The post Happy new year: Existential summit appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.
]]>I’ve mostly been immersed in the final writing stages of my new Icon graphic guide on mental health – as well as attending to my own with a lot of much-needed rest – but last year I was also interviewed for the Global Existential Summit.
Existential approaches are one of the main ones I draw on for the new book, which explores how it can be useful to understand – and work with – distress across existential, cultural, relational/developmental, and internal/embodied levels.
The interview covers how I integrate existential philosophy with Buddhist philosophy in my work, as well as the existential thinkers who I find most useful, and how existentialism relates with my main topics of gender, sexuality, relationships, and mental health.
Check out the conference line-up here.
Book to join here.
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]]>The post Fear/Shame and the Anatomy of a Trauma Response appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.
]]>Lately I’ve been writing blog posts in two different formats: the regular style, like this one, and a plural style, where I work things through in conversation between two different sides of myself. This time, as an experiment, I’ve tried writing on the same theme in both formats. You can read the plural conversation version here. Feel free to pick just the format that works best for you. Or, if you like, you can read them both. I’m fascinated by the different potentials opened up by the different formats, and how they compare for readers, so feel free to give me any feedback about that.
One of the big ideas in Pete Walker’s book on cPTSD is the sense of trauma response as a combination of fear and shame. That’s very much how it is for me. When something triggers me I tend to feel somewhere on the spectrum from worry to utter panic, combined with somewhere on the spectrum from self-doubt to self-loathing. In emotional flashback I’m convinced that I’m in huge danger and that I’m a terrible person.
Understanding that this combination of feelings probably underlies most of my stuck patterns in how I relate to myself, others, my work, and the world. I’ve tried to get curious about them and to make it my business to understand the anatomy of my trauma response. Of course my experience and understanding may not resonate for everybody, but I expect these conclusions apply beyond just me.
As I’ve mentioned before it’s not always possible – or advisable – to sit in the overwhelm of an emotional flashback. But what I have been doing is to pause when I feel the flicker or flame of fear/shame coming up and to ask myself what might be happening. I’ve also been reflecting after a period of flashback about what might’ve been going on for me.
Where I’ve got to is that nearly always a triggering situation had occurred which I felt required to make a choice between myself and somebody else: either I could choose the other person and hurt myself, or I could choose myself and hurt somebody else. Sometimes it’s more that a memory of a previous such time has come up, or that I’m imagining a future situation which might put me in that predicament.
This self/other dilemma is something I’ve had a sense of for years. The new piece is to map this onto the fear/shame element of trauma. I feel the combination of fear and shame in those moments because choosing the other person over myself equals fear, and choosing myself over the other person equals shame. This makes it feel an unbearable choice.
It seems extraordinary how this simple binary – fear(others)/shame(self) – underlies practically everything I struggle with: from something as massive as a break-up to something as tiny as deciding what task to do next today.
When I’m deciding whether to walk away from a relationship which is hurting me, it generally manifests as a sense of terror at the possibility of remaining in such pain in order to avoid hurting the other person and a sense of debilitating shame at imagining being the person who walks away and hurts the person they love. A similarly huge fear/shame response generally accompanies finding out that something I did in my work hurt somebody.
When I’m trying to figure out what task to do next today, sometimes the choice of doing something ‘productive’ like writing a blog post or answering emails can be accompanied by an almost imperceptible frisson of fear that I’m falling into my old habit of overriding my self-consent in order to do something for others. The choice of doing something ‘unproductive’ and gentle for myself – like watching TV or going for a walk – can be accompanied by a similarly tiny frisson of shame that this behaviour – and therefore I – am somehow bad, or at least less good than the alternative. A similarly small fear/shame response might flicker up, for example, when deciding which book to read next: one I think I should read or a ‘guilty pleasure’.
I could probably map pretty much every situation I struggle with on a spectrum between these big and small examples.
I think there are many strands which come together to create – and reinforce – this fear(others)/shame(self) binary.
In one sense it is a human tension, which existential philosophers in particular have written a good deal about. Sartre’s famous quote ‘hell is other people’ is all about his notion that we’re constantly forced to choose between objectifying ourselves for other people, and/or objectifying other people for ourselves. This is something I’ve written about a lot in my work on conflict. I love Terry Pratchett’s Granny Weatherwax quote for this: ‘Sin is when you treat people like things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.’
In another sense this fear(others)/shame(self) binary is a product of – at least exacerbated by – neoliberal capitalism, because within this system we are trained to experience ourselves as atomised individuals in competition with others. More from me and Justin about how that works here.
Finally the trauma component of the fear(others)/shame(self) binary is important. Pete Walker – and others – locate the starting points of developmental trauma in the lack – or loss – of protection and care. This is another binary that we could see as mapping onto fear(others)/shame(self). When we are protected we are safe enough and have no need to fear others. When we are cared for we know that we are okay in who we are and have no need to feel shame.
Personally I have a memory of a pivotal moment when I became locked into this fear/shame binary way of thinking, feeling, and relating. At nine I moved to a school where it seemed that I was being taught, daily, by my peers that everything about me was unacceptable. My struggles with this were hard for people at home so I felt increasingly unacceptable there too.
I realised that either I could hide this unacceptable person that I was and shape myself into what others said I should be, in order to belong and be approved of. Or I could ‘be myself’ and continue to feel isolated, unwelcome, and disliked. I chose the former: fear(others) over shame(self). Interestingly I’ve since had conversations with people who felt faced with the same choice and went the other way. At that age it’s unlikely that we’ll be able to find options beyond the binary.
If we see the four F trauma responses – fight, flight, freeze and fawn – as habitual styles of relating to ourselves, others, and the world, then we can also see them as four different ways of trying to avoid those horrible fear/shame feelings. Of course most of us employ a combination of these different strategies.
But none of these strategies work. In fact they all fetch us right back in the horrendous fear/shame place that we were trying so hard to avoid.
You could also see it that in the forced binary choice between fear(others) and shame(self), flight and fawn choose fear(others) over shame(self), and fight and freeze choose shame(self) over fear(others). Flight and fawn are both more about being-for-others in order to get approval, recognition, love, or belonging. Fight and freeze are both more about being-for-yourself either by blaming, attacking or controlling others, or by disappearing into self distraction or avoidance.
So perhaps fight and fawn get used to managing the fear which comes when overriding themselves for others. They find the shame which comes with standing up for themselves intolerable. For fight and freeze it’s the other way round. Certainly as I’ve moved towards balancing my go-to strategies of flight with freeze, and fawn with fight, I’ve noticed a tip towards more shame and less fear, rather than the other way around.
So far so bleak right?! There’s already a lot in my other posts about how we can notice the flicker, flame, and fire of the fear/shame response, work with emotional flashbacks, and shift our stuck patterns. Here I want to focus on two things which I haven’t written so much about yet, but which have been hugely helpful to me recently: welcoming fear/shame with gratitude, and shifting out of fear/shame logic.
This week it dawned on me that pretty much everything I’d been doing till this point was still with the aim of stopping the fear/shame response. This is pretty understandable given that the feeling feels utterly horrendous to me. When the flicker of fear/shame arises, a previously pleasant day becomes tinged with doom. There is an additional layer of fear that it might get worse, and shame that that could mean I won’t be able do the things I had promised to others. When a full flashback hits I feel small and incapable, terrible about myself, and under huge threat. Who would want to feel like that?
Of course I’m also an advocate of staying with feelings, but the trauma literature has helped me to see that this is not always the best strategy with trauma responses. Staying with intense trauma feelings can be retraumatizing and keep your body and brain locked in trauma responses, making it more – rather than less – likely that it will keep happening.
However, trying to avoid these feelings, freaking out at the first sign of them, and attempting to get rid of them was not working for me either, to say the least! Conversations with my therapist and listening to a new Pema Chödrön audio got me thinking about whether there might be another way. When the feelings were up I decided to try to welcome them warmly as part of the full experience that I was having in that moment. I guess it’s that idea that I’ve written about before of holding everything in an open hand rather than grasping hold of it or hurling it away.
What this looked like for me was pausing the moment I felt the flicker, flame, or fire of fear/shame and sitting – often in my window – trying to be with the whole moment that I was in (the sounds, the sensations, the thoughts, the feelings). This moment included – but wasn’t restricted to – the fear/shame element which often manifested as churning compulsive thoughts, a tight chest, an adrenaline lump in the throat, a sense of contraction, and feelings of anxiety and being a bad person. I tried to welcome those aspects of my experience – while not making them the entirety of my experience. I even said ‘you’re welcome here’ and tried to hold them with warmth.
What surprised me was a sense of gratitude that started to come up. I realised that previously in my life I have managed to cover over this fear/shame feeling with my four F strategies, stuck patterns, etc. Now the feeling is so strong that it’s having none of it! Also it seems to have flipped from a preference for fear(others) over shame(self) to the opposite. The fear I feel every time I risk overriding myself – even in small ways – is so intense that I can’t do it to myself any more. This means that I can’t abandon myself, even if it does mean feeling a lot of shame when I set boundaries or walk away from a situation that is hurting me.
It feels like this fear/shame feeling is protecting me: warning me when a situation has arisen where I risk hurting myself. Maybe it has always been trying to protect me. I can feel grief for the times I haven’t listened to it in the past, and gratitude for its continued presence and the fact that I am listening to it now.
So now I can – sometimes – sit with fear/shame and say ‘thank-you’ as well as ‘you’re welcome here’. I know that the feeling is probably trying to tell me that I’m risking overriding myself in some way, even if it does feel like an overreaction to a small situation – or even to a memory or an imagined event. Paradoxically, of course, when I listen to fear/shame in this way it doesn’t have to shout quite so loudly.
The other thing I’ve been doing is recognising that fear/shame is rooted in binary logic. Some of my favourite thinkers like Simone de Beauvoir and bell hooks have challenged the self/other binary, suggesting that there are ways to engage mutually with others, supporting each others’ projects reciprocally, and valuing ourselves and others equally. It’s not a matter of pendulum swinging from others-over-self (fear) to self-over-others (shame). It’s about how we can hold all lives, bodies, and labour as equally valuable, and understand ourselves as inevitably interdependent and interconnected.
This is partly why I make such a big project of exploring how we can treat ourselves and others consensually. Fear(other)/shame(self) logic is inevitably non-consensual: either we override our own consent or another’s consent. For me the consent project is all about finding alternative – mutual and ethical – ways of relating to ourselves and others in all aspects of life.
I read an interesting idea in Jessica Fern’s forthcoming book Polysecure from the attachment and trauma literature. This is that for good relationships with ourselves and others we need both protection and connection. Protection requires keeping ourselves safe-enough, having boundaries, not allowing others to hurt us, etc. Connection requires being open, vulnerable, and real with others.
It struck me that being stuck in fear/shame logic doesn’t allow for either of these things. In fear we override ourselves for others and don’t give ourselves protection. In shame we cover over our vulnerability in case others see how ‘bad’ we are, so we don’t allow ourselves real connection.
Instead of choosing fear(other) or shame(self) it’s about choosing protection and connection. This moves us from an either/or binary to a both/and. Also it neatly maps onto Pete’s sense that we fetch up in fear/shame trauma responses because we lost or lacked protection and/or care, and that finding protection and care within – and from our team of outer relationships – is the way forward.
What shifting out of fear/shame logic looks like – for me – is, again, pausing when I feel the flicker, flame, or fire of fear/shame. I sit with myself and often try to talk from a kind, wise voice to a more vulnerable child voice: the one who is stuck in the fear/shame response. I invite that child side to reflect on how whatever has triggered me is a fear/shame thing.
Usually it’s fairly easy to see how this situation feels like a choice between others (fear) or myself (shame). Generally naming this, in itself, results in feeling a bit more space or expansiveness around it. I usually try not to rush to any decision right then, but I remind the part of myself who is caught in fear/shame that there are always other options beyond choosing other or self: that this is a false binary, albeit one that is very understandable to fall into.
In exploring how this fear/shame logic works I’ve also realised that it’s understandable to obsess over past memories as I can find myself doing. It’s an attempt to prove to myself that the situation was bad enough to warrant hurting another person, in order to avoid shame. But it’s also retraumatizing to keep going over these memories, putting me back in fear. It similarly makes sense to hypervigilently go over situations where I might have fucked up, or to imagine future scenarios playing out in order to figure out how to avoid fucking up. This is all about trying to prevent shame. But again I can recognise that it’s triggering to do this, which puts me back in fear.
Generally when I feel any flame or fire of fear/shame I park any decision-making until a time when I’m feeling clear and calm again, perhaps promising myself that I’ll check in about it over morning coffee which is often a good time for me. Once I get to that point I try to expand out to consider all options, and aim at a choice that combines protection and connection. For example, lately the eventual choice has often involved openly explaining my vulnerability to others (connection) and clearly stating my boundaries (protection). If clearness and calmness do not feel possible around this situation yet, I try to commit to going slow and refraining until I feel ready, perhaps explaining that this is what I’m doing to anyone else involved if a response is required.
I’m not saying here that any of this is easy. Believe me the last year or so of my life is living proof that it is not! This approach towards fear/shame goes against the grain of all our habits of avoidance and attempts at eradication. I know it’ll be super easy to slip back into trying to avoid recognising when fear/shame comes up, pretending it’s not really happening, distracting myself, and/or acting quickly to avoid the pain – usually in ways that override myself and give others what I think they want. I’m hoping – as with all of these blog posts – that writing it down will help new ways of being to bed in, as well as hopefully helping others who’re grappling with similar stuff. I see you!
What you can do when fear(others)/shame(self) hits:
I have also found it useful to do this as a preventative activity – just checking in with myself at several points during the day, perhaps whenever one task ends before beginning the next. I ask whether there is any fear/shame feeling around, and apply this process if there is. I keep this list on my phone to remind me of the process during the fear/shame feelings when it can be hard to access.
If you want to read about I do this stuff in real time, check out the plural version of this blog post, here.
Patreon link: If you liked this, feel free to support my Patreon, it will certainly help this self-employed person to maintain some income during these uncertain times.
Plural tag: This post was written by Beastie, with vital input from Jonathan.
The post Fear/Shame and the Anatomy of a Trauma Response appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.
]]>The post Plural conversation about fear(others)/shame(self) appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.
]]>Lately I’ve been writing blog posts in two different formats: the regular style, and a plural style, like this one, where I work things through in conversation between two different sides of myself. This time, as an experiment, I’ve tried writing on the same theme in both formats. You can read the regular version here. Feel free to pick just the format that works best for you. Or, if you like, you can read them both. I’m fascinated by the different potentials opened up by the different formats, and how they compare for readers, so feel free to give me any feedback about that.
James: So it’s you and me for this one kid.
Jonathan: I think it’s right, because I’m the one who seems to hold the fear/shame the most. We see me as the vulnerable child part of ourself: the one who learnt that it wasn’t safe to express feelings. When we feel that plunge into fear/shame now it feels like it’s me who is panicking: sending out the alarm.
James: Why is it me you want to talk with about it, d’you think?
Jonathan: In our inner world you are the protector. You keep us safe. When I was little I read the James Bond books and I became kind of obsessed with them. I used to imagine James Bond training me to be more like him.
James: And what’s that like?
Jonathan: Fearless and shameless I guess. Bond is so brave. He never lets fear stop him. As a kid I felt like such a coward: always frightened of everything and bursting into tears. Bond always knows the right thing to do. He’s never plagued by self-doubt or guilt or all of the things that I feel so much of the time. He just gets on and does what needs to be done. I guess he knows that he’s okay, whereas I’m pretty sure that I’m not.
James: That’s also why you love that episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer: the character of Jonathan who you’re named after. In that episode the frightened, bullied, self-doubting kid puts all of his fear and shame into a monster – separate from him – and that leaves him as this amazing superhero type: brave and confident.
Jonathan: But that episode also shows that it isn’t the right approach doesn’t it? If we try and eradicate our fear and shame we create a monster. We end up hurting people.
James: Including ourselves. Personally I love that Jonathan character far more when he is the vulnerable, sensitive kid than when he’s the superstar. And that goes for our own internal Jonathan too.
Jonathan: *blush*
James: So that’s us introduced then: the protector and the vulnerable child. Shall we talk a bit about what we’re learning about fear/shame as a trauma response?
Jonathan: Okay so I guess it was super helpful for us when we read Pete Walker’s book on cPTSD. He describes emotional flashbacks as a plunge into fear and shame. That really connected for us. It’s the combination of fear and shame that we find so horrendous. We hadn’t heard them put together like that before. Trauma response as fear/shame.
James: Do you want to say a bit about what it feels like for you? If that feels okay, describing something so hard.
Jonathan: I can. I suppose that’s part of what we’re learning: that the fear/shame feeling was always something we tried to get away from because it feels so horrific. But actually trying to escape it only makes it worse. We need to turn towards it to understand it, and to learn how to be with it given that we do have it.
James: But gently, slowly, with a huge amount of compassion for how hard that is.
Jonathan: Right. So you talked a bit about the different zones of fear/shame in that blog post you wrote recently. We call them flicker, flame, and fire. For me flicker feels like a slight uneasy underlying feeling, like something isn’t quite right. It’s hard to put your finger on but things are not flowing easily, it can feel a bit jagged, or scattered.
Flame is more obvious. Something is wrong. There is fear: my chest is tight and constricted, there’s an adrenaline lump in my throat. My thoughts are noisy and clamouring, often leaping from one thing to another. And intertwined with all the fear is the sense that I am bad. I’ve done something wrong or am about to do so. The external world feels dangerous and so does the internal world because I’m not okay.
James: And fire? Again, go easy if you can.
Jonathan: That’s the overwhelm feeling, what Pete calls the emotional flashback. With flicker we can carry on with what we’re doing and override the feeling. With flame it’s harder, but we can manage it. With fire there’s no chance.
James: How does it feel?
Jonathan: It’s the worst. I feel like, locked back into me I guess, this side of me: the vulnerable little boy. It’s total panic. I feel incredibly small and fragile, incapable of anything. I couldn’t hide my emotions if I tried. I’m abject. And I also know that it’s not okay. I feel like other people would be disgusted with me if they saw me. I feel like I have ruined everything. Like I should give up. It would be safer for everyone that way. It’s physically painful too. The tight chest is like a vice. And it feels permanent: like this is all there’s ever been and all there’ll ever be. I’m desperate to escape and everything I do locks me in more.
James: I’m so sorry Jonathan. It’s so cruel that you have to go to that place: that you’ve spent so much of your life there.
Jonathan: Thank-you James. It’s helped to read that other people have that experience too. And what you wrote about trauma in the body. That makes a lot of sense of why it feels so desperate and permanent. Exploring this plurality is big because it mostly feels like only part of us is in that place now – not all of us – so we can access another part of us to help talk us through it with kindness.
James: Can you tell us what you figured out, about how fear/shame maps onto relationships with others and with ourself?
Jonathan: Yes. We’re not sure whether this is how it is for everyone who experiences this, but this seems to be how it is for us. I made that chalkboard comic a while back. It imagines me as a little kid always desperately trying to figure out complex equations about how to relate to others. I realised that most of those equations are basically the same double bind. It’s always felt like either I can override myself and please others, or I can stand up for myself and upset others.
I remember this pivotal moment so clearly from schooldays. When I went to middle school I got a clear message from everybody there that everything about me was wrong. And I felt that way at home too. I realised it was a simple choice. Either I could turn myself into what they said I should be and belong. Or I could stay being ‘myself’ and be outcast, hated.
James: It felt like a choice between yourself and others: a binary either/or.
Jonathan: Right, and I chose others: I chose belonging. It felt like I constructed this person – almost like those nerdy kids in that eighties movie Weird Science. I created this Frankenstein’s monster of everything I heard that I should be, and she was the side of us who operated in the world. We call her Max. It was like I was hidden away in the chalkboard room figuring out the equations and sending her information about how she should be to win love and approval, and then she would follow the programs.
James: That describes it really well. And how does it relate to fear and shame?
Jonathan: The choice of others over self is fear, and the choice of self over others is shame.
James: And that feels like the choice you have to make over and over again?
Jonathan: Exactly. So we repeatedly get faced with that choice: either be who you are and get rejected, or be who they want you to be and get love and approval. We can’t choose to be who we are because that shame feeling is horrendous – it’s what we’re running from. But choosing to be what others want you to be is treating yourself non-consensually, or allowing others to treat you non-consensually. And the more we’ve done that, the more we feel this fear around it. It used to be that we could manage to ignore that fear, but now it is so intense we just can’t.
James: And this particularly played out in relationships and work for us I think. Having felt that you lost love and approval – at home and at school – as a kid because something was wrong with you, you imagined that if you could find somebody to love you, and if you could do well at work, then maybe it would prove you were okay after all.
Jonathan: But it’s so impossible James because if you turn yourself into what you think partners would want you to be – or if you work in the ways that play the game – then it’s never really you who is getting the love or approval, even if you do manage it.
James: So you never entirely lose the shame: the imposter syndrome sense that you’ll be ‘found out’ at work, or the belief that if a partner saw the ‘real you’ they would reject you.
Jonathan: And meanwhile the fear feeling can intensify because – on some level – you know you’re treating yourself non-consensually: making yourself into something for others, or working way beyond what you have capacity for.
James: So it’s damned if you do, damned if you don’t: Fear if you’re for-others, and shame if you’re for-yourself. And this seems to be how our understanding of trauma maps onto our previous – more existential – understanding of relationships. The existentialists like de Beauvoir and Sartre wrote a lot about how people felt they had to choose self-over-others (freedom), or others-over-self (belonging): either objectifying yourself for others, or others for self. We wrote about it in the conflict chapter of Rewriting the Rules, and this blog post.
Jonathan: And that’s what the chalkboard room – where I’ve been stuck all my life – feels like: a series of impossible equations. Do I choose incapacitating panic or do I choose horrible shame? Now it seems that every time anything comes up in our life which triggers such a choice I instantly find myself in the flicker, flame, or fire of fear/shame.
James: Do you want to go through an example of what we try to do now, when we feel those feelings? We thought it might be helpful for people to read the kind of conversation that we have.
Jonathan: Yes. So what we try to do is to pause whenever we notice those feelings. We also check in a few times a day whether any of these feelings are up, because otherwise we can easily just keep busy or distracting ourself without noticing it. We’ve started trying to pause between activities and have this kind of conversation before moving onto the next thing.
James: And how do we actually have the conversation?
Jonathan: It used to be like this – written down in our journal – between whichever side of ourself was feeling the feelings – often me – and a side who could support them through it – often you or Ara. Now we start the day with journaling like that, but we can also do it as an out loud conversation. When we do that we sit by the window and talk between us. And – often at night – we do it more as an imaginary conversation. We picture two parts of us in a room in a house we all share, sitting and talking together.
James: Let’s do it then kid. We start with noticing. How’re you feeling right now?
Jonathan: I feel, um, some nervousness, some feeling like I might not be okay.
James: What does it feel like in your body?
Jonathan: It’s not huge: not that super scary vice adrenaline feeling. But my thoughts are a bit scattered. My breathing is definitely shallow: a bit fast. That’s familiar.
James: So we’re going to pause and give it some room now – this feeling. You’re safe here with me. I’m going to be with you through it. And we can take as long as you need.
Jonathan: I remember just before we sat down I felt bad for having this feeling. We’d been excited about returning to this blog post before, but the tough feeling was starting to dull that excitement. It’s often hard to be creative when this feeling is here. I was scared it might get worse.
James: That makes all kinds of sense doesn’t it? It’s tough to be with fear/shame and you’ve been feeling it so much lately. No wonder you feel relieved when it’s not around, and don’t want it to come back.
Jonathan: I guess this time it helped to remember that we were going to write this conversation. So in a way it was good to have the feeling here so we could do it for real.
James: Right, and one of the useful things to remember is that each time we feel this way it’s an opportunity to understand it better: how it works for us; what helps.
Jonathan: I’m not bad for having this feeling?
James: Not bad at all baby boy. This is just how trauma works in the body remember? Something triggers us and the sympathetic nervous system kicks in, so we start to feel speeded up and constricted. And the emotional part of our brain is sounding alarm bells.
Jonathan: Okay.
James: Can you try breathing a little slower?
Jonathan: Mmhm. Oh my shoulders were all tensed up.
James: We can relax those too. Tell me what else you’re experiencing right now as well as those fear/shame feelings.
Jonathan: Well… I can feel the breeze, on my bare legs. That feels nice. The sun is making geometric shapes on the floor of the room. The colours of the rug look really bright in the sun. I can hear jackdaws calling, a car going by.
James: You’re doing so well. Breathing a little deeper again.
Jonathan: *breathing*
James: So can we welcome this feeling: the fear/shame? Extend a little warmth towards it?
Jonathan: *swallows* I feel it mostly on my forehead now, like a furrow. It feels like I want to scan for trouble you know? Like what if something’s wrong? What if I’ve done something wrong?
James: Mm that makes so much sense doesn’t it?
Jonathan: It does?
James: So many hard things have hit this last year, one after another, and now a pandemic. It’s so understandable to be worrying what the next thing might be, whether you’ll be able to cope.
Jonathan: It’s the hypervigilance feeling isn’t it? If I can just keep scanning everything then I won’t mess up and get something wrong. I’m trying to avoid shame, but it throws me into fear because I think about all the things I might get wrong, and that’s overwhelming and scary.
James: Can you be with that furrowed forehead scanning feeling and feel the rest of this moment again? Not trying to change anything, just being with it.
Jonathan: I’ll try. Okay. I’m breathing. The air feels cool and soothing, almost like I can feel the sea in the air: the moisture. The sky is this faded denim blue. I can hear seagulls. There’s a feeling in my chest now. Sinking. I’m worried I’m getting this wrong. That it won’t be a good blog post: won’t make sense to anyone. That I’m ruining it for you.
James: You can’t ruin anything here Jonathan, not with me. But can we welcome that feeling?
Jonathan: I’ve felt it so much of my life. It’s so hard to stay with, not to just want it to go away.
James: We don’t have to stay with it right now. If it feels too intense we can just focus on soothing you, come back to it when you’re calmer.
Jonathan: No I can. I want to.
James: Sure?
Jonathan: Sure.
James: We’re not aiming at anything here, just hanging out with this feeling, trying letting it be part of our whole experience.
Jonathan: Okay. There’s me and you talking, and there’s this room and the sea and sky beyond, and there’s a feeling like I might not be okay; wanting to think over everything that happened today in case I did anything wrong. My body twitched when I thought of that.
James: Another trauma response. It’s welcome too.
Jonathan: It is… because… I know this feeling has been trying to help me. I know it comes up when I’m in danger of overriding myself. It’s only so loud and confusing because I ignore it so much.
James: That’s right.
Jonathan: I keep remembering this thing that happened earlier. Is this okay? I don’t know if I’m doing this right?
James: It’s just fine Jonathan. What did you remember?
Jonathan: How I was hurrying in the kitchen, and I shut my finger in a door, and it hurt but I just carried on doing what I was doing – putting the dishes away. I didn’t even stop to feel the pain or to see how badly I had hurt it. I had an immediate thought that I was stupid for not getting my hand out of the way, and then I, like, automatically tightened my chest and sucked my breath in so I wouldn’t feel it and kept going. It was only because we’ve been doing this that I even noticed that it had happened. And then we paused and let me feel the pain in the finger, and feel sorry for myself for having got hurt and for being so mean to myself about it.
James: And that was a fear/shame feeling you had immediately? It can be useful to recognise that right?
Jonathan: Yes. Shame for being careless and getting upset about it. Fear at how I automatically override myself to avoid inconveniencing anyone else. Like even when there’s nobody else around to inconvenience that’s still my go-to.
James: It’s so sad to think of you doing that over and over again through your life: in physical and emotional pain. It’s no wonder the fear/shame trauma responses come up so much now.
Jonathan: It is sad isn’t it?
James: We’re finding another way now aren’t we? Gratitude for the tough feelings because they have finally stopped us in our tracks and made us see how we override ourselves. Now they come up whenever we’re in danger of doing that and make it impossible to do so. And that is scary, and it’s messy and confusing at times, but it has fetched us up here, committed to doing it differently, to learning about this experience deeply, and befriending ourselves through it.
Jonathan: I’m thinking about that move from the either/or of fear/shame to the both/and of protection and connection. You know we’re trying to explore in these situations how we might move out of binary fear/shame logic.
James: What are you thinking?
Jonathan: In those situations I feel I have to choose between shame if I acknowledge the pain and express it, or fear if I override myself and keep going. Maybe if I slowed down I could have protection and connection instead. Like the protection of you – or one of the others – speaking kindly to me about the fact I got hurt and said mean things to myself about it. The connection could be – like – letting other people know what happened. Or feeling for other people who this happens to.
James: Like this right now.
Jonathan: I guess so.
James: You’re doing so well kid.
Jonathan: Really?
James: Absolutely. You just did it. How brave was that?
Jonathan: You helped me.
James: I’m so glad I got to. But this isn’t one-way you know?
Jonathan: No?
James: No way. It’s really not a great thing to be incapable of feeling fear and shame Jonathan, however you might imagine that it is. Remember how we’ve written about the importance of being able to feel all feelings. I love how full of feeling you are. I see how it enables you to feel for others, and connect with them. I’d like more of that: to learn from you as we continue to explore this plurality.
Jonathan: You learn from me?!
James: Yep. And I’d also like to remind you that it’s not brave to do things when they don’t scare you. The real bravery comes when you’re frightened and still do them – like you’re doing.
Jonathan: Thank-you James.
James: Any time. Really.
If you liked this you can read the more standard blogpost on the same theme here.
Patreon link: If you liked this, feel free to support my Patreon, it will certainly help this self-employed person to maintain some income during these uncertain times.
Plural tag: This post was written by Jonathan and James.
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]]>Reading this play is actually a very accessible introduction to the ideas of the French existentialists, and particularly resonant in these days of reality TV shows which place contestants in a very similar situation to the one in which his characters find themselves.
In No Exit, three characters (Garcin, Inez and Estelle) are, one-by-one, escorted into a drawing room and left there together, locked in. We soon discover that all have recently died and that this room is the hell to which they have been condemned for eternity. The characters initially respond in surprise that the room is nothing like the fiery pit of torture and torment which they had always imagined hell to be. However, Inez quickly realises that the idea must be that ‘each of us will act as torturer of the other two’. Whilst Estelle and Garcin try to deny that they would torment the others, and even the validity of them being in hell (perhaps it is all a mistake), Inez is more aware of their fate and resigned to her rightful damnation.
Over the course of the play, we discover that all three characters have done things that they regard as bad and/or cowardly: Inez had an affair with her cousin’s partner and he ended up killing himself, which led to his partner killing both herself and Inez, and she admits that she needs to make others suffer. Estelle became pregnant as a result of an affair and killed her daughter despite her lover begging her not to. Garcin tried to run away rather than being sent to jail as a conscientious objector, and beat and cheated on his wife. They succeed in becoming each others’ tormentors mostly by denying each other what they seek which they believed would alleviate their suffering: Estelle wants Garcin to want and desire her and Garcin wants somebody to see him as a hero and not a coward. Eventually Garcin realises that there will never be any escape from being looked upon by Inez and Estelle, and that they will never see him as he wants to be seen. This is when he delivers the famous line ‘hell is – other people!’.
Some people have simply read No Exit at face value: that it is about the kind of hell that might await these particularly (bad) people. However Sartre meant it to be a much wider comment on the human condition: other people are always hell for each other. There is some debate between Garcin, Inez and Estelle over whether they have been chosen as the ideal tormentors for one another, or whether they were simply allocated at random. It seems likely that it was the latter: the point being that any human beings thrown together would inevitably end up being hell for each other in some way.
This idea relates to Sartre’s wider philosophy: the notion that as soon as we are in the (real or even imagined) presence of another person, we begin to see ourselves through their eyes and this is the end of our freedom. In his early work Sartre only sees two ways that we can deal with this situation: either we can try to make ourselves something for the other person, or we can try to turn them into something for us. Thus in No Exit we see Estelle trying to turn herself into a desirable object for Garcin, and Garcin trying to get Inez to rescue him from his fear that he is a coward. The Look of other people has this incredible power. If only Inez (the truth-sayer) could see Garcin as not cowardly then that would mean that he is not.
However, Sartre says that such strategies are doomed to failure. Our freedom will always bubble up and we will resent trying to be what others want us to be, or we will grow weary of another person who has turned themselves into an object for us, because they will no longer have the freedom that we were originally attracted to. It is also possible to bring this existential reading together with a more psychodynamic one in the form of the transactional analysis drama triangle whereby there is always a victim, a perpetrator and a rescuer, but these roles keep switching: We see such switches throughout No Exit as freedom ensures that no role remains static for long.
There are also strong echoes of Simone de Beauvoir’s philosophies in No Exit (unsurprisingly given the close relationship between her and Sartre). There are reverberations of The Second Sex in Inez’s berating of Estelle for thinking that being a desirable object for a man is something to base her life (and even afterlife) around. And it is rather interesting for those of us who have reflected on the gendered treatment of Sartre and de Beauvoir’s work that Inez sees the truth of the situation from the start, whilst Garcin (who was oblivious) is the one who is given the show-stopping line (which just summarises what Inez has been saying all along).
This is the big question that the play raises. Are other people necessarily hell for each other? Is there another way? Garcin tries, in the play, to disengage from the others, thinking that if they all just sat there in silence it might be okay. But the futility of this demonstrates what existentialists know – that we are inevitably in-relation with others and can never truly escape their influence (even if we retreat or rebel we are doing it in relation to them).
But might there be another way of being-with-others? I’m reminded of the Jewish parable of the long spoons, where hell is a place with a magnificent feast but everyone has spoons so long that they are unable to feed themselves and they starve. Heaven is exactly the same, but people are using the spoons to feed each other. Might the heaven version of No Exit consist of the exact same three people in the exact same room, but they have found a way to feed each other?
This idea sounds something like the form of mutual, or reciprocal, relating that de Beauvoir proposes in her work (notably her Ethics of Ambiguity), which also echoes in Merleau-Ponty’s theories of intersubjectivity, and which Sartre was perhaps moving towards in his later, more Marxist influenced, writings. De Beauvoir argues that it is in all of our interests to recognise the freedom of others, not only because this is the reality of the situation, but because we need others to be free in order to trust their validations of us and to aid us in our own projects.
It seems like it is necessary for Inez, Estelle and Garcin to recognise, themselves, that their cowardice or cruelty was there, but also that it was not all that they were, and was not fixed and unchangeable. But perhaps they do require the Look of others to affirm that plurality and flexibility in themselves (they cannot use the long spoons to feed themselves). Do we inevitably regard others as objects for ourselves, or can we aspire to seeing others – and therefore ourselves – as unique, complex, changing, human beings? In fleeting moments of connection or mutuality can we experience a flash of heaven?
You can read No Exit here, and there are some fascinating clips and music videos based on the play if you search You Tube for No Exit.
There is a link to the drama triangle here, which comes across quite clearly in this play and represents another more psychodynamic reading.
For more on the flip side of this, I enjoyed rediscovering this old blog post: Only connect.
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]]>Here I’ll say a bit more about the author, summarise his argument, and say what I find inspiring about the essay, and where I feel it is limited or problematic.
Victor Frankl (1905-1997) was a professor of neurology and psychiatry who founded a type of therapy known as logotherapy. This was the thrid type of therapy to come out of the University of Vienna Medical School (following Freud’s psychoanalysis and Adler’s individual psychology). However, it was a lot more existential in nature than these more psychodynamic approaches, and has gone on to have a significant influence on the field of existential psychotherapy more broadly.
Frankl spent three years in Auschwitz, Dachau, and other concentration camps during World War II and these experiences had a marked impact on his philosophy and his therapy. They are movingly recounted in his book Man’s Search for Meaning. Following the war, Frankl returned to Vienna where he practised, and wrote and published over thirty books. He was also a visiting professor at Harvard.
Tragic Optimism
The Case for Tragic Optimism basically advocates a certain way of living, that is saying ‘yes’ to life in the face of its tragic elements. Here is a quick summary of the argument:
Frankl states that life involves three inevitable kinds of tragedy, the ‘tragic triad’:
He says that it is hard to find meaning in the face of such tragedy, but that if we do not, then our sense of meaninglessness lies behind our experiences of:
He also argues that meaninglessness is a particular issue in current western societies (when he was writing in 1984) where the youth see themselves as having ‘no future’ and people ‘have enough to live by but nothing to live for’ (p.142).
Frankl then puts forward three ways in which we can find meaning in our lives:
So Frankl is advocating that we make meaning from all three kinds of tragedy:
Frankl says that it is easy, in the face of inevitable tragedy, to fall in to nihilsm or to chase after things like happiness, success or youth instead of seeking meaning, especially in a culture which seems to encourage such pursuits. However, he is clear that the quest for meaning is the only one which he considers worthwhile. He suggests that seeking happiness is a form of ‘hyperintention’: Like trying to get to sleep, or trying to have an orgasm, it is one of those things that if we try too hard to make it happen we will be even less likely to achieve it. For Frankl the only true way to happiness is through finding meaning.
There’s much to like in this essay, but I also have some reservations about some of the arguments.
First of all, life does contain a great deal of tragedy, and I think it is useful to acknowledge this rather than denying it. It is interesting that Frankl highlighted suffering and death as inevitable facts of life (in common with Buddhist, and other existential, philosophers), but that he also included guilt, which other writers rarely talk about. Perhaps the experience of surviving the holocaust might have led him to reflect upon guilt more than most.
The pain of meaninglessness also resonates as many of our darkest and most troubling times are located in such experiences. It is hard, or even impossible, to capture the feeling of meaninglessness in words, and it is an experience which is kept private, and taboo, perhaps more than any other. We may express anger, sadness, joy, and fear, but the expression of meaninglessness is often shunned by other people, as if it were contagious. It is also dealt with quite poorly in mental health systems, perhaps because it requires an intuitive and nurturing response which isn’t what professionals tend to be trained in.
In terms of Frankl’s suggestions for finding meaning, this resonates with my experience of writing and trying to get published this year. First of all I certainly found meaning in the deed of writing the book. When it wasn’t immediately taken up by a publisher, I found that another way to meaning through it was in giving it to a few people to read and sharing an encounter with them through that. Finally, I found that it was useful to move away from a focus on striving for the accomplishment of publishing, to a decision to find meaning through the process of learning about how to get published, and through finding that I could deal with the inevitable pain of rejection that is part of this process. It seemed that perhaps cultivating all three paths to meaning (particularly the last one, as a fall back option) was a good way of ensuring a sense of meaning and fulfilment in life.
One problem with Frankl’s ideas is with the contradiction between the suggestion that it is good to pursue meaning, but not to pursue other things (e.g. happiness, success, etc.) Why is meaning a special case of something that it is okay to pursue. Perhaps, just like pursuing sleep or happiness too vigorously, seeking meaning too desperately would also inevitably prevent us from finding it.
My own way of dealing with meaninglessness in life, as well as employing many of Frankl’s suggestions, has also been to embrace it as an inevitable part of life which will happen with some regularity. There will be times – perhaps quite frequently – when we feel that our projects are pointless in the grand scheme of things, or when the world feels an overwhelming and cold place to live in, or when disconnections and conflicts with others feel unbearable and we feel utterly broken by life. If we see such times as evidence that we are ‘getting it wrong’ and try desperately to find some meaning quickly, we are – perhaps – likely to spiral even further into hopelessness. When we have such moments, it can be useful to focus on the very basic mundane activities of life (walking the dog, making our breakfast, having a shower), getting on with it until it has passed. And sometimes we just have to be with the horror of the meaninglessness while it is there without trying to change it, and without being able to do anything whilst it is happening.
Frankl also seemed to imply that meaning was ‘out there’ (or ‘in us’) somewhere to be found if we searched for it, and that disagreeing with this was a form of nihilism. Philosophers such as Sartre and de Beauvoir hold that we create our own meanings but that there is no intrinsic meaning in life. In fact, perhaps facing this fact is also a vital part of finding meaning (recognising that we create our own meanings and could create them differently).
Finally, Frankl’s philosophy seems to be rather individualistic. The focus appeared to be very much on each person finding their own meaning, rather than any collective meaning-making (although, you could argue, that both guilt and death are very relational experiences as one is all about the impact we have on others, and the other is only something we understand through seeing others die).
Frankl seems to see the ultimate in meaning as being the person who can ‘hold their head high’ in the face of suffering: for example, the people he saw who found meaning even in the hell of the concentration camps, or a person rendered paraplegic who insisted that ‘I broke my neck, it didn’t break me.’ Whilst such examples are incredibly inspiring, they neglect the different circumstances of people’s lives. Surely it is far more easy for some, than others, to find meaning: for example, for those in a position of relative privilege, and who have resources and lots of support, compared to those who are oppressed, marginalised and alienated in various ways. Frankl’s philosophy could lead to a dangerous kind of victim blame where we judge people for not being able to make meaning from their suffering.
Also, Frankl seemed to argue that it was never okay for somebody to choose death over life, and such a choice could be considered meaningful (and who is anybody else to judge this anyway?)
You can read another summary of The Case for Tragic Optimism, here.
You can list to an audio version of the essay here.
The essay is also included at the end of Frankl’s famous book about his experience of the holocaust, Man’s Search for Meaning, which you can find here, and summarised here.
There are several clips of Frankl himself talking on YouTube here.
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