I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of help lately. What it means to receive help from someone, what it might mean for someone to want to help someone else. After recently sharing some vulnerable feelings that have distracted me from posting to the blog, I’ve been thinking about the complexities around offering and being offered help.
The last few months have seen me experiencing a “dark night of the soul”. A dark night of the soul experience is widely recognized across many different spiritualities, but basically refers to a time of spiritual depression. A time of existential crisis. My therapist explains it as a time when repressed emotions (our shadow selves) pop up in our lives and the only way through this period is to confront these emotions, acknowledge them and learn from them.
She elaborates that it feels like we have these terrifying dragons in our lives to slay. But when we turn our attention towards them, we realize the dragons are our allies. The ‘dragons’ of our deeper emotions are actually strengths.
Despite my masculine exterior, I know I’m a sensitive person. I just regaled Rory and Blair with a story from my high school theatre days of promoting a play by putting on a dress and handing out flyers with some friends. This act of cross-dressing evoked many laughs as my chest hair was protruding out of the gap in bust the bodice availed my upper torso.
It’s not like I cry at sad movies (well sometimes), or have to rescue every stray cat I see, I’m sensitive as in I feel very deeply. The emotions I feel …have immense depth, that are kinda scary to explore.
But this sensitivity awards me with some wisdom—I can easily intuit the feelings of those around me. If someone is having an off day, it's almost like I can see a rain cloud over their head. If someone at the coffee shop has to take a dump, they can’t hide it from me.
Another strength I’ve struggled with but overcome to realize is that I identify as a “feminine communicator”. In a college speech class, as an exercise we took a ‘gendered communication’ test, and I was one of the furthest along on the feminine end of the spectrum. This was surprising, but as I opened myself to what that means, I’ve found it helpful to understand how this affects my communication with other people.
Gendered communication can be thought of like this: despite a person’s identifying gender, masculine communicators like to get to the point by exchanging facts and opinions. Feminine communicators like to relish in the details of a story in the endeavor to connect emotionally. Sometimes it's relevant to a story about how many teeth a checkout clerk had, or how much chest hair was bursting out of a dress.
By maintaining an openness to these (at first) prickly or uncomfortable reckonings, I feel I’ve grown as a person, understand myself a lot more and how I interact with the world around me (and maybe how the outer world interacts with me back).
I also wonder if this sensitivity and openness is what affords me my humor. These posts lately have been generously self-referential, I know—but the people seem to be healing along with me, so please indulge me here. Not wanting to sound too presumptuous, I’m a funny person. I make people laugh regularly, in person at least (I hope through written word too).
I recently read an article about the “sad clown” paradox, or the phenomenon of so many successful comedians experiencing immense darkness in their lives, people like John Belushi, Richard Pryor, Sam Kinison, Doug Kenney, Maria Bamford, or… you know… Bill Cosby, or Louis CK…
I wonder if the depth of our emotions is relative to our humor.
Coming out of the trenches of despair, I was nearing the end of my script. Or feeling like I needed to wrap it up, anyway. This was a multi-tiered challenge; I wasn’t sure how I wanted it to end or how much historical accuracy I was willing to compromise for the story. But to find out, I had to write something.
Many historians believe that Meriwether Lewis was experiencing financial trouble, in pain from wounds experienced on the Corps of Disco, self-medicating with alcohol and opioids, generally suffered from depression AND while en route to Washington to settle a dispute over his spending of government funds, Meriwether Lewis took his own life.
I began writing a possible scene for Meriwether Lewis’ suicide. And y’all, ……..it's funny. I can’t confirm that it will make the final edit, but it’s good.
I think I’ve dabbled on duality on this site before. For there is darkness, so there is light; for there is tragedy, so there is humor.
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What I learned from coming out of my spiritual descent was that, like the morals shared from infinite children’s movies, the answer is inside of us. That, perhaps uncomfortably or disappointingly, no matter how hard those around us might try, the solution to our woes is awaiting inside of the person struggling.
So how does help from an outside source fit into this situation?
Supporters can offer insights, perspectives, recommendations for self-help books, or to listen, (or read) etc. Perhaps depending on how the person falls on the gender-communication spectrum, people’s reaction to someone else’s discomfort can vary widely.
On any journey, spiritual or otherwise, assuming everyone’s journey is different, what benefit do we receive by listening to the advice of those who are on a different path than ourselves? And maybe a spiritual journey isn’t about the distance traveled but the level of sensitivity with which we’ve traveled, the intensity of the experience, the intimacy of our connections we’ve tendered, the extremes to which we’ve been exposed to, and in that case, why would I listen to someone who’s less sensitive than me?
This support might be helpful, but it might not. Maybe the person struggling has already overturned many internet (and IRL) rocks searching for the answers. Have these ‘helpers’ considered that maybe the person struggling has already read dozens of self-help books? Consumed an uncountable number of blog posts about mindfulness, metacognition, general psychology and physiology and whatever else to try to find an answer? Or have they considered the possibility of being crushed by the weight of what I have to share if I were to “just talk to someone”?
Something I’ve noticed about a lot of (not all!) our Boomer friends and family seem to value finding an immediate solution. Instant gratification is valued over the toils of the journey. And usually, the solutions offered revolve around “just take a pill.”
In a previous post I mentioned how I noticed anytime I was pointing a finger outwardly, that I realized I was pointing it at myself. You may have heard the old schoolmarm proverb of “anytime you point a finger at someone you have three pointing back at yourself.” I think about that a lot when I read opinions on millennials and Gen Z-ers written by the olds. However entitled we are is exactly as entitled as we’ve been raised to be.
Something else that should be understood about the gender spectrum of communication: speakers further along the feminine end tend to value equality in communication and masculine communicators tend to value hierarchy.
As an example of this, we can use the cultural phenomenon/stereotype of men refusing to ask for directions. Why do men resist so? Because by admitting that we’re lost, or more accurately, need help that admittance socially connotes us as subjugated to the whims of someone who has help to give. That we would be benefiting from a resource provided to us by another person strips away a sense of autonomy or independence. In masculine communication, independence is highly regarded (as opposed to feminine communication that values unity). That we require the help of another person puts us in a socially subservient position to the ‘helper’.
By offering help, one is making the assumption that they have a resource that the ‘victim’ doesn’t have. This has a social implication of stratifying the ‘helper’ as superior to the ‘victim’ as surely stratified as the ‘haves’ are from the ‘have-nots’.
Have you ever heard a group of people talking about someone doing something rather heinous? And someone says, “they need help…”, is a method of asserting the person who needs help as ‘lesser than’ veiled under the idea of extending concern.
My friend Cathy told me about a time she went canoeing on the San Marcos River during a flood. She was managing her trip rather smoothly despite the rain, but coming upon a bridge, saw a group of men hollering in an attempt to ‘rescue her’. Cathy needed no such rescuing and politely informed the would-be heroes. Having been declined the opportunity to provide assistance (read: assert their dominance), the men voiced their displeasure, hypothesizing the perils she might succumb to, yet still she thrives.
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For a sensitive person, or a feminine communicator, being presented a solution is much less help than being empathized with.
It’s hard to feel understood when you’ve been handed a solution you didn’t ask for.
Actually, what I’ve noticed is helping me is being listened to. Or more accurately, having my words read. That people make the choice to click or poke, consume words that have been fleets of hurricanes swirling in my head, and to reach out and say, “I read that. And I felt…” is the only salve I’ve found.
It doesn’t even matter what they felt, but that they did. When someone resonates, either with or against can be incredibly validating. That’s all I need, the confirmation that even some of this makes sense to someone else. Otherwise, a body could feel pretty insane and disconnected from humanity to suffer under the weight of such woes alone.
Another proverb that floats around my noggin is (I think Chinese) and goes a lil’ something like, “A smile shared is double the happiness, sadness shared is half the sadness.” It’s probably intimidating to help to take on half of someone’s burdens, the discomfort is very real, and that’s why I appreciate y’all reading so much. That you’d be willing to explore these depths with me, but hopefully walk away with something to smile about too.
That anyone is reading this is support to me, and I’m immensely grateful.
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