Non-Negotiables

How one little word may salvage our relationships

I live my life in widening circles
that reach out across the world.
I may not complete this last one
but I will give myself to it.

I circle around God, around the primordial tower.
I’ve been circling for thousands of years
and I still don’t know: am I a falcon,
a storm, or a great song?

Rainer Maria Rilke

What we know and what we don’t know

Is your field ample, vast, and spacious, or is it pressured, timid, and rushed? How are you living your life, and how on Earth are you doing your things?

Winter seems made for the highly attuned soul.¹ This season we’re in is Earth’s gift of a natural quieting down of all the busyness of life that tends to distract us, so that we may retreat - which is not pathological but natural and all creatures do it -, and reflect - essential for survival; to be given and to be taking the opportunity to look back before looking ahead; to soak in the silence in order to be able to course-correct.

Many things about ourselves, our partner, our families of origin, and the world, we may never know. Other things, it dawns on us, we do know. The space we inhabit is vast, but our time keeps running out and so we must choose how to apply ourselves while we are here, and every day indeed. Do we really need to invest all this energy into other people’s business?

Empaths must ask themselves this question on an ongoing basis.

Our Intricate Ecology of Self

The Self is not a static thing; it is a web of interrelations, or a system, as we like to call it in these late-corporate times. We make ourselves up from various experiences and perceptions that show us time and time again that we cannot not be in relationship. Even in complete seclusion, we still relate to our breath and our body; we tie one belief to another to make our idea of the world; we still relate to our belongings and the place that houses us; we relate to the world around us, however reduced or remote; we still relate to consciousness itself.

The word “relate” itself traces back to the Latin word for “to be brought or carried back”. Reflection, at the turn of the year, is a relational practice in the sense that it allows for us to return to our core values and our core mission; to stop the presses and exit extractive contracts we may have made with others, but also with ourselves.

But the word “relate” took a detour through the French, “to retell”, which I like because it speaks to the function of tradition and story in caring for a relationship. The modern meaning of a “relationship” did not come into play until the last century, where the word was used mainly in psychology discourse. Today, we think of romantic relationships, family relations, and often, their ease or dis-ease.

Trauma can affect our relationships, and on a deeper level, our ability to relate, and therefore, to be in community. Dissociation, withdrawal, social anxiety, but also cynicism and all the way to nihilism and misanthropy can accompany a person’s trauma, especially developmental or complex trauma.

The painful path to healing involves taking an active role in learning to relate again. It’s not all resolvable in the vacuum of a therapy room or in sole dialogue with one’s brain. We need to get out, talk to our neighbors, call a friend, be in town and show our face to strangers as well as to people that we used to know. We need to re-learn presence with that which carries our pain - there may be grief or unease. But the mending and the growth after of allowing ourselves back into that space can be immense.

Dealbreakers

Where does our system leak? Which are the activities, or interactions that spend our energies? How do we collect ourselves after a year of activity to refocus for a year ahead, to swim with the changes it may bring to us? Where are our resources that will replenish us as we move along?

Empaths relish in the act of giving so much that reciprocity is sometimes last on their minds. As attuned as they are, they might also miss some very basic clues that a situation is not for them: Does this relationship go both ways? Do they call me, too? Who asks me how I am and what I need? Does energy come to me in ways other than myself endlessly sharing my own?

Who brings me soup when I’m sick and who tells me that my sweater tag is showing?
Who checks on me when I’m a no-show at the office?

The more chances of return to Self we give ourselves, the more breaks we take in this regard, the more clarity we may find around what aids us and what drains us. In this way, we find, step by step, our essentials.

Without our No, our Yes is meaningless.

Our No is, perhaps oddly so, key to a more authentic relating.

Read on below about authentic relating and the power of our No, and how cultivating our presence can help us to navigate the at times narrow spaces between us and the people in our lives.