Recently, with the riots in response to the gratuitous killings of black civilians Breyonna Taylor and George Floyd, as well as many others, the ideology of antiracism has gained monumental popularity.
Antiracism calls for vigilance in the personal, interpersonal, and interobjective spaces, encouraging individuals to interrupt racism when they see it and combat any racist ‘microagressions’ or behaviours within themselves.
The problem with antiracism is that while it looks noble on paper, in practice it has the potential to become as damaging as it’s nemesis. This is because:
1) It redefines racism as a ‘system of oppression’ as a means of determining who can and cannot be racist and experience racism (which is untrue and ultimately ends up being divisive);
2) It advocates for discriminatory policies that redistribute privileges under the guise of seeking to combat them;
3) It does not account for how the somatic nature of trauma from past racism influences currently experienced racism;
4) It seeks to destroy racism using an outdated and ineffective archetypal framework of morality.
In this article, I will deal with the first problem and address the other three in separate pieces, for the sake of keeping things easy, digestible and concise (because who the fuck reads anymore? Not me).
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What are boundaries?
• a boundary is a personal limit we place around our participation within relationships. They may be involving physical contact, emotional proximity, personal privacy, language, and more. They exist within our realm of control. Imagine, I could not trespass on my neighbours property and go lock him in a cage for stealing my flowers, but I can stand on my own property and put a protective fence around my garden.
• boundaries can vary from one extreme to the other. Too rigid and harsh, or too soft and pliable. The ideal boundary exists in the middle of that spectrum, where there is a healthy stability.
• boundaries allow us to maintain a healthy sense of self within relationships, whether romantic or not. Boundaries allow us to appropriately balance and meet our own needs, while being able to acknowledge and accommodate the meeting of other needs that present in our environments.
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The above is an amazing breakdown of the phases/stages of the journey to secure. I'm paraphrasing here but it generally follows as such...
1. Unconscious Insecurity
2. Conscious Insecurity
3. Conscious Security
4. Unconscious Security
And its REEEEAALLY important to know where you land when engaging with others.
What does this mean?
If you're at level 1 and 2, you are almost certainly still a slave to your attachment wounds and reactions.
At level 1, unconscious insecurity, you don't even know how insecure you are. You are literally unaware of the wound, and unaware of how these wounds effect your behavior. This means you are almost certainly REACTIVE vs. RESPONSIVE. This means the stories and beliefs your attachment wound has created are running the show, and its likely you'll be triggered by anything or anyone who hits your pain points in just the right way. You will be an endless train of emotional reaction.
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(this article was originally posted by Nile Abasi on June 5, 2020)
I have a lot to say about the events occurring in the world right now -- much of which is contrary to any political agenda or 'correctness'. I believe some of what I have to say will be confronting to many, and if I'm honest part of me is afraid of being crucified for going against the grain of my primary liberal community but ultimately -- I am more committed to living truthfully and being honest than I am to being liked (although I have to admit, I do like it when you like me).
For those of you who don't know I'm the product of a biracial lesbian couple conceived in the heart of the nineties (close to the times of the Rodney King riots).
One of my mom's (my birth mom) is a white woman with blonde hair and blue eyes from Shaker Heights Ohio, and my other mom is a black woman from South Central LA (Compton). From birth I was raised and influenced by two completely opposing cultural backgrounds.
My biological father was a sperm donor. He is a black man I know very little about other than he was studying to become a lawyer, had high cheekbones and a nice smile.
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Recently I was chatting with a friend about the difference between the PRINCE and KING archetypes.
Here's the thing about archetypes: they are not *real*, but much like a map can give us a sense of what is out there around us, archetypes give us a sense of what is possible in terms of *how* we engage with the world.
Archetypes have been around almost forever, ever since humans were able to imagine gods and demons and spirits, each embodying the epitome of something we can only aspire to become, each giving us a sense of what is POSSIBLE.
And as archetypes developed over the thousands of years of our history, and as humans have tried to rise up to the occasion they present and look like them, archetypes began too to look like us, showing us more nuanced and refined version of what men and women COULD look like, giving us male and female archetypes.
This is where the archetype of the King, Warrior, Magician, and Lover (from Roger Moore's book of the same name) came from. Again, these are not REAL, but to a degree, we often behave AS IF they are, or at least as something to imitate, giving us guidelines for behavior, and a sense of morality: values to aspire to and develop so we can become more aware, secure, and mature.
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(this was originally posted on the Attachment Community Facebook Group)
I’ve recently been seeing many people commenting on Dismissive Avoidants (DAs) not caring about emotions, and being completely indifferent to processing anything with their partners. I just wanted to provide my own view of this, in the hopes that this might provide another dimension of understanding here.
Superpowers emerge when we go into the places where the insecurities of our attachment systems (the most sensitive parts) have over-compensated to survive, and we begin healing these parts of ourselves. We uncover the power in the deep sensitivity of these areas, and then allow the richness of wisdom here to flow through our lives.
So, while the Anxious attacher's superpower is in the realm of empathy and the Avoidant attacher's is about intellectual understanding, the Disorganized attacher's superpowers are all about somatic/primal awareness.
We’ll cover all three here.
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Trying to emotionally balance on someone who is trying to do the same thing with you will usually lead to a very challenging balancing act.
This is normal.
Ever seen two acrobats balancing on each other? There’s usually a “base” and a “flyer”. There’s never two bases or two flyers balancing on each other.
The same is true emotionally with two people. It’s always much wiser to have a base (the most emotionally balanced partner) and a flyer (the person exploring their emotions) at any one time.
For three people, you’ll notice that in a counseling/therapy situation, the practitioner will always be a version of a “base” and the partners will either be a combination of base/flyer or flyer/flyer.
In other words, it’s CRUCIAL that there be enough balance in the system (either using at least one partner or one practitioner as the base) for a volatile/challenging situation to not become too dangerous.
Again, same as with partner acrobatics.
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Essentially growing a more secure attachment style comes down to create a stable life with stable relationships as well as increasing your inner stability through practices that support it:
- embodied practice (yoga/meditation/exercise)
- reducing addictive behavior (drugs/coffee/porn/etc)
- reducing clutter/distractions
- increasing self-esteem (the book "The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem" is great and has practices in it too)
Also you can look at increasing stability in 7 different areas:
- Physical (good/enough sleep/food/water/exercise)
- Spiritual (good/enough meditation, prayer, ritual)
- Somatic (good/enough movement, dance, etc practice that involve the 4 pillars of embodiment: touch, movement, sound, breath)
- Emotional (good/enough solid/secure/fulfilling/supportive/connection with friends/family/mentors/allies who are themselves preferably secure. Therapy is an example of a secure relationship with mentorship)
- Social (good/enough interactions with peers/community that make you feel connected to the world so you don’t isolate)
- Primal (good/enough engagements with nature and the world that allow you to feel and feed your inner animal)
- Intellectual (good/enough reading/conversations/learning that allow you to know yourself and others better over time)
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There are many great insights to be found in understanding the points in this video. However, I am continually concerned about this “pathology-focused” narrative we all seem to gravitate toward in this culture.
“What’s wrong with...fill in the blank.” We often find ourselves looking for what’s wrong with others, with ourselves, with the world. What about what’s right? What can we learn from our experiences? What can we learn from the perspectives different from our own?
I can guarantee that in the future we will look back on this time of focusing on “pathology” and what is “wrong with people” as a symptom of severe disconnection with our collective humanity.
Take the point casually mentioned in this video about making sure not to label a child a narcissist, because self-focus is a critical part of our development as human beings. What about those who missed critical parts of their development? Is it not an obvious correlation to make that adults who show these traits simply missed critical development as children? Is it not obvious that those who have less privileges of wealth, security, healthy role models, education, and reassurance will have some of these traits because they display more traits of survival?
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As I've been exploring Attachment Theory, I've been wondering how it applies to open relationships, polyamory, and non-monogamy.
AVOIDANT: People with an avoidant (insecure) attachment style tend to want less emotional intimacy and are particularly skilled at deactivating their attachment system. In a non-monogamous community, this would make them the ones who can most easily play the field without really getting attached/entwined, the most picky (especially for the fearful-avoidant subtype), the least likely to fall in love, and the most desiring to "not make long term commitments".
ANXIOUS: People with an anxious (insecure) attachment style tend to go for more (emotional) intimacy as a way to keep their attachment style constantly activated. You can see them as the non-stop passionate lover. In a non-monogamous community, this would make them the most likely to repeatedly fall in love, to have multiple lovers, and to have/create the most drama in their relationships. But because anxious also often means very focused on a single person, it might also mean this attachment style will have the hardest time with their person having other lovers.
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Shadow work seems simple yet it is uncannily complex.
Wherever you see UNLOVE in the world is the place where you are doing shadow work.
This is usually a place inside of you that lacks awareness, lacks security, or lacks maturity.
In a way, it's a place inside of you that lacks integration.
As such, you engage the outside world with your misgivings, your reactions, your avoidance, your outrage, your pain, and your suffering because it seems easier than engaging with the parts inside of you that are in pain, that are dismissed, that isn't getting the attention it needs.
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Originally, it appears that gaslighting was defined as how someone is INTENT on "manipulating (someone) by psychological means into questioning their own sanity." It came from the British play "Gas Light" along with two movie adaptions named "Gaslight".
But then in order to determine something to be gaslighting, this means you have to KNOW the INTENT of the person doing it, which is much easier to assume than verify.
In recent years, there's been an arising new definition of gaslighting which seems to be about IMPACT, in line with a desire to validate feelings and experiences of those who identify as victims which have otherwise been dismissed, denied, or silenced. This would work out great if the intent of this was strictly to validate someone’s experience. However, it appears that the definition has evolved to become some version of equating IMPACT and INTENT, ie "If I feel gaslighted (IMPACT), it means you are gaslighting me (INTENT)". The problem is, since it's obvious intent isn't always present, a new expression has arisen: "accidental gaslighting", implying that someone can be gaslighting someone else without intending it. Unfortunately, this also means that INTENT no longer matters for this to be true.
So if someone is gaslighting without intending it and someone is being gaslighted without intending it, then where is the locus of RESPONSIBILITY in the engagement?
What's interesting is, the same thing can be applied to microaggressions or any other morally important topics of today where people can have very different experiences of INTENT vs IMPACT without a real way to verify intent and without a real way to verify impact (while assuming that whoever speaks of impact would never say so with an intent to harm)
So how do we resolve these differences in relative experiences?
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This feels like a great starting point for any leader out there wanting to set things up for better leadership with their community around their own personal need for sex & love and how their position can impact others. I know I've had to engage with many of the points below as a leader/facilitator/teacher myself.
Leadership can't happen alone, so having a team to support this effort is crucial and much needed. I believe that this is greatly understated in our current paradigm where we perceive leaders to be separate entities from us rather than individuals who need support for their leadership to be effective and safe(r). To believe "it's their fault and responsibility and they need to be accountable" completely absolves us from responsibility while at the same time asking us to "do something about this" which is just another way to displace responsibility to them while at the same time feeling good about doing something.
The better approach is to show up where something is missing and bring in what is missing.
That's what teamwork is.
Here goes:
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This article keeps on resonating deeper and deeper.
I've known this for a long time. Perhaps since my first acid trip. Knowing and seeing the presence of Shadow in all humans, it made me (precariously) cocky enough for me to approach it and feel into it.
Our communities of neo-pagan-tribal-hippies are so enamored with beauty and bliss -- as perfectly illustrated by the festival scene and the music scene -- and so ill-equipped with the tools necessary to handle Shadow that a veneer of dogmatic spirituality covers everything as a warm blanket, leaving it up to a few people to wrestle with the Shadow of the whole community, including the demons we create so we can cast them away in the illusion that it will make everything better. At the same time, we cannot ask for each and everyone to always wrestle with Shadow because we feel that they need it. We certainly cannot effectively blame, shame, guilt, belittle, or demonize others in doing so. When we do, we engage them with our own Shadow.
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I love.
I wish I could say that I love you, but the truth is that I just love and you happened to get in the way.
Now, most people would take offense at this, tell me how impersonal it feels, how if I just love everybody because they happen to be there then my love for any particular person is not special. But you are special before I love you. You are special even if I do not love you. You are unique, and I am unique, and therefore the love we share is unique. If you don’t feel special, it is only because you have learned to define yourself in opposition to others, competitively. You have learned to identify particular qualities in other people, decided that only by matching up to those qualities will you be worthy and important, and then you don’t match up. Maybe those particular qualities are irrelevant to your unique nature and your essence is characterized by other qualities entirely. But you do not recognize your extraordinary and beautiful qualities; instead you have lost in a competition of comparisons. And you have learned to do this and so now you are insecure.
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Welcome to my Attachment Theory Resources
Below you will find a variety of resources (tools, books, article, writing) about attachment theory.
You are free to use any of it as you as you give proper attribution to the author.
Now dive and dive deep, as the landscape of attachment theory is a rich new territory with much to explore!
Do you want to learn to become a Secure Attacher?
Truly, the solution to being in better more authentic relating where mutuality and emotional balance are present is to become more secure yourself. But this is a long journey with many pitfalls. Reach out to me to chat about taking the first steps towards happiness and fulfillment in relating!
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Welcome to the Dance of Anxious and Avoidant Relating!
FIRST, here is my resources blog post (tools/books/articles/writings) about Attachment Theory.
In the upcoming days/weeks/months, I will be populating this page with more information about developing your own secure attachment style, which is by far the most reliable way to create solid and stable and authentic relationships. For those of you who are anxious, avoidant, disorganized (with strategies of both anxious and avoidant), this is for you as you will often find yourself in an anxious/avoidant relationship dance/trap, and this is something that has been fascinating me for many years (both for having been —and still am — in them and for seeing others in them too. There are many layers, pitfalls, and challenges that await you, but I assure you, it is possible—and indeed, I could argue that it is what most people seek when they desire “the good life” that philosophy teaches us about.
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Welcome to the Journey to Secure Attachment!
FIRST, here is my resources page (tools/books/articles/writings) about Attachment Theory.
There are many layers, pitfalls, and challenges that await you on your Journey to Secure, but I assure you, it is possible—and indeed, I could argue that it is what most people seek when they desire “the good life” that philosophy teaches us about.
But beyond philosophy— and morality, ie what is good/better/right as a way to achieve it-- the journey to a secure attachment style has to necessarily begin with the nervous system which, at any given moment, gives us a sense of how we feel about the world, the people around us, and our circumstances. In other words, it’s our nervous system which tells us whether we are securely engaged with reality, moment to moment to moment.
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Most people think of responsibility and accountability as something clear and simple, something you assign to someone. But that’s just wishful thinking. We know that it won’t work unless that person has what it takes to make it happen. As such, responsibility can be defined as the areas or life/reality where they ready, willing, able, and informed—to effectively engage with.
Read that one again. If someone is lacking in readiness, willingness, ability, or if they don’t have enough information, they won’t be able to do the job of engaging well in that area.
In other words, they will more likely fail, and possibly hurt themselves or someone else in the process.
In fact, this connects with trust (ie the belief that someone will be responsible): you can absolutely trust someone to be responsible and accountable for the things they are ready, willing, able, and informed enough about. Everything else, however, you won’t be able to trust them because they won’t have what it takes to do so.
Beyond that, there’s 3 stages of responsibility, which, when developed, will lead to what I call sovereignty (ie the ability to make better choices for self and others, in connection and trust). Here they are:
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