Now I want to transition to thinking about what this self-contained person looks like in the context of others (because we really don’t exist in a vacuum!). Let’s continue with our vignette from the previous post...
Now imagine you get home and your partner or roommate wants to know about your day. You feel inclined to offer something and nothing else is standing out, so you start describing the dilemma over a raise. While you may feel like you’re doing a courtesy by sharing, you may not actually be available for relating (which is what this other person is really after!). By this time, you’ve already had a day’s worth of spin cycling possibilities so you’re convinced no one else can help in any way/fix anything/add any further information. AND YOU’RE RIGHT! No one else in 5 minutes is going to be able to analyze your situation further than you already have. But not because they’re inadequate (even though both of you might be thinking so at this point), but because you have left no feeling or thought for them to uncover with you. You’re bringing an issue to someone AFTER you’ve completely dissected it.
What are you going through?
You are probably frustrated. You have already found some peace with the situation and so now having to simply catch someone else up feels like a chore. There is no clear incentive for you and as this becomes increasingly apparent to you, you become increasingly irritated. Irritated at the work of explaining, irritated at yourself/the other person for putting you in this position, and irritated at the rawness of their emotions when you’ve already contained yours. This situation is probably reminding you of how much easier it is to just keep things to yourself. You instinctively did this for them but they are not even satisfied. You care about this person, but you’ve been shutting down all their suggestions (and their empathy) and now you are feeling like a jerk as they are looking shut down.
What are they going through?
They went into this conversation with a positive assumption - that is, with an assumption that you actually want to talk about the thing you are volunteering to talk about. Little do they know that you have no outstanding needs around the situation and were seemingly doing them a favor. But they haven’t asked for favors. They’re interested in connection and were expecting to be helpful. They have been offering genuine empathetic responses and racked their brains to try to come up with useful suggestions for you. But you have a swift way of denying all of it, and as it becomes clear that something’s not working out, they begin feeling frustrated with you or dejected about themselves. In their bodies they may be feeling inadequate, and in their heads they might be wondering, “Am I not smart enough?” “Am I bad at communicating?” “Maybe I’m not showing I love them enough...” “Maybe I’m not good at supporting people...”
From this example, we can see that this setup is not fulfilling for either person. It probably would have worked out better if you could have refrained from acting “as if” (i.e. as if you needed to talk about your raise) and flat out stated you needed nothing when you needed nothing, or reached out when you authentically did need something. The goal is for us to be this congruent, but the reality is that we as humans are very complicated. Why were you so immediately pulled into obeying social rules before respecting your internal truth? What were you assuming they needed? Why did that matter more than what you needed? Why were you so compelled to reject their empathy? Why were they so quick to assume they were the problem? How did that affect the outcome? What makes you so much more comfortable with pure logical analysis anyway?
Wrapping ourselves up in reasoning may make us feel safe, but while we are wrapped up, we are also unavailable to others. It is important to be aware that we are actually exploiting our minds (and secondarily our bodies via picking, pulling, and biting) as a means of bypassing vulnerability. In this prizing of our mental selves and this process of self-containing, we pass vulnerability off onto reasoning, which takes over and stamps out emotions, and then concludes that connecting with the external world is unnecessary. We remain isolated with a distorted rationalization that the world can offer us nothing more than we can offer ourselves. We may feel that our minds contain us, but too often, we become tragically contained by them.