What other people think of me is none of my business. - Dr. Wayne Dyer (or Anthony Hopkins, or Gary Oldman, or Deepak Chopra, depending on your source)
I hurt my friend’s feelings the other day, and she called me out on it. I was dismissive to her when she reached out to me, and harsh when I corrected her miscalculation of my age. I can defend myself - my rudeness was unintentional, texting erased any warmth or humour from my tone, I was overwhelmed, rushed, distracted and down - and you can be sure that I did this in our conversation, and then over and over again in my head over the following days, in the shower, on the bus, walking the dogs, falling asleep.
I checked with other friends: Was I rude? Was this my fault? They were reassuring, comforting and kind, but I was left with a sense of unease.
It felt like looking at a blurry photograph, or having an itch I couldn’t quite reach to scratch. There was something disquieting about someone holding up a mirror to me, and knowing that it was a little distorted (because how could it not be?), but being unsure as to how much, or where.
Good Dr Dyer’s quote above is useful, and I probably overuse it at work, but it seems to ignore a central, primal need we all share: that is to be included by our folk.We are pack animals, after all, and once upon a time to be ostracised meant certain death. If our people find us offensive, we are at risk of getting voted off the island. Yikes!
I’m embarrassed to admit that, despite my puny inner voice telling me that there is something valid in my friend’s feedback, it took several days for it to drip-feed through all my defenses and land in a place where I could take responsibility for my own part of that rift.
It’s funny -there’s a real freedom and beauty to be found in that place (the land of “fearless moral inventory”, as the 12-steppers call it) but we avoid it like poison. Once I start owning my part I can learn lessons from it and grow. How exciting is that?
What this means for me in practical terms is that I keenly want to challenge my self- absorption by extending myself more to people I care about. I want to get out of ego by making myself more useful. And it also means sitting in the discomfort of being a writer who longs to be read (because what does it even mean to perform without an audience?) while being aware that doing so is so much about ego.
But - how do we balance the competing needs for authenticity and inclusion?
Maybe, as another friend says, it’s holding two watermelons in one hand. She’s the same bestie who said, “We’re all of us masking some of the time,” and I’ll love her forever for that.
Often, we aren’t so lucky as to get loving feedback about how we are perceived. We all know people who complain incessantly, or gossip cruelly, or steamroll conversations, but how many of us feel comfortable offering direct observation or comment on that behaviour, even when it hurts us?
Not me, that’s for sure - except in one place.
Get this. On the first Friday of every month I am a participant in group therapy with a bunch of other therapists and psychologists. It is every bit as full on as you’d imagine. The style of this group was developed by the inimitable Dr Irvin Yalom, and Chat GPT puts it in a nutshell for us like so: “Group members explore their relationships, behaviours, and emotions within the group context,which mirrors their interactions outside of therapy, with a view to gaining insight into their dynamics, fostering personal growth, and promoting change through collective experience and mutual support.”
Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
It works because identity is relational and our need to be included is intrinsic. Yet even the most insightful and wisest of us are woefully unreliable when it comes to seeing ourselves with any clarity. We depend on one another to guide us so we can remain in community,even as we must rely on our own intuition to steer us toward folks we vibe with. Yalom groups are meant to be safe spaces to explore this tricky, tricky territory.There I have learned how to give feedback, and how to receive it.
This gets further complicated because sometimes how we show up is context dependent. My mother raised a way different version of me - petulant, reactive, adolescent -to the me that you’re reading, for example. My wife gets an improved version of me when compared to the me that my husbands married (bless them), and my kids probably get the rawest, most stripped back, and best me of all.
People who love me point me in the right direction - the magic of collaboration is part of my Higher Power. My friends and family push me to be congruent; that is,open and authentic rather than hiding behind a fear of rejection. When my friend challenged me about being dismissive, she was implicitly asking me to connect with her, to really see her and allow her to see me too.
Sometimes that's hard to do, right? Sometimes it’s difficult to trust enough, to relax enough, or to carve out enough time and dig up enough resources to show up unguarded.
Sometimes Ijust don’t want to. Sometimes it’s not safe. That’s okay. The work is about bringing the subconscious up into the conscious, and once we become aware of our own internal processes we can choose in any given moment what to share and what to keep private.
Dr Dyer’s quote is a paradox, both true and untrue. Other people can think whatever they damn well please about me; it’s none of my business. Also, it matters what some people think of me, very much. I want my wife and children to find me loving and trustworthy. I want my clients and colleagues to find me professional and competent. I want my friends to assume they can confide in me and I’ll hold space for them, and to know I love them even when I forget to reply to a text. It’s the watermelon thing again.
My invitation to you, familiars, is to check in with someone you love and trust and ask,“have I ever hurt your feelings?” Ask, “what’s your favourite thing about me?”And also, “where do you think my blind spots are?” My heart is pounding a little as I type this because of course I can’t lay down a challenge to you that I don’t intend to attempt myself.
Remember that there is no one true answer to these questions, and that the other person’s response will always be coloured by their own lens, their own unconscious biases and conscious beliefs. But you may be led to a more accurate understanding of yourself and a deeper connection with your person if you trust this process.
Should you have the time, the resources, and the inclination, please comment and share how you went with this challenge (even if you think it’s unhinged). I’ll do the same, and together we’ll keep climbing up this learning curve.