see yourself
when something bad
(sad, crummy) happens,
we instinctively distance ourself from it as much as possible. it’s a perfectly natural response evolved from our survival-based animal brain.
when it’s something we’ve done, one tactic of distance is blame.
”No, it’s not my fault. It’s their fault or a result of the weather.”
when it’s something that has happened to someone else or
something someone else has done, there is often a subconscious conversation that goes
”How can I prove to myself or justify to myself that I am nothing like them or in a situation remotely similar to theirs? How can I show my brain that it will never happen to me?”
and that’s just a way of our brain showing our body that we’re safe
and we’re not in danger.
we other
the situation or the person.
we need someone to blame to prove to ourselves that “it” won’t happen to us.
what if we employed this practice:
imagine the situation happening to your very best friend.
imagine your very best friend did the Thing that we don’t want to talk about.
we know their character, their personality, their history, their heart.
we understand our very best friend.
how would we could we respond differently? you would probably
accept the truth
tell them the truth
and you wouldn’t other them.
othering is many things. and in subtlety it can operate as
a way of self-medicating,
a mode of distraction away from ourselves.
when my niece died, i was seventeen; and it was a situation that i had always thought “only happened to other people.” and when i was having to make phone calls to tell people what happened, it was the first time i realized
”no, this happens to everyone. we’re all available to this kind of experience.”
don’t we know that, though? when we can admit
that we’re having a hard time or going through something difficult -
maybe we hint at it in an attempt at honesty maybe to a random stranger - and to our surprise, to our compassion, the other person relates to the experience with a story from their own life.
“you know, i went through a divorce, too.”
or
“i had to file bankruptcy 10 years ago. it was hitting the bottom.”
or
“i lost my baby last year.”
and this transaction doesn’t fix anything. these things cannot be fixed, only lived. but these conversational transactions do do a couple of things:
allow people to participate, for a moment, fully
allow people be seen as themselves and not as other
brings us out of the comfortable zone of otherness into relatability, sameness, compassion, connection
(even if for one moment or one conversation).
and it brings a touch of healing.
if it were happening to you what would you need? if it were your very dearest love, how would you react?
