Where are you being radically honest with yourself and others? How are you caring for yourself by also caring for others? How are you inviting repair in conflict? What are you doing to gather more with others and build community around you?
Someone asked me this past week, why I don’t work as a therapist and why I focused my work more on building peer mentorship programs, systems change, group work and family work. I have a lot of answers for this, so I am always curious what answer will show up in the moment. This time my answer landed here… the foundation of western therapy stems from a value in individualism and I want to build structures towards both individual and collective care. While therapy is an essential part, we need more pathways towards one another - ways that focus on inviting repair not just boundaries, and more ways that care for self that also incorporate care for others. And…I wanted to spend my life focused on changing systems of oppression - learning and teaching how to better care for ourselves, each other and the world around us, over and over again.
Some thoughts on how to invite more care and repair - to move beyond only setting boundaries to avoid conflict…
Consent is vital, and so is invitation. As a society, we often think of self-care as a way to take care of ourself - individualistic. But, how do we not abandon ourselves or others? This would mean we need to leave room for messiness while we simultaneously learn our needs, while also learning the needs of others, over and over again. And, it would mean inviting in conflict, in order to find more pathways to repair and resolution, when needs and ways of caring bump into each other.
Radical honesty. I heard recently “secrets are held lies” and it stuck with me. If we share truths and feelings that we hold with one another, we invite deeper empathy as well as an opportunity to build trust instead of resentment. This requires us to separate the feelings from the meaning or story we have attached to them. These are often paranoias. False stories our mind has convinced us will be true, good or bad, to protect us. But…these stories are not reliable because they stem from wounds from the past. What would radical honesty look like for you?
Acknowledging power dynamics. We all know there are places we all have power and where we don’t, depending on who we are with and the context around us. We have to further shine a light on the places we have power to find our blindspots. They can be hidden in unexpected ways. For example, self-sacrifice or rescuing someone is a sneaky way of taking power because you can justify the taking of power with good intentions. Where can you shine more light on how you navigate the power you hold consciously and less consciously?
Release resistance. Resistance is like being tied up in a rope that is impossible to get free from. We can toss around like a wild animal. Become more and more activated. More and more exhausted. More and more unable to escape. Or we can find the stillness to accept the circumstance. Which sometimes allows the creativity strategy to get free. Maybe this is why spies, always escape in movies.
Become more open to receiving. We as a culture always want more, but often deflect receiving - not acknowledging what we have or what is being given to us. It’s like walking around in the dark in life trying to shine a light on the things around us, just to get a glimpse and prepare. Sometimes we find people that can help us shine the light on things, and we shut their light off, every time they light up something. And other times, there are hands open to us, giving in big ways to us, and something in us causes us to turn away. How could you receive more and acknowledge your havingness even more?
I would love to know how these little seeds stirred your thoughts. Did I move you towards wanting to get more comfortable with the conflict and repair that true care requires for ourselves, others and the world around us? Or did I move you in another direction? I’d love to know.