When you know there’s at least one person in your life who believes you and takes your side – you won’t really fret about convincing anyone else like it’s a matter of life vs death, sanity vs madness.
Ideally, that’s your mother (or father, grandparent or any person reliably available in that role). Tragic if not.
When that one person is a mother who takes your side – believes the report, answers the bid, stays in the room so there is a place to come back to – the rest of the day does not get to be a trial. Someone on the playground was a dumbass. That’s weather. Insults are junk paper. You go home, you eat, you laugh about it with the person who already decided you were real. The nervous system can retire the job of finding a witness. The street stays the street.
But when that element – the loving mother, the safe home – is missing, the nervous system does not retire the job. Instead, it begins to outsource that role to anyone: classmate, boss, comment, a new group of people.
And “anyone” is a terrible mother. Not because the street is full of villains who want to bleed you dry. A stranger in sympathetic weather was never meant to be the safe base – they have their own scan running.
The most you usually get is trust: they believe you until believing you starts looking too expensive. The moment they suspect you might fail them – accurate or not, lucky or unlucky – the yes is up for review. That is how trust is not confidence. Confidence doesn’t put the chair back on the market when you wobble, or when the boss hallucinates that you wobble.
Some people walk through the world as if every room were optional weather. Some people walk through it as if every room were a hearing.
As a side-note, plenty of people do get lucky, though – not all motherless/homeless are doomed to wander the deserts alone until they discover God was with you steadfast all along. Kind neighbours do exist – and their kindness does a lot of work. While this is a reality too, it is certainly not the kind of kindness the majority of strangers are ready to offer.
Reflex.
I realized this quite late in the story-so-far, how I had developed a kind of a reflex when my observation or report got challenged. And first, what I mean by getting a report challenged: e.g. when I say I am too overwhelmed, tired or whatever to go through with something, and the counter rejects it – suggesting I am lying in order to get away with a lighter load (strangely, it is often the people who carry the biggest loads and when they begin to wobble under it, who get the “benefits” of these accusations).
So, what is the reflex when my report about myself or the integrity of the system or the group gets rejected? I take the rejection as a challenge (I mean, I try not to, anymore – I’m trying to undo some 30 years of bad habits here – that is one of them). And it didn’t land as “I don’t believe you (and this is the final verdict)” – but it landed as “Prove it!”*
*I suspect this is also why a challenged report so often ends in a hunt for official proof. If the people in the room won’t believe you, the next witness is a document, a label, or a body that finally looks injured enough to count. That’s not an argument against help. It’s what the prove-it reflex does when the parish stays closed.
Thanks to this reflex, over the course of 30 years, I developed a skill for neat rhetoric under pressure. Separation of fact from fantasy, clear observations and then following the chain of effects to demonstrate how my report or observation is solid.
Well, guess what?
No one ever was impressed by it as much as they were annoyed (they unleash a course of juicy insults when you’re too articulate), and overall they didn’t give a shit about the system or distress anyway 😀 (their own nervous systems are set on imaginary fire – what do you expect?)
It’s a good skill anyway. But the later lesson regarding the use of that skill is that there’s no point in trying to offer perfectly articulated points (and why not an entire genius program of reform to save the little system) to a person in sympathetic triage mode as if they were patient and curious as Christ.
Mommy Issues.
So, there is something to the disparaging “mommy issues” – but not in the way it is usually meant. When someone drops that on you, it’s usually meant as “back off, you’re too needy” – while what makes them flex away isn’t you being too needy or sticky, but a perfectly natural bid for connection that they deem themselves unable or unwilling to answer (I’m pretty sure they are projecting greed or deceit at that point – a person who feels safe enjoying their access to Ventral Vagal dominant states would rarely make such an accusation – so, it is often a sign of a defended state – they’re just at a much more aggressive state to protect themselves from “getting played” or whatever their own plan must be).
What I mean to say by this is that when the safe base was missing, it’s not really that we are looking to project a loving mother to a stupid and identityless enough person to fill that role. The absence of the safe base doesn’t mean we get to turn someone else into our mother – and actually I believe no one really intends to do that anyway – but is it really so wrong to expect that your friends, your partners scrap the trust and pick up on confidence – understand that seeing others as equals is the only true way to exercise clean respect?
It does become “sort of” wrong once you see the nerves mapped all over it – but that thing, seems to me, to work both ways. You can change the story in your head to regulate your nervous system. No, not everyone wants to attack you and rob you blind. Judge not.
*
Much like with the Solid Mother and the Safe Base we stop relying so much on the external factors to define our worth and determine whether we can contribute at all – figuring how our neuroception determines our states – our levels of vigilance or jadedness – and figuring that neuroception wears coloured glasses – if you keep telling yourself it is a dog-eat-dog world and no one is coming to save you, that answering bids with snark’n’sarc is your personality and you love being hated for it – you are very effectively limiting your own system from accessing states of unincentivised curiosity and ledgerless social-interest.
Judge not.
Peace be with you.
References
- Gottman’s “Relationship Cure” will tell you everything you need to know about bidding (I am sorry about the self-helpish title of the book – what a bummer! :D)
- Porges’ Polyvagal Theory will tell you everything you need to know about the modes of your nervous system as a functional map; the anatomy is debated (from which you can extrapolate the curiosity, self-defence, depressive states etc easily).
- No idea what else I read that was relevant to reaching this.
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