The Art of Realism

Several people have asked me to comment from a therapeutic point of view on a few of the more prominent and divisive storylines of 2020. The unfolding of chaotic and at times bizarre events on both the micro and macro social platforms are universally concerning.


I do not want to directly comment on these topics within this space for several reasons. Firstly there is much that has been said and will continue to be said about these events and our reactions and responses to them by those who are paid (for better or worse) to do so. I do not want to add another drop to the already oceanic swell of words that are already in existence. My sense is that we are saturated in spoken thoughts and we don’t need mine to stir and echo. Secondly, these issues are without a doubt contentious and my commenting from what is essentially a personal perspective is likely to foster more ideological reasons to view someone else as “other” and justify or inflame our own sense of correctness of belief. I may and do have opinions, but in the end they are just that- my opinions. What is more important than opinion is curiosity about how we are responding to our emotional and psychological realities when these issues of power, trust and vulnerability are foregrounded. And how we choose to respond to those with whom we disagree.


Now that I have cleared that out of the way, I would like to ask…

What have you been feeling over the course of this year?
What is the predominant emotion? What does this feel like?

Have you felt more connected to others or less connected to others?

What has this experience been like for you?

Articulating our feelings can be a challenge, especially if we didn’t grow up with caregivers who gave us implicit or explicit permission to do so without negative consequence.

If we have not had the experience in our younger years of careful attention and the space to be in our emotional reality, later in life it can be very difficult for us to not only know our own emotions as they arise, but to be able to recognise and connect them to our own experience when they appear outside of ourselves in another. This challenge becomes even greater when difficult emotions such as fear, loneliness and frustration are in the mix.

To tell the story of our lives, or indeed the story of this very moment as we sit here together can prove to be far harder than any of us would care to admit. And yet, “part of what makes us human is that we need never stop growing up, never stop growing in a (healthy, honest) relationship.” (Robb, 2006, p.188). In a nutshell, we need each other. And when we are in relationship, we need each other to tell the truth, so that we have the opportunity take in the experience of another person and to be able to respond with integrity.


So, why is this so hard?


Why is it that one of the most vulnerable things a person can do is tell the truth?


When a person tells the truth to themselves or to another, without spin, without adding shades of grey or subtracting details about the nature of one’s reality, a surrender has taken place. To tell the truth is to speak without the intention to control the listener’s reactions or response, no matter what thoughts and feelings may surface. To tell the emotional truth as far as you are able to, exposes you. It strips you of your capacity for domination of another’s reality, even if that reality is your own.

When we are needing to control the narrative of our lives and experiences, it is a sign that we sense something within us is out of our control. It is also a sign that we are seeking to take the power back, but not in a fully grown, mature way. Needing to manage the responses of others through the arts of negation, deception and magical trickery is often a sign that we feel out of control. To speak metaphorically, the steering wheel that belongs on the inside has become objectified out and on to another as a means of stabilising our inner world and our experience of the self. The logic appears to be, if I can’t control myself I can control you instead. And when I control you, you will tell me the reality I want to hear.

When we do this, we feed the experience of feeling that control is insecure as we have moved the position of power to outside of ourselves and onto another, who can never really be in our full grasp. We have precariously bestowed our authority onto another and we sense this is dangerous to our agenda. So we must control their reality too.

So often the uncertainty, grasping and desperation we experience as relational beings as we “get to know” one another and ourselves is simply a confusion of psychological boundaries. When we become confused around the questions of who is who, who is in charge and who is in charge of what, our experience of ourselves can become so blurred and distorted recognising our own inner reality can feel close to impossible. This is the basis of co-dependency, which if you are curious about, please click here.

The road back to detangling the ropes and ribbons that tie us to another’s reality is to simply come home to your own voice and surrender to what is there.

To repeatedly come home to our own listening, without agenda, without a need to change, mend or distort what we find and enter into the truth of this present moment is the beginning of finding peace and paradoxically, power with (not over) yourself. To recognise your innate capacity to surrender to what is and to develop your own inner authority in this way can become a rare and precious gift to offer our chaotic but beautiful world.