What reflects
Three Things for Thursday
I’m determined to figure this out. I have hope for my Heart, for the first time in a while. I need concrete tools, and this idea I have that shame may simply be the evidence of falling over, of tipping too far in one direction or another - that’s actionable. That also implies space between where I could balance without all that expressed or repressed emotion I’m so leery of.
It’s my conclusion that Draw energy comes from the Heart, and so the direction of the flow is reversed from Drive energy (which I think is very physical). Draw energy pulls inward. Draw energy is a magnetic attraction to my Heart. Draw energy, like a reflection, doubles back on itself. What I throw out from my Heart, wants to pump right back, oxygenated.
There’s a lot to this concept map I’m building. It has layers and layers, but the first one is the one I’ve spent a whole year exploring. One hard thing: a safer home. That’s the strong circle on the outside. The round pen. The limits and fence between the chaos outside, and the Soul space inside. One strong circle to balance within, because for sure you can’t balance outside of it.
So the big circle is Home. It’s safe to work within a home, and that’s what each of us (especially me!), needs.
Inside the home, my home, is my inner team: Heart, Mind, and Body. I’m all of these, and yet I’m somehow more than them. I am their fearless leader, caregiver, and referee. They need refereeing. They are childlike and spoiled. Some of them behave badly. Well, they all behave pretty well and yet tend to try to take advantage of lapses in my attention.
Each smaller circle is a world with its own circles inside, but that’s for later. Right now, let’s focus on the way we can balance ourselves simply by making sure that each team member has space to work. And by remembering that we (above and beyond, yes, but also prone to forget that role), might be neglecting one or even two of our three important support(ers). This makes us immediately unbalanced, at the very largest level. I have been working for months to uncover where I put my Heart, why she’s so locked away, and why the rest of me is so resistant to her messages.
It has helped to put words to the special tasks, the limiters, the roles and gifts and curses of each of my “people.” I’m playing with these ideas - naming the animals, as it were - and throwing this out to you for your considered feedback. I want this to be helpful, for me, but preferably for other people as well. I’m trying to stay within the synthesized and somewhat elasticized concepts I’ve gathered from a career in health care, a lifetime of Biblical immersion, a passion for horses, lots of reading, lots of investigatory exploration into psychological and developmental and brain-based sciences. I’m also living this out in real time, in a practical set of relationships, some of which I’m sharing about, as much as I can.
So back to my Heart, which I am now listening to with the dawning awareness that she has been stuck under a mountain of applied shame (the compost heap of horse manure in our yard is a good visual). Shame is the special province of the heart, according to the Enneagram nerds I follow. It is the problem that Heart types are trying to solve, or the discomfort they are trying to defend against, with various strategies, fixations, recursive and self-defeating patterns. Shame is, for sure, awful to experience. I’m digging out, and wondering if there’s any point to this experience. Why is shame so close to our Hearts? What is its message and how can I ever navigate through or around it so as to be able to feel with pleasure, rather than the disgust I’m more used to experiencing?
Balance implies a fulcrum, with weights on either end of a lever arm. To balance a long line is tricky. I believe that each of my team members has a similar mechanical puzzle to solve, but the ends of the teeter-totters are different. The Heart is dealing with shame, and I think the Body must balance anger, while the Mind struggles with fear. None of these are pleasant, but they are all necessary. Just working out how and for what purpose and in what relationship with other hard things…
So back to the directions of energy flow: Drive energy is a push, and that lines up with the body’s tendency to anger, and its highly physical, locatable, and defensible presence in the real world. Draw energy is a pull, and that lines up with the Heart’s emotional storms and tides and watery movement between states and colours and moods. Soaking energy - the stillness in between or even apart from push/pull flows, is the important work of the Mind - or at least a balanced, “sound” Mind - able to take in data from multiple points near and far, analyze, theorize, and then offer a plan. Stillness implies a cessation of movement to or from, and it is a very courageous stance, because a still point is holding space. There is a possibility for deep peace when there is a Mind able to acknowledge the circumference of awareness, and yet choose not to react (or at least not immediately), but merely observe. Listen, and learn.
Let’s say that the flow of energy for each of my inner team members requires a conduit, or a path, or guard rails, to avoid spillover. Let’s say that the balancing work of each part of me is slightly different (because the risks are different) but also quite equivalent (because balancing is hard work). Let’s say that when I experience anger I am experiencing my Body struggling with balance. When I experience fear my Mind is having trouble. And when I experience shame, my Heart is wobbling.
This is the benefit of those strong states, then! They are immediately perceptible, intensely disagreeable, warning signs. Just like hunger or thirst signal a fairly urgent need to drop everything and attend to a survival-based need, maybe I could use the appearance (in my “home”) of perceptible anger, fear or shame, as a red light flashing, or a flag waving, or a radio beacon of distress. My inner home is in turmoil, and based on what I’m feeling, I at least can have some idea as to which one of “us” is struggling.
I appreciate this as a story for what to do. I hate feeling shame (probably the most of the triad), but that is mostly because I feel so helpless in its presence. As I’ve said, if enough shame is dumped on a person, that person is not going to bother trying to respond rationally. I simply left my Heart where she was, walked away, and determined never to feel any of the shame at all. And that worked, but at the cost of one third of my inner team’s membership. Which is to say, a very bad bargain.
Now, I’m coming back to the situation with some optimism. Okay. Let’s say that shame is a warning system that my Heart is out of balance. Let’s further say that because of its pulling inward direction of flow, it’s like a mirror. When I look in a mirror, I see myself. I don’t see through the mirror. The mirror reflects back to me what is facing it. My Heart is like a mirror. She reflects. I think other Hearts reflect as well. I think this is how we can start to know ourselves and also each other. I think this reflective quality is probably a useful sort of feature that I’ve mostly not had available.
Working this out logically (because my Mind is teasing at this puzzle with great enthusiasm), when I access my Heart, I will see myself, and this can cause me to feel - well, shame. I can look at myself and think: I’m not very _____ (insert whatever adjective I want here). I can also compare myself to other people. I can spend an inordinate amount of time peering at my faults. I can become completely absorbed in my own reflection. I can forget that other people are even in the room.
One way to be unbalanced, as a person with a Heart, is to use that reflection to simply look at myself and focus on the many reasons to feel ashamed. These can be the ways I am deficient relative to my own standards, or maybe I decide to compare myself to what I imagine other people’s standards are. As shame is all about being insufficient, as opposed to merely acting or doing something that is less than ideal, this type of self-evaluation goes nowhere good.
On the other end of the spectrum, or the balancing arm, is the possibility that I choose to ignore my faults entirely, and focus solely on my charms and features and “benefits.” In this unbalanced state, I deny all problems with myself at the existence level, and throw any sort of blame or shame that threatens to rise to consciousness outwards (which is difficult with Draw energy, so there’s going to be a boomerang effect with this maneuver).
So, if I’m unbalanced on the one side, I’m full of shame and see only the ways I don’t measure up (becoming as self-absorbed as it is possible to be, thereby). I become helplessly immobilized by my own precious unworthiness. If I tilt all the way to the opposite extreme, I decide I can do no wrong, and any difficulties that enter my life must be your fault, or their fault, or anyone’s fault but my own.
Too much shame, or no shame whatsoever (but plenty of blame). What’s the land in between these awful poles?
Here’s where I am contemplating a structure built of children’s magnet toys, or toothpicks and marshmallows. I think there’s a balancing area, or a road between the cliffs (to use the pathway metaphor), that allows my Heart to function as she was meant to - as a mirror, as a source of strong Draw energy, and most importantly as a creative, generative transformer. I think this is a place supported by another tripod, and which neatly solves the problem the shame is flagging.
I’m not perfect. I’m not even close to “done” developing. I have hectares of potential that is unexplored. I cause pain. I cost money. I don’t always say please. I sometimes smell terrible. I don’t know things. I forget other things I did know. I get tired, and grouchy, and impatient. I’m a work in progress, and sometimes I’m a work in regress.
This is the problem, and shame is not the answer. The answer is something that shame can’t supply: worth. I must have worth. I must have worth that is not tied to my perfect performance, or I’m sunk. I’m really done before I begin otherwise.
I can’t tell you how to access a belief in your worth. This is why I’m clinging (as to a life raft) to my Christian faith, despite so much telling me to question it all. This idea of our worth as deeply loved, purpose-built, and individually redeemed humans, by God? I can’t let that go. But everyone needs to find their own source of comfort. I just know that the problem of the Heart is partially solved if I remember that my worth is sacred, and inviolate, and eternal. Whew. Because I can’t earn that. And yet I need it to go on. My faults are that apparent.
The second leg of the balancing point for my Heart, I believe, is remorse. The process of repentance. The ability to look at the mirror, see that I did something wrong, and say sorry. This is so critical! Without this path through space and time and change we’re stuck with our reflection as a snapshot, frozen and unchangeable. With remorse, and the option to work towards a repair in relationship, there is a way to move, to teeter the totter, as it were.
The third leg I’m building with my little model of toothpicks is going to be the creative energy the Heart is meant to use. I believe we all need to create. We all need to transform. We need to pull in all that emotion and energy and love and strong power from all around us, and then make something of it. This can be a boat or a story or a rug or a life. I think it can colour the way I relate with each person or animal or tree or even situation I come close to. I am utterly unique, and I pull in exactly those ingredients my Heart attracts, and then what I do with them becomes my signature of my being - or more accurately - becoming.
If I use my Heart to reflect back to me, honestly, and if I have the courage to look deeply into her oh so informative swirling waters, I have a way to know what’s what. I can also, if I am allowed, use the reflective nature of other people’s hearts to tell me what they see when they come near to me. How cool is that? And if I can try not to get all unbalanced by my disgust and revulsion (spiralling into shame), I could use the significant area between hiding, and blaming others, to good effect. I could show up, creatively, with my own original and beautiful (or at least interesting) spectrum of offerings.
Between shamelessness on the one hand, and shame spiralling on the other, there is a land of creative expression, tempered by a sense of the worth of my soul, and the souls of everyone else, and also the need for frequent remorseful course corrections. Which are possible, and do not weigh nearly as much as shame does.
Three Things for Thursday
Are you conscious of feeling shame when you “look at yourself?” Or do you tend to blame others instead?
Do you have a source of belief in your own inherent, intrinsic, pre-existing, unconditional worth?
If you could substitute shame/blame extremes for the middle, balanced place where you:
know and accept your worth,
also accept, and deal, with your faults and inevitable missteps, and
use your own creative energy to transform the raw materials of your life into something unique and specific to you…
would that change your life in any concrete way?
