Placing Ourselves In The Line of Fire

The Quiet Ways We Harm Each Other

Data Collectors,

Have you ever stopped to think about the every day ways we don’t see how we place ourselves in the line of fire? Every time we resist the nuance to humanity. The messiness, the free will of individuality and in doing so we miss ourselves.

We miss the moments that can bond us, unite us, imprint us with more core memories. But, as long as we stay distracted by the VECNA energy, the ANTs (automatic negative thoughts) of our minds it will continue to infiltrate our perception. That’s why having access to very superficial forms of dopamine, such as validation by someone else vibrating at the same frequency as you in the comment section, or a video with millions of views that discusses the same trauma wound, man/woman bashing, and that made us feel seen. This is the sickness, we don’t realize how dangerous having something in own hands where instead of sitting with the very thoughts we are in an endless loops of processing—everything. Is that not like the bell Pavlov used to condition the dogs? Over time that consistent behavior of allowing what’s in our minds to essentially choke hold ourselves. Many of us are talking to ourselves in our own heads more than we are with other people. We sit with the same mental images of a story. Your version. Nuance to a nervous system that vulnerable will see anything that is different as a dismissal of their version. The more I observe human behavior, the more I see how drowning in our suffering story serves no one— not even ourselves. We keep ourselves in a prison needing everyone to validate our version of the pain not seeing the selfishness behind how that robs others of their version—now another loops begins.

Yet, many don’t see it.

You can’t when you are in it. That’s the point of Napoleons Hills Book “Outwitting The Devil.” When you are drifting you are lost to the path of getting back in alignment with yourself.

Many of us know what we need to do. It’s the doing of it that gets really hard. So we start listing all the disorders, chronic issues, and systemic injustices to fill the gap of the doing not realizing that listing them all keeps the wounds fresh in your mind and just becomes yet (insert DJ Khaled voice) another loop of justifications for our behavior or lack of.

We get in our own way and we know it.

Remember, we all individually make up the people. If the world is a mess—well, it’s made up of—the people. The systems that have caused harm we the people are also apart of.

Think about it…

It’s your legal counsel and their team, the micro aggressions that live between the jury and the judge or even the judge and the lawyer working your case. The professor and the student. The veteran employee and the new hire with fresh knowledge and a highly supported approach. We are afraid of being “left behind”or “replaced” so anyone that feels like a threat to us is then automatically projected onto as if they are. Despite the amygdala forgetting we are at work (it doesn’t have eyes so it is counting on us and our differentiation to guide it to truth), we do not see the repercussions of our beef with people at work and how it impacts our work performance and how that performance can impact customer, client, patient, students, etc.

Let’s play with an example here ok. I want us to look at how we—the people—actually build the "broken systems" we complain about. It doesn’t always look like a big, formal policy that causes harm; usually, it’s just unaddressed human leakage that no one feels safe to name or even address.

Characters: Violet the customer, client, patient, what ever floats your boat.

Staff member: A

Staff member: B

Notice how you know nothing about A & B, not their roles, job description, backgrounds, gender, age, none of it—because it doesn’t matter. This isn’t about those identities and labels it’s about the relational space and what happens within it when emotional energy arises.

Let’s pretend this case with violet really triggers some thing inside staff member A, and Staff member B is taking that emotional leakage from A, personal and as a result their beef essentially causes Violet to lose out on intentional effort and the outcome she needed for the services these staff members are suppose to provide her. Ever had work stress that caused insomnia, anxiety, xyz? Ever look at how your work performance gets neglected? In Violet’s case she loses out, due to a dynamic that has nothing to do with Violet at all. So forms get bypassed, deadlines get missed, because the staff are in a stress response due to each other. Their unhealed, unaddressed dynamics costs violet her custody situation, or her health situation, or xyz. This is how we the people make up the very systems we complain about or deem as “not good.” Look at the reenactments that show up in the workplaces. Look how personal bias, workplace conflicts, spill into the work itself often causing death in some environments.

It has nothing to do with what our nervous system is perceiving. Yet our perception dictates how we move through the world. We take it out on the call line workers, the custodians that keep our environments clean, the truck drivers we cut off on the highway because we are impatient but forget they are the ones that deliver our goods.

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How many of you thought immediately after reading that “well the truck drivers…"?”

See, as if whatever we say within the rebuttal justifies. We have become a society of graspers. Grasping for what we can to justify harm done to us or others in our “tribe.”

We do it even in the smallest ways. Especially under stress, especially towards our loved ones. Let’s look close in the micro.

Maybe we are in a streak of not getting good sleep, maybe our back is hurting, we are on our menstrual cycle, we are stretched thin because of outside demands, kids, finances, xyz. Whatever it is. We each get pulled emotionally into emotional states that leave us feeling moody, irritable, apathetic, angry, etc. The safety to speak is about having the safety to be in moods other than moods that are deemed “socially polite” that customer service effort gets to come off like a bra after a long day. 🤭

That type of relief but with emotions, we get to come as we are where we are. We can have RBF without our partner thinking we are mad at them. We don’t have to walk on eggshells with our emotional hygiene especially on dirty days. We all have dirty days.

That’s the point isn’t it? We must be accountable of those dirty days and own them, name them, give grace to ourselves, our partners, our family for being in an emotionally dirty day..

When I work with couples. We always have compassion for the children when they cry, are moody, have tantrums, even when they hit. We can excuse it because “they are tired, hungry, sick, etc. However, when are partner is cranky, snappy, or in mood we deem that as unacceptable. We don’t come with the same grace. Remember the child in us didn’t just vanish, it got taller, and hidden under the stress of adulthood. That child comes out effortlessly when we give ourselves moments of joy. But that’s a different topic. Can you see how we have the ability to give the patience, yet choose not to because “well he’s an adult, she is grown, I shouldn’t have to.”

Who said?

Humanity is messy, moody, and irritating at times— scratch that— most of the time.

We all have an emotional battery that starts to die and the emotional frequency shifts. We forget that shift is felt externally. Often times discharged on the kids or our partner. People around us. We can see this at scale in the macro, especially online.

I have been making it a point to get back on track with my spiritual routine. Prayer, meditation, gratitude. Most important— physical movement and mobility. I think maybe as I almost enter my 35th level of life in exactly 2 months today actually (July 3rd baby) 🥳

The importance of body movement though is something I can’t take for granted. It’s very easy to as well.

Anyways, my point. I don’t know about any of y’all but these last few months have draaaagggggeeeeeed my ass. 😮‍💨 Tested me in ways that were severely uncomfortable. I also feel a shift on social media. More people are waking up to the upside down reversal. We can clearly see how many are prioritizing follow count over professional ethics, accountability, sequential structure, but please honeybees. Zoom out farther than that.

The cognitive conditioning to our neural pathways. We are already a sick and mentally unwell society. We are plugged in like VECNA’s tentacle things — to the screens. We drink and drink what the algorithm tells us as well as the news outlets. We believe anything we see even if we didn’t see it with our own eyes, and even if we know that Ai exists.

Differentiation is not just a necessary skill it may just end up becoming a survival skill necessary for navigating the new world that is trying to develop. Cognitve shortcuts straight to labeling, diagnosing, and bypassing— to justify ourselves or at least distract attention from the truth. Our inability to allow others outside of ourselves their truths because we aren’t secure in our own. We can label ourselves experts just because we decided to and we have the “followers” to justify it.

Can’t we see though. The farther we get away from community. The farther we stay othering everyone around us to protect ourselves from — ourselves. The more we get in our own way. Think about it, in reality when true crisis occurs, natural disasters, etc, I have seen people jump into help, rescue, xyz. Regardless of the very things we use to divide. Doesn’t that show you how it’s all ego noise? Over time the work gets more clear. The ability to differentiate, hold nuance and still stay rooted in yourself. Exposing self to differences allows you the ability to get closer to your own values. You get to disagree and still—be.

Wild concept am I right?

Don’t worry, I am in practice with you all too!

This month we explore concepts that we can actually try. Start putting into practice strategies to really work on pause. If we don’t know where to begin then let’s just start with the art of doing and saying nothing at all.

Something I know I too can work on🤭

Till next time data collectors.