When I began working with a therapist, I expressed that my problem was being indecisive. He looked up the definition of “to decide” and found its etymological origin of decidere, “to cut off.” What he suggested was that I was “indecisive” because every choice I could think of involved cutting off a piece of me, and none of my pieces wanted to be cut off. When I attempted to cut something away, it rebounded with greater intensity.
Developing a center creates a space in which these parts can speak and be heard, which enables us to find more creative, flexible, and creative choices. So often groups become toxic when people feel unheard and left out of choices that affect them, where those who are making the choices feel that they cannot possibly please everyone and want to push forward or avoid choosing anything.
Most of us understand that nothing can meet all of our needs, yet we long to be heard, seen, and included in the choices that affect us. It costs less, in the long run, to slow down and acknowledge the validity of each person’s perspective. The importance of each part of me, especially the ones that seem irreconcilable. To sit in the messiness of the problem. This allows for a richer solution to form.
In a solution, each part dissolves and integrates into a new whole. We could not separate out its parts without great effort. This person’s need meets this person’s fear and this person’s anger. One’s skills, longings, fears, and resources meld together.
So often we become attached to finding the “right” solution that we think we can decide what elements to exclude. Those exclusions become weaknesses to the solutions we enact. With this kind of solution, emerging from center, often people feel a sense of stillness, of rightness. They may not be able to say why this choice is right, and it may not be the choice they would make at another time, but this is the solution emerging from this confluence of time, place, and perspective.
There’s a lot of anger and fear in people’s’ hearts. Much of it comes from our experiences of being unheard, unseen, cut off, marginalized, deprived of an opportunity to have a say in the choices that affect our lives. Or from our fear that we’ll be put into that situation if someone else has their way. There’s risk that allowing one person a voice will mean someone else’s gets squelched. There’s also a risk that finally allowing someone to have a voice after ignoring them for a long time means learning some uncomfortable and painful truths that are hard to integrate. The avoidance of these fears and risks prevents us from finding solution.
More and more I’m coming to think that people and organizations that are run by rigid, legalistic systems with rules and processes for everything arise in part by avoidance of this conflict. When we are unable to tolerate honest sharing of our experiences, rigidity and tension arise.
People deeply want to be heard and seen. When we feel heard and seen, we feel more safety and trust with each other. Feeling scared, anxious, or afraid of being hurt, we might be inclined to avoid or attempt to control anything that makes us uncomfortable. We respond by not hearing, by invalidating, by mocking. We respond by controlling, threatening, coercing. All of these responses engender mistrust, powerlessness, and rage in the people being marginalized, ignored, and controlled.
