Facing the Truth with Wise Compassion
"Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch." -James Baldwin
In a Spoke series we are contemplating the question: what is impinging on our freedom/ability to be who you want to be and have exactly what you want? This prompt has been an impetus to stare painful truth in the face and to approach, with curiosity and compassion, what makes this so damn hard.
As humans, we avoid self-knowing through distraction--alcohol, sex, shopping, food, technology, exercise, talking constantly, moving non-stop, work. These participatory actions are reminders from the universe that there's something our bodies know and hold. If we pause long enough, before we reach, if we listen to our full selves (movements, gestures, facial expressions, sensations, tensions, relaxations, rosy cheeks, heart palpitations, thoughts) we may find what it is we are so hell bent on getting away from. However, the truth resents interventions of knowing that are too severe.
In psychology we call these distractions from the truth "defenses" or "protective strategies." Before we can remove a shield, we need to understand and honor its function. Removing it too soon, without other resources in place, can leave us feeling exposed and threatened. The thing about a defense is that it works wonders--pretending not to see or hiding from what is an excellent effort to feel safe. And then eventually, the shield itself becomes its own cause of suffering. For example, the excessive alcohol might make us feel assured but also bring about great loneliness, shame and anxiety in the non-drinking hours. The 16 hour work days may keep us engaged throughout the sunlight hours, but leave us with a post-sunset emptiness that Netflix and Instagram cannot fill. The story "I haven't moved in with my boyfriend because I don't have time to pack," may delay the ending of the relationship, but keeps us feeling stuck and not alive in the present.
Choosing change requires choosing loss. As therapist Lori Gottlieb reminds us, this is the reason why so many people say they want something different but stay exactly the same. To choose loss is to grieve, which is layered and complex--often taking us to places inside us that we've been, but forgotten about with very good reason. Who would elect to grieve?
Here's why it may be worth it--pain is awful, but it is unavoidable. It demands feeling. Suffering occurs when we try to fight the pain. Every thought we have about the pain we perceive we might feel: "I won't be able to live with it," "it will be too much," "I might never find another partner if this relationship doesn't last," "if the business fails then others will think I am a failure," "I won't be able to do all the things I have to if I feel all that is inside of me," etc all have one thing in common: they are not the pain itself.
Choosing to face our fears doesn't mean we have to do something about them. That is another step entirely, but it does create a new option, a contemplation of a pathway to aliveness, an alternative to stuckness and apathy. It is an opportunity to ask ourselves: what is my part to play in creating the circumstances I am in? For example, if we face our fear of loneliness, we may see that we don't feel connected in our relationships. Once we see things as they are, this allows us to then ask the question: Am I allowing myself to be reached and touched by others? What might I be doing that gets in the way? This new understanding began by acknowledging the honest in-the-moment emotion (loneliness) and not running from it.
I acknowledge here that choice, an alternative to stuckness, can also be scary. Because when we see we have a choice, we also feel a sense of accountability and onus. How frightening it can be when we see that some things don't happen to us, that we are complicit in the ways we neglect ourselves.
In sessions, support circles, and my relationships I am trying to differentiate between wise compassion (seeing the entire situation) and blind compassion (being caring to avoid upsetting, having a difficult conversation or feeling discomfort in myself). Sometimes people need to hear "totally! what an asshole?" and sometimes they need to be told "what makes you continually go back to someone who treats you like you don't matter?" Holding a mirror up to our own and others' avoidance of reflection is a radical act of kindness: being clear and not colluding with the blur.
This piece is about encouraging all of us to approach the self with wise compassion: a willingness to see the picture we've painted from other angles, new vantage points, and welcome in different points of view.
Anxiety and dis-ease thrive when truth and intuition are not invited in. Have you ever waited for a piece of news, and even if when you finally received disappointing information, noticed you somehow feel better knowing something than you did while you were waiting? This lets us know that the nervous system seeks certainty, it craves to know what is. What would it be like to give our beautiful bodies what they need?
“We are like snow globes: We spend all of our time, energy, words and money creating a flurry, trying not to know, making sure that the snow doesn’t settle so we never have to face the truth inside us—solid and unmoving. The relationship is over. The wine is winning. The pills aren’t for back pain anymore. He’s never coming back. That book won’t write itself. The move is the only way. Quitting this job will save my life. It is abuse. You never grieved him. It’s been six months since we made love. Spending a lifetime hating her is no life at all."-Glennon Doyle
What hard truth can you follow to find your way back to yourself?
What would it take for you to make a treaty with yourself, rather than be at odds with yourself--to open up to the pain that comes with each and every loss, and therefore each and every opening?
Here are some principles of self-knowing that I have learned from my mentors and the ones who've held a mirror up to me. I pass it along to you on your ever-evolving journey toward truth:
This work is deeply personal. There is no universal process, timetable or route.
This work is lifelong. This is just the beginning. Be gentle with yourself as you travel through the dark and red parts.
You will make mistakes. You will offend. You will feel like you could have done it better. Follow the lead of Paulo Freire, who encourages us to "act and then reflect" over and over again. Do not stay in a paralyzed state of reflection: there is no out from here.
Give yourself permission to get curious and not know the answers, it will emerge when you are ready and it has formed.
Invite in all of you: nothing needs to be shut out. No identity, no belief, no feeling. Shame thrives in the bottling and the ignorance. Any thought or feeling deserves curiosity and is fair game for investigation.
The Western world tends to make the mind/mental knowledge superior than other ways of knowing. Don't neglect what the body is telling you--the rooms you walk in that make you feel uncomfortable, the people you go silent with, the ones where you say yes when you mean no. The narratives we've heard about the body are that it is animalistic, too sexual, pleasure-focused, dirty, messy--this has made many of us neglect its wisdom, but there is a way back to ourselves if we invite its full experience in. Nothing is wrong, it's just real life.
Become aware of your own observation tendencies. Do you notice the words of others more than their actions? Do you see the good and avoid the pain? Get curious about what you might notice if you broaden your field of view, if you let more in and allowed yourself to feel all there is to feel about what you see.
The discomfort gets easier. Soon enough, wading through it will be the thing itself that helps you find your way out of it.
"There is another world, but it is inside this one."-Paul Eluard