After my lengthy close reading of archetypes, identity, and relationship in Beyoncé’s album B’Day, I debated whether to continue the exploration for later albums. This series of explorations comes out of a long-term series of conversations with my best friend Woods. Both of us are around the artist’s age and were in college together when she released her first solo album. We regularly discussed her music and her presentation of her particular intersections of race, gender, and sexuality. Earlier this year, I read an article by Nitsuh Abebe called “Why Can’t Beyoncé Have It All?” This article seemed to summarize everything we had ever discussed and contained this gem: “A few years ago, Beyoncé “killed” Sasha Fierce—or, rather, reintegrated Sasha, a process I wish Carl Jung were alive to ask her about.” As someone who is perhaps inordinately fascinated by both Jung and Beyoncé, this stuck out to me as an invitation and challenge. In re-listening to her works, I perceived creative alchemy, a unique process of individuation that has continued with her recent creative emergence, Beyoncé.
Author: Anthony Rella
Healing and Need
Working in community mental health, I have thought and re-thought and will continue to re-think the value of mental health care for people who struggle with poverty and oppression. My clients have many barriers to good housing and employment, including mental illness, poverty, and criminal histories. Even some of the most generous assistance programs are unwilling to work with certain criminal backgrounds, and I am left wondering what to do. I am one piece in a network of systems that at times can work beautifully well and at times utterly fail.
The Symbolic Dimension of Our Lives
A Pero Manescu (Q-Art) conceptual analog photography The part of us that lives in the unconscious is hard to sense yet easy to find. Jung coined the evocative image of “the Shadow:” banal, somewhat hidden, ever-present, often overlooked, at times sinister. Where there is light, there is a shadow. If a light is on, there is a shadow somewhere. Just behind you, under your fingers, in the places you aren’t seeing. We only have to shift our attention. Some folks experience this kind of work with a natural, intuitive instinct, knowing that attention to those dark unknowns can lead to transformation, freedom, and greater self-power. I think this is true personally and socially: what we deny as a culture keeps us sick. We see this in our most painful scandals: the cover-up might be worse than the crime, compounding an already awful wound with lies and manipulation. The evils we refuse to acknowledge in our hearts, families, and communities become toxic and connected to greater evils in our culture.
What is the Unconscious?
Western culture has internalized enough psychological language and insight as to give even the most uninterested person a casual understanding of concepts like the unconscious, at least to have heard a joke or cliché. This kind of awareness does not always carry with it the understanding of why anyone should care about the unconscious or how it could help us live a life of depth, meaning, and integrity.
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Softening
Take a breath and imagine yourself becoming soft. Imagine the hard shell of resentment starting to ease and bend. Imagine the ice of rejection melting into your heart. Breathe in those irritations and distractions, invite them into your field of awareness. Let your focus become soft. Breathe and notice the subtle sensations: what is in the corner of your eye, the gentle sounds in the background, the feeling of air on skin. Let your awareness settle on what matters but gently allow the rest into you. The energy and frustration of trying to push those things away can ease into a calm sense of openness. It needs space. Become soft.
Not to deny your own needs and values, not to sacrifice your hard-won boundaries. Not to deny your limits. Only let yourself become soft. Notice the irritation that comes with noise and distraction, that frustration when things do not go as you thought they should. Some part of us wants to deny reality, reject our senses, refuse what comes at us from our environment. We grow harder, rigid, we become angrier and lash out, we make ultimatums that we regret, we criticize or snap at people when a soft word might get us what we want.
“Lilly” by Tom Collins We might find ourselves ruminating on something said or done around us, some misspoken word or faulty opinion, some secret fear of being disliked or hated. Let that soften, that need to control what others say or do. Let soften that part of yourself that responds to the opinions of others. Not to push away, not to fix, not to say it’s unimportant. Imagine how it feels in your body to be distressed, and imagine that beginning to thin, to become soft and fluid.
Resilient, soft, responsive flesh and skin contains the human organism. A thin membrane separates our environment from our sensitive organs. The hardness of our bones gives us structure and form, but our softness enables us to move and flow through life, to adapt to constantly changing climates and circumstances. When we become hard and constrict, our fists and teeth clench, we shut down around suffering or anger, we close in upon ourselves. This shuts down possibility and potential. We lose the ability to respond creatively and make choices in line with our own truth. We become responsive, avoidant, combative. Tense muscles become more prone to exhaustion and injury. Constant and worry anxiety drains the nervous system. Constant anger raises blood pressure and harms our relationships.
We can remember how it feels to be in our soft bodies now, to breathe into what is clenching and imagine it relax. If this is not enough, we can breathe in and clench ourselves even more tightly, breathing in all that hardness and constriction, and then exhale completely, allowing the muscles to relax and loosen. With softness, we might feel vulnerable but we touch our true power in the moment. Not the power to force things to happen that we insist on happening. The power of recognizing what is, recognizing my true limits and potential, and the power to act from my whole self, in a way that feels correct.
What You Avoid Might Help You
The imagination is powerful and often undisciplined. Our minds fill in empty space with images and stories of what might be, and our bodies react as though those things are truly happening. What we imagine says so much about our personalities, our histories, and our relationships. What we imagine says so much about our mood and state of being at any moment.
If I’m busy and do not hear back from someone, I might forget about the message or focus on other things. If I’m feeling good and confident, I might assume they’re busy or working on it. If too much time passes and I feel insecure or tired, my imagination starts spinning different stories. Feelings of persecution may set in. I might imagine arguments between myself and the absent person, or imagine that I’m being ignored because I am worthless, or marginalized with deliberate intent to harm. I might imagine something bad happening to myself or the other person.
This is a common feature of people with anxiety, and most of us have some level of anxiety at some point or another. For people with high levels of anxiety, these imaginations can become so intense and frightening that they inhibit us from doing what we need to do. We might have piles of mail, dozens of unread emails, a voicemail box that is chock-full of unheard messages. We might have bills in collections and debt spiraling out of control, all because the idea of facing and dealing with it is terrifying and we have already admitted defeat. Or we’ve convinced ourselves that by ignoring a thing we are able to postpone defeat.
That’s not the case with everyone. I’ve learned that some folks might be active in managing these issues, calling the utilities and credit companies to attempt to negotiate for better payment schedules and adjust financial burdens. That conversation we’ve been dreading might be one that the other person wants to have. Help might be available if we can tolerate the anxiety and face the thing we’ve been avoiding. When we find ourselves worrying about what might be wrong or imagining things for which we have no evidence, can we stop, take a breath, and try to imagine something different? The goal is not to argue with anxiety, because to argue is to have already lost. We can stop letting worry set the terms of how we think. We can focus on what is working in life, times when we reached out and found help, or our own capacity to resolve the issue.
IMAGINATION by archanN To discuss anxiety in this way is not to say that our minds are always wrong. Some of us may find that we have accurate intuitions into what is happening, particularly with unspoken communications that we recognize are out of the norm. If you are prone to anxious ruminations, however, it may become difficult to parse out what is useful from what comes from your typical hopes or fears. We might take our cue from cognitive-behavioral therapy and ask ourselves, “What evidence do I have that this idea is true (or false)? What would it mean for me if this was true (or false)? If this is true (or false), what could I do with this information?” It might be time to take action, or to wait and gather more information. Sometimes we can spare ourselves hours of agony just by calling someone up and checking out our inner story with their thoughts or feelings.
This comes back around to the major point: while choosing to wait is an active response to a problem, avoiding the problem or anything that reminds us of it is not. By avoiding, we shut out information that could confirm or disprove beliefs, and wall ourselves up into a self-perpetuating loop of anxiety. I believe that people with anxiety are capable of courageously confronting their lives. Perhaps they need more courage than most to do what may look from the outside like simple tasks. We may find, with time, that confronting these anxiety-producing situations fills us with energy and drive.
Apologizing With Self-Respect
I have been a person who says “I’m sorry” a lot. Recently, I have noticed apologizing when I’ve done nothing wrong — someone bumped into my chair, for example. In the culture of the United States, this is considered a bad quality, particularly for a man: “I’m sorry” suggests I’m taking responsibility for a wrong, or lack confidence to take up space. Women in the United States are often reinforced to apologize for taking up space of inconveniencing others, culturally reinforced to make themselves physically small and unobtrusive. In some cultures, a person would be considered arrogant and boorish for failing to apologize and take others into consideration. We do lose an element of civility and mutual regard when we fail to take any notice of having inconvenienced or hurt someone. A friend once suggested substituting “excuse me” for times when I want to say “I’m sorry.” This may be a small gesture of politeness, but mutual civility is fed by such small gestures.
The complexity of gender, space, and consideration is brilliantly illustrated by the tumblr Men Taking Up Too Much Space On The Train. Image after image reveals what appear to be masculine or male-bodied individuals taking up more space on public transit than is necessary, at times crowding out others. Apologies and self-minimization is met by those who take up more space than is necessary, who seem unconcerned by their impact on others. These folks either think they have no reason to apologize or think that to apologize is to show weakness. The problem, to their minds, is that others are too sensitive or did not recognize what the offender really “meant” to do. The people taking up too much space on the train might not mean to inconvenience others, for example, but they are.
We see public figures causing harm or offense with their words and actions and then going through a fake ritual of conciliation. They say something to the effect of “I’m sorry you’re mad at me” and sign up for a sensitivity course. They say, “I was misunderstood or taken out of context.” They seem unaware of the harm done, they’ve taken no time to contemplate. The apology is about smoothing over image.
Photo by Greg Rakozy Apologizing does not have to mean, “I was completely wrong and you were completely right.” An apology accepts responsibility for a specific harm I have done. I may still be struggling to understand your hurt or offense, but I can listen to and appreciate that I have caused harm. I can recognize how I contributed to the situation, what I did that was not in line with my values. You may have done something that I feel justifiably angry about, and I can recognize that my behavior was not honorable.
Feeling Stuck
What can we learn from feeling stuck? If every experience offers the possibility to help us life more free, more meaningful lives, then stuckness might have its own seed of liberation. The feeling of being “stuck” is somewhat generic and can encompass a variety of human experiences, from fairly mundane to a kind of horror that begins to feel mundane:
· Stuck in a relationship that’s not very good but not very bad, living a life that feels dissatisfying but I have no ideas about what would be better.
· Stuck in an abusive cycle, where I feel terrified of someone or something in my life that has the potential to cause me harm if I try to make any changes, or even if I don’t make any changes. I genuinely feel there is nowhere I can go because every road seems dangerous, even the road of doing nothing.
· Stuck in bad circumstances, such as being loaded with debt, wanting a job but not having a car or Internet access that would help me to look for one or actually commute if I could find one, living in an apartment that’s broken down and costs more in rent than it’s worth, and every time I try to make a move the ground seems to come out from under me.
Feeling stuck is painful. Our animal nature wants freedom as much as it wants comfort. The capacity to choose our lives can help us live gracefully with what might otherwise be unbearable situations. When we feel that choice is missing, we can fall into that learned helplessness that is akin to depression. This is a different experience than living with the spiritual belief that our lives are ordained for us by some wise benefactor. Submission to an outside will can itself be a choice that helps some to find freedom in life. A substantive difference in quality comes from the belief that such submission is voluntary and purposeful. Coerced submission is no blessing.
When we feel stuck, all that energy that wants to go and do gets coiled around the basic problems, becoming increasingly more painful. Some of us start finding ways to numb the pain or distract ourselves and displace all that pain and energy into something over which we have more control. A frequently-used example is yelling at a dog instead of speaking up to a boss. Irritation with life in general, or a sort of floating anxiety and fearfulness that seems to have no cause, may point to somewhere in life where we feel we cannot move and we want to avoid perceiving.
This perception is important. One way to begin to free that energy and reclaim it is to sense and sit with it, to sense the blocked energy and suffering, and to continue sinking into that sensation. Becoming free sometimes demands that we learn to move toward the intolerable. To simply sit with ourselves being stuck and feeling frustrated and let that part of ourselves speak. If we can sit with this and find a trusted ally who is willing to listen and offer honest feedback, we might begin to recognize something we’ve been avoiding that might help us to become free: a conversation, a resolution, an action. Sometimes we have to learn how to wait while staying awake enough to see an opportunity when it comes.
Action is not always possible or desirable. Sometimes giving ourselves space to feel or finding people who can sit with us in pain is enough to lighten the heart of its burden. We can change our experience of ourselves, but we might need to find physical safety and meet our survival needs before we have the energy to do so. Help exists if we are ready to look for it. We might not know what is possible, or who is willing to help, or what is available to us, before risking a change.
What else helps when you feel stuck?
Blessing Following a Crisis
May you turn toward this fresh moment, lungs filling with the purpose of living. May this misstep, this stumble, be the step on the path you were meant to follow. May the words spoken out of turn mirror the truth you are ready to meet. May you break the cycle of transgression and punishment. May the trauma weighting your heart melt in fierce compassion, into soft, self-respecting anger. May you find an open hand that you won’t knock aside. May every blessing and gift be offered to you, and may you forgive yourself enough to accept even one.
Starting Fresh Takes Its Own Courage
I missed my weekly posting last week, and nearly allowed myself to miss this week’s. I am in a major transition between one phase of life into a new one, and many things are changing personally, professionally, and socially. All of this is positive movement toward my goals, and I feel an inner pressure to present only a joyful, confident face to go with this. There is a fear that if I show any sense of the underlying vulnerability, insecurity, and grief, then that may mean I’m defective, or made a bad choice.
While free writing, I wrote something like the title of this post, and realized one of the characteristics of change and starting fresh. There is a comfort in staying stuck in patterns, relationships, or circumstances, even the ones that no longer work, that are harmful, that inspire self-doubt and despair, or simply feel stagnant and need to change. There is a fear of what might happen if there is change.
Stepping into the unknown change takes courage. So does the steps after. We move into a new neighborhood and don’t know the people, don’t know where the grocery store is, don’t know how to get to all the things we need. We start a new job and don’t understand the politics, the job is new, the technology and responsibilities are different. We risk meeting a new person for friendship or intimacy and don’t know their sense of humor, whether a particular joke is a compliment or insult, where their pet peeves and preferences lie. And we have to do all this work to discover those things outside of ourselves while continually deciding whether to stay open and vulnerable in revealing our own preferences, wishes, opinions, insights.
I’m not a believer in getting rid of fear, if only because I have not discovered the way. For me, courage is this recognition of the fear and vulnerability and continuing on regardless. I have done it before and survived. Now I might think well about my past jobs, relationships, and lives, and even miss some of the comfort and joy of them, but I was just as scared and vulnerable when I began those.
Perhaps this is only scary for some. I have met people who seem to thrive on such change, but I only know their outward faces and did not know what was in their hearts.
