When someone gets triggered, they often want to blame someone else for how they feel (points at self.)
Yes, I’m coming out as a blamer.
My first reaction is almost always to blame before investigating my feelings and how they belong to me.
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In fact, my partner and I used to call my blame strategy my "heat seeking missile."
It would look for a target and send all the ill feelings that way.
My somatic coach helped me understand the root of this strategy is loneliness.
I feel so terrible and alone with these feelings that I want to throw them at someone else: "Here, you feel this, so I don't have to be alone in feeling it."
The problem is, when you throw your feelings at someone, you dismiss their humanity.
You forget that they are a living, breathing human with a nuanced emotional experience and needs of their own, including the need to feel dignity.
There they are, having their own experience, and whammo!
They get slimed with an intense ball of someone else’s emotions.
This has likely happened to you: someone says or does something blamey out of the blue that throws you off center.
They are taking out their feelings on you, trying to make it your fault that they feel like they do.
They might want you to take on their feelings or take care of their feelings.
Either way, you've got ooze dripping down your front where your heart used to be.
Welcome to having your humanity erased.
It is so painful when this happens.
It is the opposite of reciprocal, respectful relating.
I'll give you an example.
Back when I had my company, I hired someone, let's call them Sam, to do some work for the company.
They worked for me a few hours each week for about six months.
Sam did a good job. I liked their work.
One day Sam quit, seemingly out of nowhere.
They met with me and aggressively yelled at me about their inhumane working conditions and my despicable leadership.
They went so far as to attack me personally and disparage my company and our offerings.
The blame attack was jarring and unexpected. At that moment, I froze.
I thought the thing to do was listen compassionately.
It's what I believed a good boss should do.
If I were in that situation now, I would do things differently.
When it became clear that their rant was not just about their job but about attacking my personhood, I would cut them off.
No one deserves to be verbally upbraided.
When I reflected on the feedback, some of what they said had validity: about 5-8% was objectively true.
I had made some mistakes.
But that means 92-95% of what they shared was their own projections.
Their feedback was oversized compared to our relationship and the size of their job.
They were projecting things on me, the company and our services that had no basis.
As a result of that meeting, I felt destabilized for months.
I questioned my judgment and my decisions.
I felt crippling shame about the things they had said. Were they right?
I allowed their dismissal of my humanity to be exacerbated by the ways I dismissed my own humanity.
Their vehemence and violent speech got under my skin, and I didn't know how to get it out.
It took a long time to reclaim my humanity, to unblend with the shade and shame that was cast, and to remember my value, and the value of what we were up to.
What I didn't understand was that Sam likely dismissed their own humanity, so it was easy to ignore mine.
We see this when someone is canceled: a complete dismissal of their humanity, a deliberate forgetting that there can be a mix of parts, emotions, motivations, and behaviors.
Cancelling says someone is terrible, all bad.
Cancelling is modeled after the prison industrial complex.
The court of public opinion is just as violent.
"Criminal, perpetrator, abuser”: these are big, heavy words, and yet they are used indiscriminately in common parlance in many communities I move in.
One word to define the entirety of a person's existence?
I want us to all have more complexity than that.
After the experience with Sam, I realized the most painful part was how I could not maintain my own sense of self.
How I crumbled at the edges and felt hatred about myself.
Outsider communities can develop such rigid conditions for membership (unspoken) that members walk on eggshells, terrified of making a mistake and being exiled.
After the experience with Sam, I made a commitment to myself.
I promised to hold onto my own humanity, as well as the humanity of others.
This practice has been life-changing.
Later that year, I wrote a Code of Honour to remember who I am and what matters most.
I read it most days.
I live and let live. I am fully honest but don't initiate trouble.
I stay with it until clarity arrives. I name what is.
I hold the boundary that protects my center and sanity: I say yes to life-giving practices, thoughts, situations, and people. I say no to life-blocking practices, thoughts, situations, and people.
I greet the sacred world and accept grace as it is given.
I am a soft and trusting heart and ever increase my capacity to give and receive love.
I seek sparkle. I listen for guidance of the unseen. I walk in beauty. I smell the ephemeral & sublime.
I trust magick and that there is always more to be revealed, as I practice whole time.
I harm none with intention.
I share power, speak clearly, and communicate with love: I believe in liberation for all and in our deep interweave.
I am present, connected, and creative. I live with the intention to be a kind and safe ancestor.
I love myself deeply and act from that love.
I dance with all of it, turn towards, and then discern what is next.
I only own myself, but all of me is mine. I am accountable in word, thought, and deed.
When I receive difficult feedback, I can listen more easily because I will not join with the person's assessment but will consider what important information they are sharing and what they might need.
It's not that I don't take it personally because that would be too good to be true.
We impact each other.
I want to be soft enough to be impactable and firm enough to have a firm enough center that if an ugly, unhinged attack comes my way, I can stay connected to my feelings, needs, and humanity.
In practice, it means three things:
* Listening
* Discerning what's what: truth or projection/blame
* Responding from a place that holds my humanity, dignity, and the other person's. I refuse to dismiss your humanity, because that practice helps me hold onto my own.
There's also step 3 A: Talk incredibly sweetly to myself, gently enquiring what would be helpful and what I need.
It means I share more vulnerably about my own experience, never allowing difficult conversations to be one-sided, or about just one person’s feelings.
I know I am not available for someone to take their feelings out on me, but we can build a bridge if they can show up with their feelings and space for mine.
It was my willingness to let go of my own humanity, to believe I was bad, that fucked me up.
People project all kinds of things without being aware they are doing so.
You are under no obligation to absorb their projections.
Holding onto your humanity feels like love, care, and dignity.
It means you affirm your worth and believe your own experience.
Holding onto another's humanity feels like remembering they are human beings with needs and wants, even though they behave poorly.
To hold onto your humanity when it's under attack, it's best to remain in your body so you can notice the damage and tend to it quickly.
Palden Gyatso was a Tibetan monk who was tortured and jailed by the Chinese for 33 years.
In his memoir "Fire under the Snow," he expresses compassion for the prison guards who tortured him.
How is this possible?
He said,
'It is not that I was without hatred. Especially when I was being tortured by my guards, I had immense hatred against them because I was being hurt. But, as a religious person, after the event I could reflect on what had happened, and I could see that those who inflicted torture did so out of their own ignorance. As a religious person I have to sit back and ask myself, what is all this? Buddhist teachings say, don't let your calm be disturbed and do not respond to anger with anger.'
He held onto compassion for the guard's humanity and, in doing so, held onto his own.
Amazing.
Others will dismiss your humanity.
You do not need to join with them, either by dismissing your own, or dismissing theirs.
You get to hold on to all of who you are, no matter what.
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