Yearning as a gateway to the needs within

 I was so angry. I could feel myself wearing my anger as if it were armor while stomping around the house. I felt it protecting my chest, as if it were an energy in front of me and shielding me. I was aware of myself and thought to myself, "I am protected now because I feel too hurt to be open." And I knew that I spent a lot of my life like this - cut off, protected. I knew the anger was covering over pain and sadness. If I stopped a moment to be with this realization, I started to feel the pain bubble up from under the surface. I knew that some self-empathy was in order.

First I celebrated my jackals. What was it that got me so angry that I even slammed my fist on the table? The thoughts raced so fast that I didn't have time to see how I got there. I remembered that when I'm truly connected to my needs, anger doesn't exist. But it does come when I make judgments about other people. I remembered what I said to my husband, "Nobody cares about my own experience and whether I'm uncomfortable except for me. I get ignored because they don't care, they only care about themselves. Even though I let my desire be known, I was ignored." This is what drove me into a rage, and that it kept happening again and again. I knew that the anger was part of a protector, who was always outraged at the lack of care, compassion, emotional attunement, and wanted to keep me from feeling the pain of this and empower me instead. Knowing this, I thanked her and breathed to relax her grip. We knew it was time to put the defense down to process what happened, so that the next time I become reactive, I can calm myself even faster. 

Now that I identified the judgment, I gave myself validation. I told myself, yeah it really hurts to be treated this way. It's so hard to think that people don't care, of course it hurts. Some tears came, but it wasn't enough for me to fully feel into it; something was missing. For some reason I started to think about a friend of mine who I've been giving empathy to lately. I imagined I was sitting with her and she was telling me the things that were painful to her. I noticed that when I stayed silent, she had more words to pour out, and more pain. After listening a while, I started to think of things to say as she had just opened herself and made here vulnerable, to "dress her up" and give her a heart reaction that would help her to not feel alone. 

But then I imagined I was her, and I was hearing me say encouraging things. I felt like I could've said more about my pain (as her), but my own words were getting in the way of fully connecting with myself. What would I (as her) have liked to feel really supported and cared for? A hug would be enough. Simply sitting in silence and holding my hand. And then, what if we're on video call and can't meet in person? Then the best way for me to support her would be to put my hand on my heart and allow myself to be fully touched by her experience as I bring all of my presence to be with her. And I felt myself as her, seeing me with my hand on my heart. I felt that I was feeling true compassion, being both the giver and receiver of it. It took my fantasizing about being compassionate toward others, and receiving that from an imaginary me, in order to actually get to the point where I could deliberately give it to myself; not as a mental exercise, but as a direct felt sense experience. 

Something interesting began to happen. I started to feel a tenderness, an ache, and a melting in my heart. I felt I really had to put my hand there, as I gave myself the care that I wanted. I felt the mourning and yearning for not having it, and remembered that the yearning can be a doorway to access the life force energy with the quality/color/flavor or care that is already inside of me. So then I decided to be fully with it, to allow it to be the doorway. And then, as the pain of yearning intensified, suddenly it was as if I splashed through the surface level and arrived at the quality of care within, the one that is part of my pure essence as a human being. I thought, this is the care that is from God, that is always present, that is what I'm made of, my divine essence. I felt a lot of relief as I sat with my hand on my heart, the ache subsiding, and then I could really cry some tears of relief to access this care that I had been wanting all along. 

The difference between empathy and compassion

 I was watching a video made by Nadine about the difference between empathy and compassion.

 

In Buddhist understanding, compassion is knowing we all suffer, and this bringing energy to actively trying to reduce or even eliminate the suffering of others. Inherent assumption other need to be helped.

 

Empathy in scientific research is the experience of neurons lighting up as a listener, being the same ones that light up in the other person, whether it’s pain or joy. I.e. feeling the feelings of the other person.

 

In NVC, empathy is simply being with, in the present moment with, and connecting with the life of the other person while focusing on feelings and needs, without an agenda to fix them or solve their issue. I enjoy and trust their own intelligence when I listen, when I share presence with them, to have things become clear and fall into place with them.

 

Her colleague Eva says: “Empathy is an intentional quality of attention which brings about a sense of compassion” I.e. our intention to connect with life. Then in NVC, sympathy is feeling the same as the other person.

What comes up for me is my experience with attention itself. Attention has an energy to it. When doing a meditation to turn the energy of my attention from going outward to myself, I can really feel the difference, as if a spotlight of energy was lighting up my entire body. It feels nourishing, almost replenishing. I find that a large portion of my day is spent with the energy of my attention leaving me to go to something or someone else, be it someone/thing in front of me, or even in thoughts about the future or the past. In those moments I don’t feel grounded in my body, and notice it’s more difficult to feel myself and fully inhabit my body - as if whatever my attention rests on is taking up all of my reality without any space for me to feel my own existence. My mind siphons my attention somewhere else, and this leaves me feeling depleted after a while.

 

This is why when I first started to learn NVC and read Marshall say that “Empathy requires us to focus full attention on the other person’s message,” (from “Nonviolent Communication : A Language of Life”) initially I thought it made sense, but there was an underlying trepidation that got more pronounced the more I learned. The question was, “What about me and my experience? Where am I in this? And what if I’m also in pain?” And the only answer I’ve received after almost a year of different courses was that perhaps in that moment I need empathy too and should find it somewhere else, rather than with the person in front of me who also needs empathy and is not at capacity to give empathy. And I am adding for myself, that they are not at capacity to fully witness me as a separate entity with her own needs, feelings, and experience. This is not a very satisfying answer for me because it’s so important to me that the way I choose to interact with the world also leaves space for myself to be.

 

I think this need comes from a child part of me that experienced enmeshment trauma with a mentally ill mother. I was not allowed to have my own beliefs or feelings about things, and if I did, then I would be punished or ostracized. I was the black sheep because of my need to express and fully feel myself. I think this is a normal thing for children growing up, so they can fully develop themselves and learn about who they are becoming. But if this process is blocked or associated with pain, then it can be difficult as an adult to assert oneself. Then comes the dilemma of having to choose between being my authentic self, or belonging. So when I seek NVC as a possible solution to find belonging with others, and I see a preference put on giving my attention and presence to someone else in order for the need to be met, then the other need for authenticity and presence with myself dies.

 

A more concrete example of how I experience presence: when I’m speaking to someone who is distracted and thinking of something else, I feel they are “not present.” Though their physical body is there, I don’t feel them there. Maybe their eyes are not on me and instead staring in the distance, or looking at their phone. And then there is a sense of disconnection and loneliness. Marshall said, “The key ingredient of empathy is presence: we are wholly present with the other party and what they are experiencing. This quality of presence distinguishes empathy from either mental understanding or sympathy.”

 

There is a conundrum here - I feel connection and belonging when I share my presence, but have not figured out how to share this presence equally with myself and the other. I imagine in some situations the presence can move to one side more than the other depending on what’s needed. And I fear the times when I feel that I must leave my own presence in favor of the other, as if I’m being coerced (either directly by the other or by an expectation or pressure I place on myself). Like I have to give something up or give something away in order to receive.

 

“People can only meet you as deeply as they’ve met themselves.” I saw this quote on Facebook, and I also turned it around for myself. “I can only meet others as deeply as I’ve met myself.” And I wonder if the root of the issue here is thinking that I need to receive this attention from outside, or belonging from outside. Is it even possible to give it to myself? I have gotten beautiful glimpses of what happens when I shed all agenda to be what I am not, to simply exist, and give myself that attention. But I can’t stay in this state for long, and if it’s possible then I haven’t practiced enough. Inevitably life happens, I must respond, and I begin to inhabit the inner characters again. On that point, I know that the idea is not to get rid of them entirely, but to have choice on how I want to interact or inhabit each one, rather than being driven reactively by them.

 

But I am still left with the question, how do I take up space for myself and also have space for the other? It seems the answer would be first to expand the capacity to feel safe in my own body, and develop skills that allow me to feel rooted, resilient and resourced enough that I’m able to offer my presence to others without becoming engulfed myself. Building the capacity includes the work I’ve already done to feel into my body, feel into emotions somatically as they come up without resisting them, and being the space in which all of these feelings express themselves.