Click here if you want to read an accompanying plural post about the gap.

Click here for me and Justin talking about the same topic on the Patreon feed of our podcast.

Micro and macro gaps

You could see gaps on a spectrum between the micro and the macro. On the micro level it could be as small as taking a breath between sentences *breath*. For example, that might apply when writing or speaking. Next level there is the value of taking a gap between one daily activity and the next: to be in the present moment rather than racing on to the next thing. Then we might consider gaps in the week or month (like what we do with weekends or holidays or their equivalent). Finally, on the macro level, what about gaps following big life changes or upheavals? 

I’ve noticed a tendency to overlap both big relationships and big projects – like books I’m writing. Just as it feels unfamiliar and edgy to allow gaps between daily activities, it can feel similarly difficult to allow gaps between people and projects, but so essential in order to mark endings, process big changes, and settle. With a big enough gap I can know that new relationships and projects are intentional and consensual, rather than an attempt to avoid difficult feelings or (re)create myself to avoid being with who and how I am. Perhaps as the level increases in size, the gap needs to be longer in order to slow down and process what’s just gone, and to tune into what to do next.

Consent and the gap

Slowness weaves together with consent because it’s a way of ensuring that our consent with ourselves – and others – is ongoing rather than a one-off. For example, if we start the day with a to-do list and only feel okay if we complete it, that is one-off consent (like starting sex with a script and only feeling okay if we manage to follow it). If we check in, ongoing, during the day, as with sex it is more likely to be consensual.

Babette Rothschild’s concept of mindful gauges, and Love Uncommon’s practices for self-consent can help us to use the gap to learn what our body feels like when it is in – and out of – consent.

Why do we avoid the gap?

We avoid slowing down – or giving ourselves gaps – because they often confront us with the very feelings we were trying to avoid by going at such speed, particularly tough ones like fear, shame, and loneliness. Paradoxically the more we’re able to slow down and be in those moments, the less uncomfortable they are likely to be, because we become more used to being with ourselves whatever the feelings, and often the feelings don’t have to be so intense: shouting loudly to be heard over all the noise of busyness and distraction. Kindness is key. We need to cultivate enough kindness with ourselves to be able to stay with ourselves in those moments. Staying in those moments cultivates kindness, and cultivating kindness helps us to be able to stay.

How do we avoid the gap?

Many of us use combinations of the four F trauma strategies to avoid slowness and gaps. Fight is when our mind is constantly busy blaming others or ourselves for everything and trying to control our experience. Flight is when we throw ourselves into work and productivity. Freeze is when we constantly distract (e.g. with TV, social media, food, etc.) Fawn is when we rush to please others and respond to every bid for our attention. Some of these things can – on the surface – look slow (like when we’re obsessing mentally or crashing out in front of the TV), but if we’re checked out then we’re not really being present to ourselves or the moment. It’s not so much about what you do, but about how you engage with it.

The gap as prevention of – and response to – reactivity

When we make gaps regularly we’re more able to notice when we’ve become reactive: when our nervous system has shifted into that fight or flight mode, or dissociated. Regular check-in gaps during a day can enable us to notice such a shift when it is still just a flicker, and allow our nervous system to come back to neutral. We can also commit to pausing and looking after ourselves additionally whenever we notice that flicker come up during daily activities, and we’re more likely to notice that when we’re used to slowing down. Staying with the flicker can stop it becoming a flame or fire, and also help us to learn what to do when the reactivity is more accelerated.

The gap as a radical act

Some may critique such slowness and spaciousness as only possible with privilege, and this connection is worth being aware of. However, slowing down and creating gaps – as much as we can realistically manage – does also mean we’re far less likely to hurt others, and ourselves, and damage relationships. It’s when we’re sped up, over-stretched, distracted, or dissociated that we risk treating ourselves and others non-consensually, lashing out, offering too much and having to pull it away, and making mistakes. 

The gap can also be seen as a radical act under neoliberal capitalism where we’re so often encouraged to produce more and more by going faster and faster. What would it mean to know that we’re enough in this moment and don’t need to be more? Could slowing down help us to be with the fear and shame we’re trained into feeling unless we’re happy, successful, and in a certain kind of love relationship? if we could be with those feelings kindly, might we be able to stop constantly striving for such impossible permanent goals.

Doing it your way

There is no one true way of slowness. In recent years it has become somewhat fetishised in the form of mindfulness and/or meditation. While such approaches can help us to learn ways of being slow and still with ourselves, they often just result in another thing we’re meant to do with our days, and another thing to feel bad about ourselves for not doing ‘properly’. There is no ‘properly’. It’s not about ‘not thinking’ or ‘feeling calm’ or anything like that. It’s just about pausing – briefly or for longer – and being aware of everything going on right now: sights, sounds, sensations, thoughts, feelings, whatever is there. We’re not emphasizing any of it, not trying to avoid any of it, just being with it.

Click here if you want to read an accompanying plural post about the gap.

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 and Ara.

The post Mind the gap 2: The (micro and macro) gap as a radical act appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.

Max: You and me this time then kid.

Jonathan: How does it feel Max?

Max: Vulnerable as fuck. I’m managing it by reminding myself we don’t have to publish this. But it also feels important. I guess it’s what I’m struggling with at the moment, and it feels like something that you have a handle on. It’s a chance for me to come to you for support which is a different dynamic for us. Also it works on a meta level. Writing about taking ourselves seriously is a way of taking ourselves seriously.

What does taking ourselves seriously mean?

Jonathan: Should I start with what we mean by that: taking ourselves seriously?

Max: Go ahead. It seems like your phrase.

Jonathan: I notice that it feels easier to start with what it isn’t, maybe because it’s so discouraged in our culture so we’re more familiar with not taking ourselves seriously. But I’d rather come up with a positive definition of what it is.

I’m thinking first of bell hooks’s definition of love in All About Love. It’s about valuing ourselves and others equally: knowing that we’re no more important than anybody else, but no less important either. That’s maybe a bit abstract. On an everyday level it’s about tuning into ourselves, feeling our feelings, welcoming them, listening to them. 

That’s when the idea of taking ourselves seriously comes to me the most: when we’re having a difficult feeling that doesn’t immediately make sense. What we need to do when that happens is to assume that it does make sense, that it is sensible, that we are sensible. That’s true even – perhaps especially – when we don’t understand what’s going on. That’s perhaps the hardest – and most important – time to take ourselves seriously.

Max: Can you give some examples: of taking ourselves seriously and assuming it’s sensible?

I suppose what we’ve been trying to do lately. It’s taking ourselves seriously to put The Work before the work. We make sure we start each day by tuning into where we’re at, and giving some time journaling about whatever is on our mind. If there’s anything big we try to give that some time and care before going on to anything else. Or we note it to come back to as soon as we can if that isn’t possible.

Assuming it’s sensible is when we’ve tuned into feelings that keep coming up, like fearful feelings around certain kinds of exchanges with other people. In the past we would’ve got annoyed with those seemingly inexplicable feelings and berated ourselves for having them. Or we would’ve rushed to act on them immediately. Instead we now try to keep noticing them, and noting down the kinds of experiences that trigger them. Gradually – over time – we understand them better and become more able to talk openly about what’s going on for us, and ask for what we need from the people concerned.

Another example would be noticing we’re blocked around doing a certain task or piece of writing. In the past we would’ve tried to push on and do it, or come up with a quick explanation for what was going on: usually one that involved being hard on ourselves. If we assume it’s sensible we can keep being curious about why we might not be going there at the moment, without letting it overwhelm everything, or giving up on it entirely. Often, over time, we realise several reasons why this block might be there. We learn a lot from the process of sitting with it, and often – once we’ve learnt all we needed to – it comes easily and goes better than it would’ve done if we’d tried to push through.

Max: *exhales*

Jonathan: That’s challenging for you huh Max-y? You’ve always been the part of us that does: that figures things out and gets on with it. 

Max: Yup. I hate not understanding things, and I hate not being able to get on with what I think I should be doing. It’s so hard for me to take myself seriously in the way you’re describing.

Jonathan: Why do you find it so hard do you think?

Why it’s hard to take ourselves seriously

Max: So many reasons. First, it runs counter to the way I’ve always done things: pushing through; getting on with things; avoiding, repressing or battling any difficult feelings that stand in our way. Taking ourselves seriously involves changing the habit of a lifetime: a habit that I developed because it was the only way to survive. So it’s a lot to give up on. More than that, it’s incredibly hard to acknowledge that that habit actually did us – and others – damage. There’s a hell of a lot of grief to feel if I acknowledge that there’s this other way of being which is better for everyone. 

Second, it’s a leap of faith into massive uncertainty because I’m not sure what this other life – the taking ourselves seriously life – even looks like.

Third, the world is on fire right now. There’s a massive sense of urgency to be part of doing something about it. Turning inwards and taking ourselves seriously and learning what that looks like feels like a huge privilege: a luxury that we can’t afford, that simply isn’t okay.

Jonathan: We can take those one at a time. They’re all big ones. And ones a lot of people struggle with I think. Does that feel okay for you?

Max: I’d really like to hear your thoughts baby boy. I’m definitely struggling with this.

Jonathan: I’d like to help. And it’s also okay to struggle with it Max. That in itself is something to take seriously, not to try to push through.

Max: Go slow. It’s all anyone seems to be telling me at the moment. But the world is on fire.

But the world is on fire

Jonathan: It is. And I think that’s all the more reason to take yourself seriously. There are many reasons for that. First, we need to feel the feelings about everything being so hard. That’s why people are developing grief circles to feel the impact of climate crisis, support groups for survivors following #metoo, transformative justice processes to find ways to hear each other’s experiences when relations break down. Our wider culture is terrible at this stuff: the systems within it retain the status quo, treat people non-consensually, and harm the most marginalised. So we have to find ways of doing it differently: of taking ourselves, and others, and our feelings seriously.

Max: And if we don’t feel the feelings?

Jonathan: We break down, or burn out, or close off. Shutting off our feelings is no way to handle it. You know that Max-y.

Max: The alternative seems to be to feel SO fragile though: a fragility that makes it hard to do anything. I’ve never felt this level of fragility before. It’s so scary.

Jonathan: I think learning what that fragility feels like is part of the process. For a start it is a sane reaction to an insane world. Anyone who feels safe and secure right now maybe has a bit of a problem! Fragility connects us with what’s really going on, and with what everyone is feeling: whether they’re allowing it or whether they’re covering it over and pretending it’s all okay. It means we can have a lot more empathy and compassion for others, and see any defensive reactions they have for what they are, rather than getting pulled into escalating those dynamics with them.

Also when we can tune into our fragility we can make way better choices about what we have capacity for and what we don’t. When we have the ability to discern in that way, we can know when we’re up for moving out of our comfort zone into our stretch zone – giving a little more of ourselves – and when we need to go back into the comfort zone to recover for a while. We can notice if we’ve tipped into overwhelm – beyond the stretch zone – and pull back and recover. Tuning into ourselves in this way we’re far less likely to overstretch or burn out. We can also maybe increase the capacity of the comfort zone and stretch zone over time – because we’re not overstretching. Then more things might be possible within those zones.

Max: I would love a bigger comfort and stretch zone. They feel pretty tiny right now.

Jonathan: I think they remain smaller if we try to push or force them to expand, and get bigger if we take it gently and slowly and invite that expansion.

Max: So you’re saying taking ourselves seriously actually makes us better for others and the wider world?

Jonathan: I think so. Practically, it helps us to see what kinds of relationships and support help us to be more open and available, and to pursue those and be boundaried around ones that don’t. It helps us tune into what kinds of work feel most skillful and fulfilling to us, and therefore best for us to offer to others. It also helps us to navigate difficult things that come up more carefully and skillfully.

Max: That feels like another paradox to me. Taking myself seriously feels like the last thing I want to do when I fuck up. I want to give of myself to the person or situation concerned until I’ve atoned sufficiently.

Jonathan: But does that help them? Or anybody else?

Max: Not really. I guess it denies me the opportunity to see what I’ve done clearly and take appropriate responsibility. Collapsing into shame is just as bad as defending myself by insisting I’m blameless. Either way I don’t really see the other person and the impact on them, because I’m all caught up in myself. And I also neglect to take account of all the other stuff going on: the dynamics playing out between us, the wider systems operating through us, that kind of thing, which is always a big part of the picture. Also that overwhelming sense of shame makes me want to give up on everything: so I’m less available to other people, less likely to do anything of benefit to the wider world.

Jonathan: It’s hard to see all that. You’re doing really well.

Max: It feels hard.

Jonathan: Maybe breathe a bit Max.

Max: Okay. I’m breathing. Can you tell me about that Adrienne Maree Brown piece Jonathan. I know that struck you when we listened to her being interviewed.

Taking ourselves seriously and fighting injustice

Jonathan: She said that every time she finds herself getting angry about an injustice out there in the world, she begins by turning inwards and reflecting on how it operates within – and through – herself. She doesn’t engage outwards until she’s done that inner work.

Max: Wow.

Jonathan: I guess I see all the people we’re most inspired by saying something along those lines. Laverne Cox talks of having to face our inner oppressor rather than trying to fight oppression ‘out there’ as if it’s not also ‘in here’. When we reflect on Audre Lorde’s idea of self-care as a political act we see that self-care enables us to be honest and kind around the parts of ourselves who are survivors and the parts of ourselves who are perpetrators. 

Audre Lorde also said ‘the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house’. If we don’t take ourselves seriously then we can easily find ourselves using the tools of oppression to fight oppression: like shaming people, trying to ‘save’ people because it makes us look good, rushing into situations we don’t understand rather than slowing down and listening to the people directly impacted, or seeing ourselves as somehow superior.

Max: I get that. I think that’s a big part of what we’re trying to do this year – or however many years it takes. I know, I know, it might be much longer. If we keep relating to ourselves, to other people, and to our work, in the ways we’ve learnt in this non-consensual, unjust culture we’ll inevitably keep perpetuating that culture.

Jonathan: And we’re not going to decolonise our mind, cultivate entirely consensual practices, escape the binaries, and dismantle our inner capitalism overnight Max-y. We can’t step outside of culture. This stuff is deeply entrenched in all of us. And the very attempt at total transformation of self into something ‘better’ is, in itself, a colonialist and capitalist way of treating a person. 

Max: So what can we do?

Jonathan: Keep taking ourselves seriously in this process, remember why we’re doing it, cultivate systems and structures of support around it, share what we’re learning through it with anyone who finds it helpful, acknowledge when we make mistakes and address them, and uplift the other people who we’re learning from as much as possible. 

Max: Sounds like a pretty clear routemap.

Jonathan: Not easy though. I liked what we heard Pema Chödrön say about compassion recently, on one of her audios. She said that there’s a type of compassion which is about being kind towards ourselves and receiving support from others. There’s a type of compassion which is about being alongside others as equals: providing mutual support and learning from each other. And there’s a type of compassion which is about offering kindness to others who are struggling more than we are at the moment. It’s not about one of those being better than the others. We all need all of them. The wisdom is in knowing which we need – or have available – when.

Max: At the moment we’re needing more of the first type than ever. Perhaps because we’ve given ourselves so little of that before. But most days we do also do the other two types. Talking with friends and co-creating with Justin or Alex feels like the second one. And when we can create a safe-enough container we do still offer compassion outwards: like in sessions with mentees, or giving a talk or training, or meeting explicitly to support a friend. Even at the moment we still have that capacity at times.

Jonathan: Do you want to return to those other reasons that you find it so hard to take yourself seriously? We’ve done ‘the world is on fire’, but what about it being a leap into uncertainty? Or it changing the habit of a lifetime?

Changing the (non-consensual) habit of a lifetime

Max: Well I guess I’m on board with the need to change the habit of a lifetime. It relates to consent doesn’t it? The habit of a lifetime was treating myself non-consensually: overriding myself because I thought I needed to do that in order to be loved, or approved of, or validated that I was okay. The more I do that, the more I’m practising non-consent as a way of being.

Jonathan: Right. I think a huge part of this is that in taking ourselves seriously we’re giving ourselves a big message – every day – that we are okay. Not because somebody else says we are, or because we’re doing helpful things, or because we can point to any evidence of being a ‘successful self’. When we take ourselves seriously we can be sure we’re relating to others – and doing our work – from that knowledge of our okayness. So we’re less likely to override our own self-consent, or the consent of others, in our attempts to get validation.

Max: Oh this stuff is humbling as fuck isn’t it?

Jonathan: It’s what you said about why it’s hard Max-y. For everyone. Because it involves seeing all the hurt we’ve caused to ourselves – and others – through that old habit.

Max: It kind of reminds me of a common trans experience. For a lot of trans people when we finally acknowledge our transness and contemplate coming out, or transitioning, in whatever ways feel right for us…

Jonathan: Yes?

Max: We hit up against this huge grief. Because we recognise that we could’ve done it a long time ago. We could’ve had this whole life feeling way more congruent and comfortable in our gender. For some people that grief is too much to bear. They don’t do anything about it because doing so would involve having to feel all that grief.

Jonathan: Mmhm.

Max: That’s how I feel sometimes about changing my ways of working, or relating to others, or relating to myself. Like if I really allow it fully then I have to acknowledge the pain I’ve caused myself and others doing it this other way all this time. I can see why people remain in hiding, in normativity of various kinds, not confronting this stuff. I can see that it is a huge ask when we invite people in our lives to do this work in order to be safe-enough for us.

Jonathan: Another reason why this is so important I guess. It means we’re more connected with everyone else who is confronting this stuff and finding it incredibly – even impossibly – hard. It also means that we’re less likely to use shaming tactics against people who aren’t confronting their stuff, because we’re aware of how hard it is, and how being shamed around it makes it even more hard to do.

Max: I hope I can remember that.

Jonathan: I think it’s a big part of the work we do Max. Trying to find non-shaming ways to explain injustice, non-consent and their impact to people – whether that’s at the micro level of interpersonal relationships or the macro level of what’s going on in the world – helping people see how we’re all implicated in it and suffering from it. And being part of the wider movement to work together to address it: across our differences and our shared experiences.

Max: For one of our inner children you seem to have some damn big words and concepts at your disposal Jonathan.

Jonathan: I’ve been thinking about this stuff a lot. And inner children can grow and develop once you’re more in touch with them it seems. Our understanding is that you – Max – were the part of ourselves we developed in order to survive the tough stuff of our childhood: when it wasn’t safe to feel or express our feelings, and when we were being bullied and taught we were unacceptable on a daily basis. I was the little people-pleasing kid you were trying to protect by becoming what we needed to be in order to survive, to fit in, to find love.

Max: We realised recently even my name reflects that: Max = mask: The masks I wore in order to survive.

Jonathan: I guess I hope we might shift those inner dynamics now Max. Max also sounds like ‘maxed out’. Maybe the parts of us you were protecting can come forward to care for you, and you can step back a bit: to rest, to grieve, to heal. 

Max: I am not great at stepping back.

Jonathan: Believe me we know that! 

Max: Ha!

Time to take ourselves seriously

Jonathan: It takes time too Max, to enable new habits to bed in as deeply as the old ones were. It takes dropping any grip on what the future might be because how can we know? It takes making a daily practice of noticing you’ve clenched and tightened up again and gone into old habits, and gently loosening the grip, feeling into the alternatives available, doing something different each time.

Max: It’s crazy how hard that is. I sometimes literally believe that if I allow myself that then I will die. I’m convinced I have this or that illness in those moments. Like somehow I would deserve to die if I really allowed taking myself seriously: freeing myself of all these ideas I have about how I should be.

Jonathan: Our therapist said maybe it’s the death of the ego that we feel/fear at those times. Although we are going to die someday of course, and that’s another good reason to do this work. When we can turn and face the inevitability of death it becomes more possible to be open about this stuff, instead of trying to craft ourselves into someone who people will approve of, or stay busy to distract ourselves, or tell people what they want to hear. 

Max: Stephen Batchelor says to meditate on the phrase: ‘since death is certain, and the time of death is uncertain, what shall I do?’ Today apparently the answer was to have an illuminating and challenging conversation between two of our plural selves in a cafe.

Jonathan: Over hot chocolate with whipped cream and cheese toasties. Feeding the inner child Max-y?

Max: Well I do like to take him seriously.

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 Max.

The post Taking ourselves seriously appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.

I will be talking about the ending of the film though so have a spoiler alert for that up front. TLDR: It’s better than the giant spider in the book, but not much. However at least there was an ongoing joke though the movie about horror authors who write bad endings.

Historical and Intergenerational Trauma

When I saw the first movie of this Stephen King story I wrote this post about intergenerational trauma because the film did such an excellent job of demonstrating how we pass trauma down through the generations. While I enjoyed the sequel immensely I feel like it lost the powerful message of the first movie, as well as missing an obvious opportunity to say something helpful about how we can face demons and prevent these patterns from repeating themselves.

To recap on my first blog post, the story of the first It movie links historical and intergenerational trauma and demonstrates how these things will just continue down the generations if we don’t address them. The first film focuses on the children facing It – in the form of Pennywise the clown – in the small town of Derry 27 years ago.

In terms of historical trauma there’s a sense that the monster in It came into being around the time of settler colonialism and the genocide of indigenous Americans. In that way It can be seen as a reflection of human evil: holding up a mirror to the violence we do to each other, to other species, and to the land. The monster in It reappears every 27 years and the horrors it perpetrates relate to the human evils that are present at the time. So we see It whipping up racism and white supremacy in the 1930s and homophobic hate crimes in the latest incarnation. There are also scenes relating to violent patriarchal treatment – and sexual and physical abuse – of women. In this way there’s a clear message that historical trauma unfaced will just find new forms and continue. Some bodies and lives will always be valued less than others, subject to oppression and violence. We can see this vividly at the moment in the way that the current trans moral panic echoes the 1980s moral panic against gay men.

In relation to intergenerational trauma, each time It comes back it preys on children, and each time the parents are oblivious to what is happening. In the first movie this is clearly related to the way each generation of parents perpetuate the traumas that happened to them on their own kids: from ignoring school bullying, to physically punishing their kids, to emotional neglect, to over-protectiveness and controlling behaviour, to the sexual abuse of a bereaved father. The message is that if we don’t look at what happened to us – and do our work around it – then we won’t see what’s happening to the next generation. Even worse we may well go from victim to perpetrator: acting out the same abuses ourselves.

Confronting our Demons

In the second movie the kids who battled It in the first film are all grown up. It returns to Derry and they are called back to face it again in the hope of eradicating it entirely this time, rather than just sending it away for another 27 years.

There’s a huge potential in this film, then, to address the question of how we – as adults – might acknowledge historical and intergenerational trauma and their impact. What ways might there be to put a halt to these recurring patterns rather than continuing to act out the very violences that were done to us? The metaphor of the demon who keeps returning presents a powerful opportunity to address what we might do with our own personal and cultural demons.

What the movie does do well is to be clear that we have to go back. Choosing not to engage with the past – and to pretend the pain of the present is not happening – simply isn’t an option. Others will be hurt and – in the end – we will also be hurt a lot more than if we did face our fears. Choosing not to engage is choosing a kind of death, or at least a life of remaining asleep rather than waking up to reality and doing something about it.

The adults in the movie all have to revisit the most frightening moments of their pasts as the first step towards battling Pennywise. Again this is a great message. Unless we can fully face – and feel – the impact of these traumas upon us then we can’t acknowledge how they’ve shaped us: the survival strategies and habits they’ve left us with. Without that understanding we won’t be able to shift those patterns and we’ll simply be doomed to repeat them: hurting ourselves and others in the process.

My sister also pointed out that the movie has a smart metaphor for the mechanisms that often prevent us from facing the past and its impact on the present. The characters have all forgotten the details of what happened to them in childhood. We could see this as a metaphor for the kind of cultural and familial gaslighting which many of us experience: a strong message that it isn’t acceptable to question the power dynamics in play or their impact; that we must protect the status quo, and other people from the painful truths of the situation.

The forgetting, dissociation and confusion experienced by the characters is reminiscent of the impact of receiving that strong cultural/family message that it isn’t safe to question, and that if anybody is suffering due to social structures or family dynamics then it must be their individual fault and responsibility, not a flaw in the society or system. Hence we see Bill blaming himself for Georgie’s death, and other characters being held – and holding themselves – responsible for the bullying and abuse they received.

The Demons within Us

However, where the second film falls down – in my opinion – is that it never gets the other piece of the equation. We see how the adults have to revisit their childhood traumas and look after the victim/survivor sides of themselves back then, acknowledging the impact that it had on them. But the adults in It are all presented is pretty good people, maybe a little flawed. We never get the sense of how they – as adults – have become the generation who are now doing the damage. This was clear in the adults in the first movie, but not in the second.

Also, in the second movie, we learn that It was some kind of alien monster which arrived from another planet to wreak havoc on humans. To me this takes away from the sense of It being something caused by human evil and reflecting it back to us. 

The film quickly becomes a battle between the good guys (our group of loser kids all-grown-up) and the bad guy (Pennywise). All they have to do is to face it and beat it and then all the intergenerational and historical trauma just goes away.

Fighting Our Demons

From this simple good vs. bad perspective the end of the film makes sense. The group confront Pennywise and they fight it using the Ritual of Chüd: an indigenous American ritual which Mike says was used to banish It before (the stereotypical depictions of indigenous Americans, and Black people, in Stephen King books and movies is an issue here, of course). When this doesn’t work entirely they come up with their own plan which is to shrink it down to size by making it feel small: shaming it and denying It any power by showing how they’re not scared of it. Once it has shrunk they can destroy it.

I think this gives a terrible message. It suggests that we can fight our outer or inner demons and just eradicate them. There’s no sense that the characters have to acknowledge humanity’s own role in creating this ancient evil and the damage it’s continuing to do. Nor do they have to acknowledge the demonic within themselves: their own potential for hurting others through their unacknowledged patterns and habits.

Finally – as my friend Anita who I saw the movie with pointed out – the way the Losers fight the demon is to use the very tactics that were used against them: bullying and shaming. This reminded me of this famous Audre Lorde quote :

For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us to temporarily beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. Racism and homophobia are real conditions of all our lives in this place and time. I urge each one of us here to reach down into that deep place of knowledge inside herself and touch that terror and loathing of any difference that lives here. See whose face it wears. Then the personal as the political can begin to illuminate all our choices.

It seems to me that exactly what the group does here is to use the master’s tools: the abuse, shame, bullying, and violence that were enacted against them, and that have been enacted against oppressed groups historically. In a way it would’ve worked well if they’d used this tactic at the end of the first movie, meaning that It inevitably came back and they had to find another tactic. But the message that this is the tactic that actually worked is a terrible one. They never do have to ‘reach down into that deep place of knowledge inside themselves and touch that terror and loathing of any difference that lives there’. They never have to acknowledge their involvement in historical and intergenerational trauma. They never really have to face their demons.

Feeding Our Demons

I found it fascinating that the ritual in It was called the Ritual of Chüd because it is such a similar name to a Tibetan Buddhist ritual which I’ve been adapting in recent years as part of my own work: Chöd practice, or feeding your demons. Intriguingly, Chöd practice explicitly offers an alternative to fighting – or using the master’s tools – which is perhaps a better way of addressing our cultural and personal demons.

Briefly what you do in Chöd practice is the following:

• Locate your demon: Tune into whatever you’re feeling, find it in your body, and visualise it.
• Visualise your demon: Take this visualisation and imagine it as a demon sitting in front of you.
• Ask your demon: What do you want? What do you need? How will you feel if you get what you need?
• Embody your demon: Move across to take the position of the demon, feel how it feels, answer the questions as the demon.
• Feed the demon: Return to your position, imagine yourself dissolving into some kind of nectar – or food – which gives the demon what it needs.
• Welcome the ally: Observe what happens to the demon. There’s a sense that – on getting what it needs – it may well become an ally to help you instead of the demon that was making things so hard for you.

So I remember one time I did this ritual I felt this horrible tight clenched feeling in my chest. When I felt into it I visualised it as old rusty metal all around my heart. When I turned it into a demon it became a terrifying huge transformer-type robot in front of me with fire burning deep in its dark eyes and massive mouth. When I inhabited it, it felt exhausted and in constant pain. I asked it the questions and the answers were that it wanted to destroy me, that it needed rest because it was so ancient and tired, and that it would feel huge relief if it got that. I imagined dissolving into lubricating oil finally easing the rusted metal. It eventually all collapsed (rather like the house at the end of It) and in its place was a pool (again rather like the lake at the end of It) and some kind of being made of water emerged:  a sense of cool, calm and fluid in the place of hot, tense and brittle.

There’s a sense from this practice that our demons are the kinds of survival strategies we developed as kids. Over time they have become harmful to ourselves and others, but if we can face them and listen to them, they can morph into allies. In this way the practice is similar to embracing our inner critics, something I plan to write about here in more depth soon and touch on in my Plural Selves zine. 

In the example I gave, I read this as the demon being the survival strategy of armouring over my feelings to protect myself, but there was the sense that this strategy got in the way of intimacy with myself and others, leaving me brittle and controlling in ways that risked damaging – or even destroying – myself and my relationships. The practice suggested an alternative pattern of loosening, or dismantling, the armour over time: becoming more vulnerable and fluid.

It: The Alternative Ending

So how would It have ended if the group had applied Chöd practice instead of the Ritual of Chüd: If they had fed the demon instead of fighting it?

What does It want?

It’s very clear that It wants to frighten people, that it feeds on fear.

What does It need?

But what does It actually need underneath that desire for fear? Again the answer is pretty clear in the film. Several times It – in the form of Pennywise the clown – speaks of being unseen and lonely. It tells a small child that nobody will look it in the face and expresses distress at this. If we remember that It is holding up a mirror to human evil then this makes all kinds of sense. What it wants – from creating all this fear – is for the people of Derry to look at what it’s showing them. Each time they refuse to look this hurts it terribly and it has to retreat into itself, alone, for another 27 years in the hope that the next generation might finally see.

It’s clear that the monster wants the Losers to return to Derry. It goes to great lengths to bring them back, and to scare them – without actually killing them – as children and adults. You could read this as it trying desperately, repeatedly, to get its message across. But even when kids are disappearing and bodies are turning up, nobody pays any attention.

So an alternative to fighting the demon would be for the group to finally turn towards it, looking at it directly (instead of trying never to meet its eyes), and listening to what It has to teach them. This would involve recognising the historical traumas which we’re all implicated in which just continue – and morph into new forms – through each generation instead of ever going away (colonialism, white supremacy, misogyny, homophobia, disaster capitalism, ecological crisis, etc.) 

This would also involve the group seeing the perpetrators (or demons) in themselves as well as the victims/survivors. They would need to face up to their own capacity for evil and abuse, as well as being the victims of it. This would involve recognising that the only way not to reenact these abuses and traumas is to acknowledge them, and the strategies they left them with, and to continually work on shifting their patterns.

How would It feel if It got what It needed?

I would love to see an ending to the film where Pennywise could finally morph into an ally. When we face our demons and learn to work with them, instead of battling them, they can stop attacking us so violently in order to get their message across. If the group listened to Pennywise perhaps it would not have to keep retreating for 27 years and returning to cause chaos and agony. Instead perhaps it could rest, safe in the knowledge that this group would do the work of waking up Derry – and beyond – to historical and intergenerational trauma. Or perhaps it could remain within each member of the group as an ally they could keep returning to and talking with.

Interestingly there is a sense of this at the end of another horror movie, The Babadook. In this film the main characters quit trying to fight the demon – who represents grief – and instead make it a home in their cellar and feed it and care for it. They recognise that this demon will always be with them, and only by acknowledging it and looking after it can they stop hurting themselves and each other.

Of course when the first It movie came out, social media decided to ship Pennywise the clown with The Babadook to great effect, so perhaps on some level we all knew that this was the ending we needed.

I can’t think of a better way to end this post than the way I ended the last one on this topic. We need to recognise that the ancient evil hurts us all and that we’re all implicated in it. We need to band together with all the other losers and get down into the sewers to face it. Are you with me?

The post Fighting or Feeding Your Demons? It and Facing up to Historical and Intergenerational Trauma appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.

I’ve come across different versions of this process in a number of places. It forms the basis of several therapeutic approaches (particularly many existential, humanistic and psychodynamic forms of therapy) and it’s also fundamental to the Buddhist mindful approach which I find so helpful, and to various other kinds of meditation. But I’ve also noticed that many friends and clients have developed something along these lines more spontaneously, without necessarily following a particular approach.

I would summarise the process something like this:

Noticing -> Understanding -> Engaging

The core idea is that before going on to attempt to understand a situation, or to engage with it, it is important to fully notice it. Another way of putting it is that any time you find yourself struggling, you just go back to noticing.

Why is noticing so important? One of my favourite authors, Pema Chödrön, uses the metaphor of a glass of dirty water. This one particularly connects with me because I often start my days watching the Thames, which is, as we know from The Kinks, a ‘dirty old river’! I imagine a glass of Thames water in front of me. It is murky and unclear because it’s all churned up with mud and silt and rubbish. We can’t see anything clearly when it’s like that, so what we have to do is to let it be still for a period of time. That allows the dirt to settle at the bottom of the glass and the water on top to become clear.

Pema suggests that part of why we often don’t want to allow this to happen is the fear that we have of what we might see once it all settles. I imagine that the bottom of the Thames is a pretty scary place with all the junk and slime and probably even skeletons that have accumulated there over the years. What might loom at you out of the murky gloom if you gave it the chance? But the point is that any kind of understanding of our own accumulated mess – and the things we’ve tried to bury in there – is only possible if we allow the water to settle.

Rushing past noticing

Generally when I’m struggling with something I don’t give things time to settle – quite the opposite. My habitual response is generally to rush to either the engaging or the understanding parts of the process.

I think that rushing to engage is probably the most common one for me. I start my day with something bothering me from the previous day, or just a general sense of anxiety, unease or irritation. Instead of giving that any time I get straight into my work. Or perhaps I’m at the end of the day and something that’s happened is troubling me but I just launch into watching TV or socialising. When I do that, often there is a sense of something under the surface which is getting bigger and more frightening the more I try to push it down under all the busy-ness and distractions. When I finally stop work or turn of the TV it can feel much more fearsome than it did at the start, and I often realise that I haven’t really been present to whatever I was working on, or enjoying what I was watching, because it is nagging away in the background.

Rushing to engage also often takes the form of trying to stop the feeling before it gets a hold by reacting immediately. This is what happens when I respond straight away to a difficult email, or I lash out at somebody who has upset me, or I make a snap decision about a tough situation. Often when that happens I’m aware that I haven’t dealt with the situation as well as I might have: I’ve passed the difficult feeling on to someone else in a crappy kind of domino effect, or I’ve exacerbated a problem rather than helping with it. The idea of refraining from acting until I’ve spent some time noticing is helpful to me in these situations.

The other alternative to rushing to engage is rushing to understand. This is something I often do when my emotions are particularly painful: feeling really low, panicky, or angry, for example. I’m very troubled by how tough it feels. It doesn’t seem to make any sense to feel this bad. I’m desperate to understand it because I think that will stop the feeling. What often happens is that I end up going round and round and round analysing it and trying to find an answer. It’s easy then to layer more and more difficult feelings on top of the original feeling. I’m worried about feeling down; and then I’m angry at myself for being worried about feeling down; and then I’m depressed at the fact I’m angry at myself for being worried about feeling down – and on and on and on.

The struggle to understand can easily land me in a place where I decide there must be something wrong with me for having this out-of-proportion reaction, or there must be something wrong with the external circumstances in my life (this job is bad, this relationship is wrong, it’s this other person’s fault). So I can tip into either depression or conflict with another person or situation.

What is noticing?

An alternative to rushing to either engage or to understand is to slow down and stay with the original feeling or situation, and just to focus on noticing it. Each time I feel drawn to trying to understand it, or to get up and do something, I can try to bring myself back to the original experience and just really notice what it is like.

When I have managed to do this there is a real sense of things beginning to clear like the water in the glass. A kind of understanding begins to emerge naturally from the process of noticing, in a very different way than when I’m attempting to force myself to understand what is going on. By the end of the process I can have a much clearer sense of how to engage, often becoming aware that there are many options and that nothing has to happen immediately.

It’s important to emphasise though that it is often extremely hard to stay with difficult emotions and experiences like this. There’s a reason why we rush to distract ourselves or try to force the feeling to go away. This noticing is such a radically different approach that it takes time to cultivate.

Pema suggests that noticing involves regarding difficult feelings as friendly and supportive rather than as fearsome and threatening. That is one of the hardest parts for me. In the last week I’ve tried to approach two of my least favourite emotions in this way: one I call ‘the plummet’ which feels like falling into a deep dark pit of despair and self-loathing with no warning and no time to catch hold of the sides. The other is a kind of gritty grainy feeling of being slightly bored and pissed off and bothered by everything. Neither of those states feels friendly to me. I do not want to look at them closely. I just want to find a way never to experience the plummet ever again, and to shake off the grainyness when it comes on.

But this week I tried to just be with the feelings and notice them, trying to describe their texture, temperature and colour; really experiencing the sensations that arose in my body; widening out to notice how they unfold in time (What happens immediately beforehand? What is the overall situation I’m in when they happen? How do they tend to play out?) I tried to assume that the feelings were sensible, helpful things to have happened, it was just that I didn’t know yet why they were sensible, and I needed to listen more carefully and kindly to them until they did make sense: however long that took.

I found that after some time of staying with them, and curiously noticing them in this way, lots of things started to occur to me that hadn’t before. It was like a process of joining the dots as all sorts of connections started to come to me. There was a feeling of weight lifting and being able to see things much more clearly and calmly for a while.

How could we build this into our lives?

I think there are two major challenges to building such noticing practices into our lives. The emotional challenge is that it is generally the very last thing that we actually feel like doing when we feel bad. The practical challenge is about when and how we actually do it.

Pema suggests that it can be good to start with emotions that are not too difficult rather than launching in with the really tough stuff. You can even start when you’re not actually in that emotional state, but rather when you’re feeling okay. Just remembering the last time you felt a bit bad and trying to notice what it was like. You can just do it for a few minutes at first, and then do the same thing for a positive emotion to balance it out a bit. In this way the process of noticing can be gradually built in in ways that don’t feel too threatening.

Another important thing is giving ourselves time for these processes. Often when a tough thing hits we’re not in a position to go off for an hour and sit with it. We might not even get that opportunity for several days. So what I’ve started to do is to ask other people in my life for time, and to give time to myself. So, for example, if a difficult issue comes up, I ask the other people concerned to let me slow down and think about it for a while, and I also schedule in some time for myself to do that. And if that isn’t enough I ask for more or give myself longer. I’ve got a list of decisions that I want to consider and conversations that I want to have with people and a rough idea of when I’m going to get to them (some this week, some next month, some next year!)

As for the question of when we do these practices, obviously it is tough to build noticing into busy lives, and I know that I’m extremely privileged to have a job which is more flexible than most and which actually involves thinking and writing about this kind of stuff regularly. Different things definitely work for different people, but I find it helpful to have some check-in time for noticing at the start of the day. I take a cup of coffee outside wherever I am and sit for however long I have available. I often find it helpful to read or listen to a helpful book for a while beforehand, often on the journey to wherever I’m going that day, to get me in the right state of mind.

Something that I’m sure would be helpful, but which I struggle to do, is to take a few minutes out for noticing whenever something difficult bubbles up during the day. People sometimes use such moments to go to the bathroom and have a couple of minutes breathing space alone. Similarly the end of the working day can be a good point to take ten minutes before embarking on the evening, and/or it can be good to take some time just before going to sleep. I should emphasise that I do none of these things regularly myself – it is not easy! Also I’ve avoided using the word ‘meditation’ here. That can be offputting because it sounds like a ‘special’ kind of practice and can come with a lot of baggage. Whilst I have found formal meditation to be a good place for noticing, the most helpful noticing I’ve had recently happened while I was sitting on a train looking out of the window and listening to music on my phone. Other people find that they do noticing on long walks, or while they’re cycling or driving, for example.

Noticing doesn’t have to be a completely internal thing. I’ve always found that writing helps me a lot with it. So I take an hour in a café once a week to write in a journal about all the things that are going on, trying to focus on describing them rather than attempting to figure them out. A combination of just sitting and reflecting for a while and then writing can help. Drawing or other forms of expression work better for other folks. And, of course, some people use therapy as a place to do this kind of noticing with another person to guide them through the process (finding the right person, who you have a good rapport with, and who helps you to create such a space, is the key here). Or you can set up times with friends where you’ll each take turns to help the other person to talk through what’s going on for them, with a focus on noticing rather than trying to explain or solve the problem.

Sometimes what you notice when you are noticing is that the thoughts and feelings you’re having just shift and change by themselves; other times the noticing leads to more of a sense of the water settling and seeing things more clearly; sometimes all you notice is just how hard noticing is, and how you spend the whole time drifting off, or trying to analyse it, or wanting to stop. And if those things happen then they, in themselves, become something to notice.

Find out more

There’s more about how to do these practices in my zines on Staying With Feelings and Plural Selves.

The post Dealing with the tough stuff: The value of noticing appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.