Poetry penetrates surfaces and engages a deeper part of us. We each have a poetic voice, and if we are called to use it we will find ourselves gazing into the essential nature of experiences, people and things. The writing of poems is a kind of reporting on what we find. It is a gift to the writer and to the reader, and it is something we can all do.
The focus of this workshop will be less on form, and more about uncovering the essence of what we see or feel, and giving it a voice. This workshop is especially for beginner poets, but all are welcome.
Justice Schanfarber is a mindfulness based therapist, writer, educator and poet who believes that the poetic mind is a source of wisdom, humour and healing. He has self-published two poetry chapbooks since 2012. Read his work at www.wonderstruckpoems.com.
As we noticed the topic of “gaslighting” coming up more and more in conversations, my partner and I decided to watch the 1944 film with Ingrid Bergman that spawned the term. In the film, and in common usage of the word, a “gaslighter,” for their own selfish gain, consciously manipulates someone into doubting themselves.
The classic gaslighter is a sociopath, calculated and relentless in breaking down their victim’s self-confidence, self-esteem, self-trust, and even their sense of sanity. This sort of gaslighting is extreme and, one hopes, relatively rare. But I see a much more common, subtle and insidious form of gaslighting all the time in my work and life. I’ll call it “shadow gaslighting.”
Unconscious gaslighting
It’s generally understood that we each have an unconscious aspect of self that influences us and drives our behaviour from beneath conscious awareness. This unconscious self is sometimes called the shadow. Our shadow includes the parts of our self that we have disowned or denied because they are frightening, disappointing, socially unacceptable, or because they threaten our positive self-image.
“Shadow gaslighting” is when these disowned parts of ourselves manipulate people in our lives in order to serve their own purpose. An unconscious part of self expresses itself and pursues its own agenda but goes unacknowledged in our awareness.
Other people in our lives, especially our spouse, may sense our shadow at work. Because we deny the presence and influence of shadow unconsciousness in us and in our behaviour, these other people feel an incongruence in us: what we say does not match how they experience us.
They may take us at face value, wanting to believe what we tell them about our intentions, feelings etc, but underneath, at some level, the incongruence undermines their trust in us and perhaps their trust in their own experience. Here’s a story to help illustrate –
“I’m not resentful!”
Louise was shocked to discover that her husband Francois was considering leaving her. She knew things had been bad since the baby was born, but she was blindsided by his revelation that they were actually on the brink of divorce. When they came to see me it was quickly obvious to me that Francois held strong resentments toward Louise; resentments that spanned years and ran deep. And yet, interestingly, he would not admit to having resentments. It became apparent through therapy that he was unwilling to admit to being resentful because it would contradict the image he had of himself. “Resentful” was a human quality that Francois would not allow himself, and so he had driven it underground where it persisted unconsciously as shadow material. While Francois desperately tried to hide his resentment with denial (“I’m not a resentful person! You’re imagining it!”), the resentful part of himself grew more insistent. It was demanding to be seen, to be acknowledged and confronted. His resentment, long buried, was now breaking through to the surface of consciousness.
Francois’s resentment broke through the shadow realm into the surface of consciousness while we worked in session. This is not uncommon. Often an individual or a couple comes to see me when a powerful aspect of their unconscious shadow is working its way up into awareness. Subjectively, this feels like breaking down. Something feels drastically wrong, and so a person might decide they need help… fixing… therapy. If the timing is right I can potentially help this person as they retrieve the disowned parts of their self and attend to their developmental tasks.
The necessity of self-confrontation
In this particular case, I could see Francois struggle to confront the long-held, unacknowledged resentments that were coming to the surface and threatening his self-identity and his marriage.
For Francois, resenting his wife was incompatible with being a good person and a good father. To acknowledge that he was resentful meant that he would not feel like a good person or a good father, and so he hid it from others and from himself.
Confronting his resentment was viscerally agonizing for Francois. He choked and sobbed and wrung his hands. But he saw it through. In no uncertain terms he managed to face his resentment and to own it, right there while his wife watched and listened. (Anyone who has worked with me for any length of time will have heard me say that couples work is individual work that we do in front of each other.)
Francois was resentful, and he finally said so. Of course this was painful for Louise, but also a relief. At least now she could feel congruence in Francois. Because he was now able to confront (and tolerate) his resentment, his shadow would no longer need to gaslight her in order to protect him from the intolerable feelings of “being a resentful person.” Francois grew his capacity for tolerating these uncomfortable feelings and in doing so he become more congruent.
I see some version of gaslighting by the shadow in virtually every single person I work with or have any type of deep relationship with (including myself). I’ve come to believe that we ALL have disowned parts of ourselves that threaten to contradict or reveal the personas we present to others and identify with.
Examples of unconscious “shadow gaslighting”
Here are some ways that we unconsciously or semi-consciously “shadow gaslight” a spouse or partner –
We might say “I feel hurt” when our shadow feels angry. (Anger has been disowned.)
We might say “I feel angry” when our shadow feels hurt. (Hurt has been disowned.)
We might say “I’m not attracted to that person” when we do not trust our attraction or eroticism. (Attraction and eroticism have been disowned.)
We might say “This is all your fault” when our shadow feels the burden of responsibility, but is unable to tolerate it. (Responsibility has been disowned.)
We might say “No, no, everything is OK” or “This is all my fault” when we are unwilling to risk conflict. (Conflict has been disowned.)
The list goes on and on. In every case, our words protect our shadow and belie the deeper truths of our desires and fears.
It’s important to understand that these are not outright lies or manipulations; we are not, after all, fully conscious of what they are based upon. When we are unable to confront the needs, and hence the influence, of our own shadow, our partner feels our dissonance and this creates anxiety, mistrust, distance, conflict.
Persistent gaslighting by the shadow is a significant but poorly understood cause of confusion, regret, bitterness and blame in a marriage or relationship. If we’re willing to acknowledge the existence of shadow within ourselves and within our relationship, we may be able to retrieve some of the disowned parts of ourselves that are creating unrest. If we understand the needs of these shadow aspects and attend to them, greater integrity and truth-telling becomes possible.
Through mindfulness practice, therapy or other means we may gain the insight, courage, and humility required to retrieve our shadowy parts and bring fuller congruence and awareness to our behaviour in our relationships and in our lives.
Working towards personal integrity
This retrieving of shadow, of the parts of self we’ve disowned, is an act of integrity. When we say someone has “integrity”, what do we mean? Usually we mean that we experience them as congruent; their speech matches their actions. We deem them trustworthy.
One way of understanding personal integrity is this –
Integrity is strength obtained through wholeness.
“Acting with integrity” doesn’t mean acting according to some high moral code as much as it means expressing oneself as a whole person; not necessarily whole in the sense of not having different “parts” or a variety of voices, but as someone one who has done some work with their unconscious shadowy parts and has built a relatively honest relationship with them.
This work is probably never complete, but is a lifelong journey. There are milestones and significant accomplishments along the way but no definite end. It’s unlikely that we ever become fully conscious beings with nothing to hide and no shadow to protect, although that is a worthy ideal, and is perhaps one way of understanding the quest for spiritual enlightenment.
Interestingly, if we deny the existence of shadow, of the disowned fears and desires in our self and others, we will always take literally the failures of integrity we see around and within us. We will judge harshly and assume we are being treated with hurtful intention. If, however, we acknowledge the existence of shadow, and recognize how shadow protects itself by acting out from beneath conscious awareness, we may respond appropriately without undue judgement and bitterness.
Is mindfulness making us ill? A reader recently forwarded me an article from The Guardian that asks this provocative question. Like virtually all popular journalism, it’s a divisive piece that will fuel both skeptics and supporters. I think the author makes some valuable and legitimate points, especially about how mindfulness can trigger dissociation related to trauma, and also about the political problem of trying to use mindfulness in the workplace to make people more productive in a work culture that is probably intrinsically unhealthy and essentially inhuman (my words, not the author’s).
What is mindfulness?
In my counselling practice I define mindfulness as having an experience and noticing it at the same time. This is a practice of awareness. Can deepening our awareness be disturbing? Yes, it can. Can it “make us ill” as the title of the piece suggests? The suggestion that awareness of our own experience is dangerous (and should thus be medicalized) is more than a little troubling to me, but I suppose we each put our faith where we believe it belongs.
Mindfulness billed as a “relaxation technique” (as stated in the article) is a problematic promise right out of the gate. Mindfulness is not first and foremost a relaxation technique, it’s an awareness practice. Awareness can ultimately have a relaxing effect, but it can also have other decidedly non-relaxing effects.
Assigning mindfulness practice en masse (whether through corporate wellness programs or mobile apps or yoga studio memberships) with the expectation that relaxation be the automatic result reveals a basic misunderstanding of what mindfulness actually means, and sets people up for potentially confusing and dissonant experiences.
True mindfulness is like peeling layers of an onion or delving into an old trunk of belongings. It takes you deeper. You might find sadness, joy, numbness, physical tension, fear. As the article implies, prescribing mindfulness for relaxation only, and then providing no support or allowance for the other experiences that awareness may uncover does seem irresponsible in some ways. Also, it fits perfectly with our current cultural paradigm, a paradigm that recognizes, validates and supports only the narrow slice of human experience that fits its own needs.
MIndfulness and social implications
A genuinely mindful (aware) society would acknowledge and make room for the full range of human emotional experiences that personal mindfulness may evoke. Much of the suffering that comes from numbness, grief, dissociation, panic, anxiety etc is less from the core experience itself, and more a result of the isolation and marginalization that comes from the absence of sacred space, of ritual where these experiences can be compassionately held, witnessed, acknowledged, shared. Perhaps the question that the article asks, “Is mindfulness making us ill?” begets further questions rather than decisive answers… “What does mindfulness ask of us? What does mindful awareness reveal about us, individually and collectively? What do we do with what is revealed?” The answers can be awkward.
The economic and political systems of our culture demand that we be materially productive at all times, at all costs. This demand comes with enormous human sacrifice. In ordinary consciousness, we’re mostly blind to this enormous human sacrifice because our cultural story is deeply woven as “natural fact” into the fabric of our being. This cultural failure to acknowledge (let alone meet!) real human needs for connection, compassion, love, patience and tolerance is much more pressing, much more tragic, and much more dangerous than mindfulness itself could ever be; and mindfulness, in a perfect paradox, may give us a glimpse into the price we routinely pay for membership in this culture. This glimpse can be incredibly disturbing, but blaming mindfulness for the disturbance is akin to blaming a microscope for the germs it reveals.
The trouble with mindfulness
Perhaps the real trouble with mindfulness is in what we expect it to deliver. Mindfulness does not fix us, it allows us to see things more as they are. As such, mindfulness is radical. Who has the authority on your awareness? Who decides how much self awareness is enough; how much is healthy; how much is dangerous? Should we sign away the care of our unconscious to the experts? Or should we accept the freedom and responsibility that come with self-inquiry? It is no surprise that mindfulness, a venerable practice probably thousands of years old, has been co-opted, diluted and commodified as a “relaxation technique” and corporate employee wellness panacea on one hand, and is now on the verge of being demonized as a public health hazard on the other. Ours is a culture that has a difficult time honouring both freedom and responsibility, and simply making room for awareness, ever-changing and uncontrolled, with all its necessary demands. It will be interesting to see where this goes.
Contradiction asks much of us. On the one hand, there might be an opportunity to create greater congruence in your life by confronting the contradictions embodied in your own speech and actions. On the other hand, it takes great capacity to hold opposing points of view and disparate experiences without rejecting one or the other or both. I call this “holding opposites.”
The possibility for re-connection in our marriage or relationship is related to how we handle the contradictions we inevitably encounter; how we hold opposites. Our ability to tolerate, and as we’ll see, transform, our experience of contradiction into something more powerful requires a certain kind of personal capacity.
“Capacity” is an important concept in couples work. When I talk about capacity, imagine a cup. When the cup gets full, it overflows. In relationships, our cup gets full from anxious feelings that come from, amongst other things, an inability to tolerate the contradiction all around us.
When the cup overflows, these anxious feelings are expressed as rage, withdrawal, criticism, blame, denial, exasperation etc. We can try to iron out the contradictions we see in ourself, in our partner, in our life, in the world… or we can work on making our cup bigger. The advantage to making our cup bigger is that it holds not just the anxious feelings of contradiction, but ALL the complicated feelings that give life its richness and depth.
We may wish for simpler times in our relationship, a time when things were more black and white, but re-connection doesn’t want that. Re-connection wants you to grow your cup, to expand your capacity for holding the complexity that comes with a deeper, maturing relationship.
Some people habitually sniff out the contradictions in others and feel obligated to point them out. They believe it is their job to iron out the wrinkles they see in their partner. This includes playing “devil’s advocate.” If this is your tendency, please consider that this kills eroticism, dampens desire and attraction, breeds resentment, and makes re-connection difficult. Your first task in re-connecting with your loved one is to catch yourself in the act of using contradiction against yourself or others. I’m not asking you to ignore the contradictions you observe. On the contrary, please continue noticing them. I’m asking you to orient around contradiction differently, to change your relationship to contradiction. Stop treating it exclusively as a problem to be solved. If you will practice accepting contradiction as a normal aspect of life, you will be preparing the ground for re-connection in your relationship.
Much conflict and disconnection between lovers and spouses is due to a misunderstanding about contradiction. Contradiction is normal and healthy. It’s inevitable. If we see our partner’s inherent contradictions as a flaw or weakness, we essentially take a stand against their basic human-ness, and that is the real disaster. We also very likely take the same stand against our own human-ness. We remain apart, separate, because we have rejected a real part of being human.
*****
Paul watched his wife Marilyn eating pie for dinner after they both came home late from a frantic day at work. Just yesterday she had confided to him that she wanted to eat more healthfully. Now as he watched her hungrily annihilate two pieces, he pointed out how her actions were in complete contradiction with what she had said yesterday. When the three of us talked about this in session, Paul maintained that he was trying to support her. Marilyn erupted in frustration. She felt anything but supported. This was an ongoing dynamic that was becoming a major obstacle and source of disconnection in their relationship.
*****
When we are feeling combative, it’s easy to point out contradictions in the other as evidence of their shortcomings, implicitly making them “wrong” or “bad.” This reveals a narrow view of contradiction and it misses the deeper gifts and insights that working with contradiction can provide. If we believe, even unconsciously, that we should do away with contradictions, we have become too perfectionistic and are likely to find ourselves frustrated and lonely; disconnected.
We can judge ourselves and others based on the contradictions we observe, or we can inquire into these same contradictions with a curious mind and open heart. We might ask ourselves “What are the various parts of this person that are trying to have a voice?” We might try assuming that both sides of any contradiction hold an important truth, and rather than pitting them against each other, we might experiment with “backing up” until our perspective is broad enough to include both sides. This type of inquiry asks us to soften our focus.
We’re accustomed in this culture to seek answers, facts, quantitative data, to narrow our focus until we’ve solved the problem. It’s a reductionist way of seeing each other and the world, and it keeps us from finding solace in the mystery; it keeps us from experiencing the sweet surrender and easy humility of simply not knowing. “Simply not knowing” is a wonderful state of being. Have you practiced it? When we allow ourselves to be washed over by waves of contradiction, and we stop insisting on sorting out each one, we might find ourselves on new unfamiliar ground, a place where fresh experiences and re-connection become possible.
With some practice allowing contradiction, it begins to transform. Contradiction that is allowed, that is honored, can begin to mature into its wise relative: paradox.
Contradiction is that annoying know-it-all brother in law who seems oblivious to the way he rubs everyone the wrong way. Paradox, on the other hand, is that enigmatic uncle, mysterious and calm, whom you feel good around, even if he’s strange and maybe a little bit crazy. Contradiction is two dimensional, black and white. Paradox is multi-dimensional, full of colour. Contradiction is blunt, a dead-end, right and wrong, end of story, a door closing. Paradox is a door opening. As much as contradiction is confusing and deadening, paradox is illuminating and enlivening. Contradiction cuts us off. Paradox connects us. Contradiction is an annoying problem of logic. Paradox, like love, is mysterious and awe inspiring, unsolvable. When we see only the contradictions in our partner, we are looking at them like problems to be solved, like broken machines. When we are able to look at our partner and see the deep paradox underneath the contradictions, we begin to see them in their fuller mystery. We view them with our heart’s intelligence, not just our reasoning mind.
You don’t need to figure this out entirely to work with it. It’s ultimately not any technique, but rather plumbing your own depth and growing your own capacity that turns contradiction into paradox and enriches your life and relationship. If you will simply allow contradiction in your life, in the world, in your partner, rather than fighting against it, you will have begun this practice.
Contradiction asks much of us. On the one hand, there might be an opportunity to create greater congruence in your life by confronting the contradictions embodied in your own speech and actions. On the other hand, it takes great capacity to hold opposing points of view and disparate experiences without rejecting one or the other or both. I call this “holding opposites.”