Inward Self and Expressive Self

My friend did not share because he would have been performing. I started in performance, and then came to speak more softly, from a vulnerable part. Are these parts of me in conflict?

There is a part that is a performer, that revels in attention and applause. I made an acrostic from my name with affirming words: I have authenticity bravery integrity grace anger intelligence Love. On stage, I affirmed myself. Then I spoke from a softer side, only to say that I can speak from that. Then I looked round the hundreds in the auditorium, and acknowledged their applause, delighting in it.

A one-word title can reveal aspects of these parts of myself. They are vulnerable part and Performer. Neither is inauthentic, just because it is not the other. Each is expressing part of my true self.

I love an audience. I want to inform, entertain, and be appreciated. So I write here. That part of me can seem confident, though in childhood it was shamed out of consciousness much of the time. In ACA, we see the true self or inner child as crushed behind a people-pleasing façade, so it is easier to identify it with that part which speaks softly from a vulnerable sense of communicating my feelings. The Performer in me, enjoying rapport, gains in confidence as it gains practice. It too was crushed, in fear, when I was a child.

ACA values speaking from Self because generally we have crushed our inner Selves. The group gives a space where Self can be nurtured. I want to heal the wounds of Self. I want to please others without sacrificing Self. We might imagine the Performer is part of the façade rather than part of the True Self. It feels confident where the vulnerable bit is not, it feels extravert where the vulnerable part is introverted, masculine when, speaking from the vulnerable part, my voice goes higher and it feels feminine.

When I named other parts Stretcher and Protector, I reconciled them. I hate conflict, and work for reconciliation among other people: I may be able to reconcile parts of myself. Each are acting in my interests as they perceive them.

Perhaps, under it all, I am both vulnerable and confident, introvert and extravert, masculine and feminine. I want a place where that vulnerable part can express itself and play, and Performing has value too. ACA might call the Performer the Inner Teen. Just because they appear so different, does not mean they are in conflict.

ACA gives a space where the vulnerable part may be nurtured, perhaps more than the Performer. The Performer is still Authentic. Nothing I do is inauthentic. It may be hurting, blind, or desperate. It may be suppressing certain aspects of myself to meet more pressing needs. It may create conflict in myself. But it is all Me, all the flow of the biological process I call Abigail. Some of the atoms, some of the ideas are different from last week and a lot are different from twenty years ago and it is still given these names. And some of the things the process does surprise or distress parts of that process. Those parts may judge those acts or thoughts, and produce condemning words.

Condemnation is part of my process understanding itself. The process, I believe, grows and adapts. It is my experience that great distress- trauma- freezes responses, locks away alternatives which might be valuable at another time. The strongest judgment and repression comes from traumatised parts.

There is a Performer, which entertains, persuades, communicates. There is a vulnerable part, which feels feelings deeply, and can express feelings. Both are loving and creative, both authentically Me. I will nourish and cherish both. I seek balance of all my inward parts.

Objectivity and Subjectivity

Whose facts matter?

It is terrifying that the world is inexplicable. People like to believe we can understand and control it, so believe in the existence of facts, objective truth, and Right and Wrong, all of which they imagine they know. So we argue past each other. In reality, Objective Truth about anything human cannot be known, only approached or approximated. Each person is marooned in their own subjectivity, their values and desires influencing how they see the world. That, or trapped in someone else’s, which is worse. How can we even talk to one another, when our experience and needs are so different?

I am Trans. I have been going on about this quite a lot lately, as it is denied. I am not a person “questioning my gender”, I know my gender quite well. I do not suffer from gender dysphoria, but have Trans Joy, because I have transitioned. I am not a “believer in gender ideology”, I know precisely what gonads I had, what they do, and what I did to them. I am trans. People are- hundreds of thousands in the census, tens of thousands on gender clinic waiting lists, thousands with Gender Recognition Certificates. There have been trans people for ever, and we exist all round the world in every culture. Some people are trans is about as Objective as you can get about people, just as objective as that people can be gay or left-handed or aphantasic.

I have always been trans. You don’t “become trans” when you embrace your nature, you just are trans, even if you try to present as your sex at birth despite how miserable it makes you.

And trans is subjective. Nobody would know that I am trans if I did not act like a trans person and say I am trans. Any diagnosis is based on what I say, though a psychiatrist might check if I were psychotic, and might try to see if I were lying. Someone might lie, and pretend to be trans, though outside prison it will gain them nothing.

In a free society, my subjectivity matters. I “pursue happiness” by, among other things, transitioning. My example of being authentically myself blesses other people.

The pretence that sex is biological and this is objective truth, or even that it matters apart from issues of reproductive biology, is a lie. Sex- what sex a person is and how that affects their life- is almost entirely cultural.

Other people’s subjectivity matters to me. If a woman is frightened when she sees me in a woman’s loo, that matters, but the answer is not just excluding all trans people.

So much of the argument against trans inclusion is sloganeering, triggering and mystification, as objective as Mein Kampf. Take the slogan “Sex-based Rights!” It is designed to trigger, to make women angry that their right to services with no men is being taken away by trans women and trans allies. Mystification: the anti-trans demand trans exclusion, without mentioning trans. The announcement of the NHS consultation talks about trans exclusion in ten paragraphs, and mentions “transgender patients” once.

I am not the Faceless Threat, the Others that the Tories want decent people to unite against. That’s as subjective as can be. I am a person. I matter as much as cis people do.

Whose facts matter? Everyone’s. Not their lies and bullshit, just their subjective facts, perceptions, needs, desires. Mine, as much as anyone else’s.

Privacy, dignity and safety

“Privacy, dignity and safety” is the new code for driving trans women out of women’s wards, and “same-sex care” means treating trans clinicians as of their assigned sex at birth. The NHS consultation is about all sorts of things, but the press release headline only refers to trans people.

My privacy, dignity and safety matter, just as much as cis people’s. The 2019 NHS guidance provides for that. Trans people should be accommodated according to how we present, as the EHRC Code of practice says.

Trans people would often be in a single room. If I needed to be in hospital, I doubt I would be able to keep my wig looking respectable all the time, and you can’t sleep in a wig. I would not want my bald head on show. Some patients will not have had genital surgery. My aureoles are much smaller than most women’s, and I would be self-conscious showering with others. Trans people I have visited have had a single room.

Privacy and dignity are held out as objective values, but are not. They are subjective.

Subjectivity is the subject or person’s view of themself and the world. There may be an objective truth, a truth not dependent on the perception of minds, but it is extremely hard for minds to know it. We can attempt to understand the biases our minds create, and to eliminate them as far as possible, but not attain true objectivity.

It is not Objective Truth to say “trans women are men”. It involves the value judgment that genes, gonads and genitals matter more than the person’s sense of themself. A woman with a Y chromosome and androgen insensitivity syndrome, AIS, is a woman, according to her assignation at birth: the idea that she is more like a woman, so should be brought up and treated as a female, is subjective not objective. She has no cervix, no female reproductive system, and she will not grow breasts without hormonal intervention. The belief that AIS makes her a woman but the intransigent, incomprehensible belief that they are female does not stop trans women being men, is also entirely subjective.

When Kemi Badenoch opines that I am a man, even if the AIS woman is not, that is merely linguistic. Trans allies say I am a woman. If cis women see me in their ward and feel this is a threat to their dignity and privacy greater than being in hospital, sick, perhaps asleep when male hospital staff and visitors are a few feet from their bed, that I am a threat equally repugnant to being in a bed next to a man, that too is subjective.

Privacy and dignity are subjective. It is as if my privacy and dignity do not matter to the Ministers driving such a change to the NHS Constitution. The Ministers privilege their subjective feelings and ride roughshod over mine.

The current guidance suggests a curtain may be sufficient privacy, for trans women in women’s wards. It would not be, for a trans woman, in a men’s ward. Taking hormones, trans women develop breasts. Those of us who don’t need wigs have our hair in women’s styles. Moving from a single room to the stairs would be humiliating. It might even put pressure on trans women who might pass as men to conceal their trans status while in hospital: it might make us false to ourselves. Whether presenting female or male, being in a men’s ward would place additional stress on me, which I would not want while dealing with the actual health issue.

Safety is more objective. You can count how many assaults there are. Freedom of Information requests found no complaints about trans women in women’s wards.

Excluding trans women does not improve cis women’s “safety”. Saying that it does, is a slander on trans women. There have been abusive NHS staff: projecting threat onto harmless trans people makes patients less safe, as scrutiny is diverted from where it should be.

Trans exclusion has been bolted on to an NHS consultation which deals with real issues, and might even make small improvements. It is a non-issue, put in to grub for votes from hate and gain publicity for the Ministers.

The Tale of Kitty in Boots

Did Beatrix Potter write a nonbinary character? She wrote The Tale of Kitty in Boots in 1915, but only made one illustration for it. There, Kitty, as the kind old lady who feeds her calls her, wears a jacket and tie.

Potter was strongly opposed to authority, and on the side of the child. Look at the fear on those other children’s face.

She also has the habit of saying something shocking and then saying she did not really mean it; or saying something subversive, then giving the societally approved interpretation after. For example, a ferret snatches Kitty’s gun, and she spits at it and scratches it. Then Potter writes,

“(I once saw a copy-book heading to the effect that Evil Communications Corrupt Good Manners; Miss Catherine’s manners were not improved by associating with poaching ferrets…)”

Mmm. Scratching is bad, children. Wink.

In the same nudging way, Potter writes that the old lady “would have been painfully surprised had she ever seen Miss Kitty in a gentleman’s Norfolk jacket, and little fur-lined boots.” What a bad female cat, dressing like a Man! Mercy!

Mrs Tiggywinkle calls her “Sir”, and she was “rather flattered to be mistaken for a sportsman”. The second time she corrects her, “Ma’am”.

She has a friend, Winkiepeeps, another black cat who sleeps in her place when she wants to go out hunting, and eats the breakfast the old lady provides. Winkiepeeps calls her Squintums, though Miss Catherine St Quintin objects.

Of course, there is nothing wrong in women engaging in activities thought of as masculine, or in wearing trousers, though it was frowned on in 1915, when women could not be lawyers or doctors, nor graduate from university. This little cat could just be a tomboy, a girl who liked exciting things.

Yeah, I’m just following Potter’s own trope. Of course Kitty is nonbinary. Why else would she be an “odd little cat”?

Kitty suffers badly in her hunting trip, and afterwards is a reformed, lady-like cat. It is as if Potter does not imagine a happy ending for such a counter-cultural cat. “But Winkiepeeps lived in the woods.” He gets to live Cat, as Cat is.

The book is illustrated by Quentin Blake, and on the front Miss Kitty wears a man’s hunting gear.

Writing

I want to be read. More than that, I want to say what I want to say, and for that to be read.

Ursula Le Guin took my breath away, again. Is there anything of hers I have not read, where I might find such wonder? I consider buying Orsinia. But then, I want to read Miki Kashtan, Sarah Peyton, Bonnie Badenoch, and I have two volumes of Le Guin short stories not all of which I have read. After a moment of wonder, I was frantically scrabbling, and now pause.

In “Solitude”, a woman of the Ekumen goes to a planet as an anthropologist. She sees the society as broken from a high technology world to subsistence living. She despises it. But her daughter, growing up in that society, sees its value and wants to stay. It is collected in The Unreal and the Real volume 2, and The Birthday of the World.

I have read it before, and what I remembered of it was the daughter fitting her society and not wanting to go back to her mother’s world, morality and understanding. There’s something like that in episode 2.6 of World on Fire on the BBC, and I found myself completely with the daughter, even as I found the daughter’s morality repulsive. What speaks to me now in “Solitude” is the idea of becoming a person, an individual, rather than one of “a people”, a society. Your thoughts, feelings and actions are your own. People still co-operate: women live in villages together, singing the songs of the culture so that children learn. Men live separately, and women visit them for sex, sometimes intending conception, but do not pair-bond, as “magic”, influence on another, is so despised.

I find the story utterly beautiful. What is this world, and how do people see it? How do they write it, and could they be mistaken?

I could write about the story. Here is my blog. I could, fairly easily, get something published in The Friend. I am still scrabbling, though less feverishly. Possibly, as I grow spiritually, different parts of the story speak to me. That might be worth saying. Or, Look, Look, Ursula Le Guin is wonderful! Would I include The Dispossessed? The moon Anarres has a radically egalitarian society, of interest to Quakers.

On the blog, I quickly put out something on what the Constitution of the NHS says, and what the Consultation does. It’s quite technical, of strong interest to trans people. For what to say in the consultation, I await Robin Moira White’s suggestions.

Also on the blog, I am writing this, to get my thoughts in order. Yes, I could journal. I like the idea of saying it in public: I imagine people cheering me on, or possibly criticising. I can part-form a thought here. For anywhere else, I want it fully cooked.

I want to say what I want to say, and for that to be worth saying and worth reading, and for that to be read. I want it to be compact, to say as much as I can in the 600/1200/2000 word limit of The Friend. I judge other articles there as not saying enough for an article, having an interesting thought which could be developed more in that space, though I do not judge the editor for printing them.

I have not sent anything to The Friend since December. I had a few thoughts, and started writing, and had doubts about what I wrote. Is it ministry, is it something Quakers need to hear? One thought could be ministry and I am not sure I can express it well enough, it does not seem to flow. An article on Le Guin could please and inform Quakers, and that might be enough, and I should really research it if that is what I want to write, rather than just go from my mere delight.

I want to write more about relational neuroscience and spirituality than that one Friend article, and would have to delve deeper into sources, probably primary sources. I have other things to do- becoming a person, my thoughts feelings and acts my own. That’s why Le Guin so grabbed my attention, why I want to read about relational neuroscience more deeply before thinking of writing it, why I want to read and do more ACA. I was at the ACA meeting yesterday. It is about becoming a person. My feelings are obscure yet horrific to me: I want to go through emails and do what I feel would be good to do, an email evokes a feeling at the edge of consciousness and I am frantically avoiding it, through avoidance activity. That needs my patient, loving attention. What pain is so great I must avoid it like that, at that cost?

I have things to say now, and want them heard and read, and have other things to do.

The NHS Constitution and trans people

“Strengthen privacy, dignity and safety”. Without naming trans people, the government call us dangerous, and their headline on their NHS consultation only mentions trans exclusions. The consultation asks about other things, but that news story mainly goes on and on about The Trans Threat. Single-sex wards are mentioned three times: they will be “respected”. Someone from Healthwatch welcomes the plans.

Expressionists

“I am not a man. I am not a woman. I am I.”

To the Tate Modern exhibition of Expressionists. On the wall, I read, “The Blue Rider Collective included women artists and those exploring their gender identities”. I had not anticipated this. Who? Here is “Spanish Woman”, by Alexei Jawlensky, sometimes “von Jawlensky”.

The sitter is the dancer, Alexander Sakharoff.

Sakharoff is a dancer able to express their whole self, beyond masculine and feminine. They did not go through a binary transition: perhaps they could not imagine the possibility, perhaps there was no need. They could express their feminine self by performing in women’s or genderfluid clothing. Perhaps they felt afraid, of cancellation of their dancing career or violent homophobia. Their papers are at the Houghton Library, Harvard University.

They wrote, “the body must be an elaborate instrument capable of expressing the soul”, and I find my being through inspired movement.

Marianne Werefkin painted Sakharoff. I got a tote bag with this image. That could be a flower or an impaled insect.

Here is Werefkin’s self-portrait

(not in the exhibition). She inherited money, and was a patron of the arts. This was a man’s role in that society, and she was attacked as a “manwoman”, or Mannfrau, for it- an unnatural member of a third sex. But the “I am I” quote could just mean, Don’t stereotype me. Gabriele Münter, whose work is still in copyright, painted Werefkin, seeing her as “of grand appearance, self-confident, commanding”. This does not make her not a woman.

They moved through the world as best they could, as we all do.

Here is a Kandinsky from the exhibition.

More in Common on Culture War

More in Common, a centrist body committed to bringing people together, has done a deeply transmisic act.

For their briefing paper about culture wars, they asked people about various issues, both Do you support or oppose various actions? And Is your view on this action important or unimportant to you?

There were three trans-related issues, framed as follows:
Allowing transgender women to compete in women’s sports
Public institutions holding family-friendly drag queen shows
Protecting female-only and male-only spaces in places like bathrooms and hospital wards

The third of these has a completely transmisic framing. The word “protecting” implies there is a threat. Of course we “protect” women’s spaces from men, though often not from male cleaners. The framing treats trans women as no different from men.

It would have been easy to frame this issue in a trans-friendly manner. Do you support excluding all trans women from women’s services such as toilets and changing rooms in shops? Or, if naming hospital wards, the survey could point out that a lot of wards have single rooms. My friend, dying, had a single room. I suggest “excluding” rather than “including” in the phrasing, because currently trans women have a right to be in these places, according to the statutory code of practice.

The introductory page has links to download the briefing paper and data tables giving the questions and answers. 76% supported “protecting female-only spaces” and only 6% opposed, which is unsurprising given the framing. 69% said this was important, and 10% unimportant, which would mean the population is seething with transphobia. But, when I go into toilets I have still not been challenged, though I am more and more afraid of saying that in case I jinx it.

On pronouns, 39% agreed using pronouns is basic decency and respect, and 35% said it was compelled speech contrary to personal beliefs. Yet I am not misgendered. Possibly, people gave the anti-trans response because it was suggested to them. Had they been offered the phrase about decency and respect alone, more would have agreed. So, More in Common normalises anti-trans talking points.

The net opposition to trans women in women’s sports was 48%. The question did not distinguish elite from amateur sports. The public were even opposed to drag queen story time, by a net 7%. More people found these matters unimportant than important.

Having said all that, the report has some useful stuff. It quotes Steven, from Blyth, saying transgender inclusion would not “change his life”, which if he’s cis seems obvious. Simone, also from Blyth, said the anti-trans politicians are merely ignorant. Richard from Wokingham called Rishi Sunak “disrespectful” and belittling in his attitude to trans.

However an imagined leaflet promising in its title to “protect women’s only [sic] spaces” was seen as more interesting and important than one to improve bus routes. The least popular title was about renaming streets to reflect modern diversity.

They recommend that politicians “talk about the issues that matter most to the public”. Well, of course they do. They’re More in Common, not some Tufton St junk-tank or the Daily Mail wanting to win votes through stoking hate. They say trans issues should not be dealt with by trying to create electoral wedges, but for the election politicians should stick to everyday concerns of the public and work through trans issues behind the scenes. This “working through”- they don’t say if it might mean scrapping the trans parts of the Equality Act, and the Human Rights they are based on. That settlement allows trans exclusion if there is a good reason- it’s just that there never is a good reason.

It’s not just the far right and hard right who spread hate on trans. We are not safe with anyone. Any organisation which, like More in Common, sees itself as reasonable, balanced, sensible and centrist may preach trans-exclusion. It’s a huge contrast to what they said less than two years ago.

38 Degrees commissioned the report. They say they want people to get “a fair chance in life”. Well, perhaps not trans people. Owen Jones had useful points on the report.

Meanwhile, Amnesty International condemned the UK government for breaching international human rights commitments and curtailing human rights protections, including its blocking the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill. And the Parliamentary Assembly of the ECHR spoke up for trans across the continent, with a good speech by Jeremy Corbyn: he said that ending anti-trans discrimination “is why we exist”. Some people see that the attack on trans is an attack on human rights and freedoms.

For a by-election, Rachel Reeves visited, and I got to see the back of her head. She spoke for seven minutes, then rushed off. A man had wanted her to sign her book for him, but she got away too quickly.

Ready to be the Exile

In therapy, someone might value their own feelings for the first time. The therapist finds the person’s wounds, the times in the past where the world has overwhelmed them.

Later there will be a time for an academic understanding. I have no idea about other clients. But for me as client, healing comes in being in the Exile, the part which could not cope, which was rejected by a protector, and feeling her feelings in the moment of overwhelm, despair, splitting off, becoming Exile.

I was blessed to watch a therapist and person in action over zoom, and as they find the person’s exile I become that exile, feeling the hurt and need to protect and incomprehension, curling up in anguish, and hearing the need of the person for me, the exile, to get up and be an adult and only when I feel the person’s love for me, the exile, as I am, being able to move from that foetal position.

Two days later, there was Heather, co-creating my liberation.

I wanted to go back to The Piano Incident. I was eight, disputing with my mother, weeping though Big Boys Don’t Cry, and part of me became the Exile, lost, abandoned, weeping on the floor. Part of me became the Protector, as young as the Exile but with an idea of how to survive: Get up! Do the more difficult thing, and stretch yourself! Be a Man!

In 2009 I told people of the incident, every person I imagined I just might be able to trust with it, and I felt the full anguish of the Exile as if possessed by her. I told of lying on the floor crying, and my mother just looking at me: “SHE DIDN’T UNDERSTAND!” With all the hurt of that Exile. And then in September 2009 I realised. Oh, riiiight. She didn’t understand. She was who she was, with her limitations. It felt like forgiveness, a great step forward.

It was. I had been trapped in the pain of the exile, reliving it, unable to move on. I could not process that pain. Then I “forgave my mother” and put the pain in the background again. I obeyed the protector, getting up, trying to stretch myself, Getting On with my life and work. I realised it was not forgiveness, for that implies a wrong, but acceptance of who she was, a human being.

I feel that moment in my body now as I tell Heather of it, of my back tenser than ever and my gut repelled but my head up, hopeful, facing the world again: I managed about another three years. I was not ready to heal, so I girded my loins, and kept them girded until it was no longer possible and I retreated.

Now I am ready. I lie down on the floor, and curl up in my misery. I am that exile, in the moment of splitting, weeping, arguing with my mother. She stands over me, and part of me splits off to be the Protector, who knows what the Person must do: Be a Man, do what I am asked even if I think it stretches me too far. That frightened yet certain eight year old stands over me, beside my mother.

As the Exile, I feel my No, my disgust, in my gut. As I imagine the Protector my back tightens in stress.

The risk with affirmations is that they reinforce the Protector not the Exile, but I state the affirmations both need to hear.
Now, I am grown up.
I have agency. I can stretch myself if I wish, or refuse to attempt the difficult thing.
I have choice. I can do what I want to do. I can love what I love.
I can be my feminine self.

I dance my joy. Movement expresses my feelings even better than writing.

Then I think of some of the things I choose. I choose to look at art. I want to see a Caravaggio, loaned from Naples to the National Gallery. I choose to play the piano. These are things my parents introduced me to. Are they truly my choice? I think of them. Various experiences of art are soul-responses, my delight, my reality. I am clear enough on that. On the piano, we discuss the Pathetique sonata. My mother did not like how I put my whole body into those great crashing chords at the end of the first movement. Somewhere, Beethoven uses the instruction “Break the piano.” It was a fortepiano, wood-framed, but still.

-Rock and Roll!
-Yeah!

This is me. I want to play that piece so that someone thinks, I have never quite heard it like that, and it is the only way to play it. And I am far from that class of pianist.

These things that I want, I have so much work to do that perhaps they are impossible. I desire to be my feminine self, and it is no longer forbidden, but I have so much work on my voice, to project it in a head-resonance, unbroken pitch. I want to be a counsellor, and there is so much training to go through.

I feel the tension. But it is not the miserable tension of the Protector, that eight year old boy inside me.

If therapist and client simply look at the wound, and discuss how the client feels about it now, they may hardly advance at all. It might just reinforce the Protector, the false introjected understanding of what must be done, seeing the pain from the Protector’s point of view. I find that feeling myself as the Exile at the moment of exile, feeling the despair and anguish and accepting them, then stating the affirmation the Exile needs to hear, is liberating. The Exiles are us. We need to process their feeling, and for me that means feeling and accepting it.

I feel the Protector inside me, and give him a hug. Thank you for that work. You do not need to do it any more. I know you meant my good, and have carried that anguish all these years.

The vagus nerve is mine, to feel what I feel. I will not reject its responses. My chakras are mine, to feel what they feel, the information I need.

I can make a fuss

In Internal Family Systems, we find unconscious parts of ourselves which could not deal with a situation we were in, or the feelings that evoked, so blanked it from consciousness. The unconscious part, the “Exile”, is defended by a “Protector”, a way we react: it comes forth when the Exile is reminded of its shame. Others call this a Trigger.

In finding the Exile and helping it process the emotion about the original trauma, Richard Schwartz asks what age the exile thinks the person is. The exile’s understanding is frozen at the age of the trauma: if it occurred when I was three, then the exile thinks I am three. So, we find out what age I was when the trauma happened.

Then we tell it how old I actually am. I am 57, able to accept and process the emotions, and having a particular view of the trauma- it was unfair and wrong and I do not have to tolerate such things. So the protector is unnecessary. Well done, good and faithful servant, now relax. The exile is integrated, the trigger is disarmed, the person has a quantum of healing.

For two people to be perfectly attuned and also both free may be impossible. Our relationship ruptures, and when we repair it we strengthen it. I saw a presentation by Mali Parke on anger. She explained when there is a breach without repair, one will descend through stages: from social engagement into fight/flight, or activation; then freeze, where the body is tense; and finally enter immobilisation, seeing no possible action to take. Immobilisation is a major component of depression. Repair means getting back to social engagement.

This is a post about joy, liberation and empowerment. There is one bit which is disgusting: I ingested a long hair or fibre, and in the shower I felt it extruding from my bottom. I pulled on it until it all came out. I felt disgust and discomfort, but also an imperative for my survival:

I must not make a fuss.

I must not discuss this. I must not even show any feeling about it. Now, I have no recollection about such an experience before, and it is disgusting (my feelings are valid) but not in itself traumatising or life-changing: in my ideal understanding of emotions in the living human I could feel disgust and then move on. But I also felt that imperative.

I felt a need to process this with Kate. I did not want to discuss the hair, which provoked my inner conflict, but the conflict itself. I can’t get it out of my mind. I feel I ought to be able to feel disgust, process the feeling, move on. Or to just suppress the feeling and move on. Instead I want to talk about the feelings, in order to process them. But I can’t meet her eyes.

Part of me is telling me not to make a fuss. However another part believes Self could process the feeling and move on but for the protector which demands that I don’t make a fuss, don’t be conscious of the feeling or show it.

What does the protector (or Exile, whatever, the distinction is unclear now) need?

It is immobilised. I am moved to act this out: I curl up on the floor. What do I need? Not reassurance, but to be told that my feelings matter. How old is that part? I do not know. Rather than tell it I am 57, I say I am adult now, and can create beautiful things that people love.

And- I have a partner who loves me! I can make a fuss!

Only then could I tell her about the hair. Starting this story with the hair feels like a sign of liberation.

In March 2023 the exile was too young for an age in years to be meaningful. When I said, “I am old enough to go out, get food, come home, prepare and eat it” that produced a relaxation in me, a relief. It felt right. In Chichester Cathedral I felt constrained, possibly immobilised, and an age statement seemed irrelevant, as I was enmeshed until age 30. Saying I am 57 does not, by itself, indicate greater power or agency. Instead, I have come up with a statement about myself, now, which mitigates the hurt.

I am able to make decisions about where I go and what I do.

That produces the same quantum of relief.

I have a number of these affirmations:
I am old enough to go out, get food, come home, prepare and eat it
I can create beautiful things that people love
I have a partner who loves me, who will accept and help me process my feelings
I can make a fuss
I am able to make decisions about where I go and what I do

In each, I am saying what the Exile needs to hear in order to feel safe. “I am 57”- that is, I am an adult, able to move through the world as an adult- is the IFS equivalent, but when it is not enough for me these bespoke affirmations heal the Exile and bring it home. Then, I am looking out through my own eyes is an assertion that the Exile is home and free.

My partner loves me. I can process my feelings with her. If this co-dependency, it is not a bad kind. I am human. I need relationship. Possibly, having ruptured my relationship with tout le monde when I depended on my mother and became enmeshed, I am repairing it through Kate now. I can respect and love myself if I can connect and experience her respect and love. Possibly a therapist could help me heal, with love- or even with clearly perceiving and accepting, valuing, me, and communicating that.

My friend does not like affirmations. They feel like something she is supposed to believe- some off the peg concept that will make her improve, such as, “Every day in every way I get better and better”. This is different: it is the truth about the adult that the exile, the lost child within, needs to hear.

I have guessed the affirmation I need, and felt it freeing and empowering me. I have guessed an affirmation for another, seen her relax as she welcomes it and feels its truth, and it is one of the most delightful experiences I have had.

Then I ask the person to imagine themself as that lost child, hugging this big, beautiful adult that they are now, feeling held and supported by that adult, as well as imagining themself as the adult hugging the lost child. She was lost, and is found.