Power Of Inclusion And Authenticity

We are want to feel included and are vulnerable to being excluded. This is driven by the survival threat we feel in our nervous system when we are not protected as part of a family or group. In this 1st of 4 live explorations on authenticity and attachment, we look into when we are able to be authentic, when we make a strategic decision that it is not safe enough to fully share who we are, the nuance of not shaming ourselves, and the importance of kindness and present moment awareness.

Transcript

This is a four-part series on authenticity and attachment.

It's so fundamental to our happiness if we feel included or when we feel excluded.

Part of that is from our survival mechanisms in our nervous system.

So we evolved to really need to be included in the family group,

The small community.

We just know that the best way that we can survive,

And in fact the only way we can survive is within our communities.

And as we've moved into our modern world,

We've brought our primitive nervous systems with us.

As we're starting to look in this,

Let's take a moment to just see what's happening in your body and your breath.

And the power of inclusion really starts with us here.

If we can include ourselves,

Let's just say that I include myself in my attention,

My priorities.

And it seems kind of an odd thing to say because,

You know,

Of course we do.

But just to see what comes up for you,

I include myself.

One of the things we know about trauma and traumatic memories is that traumatic memories feel like we're back in that time when it happened.

And one of the therapeutic tools that has come from that,

And it's widely used by many other people too,

I'm not a therapist,

This is a somatic body mindfulness-based practice inquiry,

Is that because we feel like we're back in that moment,

We can also really focus on being grounded in this moment and then connect the two.

So if you were to go back in time and let yourself just kind of bring forward a memory of a time when you felt really included,

And that might not be simple,

It might not be simple to notice that.

For any one of us who's had a predominant experience of feeling excluded,

When we felt excluded in our family,

Excluded at school,

Excluded socially,

But notice if there is anybody in your past or any experience you could bring forward.

And just notice what that feels like.

Notice what it feels like in your body.

Usually our body will relax a little bit,

Our mind will become a little bit more still,

We might be thinking about a happy experience.

And as you're doing that,

Let your breath become a little bit deeper.

One of the ways that we do that is to soften the belly.

Let your lower belly especially,

Get your navel center,

Your stomach area,

Get that whole area softened as you breathe out.

This dance that we do between the traumatic memory and the age we are at that time,

And how it can feel very much like that's what's happening,

And our adult self,

This is one of the ways that we do that.

We stay grounded in the present moment where we know that we're okay.

And maybe for most of us now,

We've built a life,

An adult life,

Where we're connected with ourselves.

One of the big effects of trauma is that we disconnect from ourselves.

But now we're really more on our own side,

We're more inclusive of our own needs,

We consider ourselves more,

We don't betray ourselves so easily.

So one of the questions that we sometimes look at is,

Are we trading authenticity for attachment?

And the answer when we're a child is always yes.

A child literally can't afford to be authentic at the risk of alienating their parents or the people that are caring for them.

So just as you sit with that question,

How am I or when am I or how often do I trade authenticity for attachment?

And as your adult self is grounded in this moment and he knows that now you're safe,

And you're not at the whim and the power of the adults that you were when you were a child,

It's not like we don't care about other people,

We do.

But we have more resources,

We can,

Our own adult self can act as a resource for our younger self,

Who felt really alone,

Not cared for,

Not attuned to.

When you think about those words,

Or when you listen to those words,

I trade authenticity for attachment.

Sometimes I pretend to be someone else,

Or sometimes I just don't say what's really going on.

This can happen at work,

At home,

In social circles.

For me,

As a lesbian who was out at work a lot of the times,

And also in one particular job in a corporate setting,

The people around me knew,

But I wasn't really public about it.

I didn't take my partner to Christmas parties and things like that.

I made a conscious decision to do that,

That I was well aware that there was a risk involved.

I knew some of the senior management and I wasn't too sure that they would be accepting of that.

So I had a lot of other opportunities to be authentic,

And I chose to make that trade.

But if you follow along that same theme,

A young person who's starting to question their sexual orientation or their gender identity will have to make a judgment call.

Can I be open with friends?

Can I be open with my parents,

Siblings?

Am I going to be judged or shamed,

Or am I going to be kicked out?

A lot of the homeless teens are people who are LGBTQ+.

What is our sense of that for yourself?

And it can be a lot of other areas.

So maybe you really feel strongly about global warming,

And you ride your bike to work,

And you really try to minimize your airplane trips,

And you recycle and do those things.

But the group that you hang out with with your family are really scornful of those hippies that are living off the land and all that ridiculous stuff.

Is it appropriate,

And do you even want to bring forward,

Well this is who I am,

This is what I believe?

So whatever that is for you,

Let yourself kind of settle in to using a particular situation or a person,

A group of people,

And let yourself kind of feel into that in your body.

What happens?

Do you,

Do your shoulders come up around your ears?

Do you start holding your breath?

When I'm not really telling my truth,

What does that feel like in my body?

And keep yourself really aware of this moment.

So if you're starting to get kind of carried away or a lot of compulsion in the mind,

Open your eyes,

Look around the room.

You could do some box breathing,

Something to,

You know,

Hold your own hands.

Do something to stay stabilized in this moment.

And then as you think back to maybe it was yesterday,

Maybe it was when you were a teenager,

Teenagers are particularly vulnerable to peer influence.

And maybe you were the smart kid in class,

Or maybe you were the jock who wasn't smart in class,

Or maybe you were a gay kid,

Or maybe you were just kind of didn't fit in.

You were the new kid.

You moved a lot.

I think we've all had the experience of not really fitting in.

And if you could bring forward yourself at that age,

What would your relationship now as a healthy adult or healthier adult,

What would your relationship be with that person of that age?

What would you say?

Would you give them a hug?

Would you tell them,

I'm so sorry that happened.

It wasn't your fault.

What would you say?

And just keep yourself really aware of your breath.

And oftentimes when we're doing an inquiry,

We'll notice some kind of energy or sensation in our body.

So notice if you started clenching your teeth,

Maybe you have a feeling like a black hole whirling in your belly,

You started holding your breath.

Use these awarenesses,

This mindfulness and these tools to stay here in this moment.

Deep breaths.

And notice if you could really work on being kind and letting your younger self know,

Younger self meaning yesterday or right now or decades ago,

Really letting your younger self know that it's okay,

That we all try to protect ourselves.

We have a primitive brain survival level threat against being excluded and we try to be included.

That's how it works.

So notice as well now there's a nuance here.

Are you shaming yourself or going along to get along?

For not challenging the racist comment or the sexist comment or hiding a relationship that you know that isn't going to be approved of or maybe you got fired from work and you're not telling people.

We're all really vulnerable to inclusion and exclusion.

It's really important.

So we could also work with just allowing ourselves to make those decisions.

So I was hiding who I was.

Well,

You know,

That was my best option at the time.

I couldn't afford to really be clear about who I was or what I believed.

And see if you could have some sympathy,

Some compassion for yourself when we're put in that position.

Let your heart soften,

Your shoulders soften.

Notice your breath.

And there's a really prevalent experience that pretty much everybody's having right now around COVID,

Vaccinations and masking.

And there's people that are so divided,

Some right in our own families,

But certainly in communities where in some communities you're going to feel out of sync.

If you wear a mask,

Others you're going to feel out of sync.

If you don't wear a mask,

Sometimes it's mandated,

Sometimes it's not.

Maybe you don't choose to get vaccinated and other people are pressuring you into it.

Maybe you really feel like other people are pressuring you,

Saying that you're a sheep because you got vaccinated.

There's so many opposing views.

And a lot of how we respond depends on if we're in the majority view or not.

And majority changes.

It changes whether you're with your family of origin,

Whether you're with a circle of friends,

Maybe at work,

At the store.

So we all have these experiences of being part of the in-group,

Part of the other side.

And some of those experiences have been really hard.

When we've been bullied at school or at work,

Or we're left out of things.

Some of the tools that we use when we're feeling kind of charged up about this is,

Well,

The main one is to be here in this present moment in our bodies.

And all of these tools are really partly how we do that.

So you might start to tap gently on your forehead,

Take your attention away from your thoughts,

And into your sound and sensation of your fingers on your forehead.

If you're feeling quite activated and you're holding your breath,

You could do something like longer exhalations.

Deep breath in.

And as you breathe out,

Really let your whole body relax.

Your head,

Your shoulders,

Your neck,

Down through your arms,

Your legs,

Your feet.

And there are some that use our senses,

Like we look around the room and name five things we can see.

Say it out loud,

I see a picture,

I see what it is that you see.

So if you feel like you're getting a little bit too intense now,

You can always do something like that to just bring yourself back into this moment.

But often what's happening there is a traumatic memory has come up,

Partly because we're poking the bear.

I mean,

We're bringing these things up.

And sometimes we're not able to really stay stable and grounded in this moment.

So those are some of the ways that we could do that.

So let's come back to going back into the inquiry.

We've been working more at the moment with looking where we are included and where we're not included.

And you might notice that the mind intensifies the situations where we were not.

That's the negativity bias of the brain.

And part of the reason for that is because being excluded evolutionarily is a survival threat.

And as a child,

In modern days,

Even as a child,

We don't have jobs.

We can't pick different parents.

We can't control our environment.

So it's very important that we have these mechanisms of self-blaming,

Which we're going to work with next week,

Core deficiency beliefs.

We really believe that it's our fault that we're not loved,

We're not included.

Nobody's really seeming to care who we are,

Because that's the only way that we could have some hope for change.

If it's our fault,

Then maybe we could be funnier and smarter and less dorky or whatever it is,

And we'd be more accepted.

And then as we get to be an adult,

We can also really broaden our relationship with ourselves,

So that we can have more compassion,

We can have more perspective.

Well,

You know,

In that situation,

It's not really safe for me to,

You know,

Express these views or be who I am in that sense,

But I don't really care about those people that much.

I can handle that for a few hours,

Once a month,

Or whatever it is.

Or it might be,

You know,

That's really important to me.

I feel like I'm dying inside.

Every time I hear some comment and I don't challenge it,

I feel like I'm out of alignment.

So that's part of what can happen here,

Too,

Is that we feel like it's really more important to me to be authentic than it is to stay attached to this group of people or that person.

And then to be strategic.

So,

You know,

When I was a single mom,

I couldn't afford to quit my job.

I had to get another one first.

So that might be your situation.

And when families are involved,

It's always messier.

So could you really give yourself respect and kindness?

And if you notice that you've been trading authenticity for attachment,

Could you give yourself some leeway there and some recognition that we all do that?

It's not always the wrong thing.

It is if it takes over and we're never really who we are.

So notice your breath again.

Move your body around a little bit and bring back memory,

A current memory of feeling included.

So there might be certainly times when you have felt not included recently,

But there's probably times when you have felt included.

And,

You know,

Sometimes,

Especially right now with social distancing,

Sometimes the time we feel included is when we're really absorbed in a drama on Netflix,

And we feel like we're part of that family.

So it could be that.

There could be a warm,

Warm feeling of that.

How to really develop the capacity to include ourselves in our life and to allow ourselves to have the experiences that we have and to not enjoy being excluded,

To really understand that.

Continue to be aware of your body,

Your breath.

How do I know if I'm trading authenticity for attachment?

One of them is to really feel it in our body.

Partly we know from our body tightens up,

Our breath gets kind of shallow.

Sometimes we're really aware of it.

It's really obvious.

Like when I was at work and I would just be not engaged with some of the people there,

Not really telling the truth of what my life was like because I had made a decision not to.

There's a lot of nuance here.

Sometimes it's the right thing to do.

And sometimes we don't want to let that go on too long or we don't want to let it be too prevalent in our life.

It's worth it to take that deep breath.

So you know,

Actually that comment that you just made about women in the workplace,

I don't agree.

Let's talk about that.

One of the things about being present in our physical body is that it can give us a lot of clues as to what's happening emotionally and in our nervous system.

So one of the signs that your nervous system is activated is that your body's tight,

That you're restless,

You can't kind of settle down,

You might be hypervigilant.

A lot of times we get into some real catastrophic thinking or compulsiveness in the mind,

A lot of worrying.

And we can use these tools to come back into the present moment.

And we kind of have to go back.

A lot of times when we were young,

We didn't have the knowledge or the wisdom or the resources or the power to really do much about our situations.

And we get into these habits and now as an adult we can go back and kind of restore some of our sense of agency and for sure to be kind and compassionate.

It's interesting to work with that because sometimes we'll take that deep breath and we'll say,

You know,

Actually I feel more comfortable around people who are vaccinated.

And so for me it's important to know that.

And if you're in a place where other people are really against that,

You're going to be maybe the lone person.

But maybe you'll also be the person that somebody else there could say,

You know what,

I kind of agree with her.

Let's talk about this.

Let's see if we could stay connected and not exclude somebody.

There's a social atmosphere where we feel more able to do that.

And a lot of what shuts that down is when we're being judged or shamed.

Or maybe we're doing that to ourselves.

And a lot of that comes from our history with this as well.

But we can always tell how we feel by checking in with our body.

Sometimes this can be very emotional.

We have these nervous system responses and a lot of the time we don't really notice.

But if we notice,

Then we can do something about that.

So,

You know,

We could give ourselves our hands on our heart and feel the warmth of that.

Or we could get a blanket if we're cold.

We could move around.

We could shake it out.

We could do some breathing practices.

Or we could just stay with the sensations and energy.

You know,

I find that I don't get scared or worried about emotion.

I'm much more likely just to let it flow through.

And there's still some circumstances where if I'm around someone that I think might be shaming,

I might wait till I get home.

Take a few deep breaths and go,

Okay,

We're going to put this one on the shelf for a little bit.

But much less often,

And part of it is I think we get used to feeling the emotions and then we know that they're not going to stick around.

They're not permanent.

And the other part has to do with traumatic memory and how we feel like we're back at that age.

And as we develop the skill and the tools to stay really present in this moment in time,

Then we know that if we start getting off track and dragged back into a traumatic memory,

That we have the tools to come back.

And we can hold our hand,

We can take some deeper breaths.

And there's a lot of other practices that we can do that are really getting to be so much more better known now.

So it's really wonderful that we can practice those and have that at our fingertips.

And then I think the biggest thing is to be kind.

You know,

When we understand that it's our nervous system that's driving this,

It's not that I'm a coward,

That I'm not speaking up.

It's that our nervous systems drive us to try and fit in.

And then as we really work with ourselves,

We stop shaming ourselves,

We allow ourselves to be who we are,

We start to really recognize our nervous system responses,

Like when we go into fight-flight-freeze.

And then we're able to just keep coming back and being compassionate,

Connected.

And it's from there,

Dr.

Steven Porges has worked a lot with a polyvagal system,

And we hear about fight-flight-freeze.

And if you're familiar with that language,

They talk about the dorsal response from the diaphragm lower.

And that's our freeze.

And that's really primitive brain.

I'm not going to breathe,

I'm just going to hide here until the threat goes away.

And in our life now,

It might be I'm so overwhelmed,

I'm just going to watch Netflix for this whole weekend.

It works in a lot of different ways.

And then the sympathetic arousal is when we go into fight or flight.

So those are all fight-flight-freeze,

Are all responses to threat.

But in order to connect with ourselves,

In order to connect with other people,

We need to be in a state of trust and connection.

And that's called ventral vagal.

And so if someone's using those terms,

Dorsal is the freeze,

Ventral vagal is when we really just feel social,

We feel connected,

We're confident.

And if you think back to times when you maybe you were with a small group of friends,

And it was your pack,

And you were just really,

You know,

You just felt comfortable,

The things you would laugh at and the good time that you would have,

There's no worry.

You weren't in a state of fight,

Flight or freeze.

But then if you're in a different kind of a situation,

Maybe around people who aren't so safe,

You can't think of the right thing to say,

Your body's kind of tight,

You're awkward.

And then when you get home again,

Maybe you'll think of the right thing to say.

But we couldn't think of the right thing to say,

Or we couldn't genuinely,

You know,

Pay attention and listen to somebody else,

Because we were in a state of threat.

So that's a really powerful reason why we would learn more about the nervous system,

And learn to recognize when we're in those states and how to come back.

And who wants to be included with someone who's in a state of freeze,

And we can't really reach people in a state of freeze.

And when we're really angry,

Or someone else is really angry,

Or they just take off,

And they're just always,

You know,

Playing video games or something,

They're not engaging with us,

We can't really have human connection.

And so to be able to recognize and bring ourselves back to a state of nervous system regulation is where that happens.

Healing the past is so important.

And part of the reason for that is because our nervous system brings the past into the present.

So we're always reactive when we have unhealed trauma from the past.

When we feel like we need to make a judgment call that we're not going to be,

We're not going to share ourselves completely,

We're not going to be completely open,

Then to not judge ourselves for that.

To not call ourselves a coward or something like that,

But just to be really compassionate that,

Wow,

Here I am in this situation where it doesn't even feel safe for me to be who I am.

Could I at least be safe for myself and allow myself that kindness and compassion?

Reviews

thank you, as someone who grew up homeschooled this talk brought me a lot of peace and comfort 🙏

Thank you. So much in this inquiry. My biggest take is understanding that when my body gets tight and stressed around certain people it means I don’t feel safe with them….and that’s ok, there’s a reason… so I can stop trying to make myself feel safe with them. Instead I can choose the level of connection that does feel safe for me (including no connection). That feels sooo good.

One of the best talks on trauma and healing. I've listened a number of times and highly recommend it. Thank you so much for this wisdom! ❤️

Amazing insight what happens with the nerveous system when we have feelings of inclusion & exclusion.