Authenticity and Trust

We are working with What It Takes To Heal: How Transforming Ourselves Can Change The World, by Prentis Hemphill. The following are a series of quotes and reflections from the book.

“Social contracts - whose body gets to remain intact in this world, and whose must bend. We inherit beliefs and patterns of relationship by watching how the people around us move. Who is listened to and seen, who is adored. Who is invisible. Who is lifted up. Who is hunted down.

We learn in this way who we are, and who we have been, in relationship to the world’s other inhabitants.

I realized that something in my gaze was learned, that downcast way I met the world. We soften the focus of our gaze to escape. They had taught the mask to us. There was also a prayer that their posture, their dulled eyes, might be undone at some point, by some generation later. When a descendant, when I, could relate to the world from an uncompromised body with brightened eyes, when I would have the space to be unguarded.

When we know how and why the mask came to be, we know it is not the true shape of our faces.

Empathy, mutuality and connection are dangerous to injustice. 

If we felt, imagine what we might change.

Our relationships, our social connections, are the bridge between individual and societal transformation.  Relationships have the potential to be the place where we can risk encountering one another and being encountered, where we can create a new pathway of connection and experience together.

Real relationships are made of feeling. The avoidance of vulnerability and discomfort, of the hard work of relationship, is the root of the isolation many of us feel - and this isolation prevents transformation on any scale.

Healing always happens through relationship. To do so, we need skills that trauma or oppression attempts to take away from us: connection and collaboration, authenticity, boundaries and trust.

I learned to keep anyone I perceived as volatile happy and to hide my own life away.

Being oneself is the foundation for connection, to allow ourselves to be there. We stop trying so hard to be who we think we should be, and be more as we are. Then we can discover ourselves.

People-pleasing is the habitual need to shape-shift. We lose a sense of who we really are other than who we need to become for another’s sake. When we give ourselves away so often, we can start to believe that who we really are is the guilt and shame we feel on the other side of those interactions, which only reinforces our self-abandonment. 

Authenticity is the root of vulnerability, of intimacy, of relationship. When we can take off our mask, we invite others to do the same. Trust is the connective tissue, the lubricant, that makes things go. Trust is a risk we take with one another to do something bigger than we could have done alone. 

These days we are seeing a corroding trust between individuals. Many people feel a sense of betrayal toward systems they depend on for care and protection that have let them down. News and social media dictate convenient enemies, an outlet for our dissatisfaction and disorientation.

It is those seeking equitable treatment or rights, upsetting the status quo, who are represented as untrustworthy characters: Black, queer, trans, migrant. Refusing to grant trust anywhere breeds in us confusion, fear and isolation. It makes it harder to solve societal problems and create change.

~~~

How has the past shaped us, what gifts it has offered us, and what limitations it has imposed on us? What does our training allow us to do, and what does it prohibit?

I started a primary relationship with myself and learned how to attend to me, to take responsibility for myself, my anger, and my joy, to maintain my integrity.

Prentis writes about the experience of meeting with their father after many years of not seeing him. I felt myself begin to brace; my chest that had started to soften hardened again. My body was communicating my limit. I had found the point where I would need to compromise my own care in order to stay. 

Boundaries are a way of resetting power dynamics in relationship, of restoring our sense of agency and choice. They are how we shelter our authenticity. 

Do you know how to listen to the boundaries of your body? Bodies are encased in skin that is both barrier and porous. It lets things in and it keeps things out. Your body holds the answer. You just have to listen to it.

We are both individual and collective. Boundaries require us to rework and restructure relationships for the sake of connection, for deep mutuality.”

~~~

Somatic mindfulness inquiry this week:

Bring to mind someone with whom you feel safe enough to risk deeper authenticity. Visualize yourself sharing something with them and a positive response from them. What might they say? How do they look?

Maintain awareness of your own sensations. As you study their face and voice for cues about their response, maintain awareness of yourself.

Now visualize a neutral or slightly negative response from them.

What are the subtle movements your body makes to protect you?

Practice regulating. Soften your muscles. Open your chest. Breathe.

Make room for yourself, the other person and what’s between you. 

See my interviews with Prentis here.

Join us Sunday to practice authenticity and trust together. Details and link are here.