Covid Quarantine - Week 13: A Letter To My Patients

Hi all,

I was on a Zoom call yesterday with my roommates from college. We were supposed to be celebrating our 25th Reunion in person, but due to COVID19-- you may have heard about it-- we were relegated to seeing each other in our current natural habitat: on screen. 

At one point, one of my roommates-- who happens to be black-- got teary. She was grieving with fresh astonishment at our current state of civic affairs and relationship. "I'm simply despairing at how cruel we are being to one another." We all zeroed in on her sadness, which quickly became a collective sadness we all sensed and shared with one another. She had some choice words about our current president for sure, but she was quick to note that, while Trump embodies this cruelty and mindlessly leads with it, he is really just an enactor of our worst human relational (American) demons. Certainly, Trump is American as apple pie.

My roommate (inadvertently) reminded me to withdraw my projections from Trump, that easy scapegoat (from whence he gets his power, actually) for our nation's problems. Oh, he is a problem, don't get me wrong. But this is deeper than Red and Blue. Of course, we always have the choice to escape into these abstract identities in order to assuage our guilt and shame at enacting this cruelty towards our fellow Americans. I can be as guilty of that than the next person: temptation to evade is an equal opportunity unconscious employer.  

To be sure, Trump coaxes us into being our worst selves, modeling an entitled posture towards the Other which creates more reactivity, demonization and conspiratorial fantasies of "them"-- whoever your "them" is--, rather than a courageous listening posture imbued with curiosity. Can you imagine this moment if he could lead in this way? A girl can dream. 

This kind of (listening) posture is necessary to facilitate not only true communication between people of diverse backgrounds, heritages, generational trauma, class, etc... but also is the only way to further the possibility of a more equal and just relational dynamic with each other in our nation. A girl will work towards this dream.

Perhaps I have a bias, but I can think of no better practice ground in acquiring this posture than being in therapy. (I told you I was biased.) In therapy, we learn to experience our fears, terrors, shames, guilts, hatred, rages, and deep grief in a safe enough space, in such a way as to build a more solid self to be in relationship with those who are not like us, not to mention those who have most seriously wounded us. (Oof, that was a long sentence! haha.) In essence, therapy helps us to stop scapegoating. Therapy brings us into a deeper and more enriching relationship with ourselves and gives us the fortitude to engage that dreaded "other" with less fear. After all, no actual effective communication can happen when our amygdalas are firing. Therapy helps us practice feeling charged, facing our fears, and soothing our bodies. This so that we can find our truer words through which to communicate our lived experience with the other from an embodied mind, and not from a well of psychic reactive disavowing instinctual junk.

Yes, I am biased. But I have evidence: you. In listening to you guys every week, I can see your courage to face your own inner selves, and thereby I can see your growing capacity to be in a deeper more solid relationship with the world. 

(In case you think that I've got all this down pat, I do not. I am in conversation with my own people, facing my own fears, etc... We are all in this together. That's this girl's reality, not dream, with all of you.)

I look forward to "seeing" you this week.

Deborah