Our experience is a big mine shaft, filled with valuable relational resources

In which I consider the second step in understanding relationships

Let me confuse you.

In an earlier post, I talked about making the turn.

In my last post, I talked about taking the dive.

In this post, I’m going to talk about making the flip.

They sound the same. They are different.

Here’s how: When you make the turn, you focus your attention on your innards. Your internal experience. Like when you meditate.

When you take the dive, you stay in there. Even when you want to escape, you stay in your body and look around. (Like when you meditate, but different because you’re not trying to let go so much as notice and gather data.)

When you make the flip, you look back out again. At other people. And make some guesses.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let us review:

I think of internal experience as a big mine shaft (hence the title of this post). A main shaft with veins of gold and glitter. The gold and glitter are feelings that can either stay stuck in the rock of the mine — and therefore remain, at best, inert and useless and, at worst, dangerous to us — or can be pulled out and up for scrutiny. And thereby become extremely useful to us. Because those feelings are meaningful. (More on that in about a minute.)

Extending off into the depths of our mines are rabbit holes of negative self-beliefs. Like “I’m stupid.” Like “I’m too much.” Like “I’m unlovable.” Like “I’ll never be good enough.”

These rabbit holes are important for at least three reasons:

1) When we go down them, we get lost in an alternate reality. We totally lose perspective on ourselves and grab onto (usually familiar) negative beliefs about ourselves with a kind of death grip.

2) This alternate reality gains strength and power every time we go into it because we actually look for — AND FIND — evidence of our negative self-beliefs everywhere. Both inside and outside our selves. Because our rabbit holes filter our perceptions and determine our interpretations of what we perceive.

3) Reinforcing our negative self-beliefs by looking for and finding evidence of them means we miss counter-evidence. That is, we miss messages that contradict our negative self-beliefs. These messages fly right over our heads. Don’t even register. Like they didn’t even exist. This happens to our intense detriment.

This is a quick description of daily life in the mine shaft of our experience: Generally we walk around, not paying much attention to the veins of emotions in the walls (which therefore remain inert and useless and, depending on what they are, potentially dangerous if and when they erupt), barely managing to skirt the rabbit holes of negative self-beliefs (which exert a powerful pull on us even unconsciously), keeping distracted and busy.

Then comes an unexpected, inescapable shock to the system. And we scurry into a rabbit hole. And pain and suffering begin.

How do we back our cute little bunny butts out of our rabbit holes and vaporize the pain and suffering?

We make the turn, take a dive, and make the flip.

Let’s look at an example.

Let’s say one of my negative self-beliefs is that I’m incompetent. I always miss the memo, always mess things up. If anyone is going to make a mistake on my team at work, it’s me.

But one day I get feedback from my boss that she’s happy with something I did. (Here’s my shock to the system.) Even though this is a positive event, I start down my rabbit hole of negative self-belief, wondering what she wants from me. (Because I’m basically programmed to interpret even positive events through the filter of my negative self-beliefs.) But I’m surprised — and hopeful — enough to tell my co-worker friend about what my boss said. “Really?” says my friend. “OK well. I wouldn’t have said that. But good for you.”

I am slammed with shame and disappointment. Not just about the fact that my friend disagreed with my boss’s conclusion that I did something well. And that my friend wasn’t actually happy for me. But also about the fact that I believed my boss, that I felt a little pride about what she said, that I exposed my hopefulness to my friend when I clearly had no right to, no reason to. How dare I see myself as anything other than a screw-up?

I am now wedged into the far reaches of my rabbit hole of unforgivable incompetence. I cringe there, collapsed in shame and horror, fighting tears. I could strike out in self-defense, but that’s not my MO. (It is for some, of course.) Debilitating shame is my go-to response. Which means my negative self-belief does not budge. (It wouldn’t budge if I got defensive, either.) Rather, my negative self-belief controls my entire experience of that moment. And gets stronger.

It is time to back my butt out of there.

So. Here we go: First, I make the turn inwards. Whether in that very moment (which isn’t all that easy, because I’m super activated) or afterwards, when I’ve got time with myself or with a smart, caring other person. I focus my attention on my insides.

Then I take the dive and stay with my emotions. That is, I notice what I’m feeling. Ashamed. Exposed. Frightened. Disappointed. Vulnerable. Needy. Small. I label whatever emotions I can.

I wonder what those emotions mean about me. What is the shame about? Why would I assume there’s something wrong with me when my boss compliments me and my co-worker friend disappoints me? When has this happened before? What am I afraid of? What was I expecting that didn’t happen and therefore disappointed me? What do I need? What do I assume is going to happen when I’m needy? What’s this feeling of being small? Am I a child right now? Who’s the parent? What is that parent like? Is that familiar to me?

Once I’ve got a few sparkling nuggets, a few tentative answers (and maybe some flashes of insight), in my palm, I make the flip. I launch into the air, twirl around and turn my attention to my friend. And I ask a simple question:

Might my friend be feeling the way I’m feeling?

Might they be feeling ashamed? exposed? frightened? disappointed? vulnerable? needy? small?

This might sound crazy, but believe me: The answer is almost always YES.

When I’ve recovered from the amazement of realizing that my co-worker friend might very well have induced in me his own feelings, I go on to the next simple question:

Why might he feel this way?

With this question I have completed my magnificent flip. What remains is to stick the landing, which, I’m happy to say, turns out to be the easiest part, because this question can be surprisingly easy to answer.

Here’s my answer, my guess, about my co-worker friend: He was envious of me. My report of our boss’s compliment evoked concern in him about himself. His own negative self-beliefs, which might sound different from mine (“I’ll never be appreciated”; “I’m always one-down”; “I never get what I deserve” or innumerable others) but which trigger the same responses (shame, vulnerability, neediness, regression, etc.), overtook him. He couldn’t be a friend to me because he was flooded with these terrible feelings. Which he didn’t want. So he discharged those feelings by giving them to me. By tearing me down so he wouldn’t tear himself down. That, by the way, is how envy works.

This is just a guess. I might be completely wrong. But here’s the thing, a very important thing: If this guess gets me out of my rabbit hole and back into my main mine shaft, where I can stay with myself and trust my feelings and their meanings, where I can continue to do what I (Betsy) call emotion work, where I can feel compassion for myself, where I can even feel compassion for my friend, then I’m in good shape. I mean, REALLY good shape.

Because I feel better.