“I’m not myself today”, I told my friend once.
And they replied: “What if you are simply being a part of your self you refuse to acknowledge?”
That’s a conversation I still have mentally bookmarked.
In another conversation with another friend, I recently confessed that my darkest traits or desires are all perfect inversions of my most admirable qualities.
For example, when I’m at my best, I’m the embodiment of love, presence, connection and everything I want to spread in the world.
When I’m severely dysregulated?
Pretty much the exact opposite. I’m dismissive, judgmental, pay little attention to others, aim to be left alone and tend to say no to any requests for help or attention.
If I’m in a social setting I’m “supposed to stay in”, I’ll probably dominate conversation without even trying and barely let others get a word in.
It’s pretty wild how these are almost perfect opposites.
So when I told my friend about this, they replied: “Yeah, the same is true of me. My good and bad qualities are exact inversions too. Isn’t that the case for everyone?”
This made me wonder out loud if it is.
So loud that I posted it on the internet, and a twitter connection replied the following, which made it all click:
“Wow i wonder, is this kind of definitionally true? In a way a tautology? Because we only see the qualities in ourselves as admirable where we also judge ourselves for the inverse? we can only pride ourselves on what we judge the ‘opposite’ of?”
I walked around with this idea for a while.
Moved through life and observed its implications. Observed how it related to some other things I’ve learned or written about. And it kept holding up.
When I wrote about healing shame, I mentioned that pride is a hidden form of shame. An inversion of it, where we place a horcrux for our identity in one particular positive quality.
But why was the shame there in the first place?
Because we judge (or internalized a judgment of) the quality we’re ashamed of. Of course!
So one of the ways to break the horcrux without lowering our self-esteem is to start with forgiving this quality in others.
One thing you might ask yourself here is “Why the hedge would I wanna do that?”
For example, if I judge lying as bad and take pride in my honesty, why would I want to forgive the lying? Isn’t it better to be honest?
I would assume the answer is yes, but think about this:
If I see the qualities I judge in others as “not part of myself”, then my self-view determines the shape of my shadow.
When I identify as honest, I become blind to the ways I behave dishonestly.
When I identify as kind, I don’t see how I’m selfish or dismissive.
But if I see myself as a complex being which has the capacity for all of those, then each moment becomes an occasion to consciously choose which of these qualities I will embody. And if I know that all of them are me, I am prompted to care.
In a similar fashion to a how a self-ware bear might be careful with her claws during a hug, because she knows they might kill. While an ignorant bear who judges other bears for killing, might do a lot of harm in the same situation.
Because here’s the thing:
Judging a certain quality (e.g. dishonesty, aggression) doesn’t stop us from embodying it. All it does is stop us from choosing it consciously, and make us less aware of the times we do (because having that awareness would feel bad).
I recently wrote about how personality is made of a set of gates which determine which behaviors can pass through.
So for example, by identifying as honest, we no longer allow dishonesty to express itself through us.
But there’s a catch.
The gate stays open to forms of dishonesty that dress as if they’re honest. And that’s where things can start to get particularly icky in ways where it’s hard to catch ourselves.
For example: “Good vibes only.” appears positive, but is in itself a negative, fearful and fragile vibe.
This is not a coincidence, it’s by design: It negates every feeling it doesn’t perceive as fun, it actively avoids anything that might rock the boat, and it has no defense mechanism because confrontation or conflict would be a “bad vibe”.
What this means is that if you create a space which is designed to be only “peace and love”, that space can quickly become dark in disturbing ways:
For starters, sociopaths can easily invade the space, and prey on its members through manipulation that looks positive (which is particularly easy to do).
Secondly, if someone is socially savvy enough to sniff out the sociopatic strategies, they are not empowered to call it out. After all, the things will appear positive (the sociopaths will make sure of that), and accusing anyone of anything abusive out of nowhere would be a “bad vibe”.
But to make matters worse, good people with occasional dark feelings or intentions (AKA nearly everyone) are not allowed to express them in the space. So if those feelings are particularly important to them, they are now also pushed in the direction of manipulation. This is not something they’d normally do. But they might not even be aware of doing it, because everything I mentioned in this email applies to them too. Most will be unaware of their potential for this.
So if you’ve ever wondered why so many hippie parties feel a bit off, there you have it: The good vibes only motto is giving the bad vibes free rein for unconscious expression.
There are many more examples of this. For example, many pro-inclusivity spaces become increasingly exclusive over time as they keep raising the bar for what is “inclusive enough”, and lowering the bar for who to judge.
This is exactly what happens inside us when ever we label something as “not us”.
And the same is true about positive things. Many of the things we admire in others are qualities we already possess but are in denial of.
When I wrote about horcruxes, I mentioned how we also put horcruxes on others. In other words, the pride we put inside a horcrux to suppress our own shame doesn’t have to be focused on ourselves.
It can also take the form of admiration: pride in the traits of others as an inversion of the feeling of low self-worth inside us.
The reason to forgive and welcome both sides of a trait is not that both are equally good. (Yes, sometimes they are and we just can’t see it. But it’s pretty clear that some things are a virtue and not a vice.) The reason to forgive the quality is to free ourselves from both the pride and the shame so that both sides of ourselves (the one we judged and the one we loved) are allowed to be part of us again.
Not to suddenly become a worse person and feel okay doing so. But to gain the awareness that we contain both, because when we rememer it’s that, we can practice discernment and make intentional decisions about it.
But on a deeper level, this contributes to the process of restoring our sense of wholeness.
To reclaim back what we deemed “not-self”. Or “not appropriate”. So that we don’t accidentally, subconsciously become it the way the good-vibes only space became its own nemesis.
(A favorite practice of mine: At the end of lengthy Authentic Relating workshops, I often propose to do a session of “Inauthentic Relating”, for all of us to have some fun with it. You’d be surprised how often people get upset about this idea, when—in my perspective—it would be greatly of service in such a moment!)
There’s a famous Rumi quote that goes:
“Your task is not to find love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it”.
My conclusion on this topic is that both our self-concept and the not-self concept we create as a result of it, are the sum total of our barriers to love. (Yes, that’s exactly what each personality gate is! A barrier to love for a trait.)
All of this, not to say that we should remove all those barriers at once.
I think they are there for a reason. To protect us when we don’t have enough resilience to fully open ourselves to that trait, and the responsibility and risk that come with it.
So when is it time for the next barrier to open up?
Whenever we have enough capacity to truly embrace whatever that lets in, with love.