Luan Hassett

When we interact with others, we are defending ourselves from disintegration.

Obviously we don’t think of it that way, usually. It’s not that easy to notice. But every time we have a judgement, however subtle, that is what we are doing.

Let’s say someone is getting a bit too excited. They have a “bit that they do,” a little dance type movement, or some singing, or a joke that goes on for too long. You perform tolerance, expecting it to stop soon. But it doesn’t. Instead they seem to infer an invitation to draw it out even longer. Now you’re really judging them. You feel tense, and start to look around the room as if hoping for rescue.

Somewhere along the way you decided that you were not going to allow yourself to have that amount of excitement. Someone cringed at you, and now you are cringing at someone.

What is happening in the moment you tense up and seek rescue is that you are deflecting against destruction of who you are. The part of you that’s protecting against getting cringed at again is in survival mode. It’s enlisting judgement, and your judgement will seek to enlist agreement from others who are also judging. Most likely the judgement infrastructure is protecting against grief for all the missed excitement which others got to participate in.

Now let’s look at it from the point of view of the excited person. Chances are they are in the dynamic with you. It’s quite possible that their excitement is tinged with shame. After all, they are hanging out with someone who is judging them. As you disconnect, they keep dancing, singing or joking around. It’s almost as if they’re defying you, their way of defending against the judgement you’re emitting.

In a way, they are asking you to accept them for who they are, which sounds like a reasonable ask except that it entails the destruction of whatever part of you refuses to identify with them in that moment.

So ‘Being With the Other In Their World’ is no joke. Performing curiosity just won’t cut it, because when it comes to the vulnerable parts of them, they can always tell. Just as a child can always tell when their parent’s attention is loving and when it’s distracted.

Let’s do one more change in perspective. Say I’m the defiant excited one. I’m being all zany, I’m enacting my identity as The Charming Creative, and it’s causing my friend to freeze. I see this and feel abandoned. I could judge them, and this would rescue my identity as a charming creative – I just need to find better friends, ones who are more willing to put their own judgements aside to be with me in my idiosyncrasies, to see that I’m really being vulnerable and at least give some element of caring attention; more ideally, join me and have us pursue self-expansion in unison.

Or, I could ask “what’s making you go silent?”

Here is the move that constitutes my “being with the other in their world.” I am including their authenticity rather than prioritizing the defence of my right to express mine. Once I do that, I am opening myself to the possibility that I am not as charming as I think I am. I am opening myself up to destruction in a very real sense. I now have to include the fact that some people respond to my excitement as if it were distasteful, or even a threat. I don’t have to believe that it’s really either of these things. I just have to (i.e. I get to choose to) create bandwidth for the part of “the other’s” consciousness that’s perceiving me that way. This means feeling my fear and my shame. It could also involve feeling anger or sadness.

Lastly, I should point out that when I ask “what’s making you go silent?” the answer I’ll probably get is “oh, nothing.” Because the other is unlikely to want to be seen judging someone for their behaviour. Our judgements can be a very intimate part of ourselves. The point is that even asking what is happening for them is a move of opening myself up to annihilation since I need to give up the certainty that the people rejecting me only have bad reasons for doing so.