No Need to Push, but Don't Hold Back

Each morning I write for 30 minutes before I need to get ready for work. This is my daily writing practice, and I’ve been doing it nearly every day since early January of this year. There are a few other practices that, together with my writing, make up my morning routine: some yoga, meditation, a little workout, and reading.

At least a couple mornings each week, I sit down to write and nothing comes to mind. Stress will hit my head and upper torso, and I’ll nearly open a new browser tab and go to email, social media, or my calendar. Instead, however, I close my eyes, take a couple deep breaths, and just start writing.

It doesn’t work to force myself to write. I can’t force words out. Instead, I just get my fingers moving on the keyboard and words start showing up on the screen. Here’s the type of sentence that usually comes out, and I end up editing it off the top of my blog post drafts:

"I’m not sure what to write - I’m distracted by the tv playing in this waiting room, it’s cold in here, and people are talking. But here it goes anyway. Breathe deep. Let's see what falls out."

There are times when we feel like we’ve really got to push ourselves to meet our next goal, or push ourselves to act in the face of internal resistance, or push ourselves to do the things we really want or know to do for ourselves. What if we don’t actually have to push ourselves to get those things done? What if, instead, we just stopped holding ourselves back?

Plan your work. In moments of calm and clarity, that’s when it’s best to make commitments and plans of action for our future selves. When we’ve committed to an action or a practice from that space of still, relaxed knowing, it’s coming from a truer part of ourselves than our surface level desires and interests.

Take actions before you can talk yourself out of it. We get into our own way by paying more attention to our thinking about the action than just getting in action. In Getting Going, I shared about a student struggling with school work. To me, to his parents, and to his other teachers, the kid has so much potential and “just needs to get out of his own way.” We’re all just like this kid.

Don’t listen to your judgmental thinking while you’re acting. It’s generally more dangerous and risky to put ourselves out there, to put time in, and to possibly fail at whatever it is we’re doing. So our brains, which were designed to keep us safe, are going to throw into our awareness whatever thoughts will keep us maintaining the safe status quo in our lives. Focus on the action you’re committed to, including the motions of your body as you take the action, and allow the judgmental thoughts to come and go without needing to focus on them or do anything with them.

We don't need to push ourselves to live consistently and reliably in line with our best selves (what I think of as our True Self) - we just need to get out of our own way.

Don't hold back.

No need to push, but don’t hold back. - Susanna and Ya’Acov Darling Khan

Thanks for reading. ❤️

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By the way, my workshop for adolescents and my workshop for adults are both beginning 2 weeks from today! Consider joining me, and please share with someone who may be interested! In the workshop, we'll discover new access to getting out of our own way so that we don't need to push ourselves and we don't hold back.

Break Free from the Drama Triangle

Feeling stuck, frustrated, stressed, or trapped is an indication that we're playing a role that we don't want to play. Circumstances in life show up whether we pick them or not, and when we can't seem to find the power or creativity to play a new role that we'd really like to play, we're caught in the drama triangle.

In 1968, psychiatrist Stephen Karpman developed what he called the “Drama Triangle” model of human conflict. The idea of this triangle is that when conflict arises between people, we are always playing one of the following roles:

• The Victim: the oppressed, the persecuted, the insulted, the unacknowledged

• The Persecutor: the oppressor, the blamer, the judge, the critic

• The Rescuer: the helper, the overly concerned, the knight in shining armor, the warrior defending the weak (source)

In conflicts with others, we’re playing one of these roles.

It was suggested to Karpman that the triangle be called the conflict triangle, but Karpman wanted it to be clear that there’s not actually a victim, a persecutor, or a rescuer in our everyday conflicts. They’re just roles we play.

Why do we play these roles? For the same reason most of our default, automatic, and instinctual reactions arise: to minimize danger or maximize reward. In other words, there’s a benefit to playing these roles.

If there were only benefits, I wouldn’t suggest that we reconsider them. However, these roles also have drawbacks. In other words, there are costs.

• When we play the victim, we try to obtain sympathy and support (benefit) by sacrificing our creativity and well-being, giving away our power, and abdicating our innate ability to make a difference in the situation (cost).

• When we play the persecutor, for the feeling of power and self-righteousness (benefit) we trade our experience of love, partnership, and community, and we demean others (cost).

• When we play the rescuer, we obtain a bit of looking good (benefit) for the price of selling out on another’s strength, innate well-being, and capacity to stick up for themselves (cost).

Just for a couple days, see if you can find the drama triangle roles playing out in life. They’ll be there in small conflicts and big ones. You might see them in a minor quarrel with a spouse or sibling, you’ll likely see them in conflicts between others, and you could see them in how we think and talk about politics, which is often through the lens of oppression regardless of our political leaning: the oppressor (persecutor) taking advantage of the oppressed (victim).

How to break free from the constraints of the drama triangle:

1. First, become aware of the automatic role you've been playing. When circumstances arise, we usually respond on autopilot by playing whichever role our safety-seeking brain picks on our behalf. Notice the autopilot kicking in.

2. Second, take a different action, one that's out of character for the role you're in. Taking an action that doesn't fit the role we're playing will often shift us out of the role (like apologizing when you notice you're playing the victim).

Thanks for reading. ❤️

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By the way, my workshop for teens and my workshop for adults are both beginning 2 1/2 weeks from today - consider joining me and share with someone who may be interested! In the workshop, we'll uncover the mechanism that pushes us into the drama triangle, and we'll get free from it forever.

We're All on Drugs

The high school senior athlete quickly stood, turned toward me like he was ready to fight, and said, "F*** you, b****!" A friend of his reached around him to hold him back.

We were somewhere in the middle of class and I had asked him, in a particularly rude way, to be quiet and pay attention - then came his outburst. So I asked him to go hang with his class dean and tell him what happened. After class ended, I went to the dean's office to talk.

The student had calmed down by the time I got there. Before he or the dean could say anything, the student and I made eye contact and I apologized to him for being rude and disrespectful to him. I felt disrespected by his behavior in class, and I reacted impulsively using mean language. I was committed to not acting that way with anyone.

He then authentically apologized to me for what he said, and though he seemed a little apprehensive, he was back to his usual, pleasant self. We then chatted about how both of us could benefit from not reacting impulsively to emotions.

That kid was on drugs, the hormones of adolescence, and I knew he was responding to the drugs and not to me. All adolescents are on drugs; it's a transformative time in our lives when our body chemistry is notoriously wacky. What I said in class triggered this student's anger and it flared nearly full tilt. No his reaction wasn't appropriate, but much better for it to happen in school than on a job or in an otherwise dangerous situation.

Adults are on drugs too. We've also got brain chemicals and hormones doing funky things to us, and our emotions can flare or fester as well as any teen's. While the flaring of emotions can lead to obvious impacts, the festering of emotions is probably not any better.

As I reflect on the story above from my third or fourth year teaching, I'm aware of three insights:

1. Other people, all of them, are on drugs. Remembering this can give us a little room to stay calm whether in an argument with our spouse, in a situation with our kids or siblings, or within a school building. After all, they're not responding to you, they're responding to the drugs.

2. Taking responsibility for any situation continues to be the easiest way for me to experience agency, peace of mind, and vitality.

3. To some it looks weak to apologize, especially to apologize first. However, I've found time and again that taking responsibility first gives the other person space to take responsibility too. Defenses are softened when the other side apologizes, and from that softening comes more room to reflect and find our own agency in any situation.

I hope you have a great week! ❤️

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By the way, my workshop for teens and my workshop for adults are both beginning 3 weeks from today - consider joining me and share with someone who may be interested!

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