I was talking to someone that I have a loving connection with the other day, we were talking about how she was struggling with a situation that was overwhelming to her. A deep emotion that had overcome her, and she was trying to make sense of this, trying to navigate the rich textures of the experience that weave the web of life’s experience.
I was being a man. Trying to fix the situation with knowledge.
We talked for an hour, and to be fair to us both we navigated this situation really well, checking in with ourselves and each other regularly. Ten years ago I would’ve gotten frustrated with myself for not being able to fix the situation: Saying that’s not how this works, reflecting the emotion in my own experience, and projecting my low self esteem.
I’ve been in situations like this in the past where I’ve left the room inappropriately and really left someone hanging, or worse still I’ve blown up at them in frustration: “Why can’t you just accept this?!” Or I would move to judgement, blame, shame, or dismissal: “Well it’s because you don’t do it properly”. That hurts people, I think what hurts the most is being left hanging in a vulnerable state.
I don’t do this anymore because my respect for humanity has grown, my respect for myself has grown; I have learned through many self-growth workshops and courses that that’s not actually how human emotional systems work. I would get frustrated that I did not have the skills to relate to the people I loved in my life, I kept leaving them hanging in unsupported and painful space, in situations where they quite rightly needed support. Then I wouldn’t know how to deal with the consequences of that either; it was a slow death of relation space.
After an hour of chatting, we both became frustrated because we weren’t connecting as we both would’ve liked. I said: “I don’t feel like your listening to me”, she said: “You’ve just been lecturing me for an hour, can’t you just meet me there?”
Everything stopped when she said that, I had been lecturing her, and I noticed that I had a frantic and anxious energy in my chest that released. Can I meet her there? Yes. The answer is yes, I can. As soon as I relaxed I felt my heart beating faster, so did she. That was a connection moment.
It’s one thing to want to fix someone’s ‘problem’, what they actually need is safety and the space to feel what they’re feeling, the rest they can do by themselves because they’re human and that’s how it works. We are extraordinarily capable of healing, and working out our own stories if we’re provided the safe space. Emotions need to be reflected and held in safety by another, that’s the way that it moves within us. None of us can save or fix our loved ones, as much as we might want to, or pretend to. And this is a very masculine trait, men want to do this all the time because it is how we are socialised around self esteem. We’re told if we fix things around the house, if we learn the skills (originally in the factory, but translated to the office) then we’ll be providers; we’ll be worthy, and enough.
Here’s a couple of ways to really centre, and really listen to a loved one in this scenario:
Active Listening
Active listening is not just listening until you get the chance to reply, it’s not formulating your answer whilst they’re talking, it’s not trying to find a solution to the ‘problem’ that they are facing. It’s not even sitting there pulsing, or fuming, in an emotionally charged state. None of those things are empathy. Active listening is really hearing what the other person is saying, and reflecting that back to them in a kind and empathetic way. Without judgement, or excuse. If you need to take a moment out to breath, then communicate that respectfully, and make sure you circle back quickly. This experience does not include blaming them for what they’re going through, wanting to shame them into silence, or dismissing them for their lack of skill or awareness. It doesn’t include hijacking their emotional expressions with your own.
It’s hard to describe the process, it’s a whole different feeling when I manage to meet someone in an active listening space. They feel heard, I feel them feeling heard, they hear me in response, I feel them feeling me.
I heard from Chen Lizra the other day:
The antidote to hopelessness is not hope, it’s deep relational space.
Empathy
Brené Brown’s amazing list of empathy wins and misses comes in so handy in relation to others. The environment precipitates the sharing people, I feel like that isn’t honoured enough in our modern world, no-one on this planet is going to meet you in emotion if you don’t provide safe and empathetic space for them and yourself, the wins and misses are as follows:
Wins
#1 See the world as others see it.
#2 To be non-judgemental.
#3 To understand another person’s feelings.
#4 To communicate your understanding of that person’s feelings.
#5 mindfulness; “heartfulness”; paying attention.
Misses
#1 Sympathy — having to be a knower, feeling bad for, not with.
#2 Gasp and awe.
#3 Mighty fall — disappointment of failure in others.
#4 Block & tackle — so uncomfortable with vulnerability that you scold them for it.
#5 Boots and shovel — needing to make it better, desperation.
#6 If you think that’s bad… — confuse competition with connection.
Looking back at the connection I explained in the introduction, I exhibited many of these empathy misses in our conversation, until she said: “Meet me there.”
We navigated more of this conversation afterwards and I apologised for lecturing, she explained that what I was saying was useful, and that she did appreciate, and need, to hear it. If I had approached the conversation in empathy, I would have been assured that I had information that was useful, and assured that the connection that I have with the other person would allow that to come out if it was needed. Part of the disconnection on my part was needing to speak of my experience of the subject, because I haven’t been heard in the past, that’s not empathy either.
Noticing emotion & memory
Holding space for these conversations takes a certain amount of noticing emotions and memories and understanding what they mean for me. I cannot hold space if my nervous system checks out after the other person says something. This is partly speaking to the universal connection of people in your life, we surround ourselves with those that can hear us, and process the depth of our emotion; love, joy, sadness, despair, our closest ones can cry with us as well as laugh.
Hopelessness and numbness are two emotions that people struggle with in general. I believe it’s because the cultural narrative encourages numbing behaviour, we check out of our emotions when we feel full and overwhelmed, and that’s actually called numbing. We might binge watch a TV series, or make some food, or go for a swim in the ocean, these things help us to process our experience. What if we could learn to process it by noticing it?
Then we could enjoy the things that we would otherwise do to take the weight off. Unfortunately some people pack it all in until they can’t help but explode on their closest. This can be a process of trauma, and should be honoured and observed, however more often than not it is the learned and habitual behaviour that keeps us deeply rooted in the grooves of our current experience.
Recognising emotion allows it to move, and allows us to process it. The only thing to do in each moment is to feel what you feel, think what you think, otherwise you exist in resistance. Resistance is a mighty struggle, I heard from Sadhguru one time (paraphrased):
..human beings like to make a competition with the universal forces, who do you think will win? It’s a bad game.
If we fight or resist change or emotion then it builds up the pressure within us. Sometimes we cannot help but do this, this is what trauma is, and it’s an intelligent system, because there are times when life is overwhelming and hard, yet, if we set our intentions on honouring our emotions and thoughts then we will be able to live in that state more often than not.
Holding space
Holding space can be a hard term to differentiate and it does have a certain spectrum; there can be many different levels and examples of holding space. I’m specifically talking about holding space for someone’s processing and emotions in this article, so I’ll use this context.
Empathy is a way to cross the divide of the human experience and really feel what someone else is feeling, and in doing so you share their experience of life, you give them a chance to process their experience in your reflections: In your eyes, in your body language, or what you say. It gives me the chance to reflect on my own life, and what that means to me, within reason, we still want to maintain the safe space.
It is a very specific feeling to be held in a space, there’s a level of awareness where I can feel supported in my body, I have an intuitive feeling that the person I am sat with can handle my emotions. It has been the opposite for me, I have known people that can’t hold the intensity of emotions that I have been feeling, and that’s fine because that’s just an observation of the timing between friends, and it means that I stay quiet, or I test out how much they can hold before sharing.
Letting it be
Let it be. That’s The Beatles song from one of their last albums where they exhibited an immense amount of wisdom. So it is.
It reminds me of what I wrote about resistance, the world turns as it turns and it’s only our perception of it that defines who we are and how we respond. If we can cultivate the space to respond to stimulus in our lives, we can realise that every single thing that occurs has a nature; a certain form, and then we can respond wonderfully to that form, from our spirit, and not be so helplessly unhappy all the time. The frantic nature of not choosing life, reacting to one breaking wave after another, over and over again really breaks us; it depletes the energy system, that’s what makes this unhappiness, when we feel that we haven’t got the resources to deal with what we want to deal with, it develops a sense of burden.
Closing thoughts
This might seem scary, or impossible, or like ‘hard work’ and like I do, you may have a list of examples in your past that give you reason to believe that you’re incapable. Dear one, these are skills. If I can learn them then so can you. I had a moment this morning in total fear of creating relational space like I used to and I was reminded by another friend that I have changed; shifted, I am a different person with different skills now. I am able to create these spaces with another person who is willing and able. This doesn’t make life easy you hear, it makes life rich and enjoyable, and it does mean less friction in my life, because relationship (in whatever form) allows us to grow, share, support each other through life. An isolated life is a difficult life. Isolation means amplification of problems.
It took a little while to get to the space where I was comfortable enough in my own emotional experience to have these conversations with others. I invite you to keep growing until you can get there, because it is one of the richest experiences we can have. It’s stunningly beautiful to meet someone ‘there’. Wherever ‘there’ is for them, in each moment, and start to allow there to become a feeling of here within you.
There’s such a common narrative that if we share our hearts then we will be rejected, ostracised, hurt. It’s a possibility, but let’s think of the other side of the coin, because there’s always an other side. The other side is deeper connection, deeper love, achieving together, and supportive friendship.
I said this earlier and I’ll repeat it because it’s so huge:
The environment precipitates the sharing.
Safe and secure space is how to build relationship.
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This post was previously published on Hello, Love.
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