearful, anxious, or overwhelmed when my identity is under attack. Though I am cisgender—I was assigned male at birth and continue to identify as male—there have been times when others have explicitly or implicitly questioned whether I am “a man” because I did not behave or look like what they thought “a man” should. This fostered injuries to my identity—a defensiveness and anxiety that arises when I hear a particular phrase, a particular tone, or someone insults me in a way that resembles earlier insults. Intellectually I may understand “being a man” as a complex, shifting cultural and historical set of norms—but I may find myself manipulated into doing something I don’t want to do, simply because someone implied I’m “not a man” if I don’t do it. (At the same time, there are ways my maleness is not questioned in the ways a transgender man’s might be—most people refer to me by male pronouns without my asking; I can use the men’s bathroom without fear; and peers and authorities accept my maleness without any effort on my part.)
Photo by Thomas Lefebvre
As social creatures there is, I believe, an instinctive part of us that needs belonging. We know that babies thrive when they experience touch and warmth from their caregivers. We know that solitary confinement fosters mental illness in prisoners. Threats of exile and abandonment are experienced by parts of us as threats to well-being and survival. I believe this belonging-needing part of us suffers a kind of trauma when it experiences bullying, exile, abandonment, or any experience of being made to feel it is unwelcome. This is one reason why real harm is done to trans and gender nonconforming folk when others refuse to use their names and pronouns.
As with many psychic wounds, when we get our first taste of exile or abandonment, we develop strategies to avoid ever having to experience this pain again. In some ways those strategies succeed at reducing the pain of exile or abandonment, but they may well become toxic to our selves and relationships. The strategies become problematic to our selves and communities when we:
Become deeply invested in identity, trying to be “the best [x] I can” so no one can judge or exclude us. This may get us some mileage, but the trauma is magnified when we lose that identity. Someone who has spent years being “a good son” suddenly becomes utterly lost when their parents die. This is also incredibly challenging in a society in which we may hold multiple identities with widely varying norms and expectations.
Minimize the need for community and connection altogether, disavowing any identity that requires others’ validation. A less intense version of this might look like cultivating a kind of critical distance, so one is a member of the community but thinks of themself as on the edges, or outside, or more of an observer.
Develop rigid expectations of what someone in “[x]” community should look like or act like; what values they should hold; what politics they should espouse; all of which centralizes one’s own values, attitudes, and behaviors. Doing so, we begin to limit our own growth and development.
Express defensive outrage or excessive victimization at signs of criticism or accountability from others within the community.
Police community boundaries—enacting rigid identity norms by marginalizing anyone who doesn’t fit through social control strategies such as gossiping, bullying, excluding from social events or positions of influence, or straight up denouncing the person as “not a true [x]”. Thus we become hostile to the natural and productive diversity within our communities.
Being a member of communities that are composed of socially marginalized people, I observe the above dynamics periodically. I think these come from the trauma many of us experienced growing up in communities where we felt alien or rejected. Once we find a place where we feel accepted, welcome, and seen, that taste of joy intensifies the resolve to never lose it again. (Of course, others feel unwelcome and rejected even in the communities that “should” accept them.) Unhealed, these underlying identity injuries fester, directing our actions more than we might acknowledge without reflection. Much is made of “body fascism” in gay male communities, and I suspect much of that is fed by the shame of childhood alienation, causing some men to grow up and push themselves to prove their worthiness through superlative physiques, careers, fashion, and then projecting their own insecurities onto the less-developed bodies of their peers, who experience that as reinforcing pressure to hold themselves to those standards as well. Then it begins to look like a cultural norm.
It’s important to note that it is normal and necessary for communities to maintain boundaries and shape definitions for identities. Think of boundaries being as natural and necessary as the shell of an egg, or the edges of a living cell. To foster life, there needs to be some limit that holds in the living organism and keeps out harmful toxins in the environment. That boundary needs to be firm, but porous enough to bring in nourishment and push out what is harmful. All communities develop mechanisms by which this occurs. When these structures are not developed consciously and purposely in a way that allows for flexibility and diversity, then they tend to be enacted in the rigid ways noted above by people who feel most urgently the need to do it, without an accountability structure in place. The loudest voices tend to be the ones of rigidity and exclusion, and the people who recognize and value inclusion and pluralism have to push hard to be heard. Communities with structure have the opportunity to make this polarity a conscious part of their community agreements, recognizing the need for pluralism and boundaries.
On a personal level, I think it is beneficial to continue developing ourselves as whole people. If one identity is taking up much of our time and attention, then it’s worthwhile to engage in other interests, connect with trusted family, or engage with friends outside of that community. This helps me to get perspective on what’s going on in my community, take it less personally, and re-engage with more of an open heart—partially because I remember that I am more than just this identity. The practice of “Neti Neti” or similar meditations of shedding layers of identity also helps to reconnect with the core Self. When I can validate my identity and also remember it isn’t “me,” I feel less vulnerable when someone attacks it. Becoming aware of what the identity means to me—what I think defines the identity based on my lived experience—I have a stronger base of authority to support me in dialogue or confrontation.
What about on a community level? I am curious for more conversation about this, and I think it’s needed. One thought I have is to become sensitive to signs of trauma so that I can respond with compassion when I or someone else acts in the ways listed above. These days I am more interested in communities organized around shared values or a shared mission rather than a shared identity. I think that helps us to depersonalize community problems and focus more on developing just and inclusive community systems with effective boundaries.
What do you think? What practices or policies could heal or manage some of these dynamics?
This space has lain silent, though it continues to speak with the archives of posts. Blogging was useful to me as a discipline of creating something weekly and putting it in front of an audience, of believing in my words and my process of exploration enough to make it available to anyone with an Internet connection. How many people clicked on the posts mattered less, though some posts were surprisingly popular and I continue to be pleased with how often my Jungian Beyoncé writings continue to get clicks. This past year, however, I felt less passion about blogging.
Ouranos, photo by Antigone059
When I think about the Internet, I think it is in some ways a venue to observe our collective consciousness. One can read one’s Facebook feed and see the “trends” of thought and conversation, the dialogues that seem fixed, the outraged responses and the outraged responses to the outraged responses. I associate this with the astrological meaning of the planet Uranus, with its associations with community, intellectual debate, and revolutionary thinking. Astrological Neptune is association with the ocean, the spiritual realms, dreams, illusions, and in my view the collective unconscious. In Greek myth, Ouranos is castrated by Kronos (Saturn), and his phallus thrown into the ocean (Neptune), which results in the birth of Aphrodite (Venus).
My interpretation is that the potency of our airy, conscious discourse is lost when we are unable to sink into the oceanic depths and connect with the unconscious influences there. Love makes possible, and is made possible by, the joining of our rational and irrational minds. And here I’m lost in airy analysis when I’m trying to say that I become weary by the constant dialogue and analysis made possible by the Internet. It’s exciting and feels important, it spurs anger and the desire to write and communicate, and at the same time it can be lacking in depth. We are at a point where it is possible for an event to happen in the world and less than two hours later have five different opinion pieces about why the event happened and what it means about us as people. There is not time for deep reflection and integration in which we can say something truly original, something that would truly move our conscious conversation forward. Instead we are reacting to each other based on the assumptions we already have.
Therapy is like that. I’ve come to notice that “analysis” often happens too early and ends up being a rehash of assumptions we’ve already made, the assumptions that created the situation. “I’m feeling uncomfortable. It’s because I don’t like my job.” That has some truth, and yet that does not move us toward anything. We learn nothing new about the discomfort and we get no insight into what might change that would make the work experience better. What helps move forward is to sit with our discomfort, to try to listen in a new way, to notice the stories we always tell and acknowledge that maybe they’re not the entire truth. Maybe these assumptions are dried leaves of our mind that need to be shed so that we can lay bare and fallow for a time, being with that emptiness and not-knowing, to make space for something truly new to grow from within us.
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I’ve written all of this and noticed that I titled the post “On Wisdom,” because I thought to say more about the oddness of the rhetorical box I’ve created for myself with this blog. I’ve enjoyed writing about therapeutic process and trying to communicate psychological insights in ways that are fresh, accessible, yet challenging to pop psychological assumptions that I think are unhelpful. At the same time I’ve not appreciated how this platform and that approach necessarily narrows the scope and loses nuance. What I have learned as a therapist is that every person needs to hear something different, even if their problems look superficially the same. We are all on a unique trajectory of growth and have unique histories that shape that growth. One person needs to hear, “You are not your symptoms. It is time to live the life you want even if it doesn’t feel right.” Another person needs to hear, “What you are experiencing is not your fault. You have an illness that is out of your control.” For both of these people, one message would be liberating while the other message would be a cage.
Or, in other words, there is a story about a Buddhist master and a student. The student comes to the master to complain. “Your advice is contradictory. You tell me to do one thing one day, and the opposite the next.”
The master nods. “Imagine that you are standing at one side of a bridge that has no rails, and you are helping a blind person to walk across it. When the person veers too far to the edge on the right, you yell, ‘Go left!’ When the person veers too far to the left, you yell, ‘Go right!’”
My intellectual focus on opposites, polarities, and dualism is in this spirit. My hope is to help people find their own Middle Way, which necessitates recognizing and accepting the opposites within us. This is so simple to write but in practice there is not a set of consistent, reliable codes to follow. Yet writing blog posts, I struggle to represent that, as often the topic of a blog post is “How to go right when you’re veering too far to the left,” which may be terribly bad advice for the people veering too far to the right. I could become more complex, but then my blog posts would be like this one, approaching 1,000 words, and thus unlikely to be read or shared by people on their lunch breaks.
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All of this to say: I have ended my practice of weekly blogging for now, and have returned to writing longer essays and fiction to encourage me to reflect more deeply, research more, and think more critically about what I want to say.
