Yesterday I got a request for empathy by sms (textmessage) from a friend visiting Asia! This is how it went:

“… But now I’m a bit shaky from the encounter. Any empathy to offer me?”

I reply: “Guessing you might be needing safety while also to be authentic – and perhaps shaky from exposing a little more of you? Aliveness at the edge of comfort zone?”

“Yes! Sigh…” + a couple of sentences about the challenge which I omit here for privacy.

I sensed that even if the words – my empathy guess in prudent NVC language – had landed well with my friend, the shakiness was actually still there, and we could have gone back and fourth texting for a while. Instead I offered:

“Ok. If we were talking I would ask: are you able to breathe into your center? Can you uplift your posture so it reflects dignity? Is your back providing you with support for self? Just to invite a shift via the body…:) ”

Moments later my phone plings again: “Cool. That helped even via sms. Thanks”

Neither the NVC-style empathy nor my suggestions about how to “shift through the body” were straight guesses. In fact the state of my friend at the time for her request was pretty clear to me: in the theory I am working on articulating, I call this “disintegration of self structure”. We all go there when we make embarrassing mistakes, or expose a little more-than-usual of ourselves, or have our sharing of vulnerability met with some form of rejection or misunderstanding… This sense of loosing ground, loosing ourselves, perhaps accompanied with a feeling of shame… Do you know what I’m talking about?

In short, this experience of “disintegration of self” is one we all want to avoid or get out of as quickly as possible. Most of us design our lives to not go there! Some if not most addiction can be seen as attempts to get out of these states or at least not feel them. My current take is that even light “disintegration” – like my friend was sharing about yesterday – is actually a touching on “trauma vortex” as Peter Levin has defined it.

So then, how do we integrate the self structure again?

There are many ways, and your best method will depend on what has worked in the past. In my study of “human being, behavior and change” I have found:

• Anger [!] appears to be very effective at “pulling oneself together”. Do you know that sense of clarity that can come with anger?  I see the anger itself as pretty useful – as long as we can feel it inside instead of dumping it on others through blame or violent actions and words.
• Articulation: It seems to help integrate a self structure when someone can formulate their clarity (also without having to go to anger). For example, statements like “this is true for me”, “this is my decided path of action”, “this is what I can offer” seems to work also without getting validation or acceptance from others, like in journal writing.
• Support from others: Just sharing about an uncomfortable event with a friend or family  member often does the trick. And we kind of know who will validate our experience and who to avoid sharing our deepest secrets with! A word of caution though, as this “method” run the risk of blurring into sympathizing, shared blaming, triangulation and the like – which I think of as “mutual disintegration”: this might feel less lonely, but does not actually provide any recovery of the self structure, nor the functioning in life that comes with such recovery.
• Empathy, or empathic attunement: Having someone else support us by  “tuning in” and validating our inner experience – even when it’s horrible – seems to work both for integration in the moment and for building up more long term resilience.
• Creating a somatic shift: Like in the example above, we can “integrate” our self system very quickly and effectively through our embodiment. Being present in the body, having a way to use breath, movement or posture to tap into some sense of “me at the center of myself” seems to reliably make a difference. For long term effects, we practice doing this also when no disintegration is occurring, to build capacity, to train the nervous system. My main teacher in Embodiment, Wendy Palmer, says we need 50000 repetitions for a new habits to become automatic responses.

Each time I create a somatic shift – for myself or in coaching others – I’m in awe over how quick and sustained the change is. I invite you to try this: next time you get a little “shaky” from being outed to your peers, or made a silly mistake, or shared something important (to you) that nobody paid attention to: “Are you able to breathe into your center? Can you uplift your posture so it reflects dignity? Is your back providing you with support for self?”

Love to all,

Maja

PS. The notion of “self structure” was formulated by  Heinz Kohut. I am influenced and inspired by his theory of Self Psychology, but am also departing from it: using the term self structure with a slightly different meaning, and articulating associated distinctions as they resonate with my own understanding of how we function as humans.