This fall I’m out speaking again, yay! Audiences have varied, from medicine to the judiciary, and the topic is still mainly health, wellness, and self-care. I have updated PowerPoint slide decks from 2020 with personal and professional learnings and synthesis from the past 2.5 years (much of it chronicled on this blog). Some ideas remain foundational and timeless, such as the 5 reciprocal domains of health (Sleep, Nutrition, Exercise, Stress management, Relationships) and each individual’s nodal role in complex adaptive human systems of connection. This year I have added the 3 reciprocal tenets of self-care (working label): Self-awareness, Self-regulation, and Community Building, listing specific practices under each heading and showing how they intersect and mutually uphold.
I do my homework in advance. I make multiple planning calls, clarifying audience demographics, learning objectives, and key take-aways. I spend hours compiling resources to reference. I know this material left and right, up and down, inside out. I have studied and I can teach–I live my presentation content every day in my practice.
And yet, I wonder. Am I really the expert? I haven’t published any papers (although I contributed to one that I’m pretty proud of), and no longer hold designated leadership titles. Doubt sets in when I think of those in my audience who resist my message–that our jobs are excessively stressful, our work cultures promote boundary-less self-sacrifice, and in addition to personal resilience practices (exercise, meditation), we need to connect with one another in order to really thrive, which often includes asking for help. I feel rejected before even arriving on site.
I have called on the tribe for pep talks and validation the night before more than one presentation. They step up every time, reminding me of my credentials, fueling me. I have played “You Raise Me Up” on repeat for days, reminding myself of all on whose shoulders I stand. I power pose a few minutes before going ‘on’, lengthening my posture to the full 5’2″, plus 3″ under my heels. By the start of my talks, I see my audience not as adversaries to be persuaded. Rather, I recognize them as highly motivated, resilient, dedicated, fellow lifelong learners. It is my job to reflect back to them their inherent strengths, identify how they are already well, and raise them up with whatever knowledge, insight, or advice I can offer that’s relevant.
The feedback is almost always very positive. I always manage to connect with at least a few people, and walk away satisfied that I did my best and it was all worth the effort.
I know my value. I recognize my expertise. I stand up straight in it, and I really do think I own it. Still, I fear arrogance. It’s like a demon following me around, waiting for a moment of weakness, of uncontrolled and overblown ego, to overtake me and blind me to my own flaws, areas where my inner work is glaringly unfinished–where my actions are apparently inconsisent with my preachings.
Huh, maybe that’s it. I think I don’t have imposter syndrome…but rather fear of hypocrisy? Or at least fear being seen as a hypocrite? That would certainly grind against my core values of honesty and integrity.
Or maybe I just want to be liked?
Oh well, I’ll think more on it. Meanwhile, more inspiring music, text threads with the tribe, interesting reading, writing to parse it all out. And I’ll just be me. That’s good enough.
“Negative polarization (or negative partisanship), as I’ve written many times, is the term for politics that is fundamentally motivated by animosity for the other side more than affection to your own party’s leaders or ideas.
“Under the malice theory, the key to electoral victory is unlocking that anger. That means highlighting everything wrong with your opponents. That means hyping their alleged mortal threat to the Republic. Because of pre-existing animosity, your message will fall on fertile soil.
“In this context, it’s easy to see how kindness and graciousness are seen as weakness, or at least as a lack of conviction.”
Basically, if we think of our political opponents as a ‘them’, an other, we make them an abstraction. If we paint them with broad brushes in various shades of ‘evil,’ then we make ourselves fundamentally susceptible to tyrants who manupilate that fear and hatred for their own purposes. We follow blindly out of emotional hijack, deluding ourselves that we are being totally rational. The ultimate tool of such tyrants is dehumanization, making ‘the other’ a thing rather than a person, something we could not possibly relate to or care for.
Validation
One potent antidote to dehumanization and malice politics is emotional validation. I found this article while writing Monday’s post on how to be less shitty to one another. If you read any of the essays from this post, read this one! More highlights:
“Emotional validation is the process of learning about, understanding, and expressing acceptance of another person’s emotional experience. Emotional validation is distinguished from emotional invalidation, when a person’s emotional experiences are rejected, ignored, or judged.
“Validating an emotion doesn’t mean that you agree with the other person or that you think their emotional response is warranted. Rather, you demonstrate that you understand what they are feeling without trying to talk them out of or shame them for it.”
When we talk about people on the ‘other’ side of politics from us, what do we say? Do we speak in generalizations? Do we assume nefarious motives, declaring that they are just bad people? Maybe we say we ‘can’t imagine,’ ‘don’t understand’ how anyone would vote the way they do? What assumptions do we make about how they live their lives and how it must be completely different from us? Validation requires us to put down these generalizations and see each other as individuals, humans, people with whom we are in relationship (and we are all in relationship)–to move in closer, as Brene Brown asks us to do. It’s a practice in empathy and ultimately, a neutralizer of negative partisanship.
Why should we validate one another’s emotions? Because it helps us connect, especially across difference. When we feel validated, we let our guard down. When we feel seen, we de-escalate. Then we are more likely and able to engage in discussions, even disagreements, with more openness and curiosity, respect and collaboration. But someone has to take the first step on the path to de-escalation, to lead by example and invitation.
The Butterfly Effect
In my Quirky Nerd post, I mentioned this idea at the end, in passing. I like to include links to interesting ideas, and found the essay on Farnam Street by Shane Parrish and/or his team. Parrish hosts The Knowledge Project, one of my favorite podcasts. Ever since learning about the self-organizing nature of culture, I have felt validated (ha!) and increasingly confident to point out how the impact of any given node in any system both impacts and is impacted by that system–because everything is connected! I define myself as a node, and I am a member of multiple systems at once (we all are). Some systems are nested (family, neighborhood, city, state, nation); some overlap (Chinese-Americans, physicians, working moms). Looking from the most complex and simultaneous perspective, we can then see how the state or movement of any one node may have direct and indirect ripple effects that propagate and eventuate in dramatic multi-systemic change.
Or, it may not. It’s a paradox–anything you and I do can have transformative effects or no effect at all. I wrote about this as the Optimistic Nihilist. From Farnam Street: ” John Gribbin writes in his cult-classic work Deep Simplicity, ‘some systems … are very sensitive to their starting conditions, so that a tiny difference in the initial ‘push’ you give them causes a big difference in where they end up, and there is feedback, so that what a system does affects its own behavior.’
“We like to think we can predict the future and exercise a degree of control over powerful systems such as the weather and the economy. Yet the butterfly effect shows that we cannot. The systems around us are chaotic and entropic, prone to sudden change. For some kinds of systems, we can try to create favorable starting conditions and be mindful of the kinds of catalysts that might act on those conditions – but that’s as far as our power extends. If we think that we can identify every catalyst and control or predict outcomes, we are only setting ourselves up for a fall.”
My point here is that when I start to feel too small to make a difference, I just remember my role as node. I may not see the waves that my attitude, words, actions and relationships create in the world. But I believe wholeheartedly that I can and do make a difference–a big one, potentially. I just don’t know exactly which day, which conversation, which post, which relationship will incite the shifts I agitate to make–toward mutual understanding, accpetance, cooperation, and connection. Thus, anything and everything I do matters, so I keep it up. I commit to playing the infinite game of human connection, and my just cause is to de-escalate, defuse, and disarm us, in service of interpersonal peace. But anything I do could not matter at all, so I don’t have to burden myself with perfection and exhaustive hamster wheeling.
Once again, insights about life integrate and synthesize in the patient encounter, and my life is that much richer for it. These encounters make me think, they give me material to process here on the blog; but most importantly, I am allowed into people’s lives such that we both connect and benefit synergistically. It’s the relationships, of course.
This time Patient and I bonded over a shared experience of people just being more and more shitty to each other these days. Ironic, isn’t it, that as we emerge from restrictions on travel and social gatherings, we find ourselves yelling, honking, and just aggressing more than ever? Every day I witness escalating impatience, intolerance, judgment, and contempt. Hard to stay optimistic about our species right now.
The COVID-19 pandemic has challenged all of our status quo defaults, and we suddenly understand the deep flaws and disadvantages of our old assumptions. Global business can be conducted effectively via remote connections. Some outpatient clinical care can, too. Other work, like education, judicial work, acute clinical care, and essential retail, suffers profoundly or simply cannot be done remotely, showing us all just how much we have taken for granted, for so long.
I imagine each and all of us, through both individual and collective adversities since early 2020, have probably experienced at least a few epiphanies of clarity. If you have faced death in any context these few years, you may feel it even more acutely and painfully. Grief unfolds over time and transforms us. How much clearer are you today about your core values and life priorities, compared to three years ago? What activities, tasks, and even relationships, are just not that important to you now? What others are elevated? How has this shift disrupted and altered your whole existence, if you really think about it?
And how much agency have you today, to make changes in your life, to better align your daily activities and interactions with a reassessed, reoriented life perspective and world view? Are the things that demand your attention worth your finite and precious energy and resources?
Once we know deeply what we do and don’t want, what serves and nourishes us and not, the latter things become increasingly intolerable. And if we have little or no control to change our circumstances, to move toward the former things, we get agitated. If our coping skills are fragile, or our stress overwhelming, our agitation accelerates and behavior deteriorates. We lash out, triggering others’ distress in a maelstrom cascade, and in no time we’re all boiling in a collective, co-created, toxic social soup–and we have no idea what happened. We just feel shitty, and the downward spiral churns on.
Sometimes it’s okay to just be with the miserable feelings a while, simply acknowledging them, naming them, without judgment. Validating the suck for one another can be profoundly therapeutic. The next time someone lashes out, I can take a breath. I can refrain from reacting in kind. I can self-regulate, maintain my own peace, and not add acid to the soup. And if I can muster it, maybe I’ll offer a kind word or gesture, an expression of empathy, and turn down the heat a little, even if only in myself.
I feel my own impatience and agitation these days; lots of transition, inflection, and reorientation going on. I lean heavily on my tribe for understanding, reflection, and encouragement. I move my body regularly to release tension. I breathe slowly and deeply more often. I look for small changes I can make now, starting with my attitude, that create the new reality I want. If we can each and all slow down, see how the realities we crave align, maybe we could even work together to co-create something better for us all.
One day, one moment, one breath at a time. ODOMOBaaT, my friends. We’ got this.
Healing Through Connection 