Protector Parts, Defender Parts

We are rather less a single, unitary 'I' than a system or community of parts, each in relationship with one another. And it can be so very revealing, and practically useful, to get to know the parts - their intelligence, their blind-spots, and the very particular projects they've each taken up in our lives.I've written before here about shame, a familiar background mood for me, as it is for so many people. It turns out that there are at least two parts of me that are actively involved in protecting me from shaming by others - one which pre-emptively shames me, and one which more directly defends me from shame. Each has its own form of good intention, and each often causes me difficulty.The first part is an inner critic part. It's so dedicated to me not being shamed by other people that it will frequently take pre-emptive action by shaming me itself. The logic is clear, and compelling: if I can be made to feel sufficient shame beforehand, then perhaps I'll hold back from acting in a way that would cause others to shame me. It's a simple exchange - the lesser pain of my own internally generated shame to protect against the more soul-searing shame that comes from the disapproval of other people.This is the part which would have me hold back from speaking my mind, from becoming angry with other people, from showing too much love, from being a surprise or a disappointment or a bother or mystery. This is the part which, for years, held me back from dancing, having me be ashamed of myself even before I begin. It's dedicated to forever scanning the horizon and keeping me within very tightly contained boundaries so as to avoid the kind of pain it knows I could, once, not tolerate. It is willing to exact quite a price in order to do this: the inner price of feeling some level of shame at all times, and the outer price of holding back what is, most truly, mine to bring.The second part is a protector part. Should the antics of the inner critic fail, so that I actually get shamed by someone else, it throws itself into action. It's not interested in waiting, nor does it have any time for curiosity or learning. What it most wants is the shame to go away. The protector part brings forward my defensiveness, my justifications, my denial. Insincere apologies, pretence, lengthy justifications for my actions, tuning out, disconnecting from people, freezing, abandoning my commitments, bending myself out of shape - all these are the order of the day for the protector part.The protector part is also willing to pay a price to protect me from shame, most notably having me act at odds with myself, with a relationship I care about, or with my deepest, most sincere commitments.And while both these parts have honourable and noble intentions, they are way out of date, having swung into action when I was very small and really needed some protection. They don't take into account that I am an adult now, and that there is another part of me, more akin to the me-myself that exists over the entire span of my life, that no longer needs their help. This part, which could be called essence or self, is really quite able to be in the world alongside shame, and anger, and hate, and disappointment. It is vast enough, deep enough, alive enough, and quite strong enough to experience whatever comes its way. It is curious, open, timeless, and willing to learn.Naming the parts has power. When I see that I am had by the inner critic or inner protector, I am increasingly able to ask them to relax, to step aside - to reassure them that I'm quite fine, whatever happens, and that I do not need them to protect me any more. And, in the space that this affords, I'm more able to step, willingly and without panic or rush, towards genuine relationship and inquiry, and into the world as it is rather than the world as smaller parts of me imagine it to be.

Photo Credit: ebrandonje via Compfight cc

Automatic or alive

Two paths available to all of us, that are an inherent part of being human.(1) The automatic path

Our bodies and minds have an exquisite ability to learn something new and then reproduce it without our having to pay much attention to it. It's what we rely on to get us around in the world. Navigating doors, cooking utensils, cars, speaking, phones, cities, social niceties, and paying for things would all be practically impossible were it not for this capacity. Without our automaticity we would have to learn and relearn how to interact with just about everything in the worlds we have invented.  Indeed, without our capacity to automatically respond to the vast and rich background of culture and tools in which we live, culture itself and tools themselves would be impossible.

(2) The responsive path

We also have an exquisite ability to make sense of and respond to the particular needs of the current moment. In any given situation we can find ourselves doing or saying something we've never done or said before. Sometimes our creative response can be surprising, sometimes clumsy, and sometimes we find ourselves able to respond with beautiful appropriateness to what's happening. From this comes our capacity to invent, to respond with empathy and compassion to others, and to change the course of a conversation or meeting or conflict mid-flow. Without this capacity we'd hardly be human at all. We'd be machines.

But here's a problem. We so often call on or demand the automatic path when what's called for is the responsive path:

We fall into habits shaped by the strong feelings that arise in our emotions and bodies.

We tell ourselves 'I don't like that' (and so don't do it).

We say 'I am this way' (meaning I won't countenance being any other way).

We insist other people stay the same as we know them, and put pressure on them to remain predictable in all kinds of overt and subtle ways.

We institutionalise or systematise basic, alive human interactions in our organisations, insisting on frameworks and codes and processes and procedures so that we won't get surprised.

We repeat ourselves again and again - saying the same things, the same jokes, the same ideas, the same cliches.

We think rules, tools, tips and techniques will save us.

We form fixed judgements of ourselves and others which we can fall back upon when we're in difficulty.

We turn away from anything that causes us anxiety or confusion. We prefer to know rather than not know. We're hesitant to step beyond the bounds of what's familiar, and comfortable.

We would often rather settle into the predicability and sense of safety that our automaticity allows. Sometimes we even call this professional or businesslike.And all the while what's most often called for in our dealings with others, in our businesses, in our work and in our organisations is the responsive path - our capacity to respond appropriately to the particular situation and its wider context; to be unpredictable, creative, exciting, unsettling, sensitive, nuanced and, above all, alive.

Photo Credit: Chirag D. Shah via Compfight cc

Yes to what?

Many of us will say yes to anything.If you observe closely for a while, you'll discover that this is effectively a yes to nothing. Wrung out and over-extended, you find yourself in a half-hearted, resentful relationship with others and eventually with life itself. And although it might look to you like you're only trying to help, it turns out that you're serving your own sense of being needed more than really helping anyone.The antidote to all of this is neither giving up nor retreating from the world. It's finding a genuine, wholehearted yes which allows you to discriminate; a yes that goes beyond looking good, getting ahead, or feeling better about yourself; a yes which allows you to genuinely serve; a yes that at last allows some things to be more important than others.Commit to a yes that comes from your deepest principles, your integrity, and your heartfelt longing to contribute to something bigger than yourself, and you'll find that a new form of clarity emerges. Now it's possible to respond with discernment, to say yes over and over again in a way that serves everything and everybody. To care for yourself and for others. And to say no, to what was never yours to do in the first place.

Photo Credit: Lars Plougmann via Compfight cc

Looking good

Could it be that it's time for you to give up looking good so you can be real instead?I'm not saying this lightly.Five summers ago, I found myself rendered momentarily speechless, mid-conversation, as a dear friend and I walked together for lunch. A few minutes later, flat on my back on the pavement, heart pounding, short of breath, mind racing.I knew for certain only after a few days - but had an inkling as it happened - that an undiagnosed blood clot that had been forming in my leg for some time had at that moment broken loose from its moorings.Terror, love, longing, hope, confusion.I called home while we waited for the paramedics to arrive."I'm fine," I said. "There's nothing to be worried about".Not, "I'm scared.". Not, "Please help me". Not, "I don't know if I'm going to be ok"."I'm fine".It was a hot June afternoon, blue skies, but there must have been clouds as I remember watching a seagull wheel high overhead against a background of grey-white."I'm fine".Just when I most needed help and connection I played my most familiar, habitual 'looking good' hand - making sure others around me had nothing to be worried about. A hand I've played repeatedly since I was a child.Even in the most obviously life-threatening situation I had yet experienced: "I'm fine". Too afraid to be seen for real, to be seen as something other than my carefully nurtured image of myself.It was there, on the pavement, that I started to understand in a new way the cost of holding myself back from those I most care about; the power and necessity of vulnerability and sincerity; that my humanity, with all its cracks, complexity and fragility, is a gift to others, not a burden.I began to see that the realness I treasured in the people who love me the most was my responsibility too - a necessary duty of loving in return.I'm still learning, slowly, how to fully show myself.One step at a time.And I'm learning, too, that sometimes we'll carry on trying to look good, even if it has the potential to ruin our lives as we do so.

Photo Credit: Pimthida via Compfight cc

Accepting life

An unchangeable feature of life is that, at every moment, you find yourself inescapably in some situation or other - perhaps one that you did not choose.And however magnificent or terrible it is, you are, conclusively, just here, at this moment in the life that you are living.No manner of denial (and all the suffering that comes with it) can change that your life continues from this moment, this particular configuration, and not from another.And so acceptance of life - as opposed to fighting life - is not 'putting up with things' but responding fully from where you are. Not pretending to yourself or to others that you are somewhere else.Every situation, however glorious, however unwelcome, has its own possibilities. And you have precisely this hand to play in whatever way you can.Many paths lead from this place.Will you go to sleep to yourself, or step in to this, the one and only life you have?

Photo Credit: *Light Painting* via Compfight cc

Enabling constraints

Often, our attachment to personal freedom becomes its own kind of slavery.

When we demand freedom with no bounds, our endless right to choose, it's incredibly difficult to

enter into a relationshipmake a promise we'll have to keepmake a decision (because any decision closes off options)publish a blog post, letter, report, book

Our demand that we keep everything open closes off the very possibility of taking many kinds of action. In this way freedom becomes its own kind of slavery, a trap disguised as liberation.As a result it's often only through willingly submitting ourselves to particular kinds of limitation that we find any kind of freedom at all. In order to

deeply commit to someonetake a stand on something that's importantfollow a path that takes dedication and focus

we have to discover that the truest freedom sometimes comes in the form of choosing, deliberately, to be bound by enabling constraints.

Photo Credit: MTSOfan via Compfight cc

What we pay attention to (and what we don't)

So often what we are doing in our lives (and hence in every activity, relationship, project) is joining the dots, stringing together the phenomena we experience into coherent narratives and explanations. In other words, we are always interpreting - and which interpretations we choose (or which choose us) is of enormous significance.Of equal significance in this is our choice of phenomena to pay attention to. What we notice, and what we take to be meaningful, is a matter of both choice and practice. Choice - because an infinity of phenomena reach us and we pay attention only to some. Practice - because the way we pay attention (which includes what we pay attention to) is both a matter of habit (we most easily pay attention to what is familiar to us) and skilfulness (our capacity to discern and discriminate between different phenomena is something that can be learned, and cultivated over time).The current cultural background of scientific materialism in which most of us are deeply schooled without our knowing it does not help us well in developing life-giving interpretations from which to live life, nor in learning to pay attention to what might be meaningful to us. This is not through any fault in science, itself a powerful and rigorous method for discerning deep and fundamental patterns and truths about the material universe. But looking at our lives only this way has us pay attention only to certain kinds of experience. We look only at what can be reasoned about, logically and in a detached way. We treat as true only that which can be proved, measured, quantified.Scientific materialism, in its deep commitment to understanding the material world (and in understanding the world only as material) has little scope for understanding what's meaningful to people, what makes our hearts sing, how we are moved by encountering or making art, what it is to love and be loved, what it is to care about life, the world, others. Or, more accurately, when it does have something to say about these topics it can only say that love is a particular firing of neurons in the brain, or an evolutionary adaptation to make it more likely that we reproduce; or that art is simply an adaptation that allows us to build social status, or that our appreciation of it comes because of the transmission of pleasure signalling chemicals to reward centres of the brain. And while all of these might well have a kind of rigorous truth about them when looked at from a materialist perspective, they tell us nothing about the meaningful experience of being human - what it is to love, or be loved, to create art, or be moved by it, to open to the mysterious and endless wonder of finding ourselves alive, or to be a whole world - as each of us are - of relationships, language, meanings, longing, desire, sadness, grief, joy, hope and commitment.When we treat ourselves or others as mere material objects and truth as only scientific truth - as we are encouraged to do in so many of our systems in organisations, education and government - we miss out on deeper interpretations that take into account that we are subjects too, living beings who act upon the world through our ability to care and make sense, and who possess an exquisite and precious consciousness and capacity for self- and other-awareness. Precious indeed, because as far as we can tell, compared to the abundance of matter in the universe, life is rare enough. And among all the life we know about, as far as we can tell, consciousness and self-awareness (the capacity to say 'I' and reflect on ourselves) even rarer.Alongside our scientific materialism, we could support our understanding and care about being human by paying attention also to the insights of those cultures and peoples who came before us, many of which we have thrown out in our elevation of reason over wisdom. In treating only reason as valid, we've discarded ways of encountering truth that can include beauty, meaning and goodness alongside what can be logically proved to be true. Myth, art, poetry, music, legend and spiritual practices that bind us into communities of meaning and action are all worth studying and taking seriously here. They can teach us to pay attention not only to the deep insights of our logical minds but also to the wisdom of our hearts and bodies, and to our first-hand lived experience of being human among other human beings.Which brings me back to the 'dots' we pay attention to - the phenomena we treat as meaningful in our lives. What we experience does not come labelled for us as important, or not, significant or not. We have to decide what's worth noticing, and practice living lives in which we make matter what can matter. And it's incumbent upon us to do this, by paying a deeper kind of attention to our lives and our experience, and to what we choose to care about.

Photo Credit: wuestenigel Flickr via Compfight cc

Every sorrow can be a form of love

When we're feeling fear, sorrow, anger or emptiness at the world - or at any situation we find ourselves in the midst of - perhaps it would help us to remember:That when we speak our fear we draw on the courage and dedication it takes to speak;And when we express our sorrow it can arise from our love and care for what has been lost;That we can speak about our anger best by finding the commitment to justice from which it comes;And that our emptiness, our sense of what is still missing, is also the possibility from which something new can arise.Every anguish, every sorrow, has its truest ground in a kind of dedication, hope and love. And when we can remember that, rather than just the anguish and sorrow, our chances of being able to contribute with dignity are deepened and widened and made more real.

Photo Credit: HDRforEver Flickr via Compfight cc

What will it take to give up our busyness?

Even when we see that our endless busyness is stifling us, holding back our creativity and contribution, narrowing us - even when we see that in many ways it's killing us - it's so hard for us to give it up.Why is this?It may be in part that we're unwilling to stand out from those around us - to risk the feelings of shame and awkwardness that come from taking a stand that we call our own.And it may well be that we're unwilling to cease our busyness as long we're unwilling to face loss. Because to give up rushing will indeed be to lose a particular identity, a way of keeping our self-esteem going, and of course the end of all those activities with which we stuff our time. And we human beings can have a hard time with loss.It's only through turning towards inevitable loss that we open the chance for life to reach us.I think we ought to do that sooner rather than later. Because loss will be forced on us in the end in any case. And by the time it comes there's a real possibility that we've missed our lives because we weren't willing to choose to face it earlier, of our own accord.

Photo Credit: John St John Photography Flickr via Compfight cc

Feels just like me

That familiar feeling again. She said “You’ve let me down” and something dropped in your belly, your posture collapsed just a little, and the world seemed to lose its solidity. You know how this goes. You’ll deal with the deflation by apologising and the energy for all your projects and plans will slip away until long after you get home.Or you’re five minutes late for the meeting. Pulse racing. Tightness in your chest. You’re holding your breath, mind whirling, all the excuses and ways you’ll save face working out as you dash down the hall. You arrive hot, out of breath, mutter an excuse that blames the trains or the email system or someone else for holding you up, and then stay disengaged from the conversation, wrapped up in your shame and self-judgement.Or maybe he sent you an email telling you he wouldn’t be seeing you as you’d arranged. Fury and resentment knot your stomach. Your jaws clench, your shoulders tighten. “It’s always this way,” you tell yourself, “he’s so self-centred”. And already your fingers are tapping out a reply: cold, distancing, laced with judgements and sarcasm.Those feelings that are so familiar, that ‘feel like you’, are where your freedom can begin. Because every emotion conjours up a world, in which certain people loom close and others become far away, in which some actions become obvious – necessary even – and others seem impossible. And from the world that’s revealed to you by your moods you act: the combination of the familiar feeling and well-rehearsed action giving you a sense of who you are. In a way, over time, your way of responding indeed becomes who you take yourself to be.You can see that this is the case by observing yourself for a while. What kind of possibilities become available to you in love, hate, resentment, joy, boredom, anger, frustration, sincerity, cynicism, fear, panic, anxiety, gratitude? And what familiar actions do you tend to take? What results do they bring?The first steps towards your freedom are taken when you find out that there is no right ‘thing to do’ to respond to what you’re feeling. What seems so self-evident might just be the result of years of practice that’s conditioned you to react in a particular way. Don’t confuse its familiarity with appropriateness.Next time you find yourself propelled into action like this see what happens if you make a change – and just a small one – in your response.What happens if you do the opposite of that which your body seems to compel you to do? You may just find that new possibilities begin to open for you and those around you… that the world starts to open up in ways you’d never imagined.