Tag: psychology

Love and Shadow Work

Yvet YoussefLeave a comment

“The role of the artist is exactly the same as the role of the lover. If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don’t see.”

– James Baldwin

If I love you, I don’t want you to be stuck, I want you to grow. If I love you, I don’t want to get stuck, I want to grow with you, for you, for all of us. To me the very purpose of being in a relationship is to grow with someone. I have no interest in tranquility if it is housed on a gurgling cesspool of unconscious dysfunctional behavioral patterns. Such tranquility is a farce, it is not real, it is not peaceful. Peace can only ever arise from making conscious that which hides in the shadows of our being. Carl G. Jung referred to this as shadow work. And it is precisely in (conscious, self-reflective) partnership with another person that such work is particularly feasible. Why? Because when I see you – truly see you – day in day out, and if I am the slightest bit aware, those shadows of yours are going to announce themselves to me sooner or later. We all have them. In this inevitable process I will feel those shadows hurled at me with sharp clarity, at which point I can say: “Hey, you! Look at this. Here’s something to dig into because it hurts me and others”. And you, dear one, can do the same for me: “Your behavior is painful to me, let’s address what is happening here”.

And guess what happens through this type of relational labor? Peace happens. Peace happens within the awareness of the chaos. Peace happens within the acknowledgment of the pain. The moment we are conscious of our destructive and dysfunctional behavior, is the moment we can heal it, is the moment we can breathe a sigh of relief. That is what it means to me to be in a loving relationship; to trust someone to respectfully call out my bullshit because that person cares about me enough to see me do better. If we can lovingly do that for each other, Love will continue to grow, intimacy will continue to deepen, life will expand in richness and in meaning. To Love you is to see you and to support you in becoming the best possible version of yourself, which in turn helps me become the best possible version of myself. Such Love is evolutionarily, reciprocal, and regenerative.

Unfortunately, we are collectively pretty terrified of being uncomfortable. And if one thing can be said about shadow work: It is ridiculously uncomfortable. However, dismissing discomfort is much like closing the curtains to life. We have been duped by the sugary platitude of “Happily Ever After” to buy into the false idea that relationships are there to make us happy. As if it’s even possible to affix a transitory emotional state to a lifetime of perpetual changes. Philosophically we can likely agree that it is questionable whether it’s even possible to gain happiness through external acquisition. There is surely a correlation between wellbeing and having our basic human needs met, but there is a limit to how much joy can be derived from external goods and services. If happiness is an inside job, it should come to no surprise your new fling isn’t gonna give it to you. Yet in the realm of relationship we seem so addicted to this infantile storyline: “Godspeed ye innocent lovebirds carried into the distance on a sparkling carriage just smiling happily and chugging along ad infinitum towards an elusive horizon! Your coupling grants you entrance to the ranks of well-adjusted extras in a lifelong Colgate commercial!” Not only does it sound boring AF, it’s delusional as all hell. This is not fucking Pleasant Ville, you’ve got a life to live, buddy.

We are humans, we die, we lose loved ones, we meet sickness, misfortune, we grieve, we fail, we fall apart, we are wrong sometimes. Sometimes we are wrong a lot. Try to smile through that. Happy yet? What’s that? You are telling me you can’t sustain that radiant smile of yours for all of eternity? Is the denial starting to hurt? Is it beginning to feel weird? You see, I am not in this life to witness a staged performance of perpetual happiness. To be clear, I have nothing against ‘happy’ as an experience. Bless ‘happy’. I just believe we have been misguided to measure our success in life, as well as our sense of worth, on how long we can sustain a state of happiness. But happiness is not an achievement you lock into for life, it is a gift, and it arrives on our doorstep naturally when we align with our essence and learn against all odds to love ourselves fiercely and deeply. The only way we can love ourselves deeply is through a systematic dismantling of all of the places where we are in denial and full of shit. And yes, indeed, we can lovingly see each other through such a process*.

So, in lieu of a feigned smile, please give me your pain, your struggles, and your mistakes. Let’s work through the reality, the grit, the rawness, the really disturbing shadow of it all. Allow me to love you entirely and let’s be real about all the places where we have more work to do. Let’s dance through the truth of our humanness together. Let’s marvel at the messes we’ve made. Let’s shake our heads really hard. Let’s sit for a moment in how much it hurts. Breathe through it. That’s where freedom and laughter simply come to greet us on their own accord. It is such a glorious relief to surrender to the realness of it all. I am in this life for the remarkable joy of “Evolving Ever After,” instead.

* For the record, I am speaking from a perspective of personal relationships here, but this very same process holds true for our collective struggles as well. From the micro to the macro – everything is connected. James Baldwin has written extensively on the role of truth-telling in relation to racism and other injustices in our societies. True patriotism – the love for a country – thus resides in the people who dare to shine light on the horrible shadows of our nations, because only through such labor can we even start to imagine peace. Healing can only begin when we uncover the festering wounds of our collective past and present and start scooping the puss out. No, it isn’t pretty, but it is what Love does when it cares about something.

Guesthouses

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For 14 months I have slept in spare bedrooms and on couches, in hostels, in tents and on the occasional bus or balcony – relying on the hospitality of others, unable, still, to recreate what I lost, and establish a new home for myself. I know it seems strange to some people, but I also suppose most people don’t know what it feels like, so it doesn’t really matter what they think. I write this last sentence with relative ease now, but this understanding hasn’t come easy. We have to unlearn so much of our cultural and psychological programming to truly care less about other people’s judgements of us… I am still diligently working through it.

Since having been involuntarily uprooted and catapulted from one continent to another, I’ve struggled with a need for my own space, and I have wrestled with my dependency on others. It’s been a challenging time on many levels. But I have also felt a strong resistance at the thought of living in a new permanent residence by myself while pretending to be a well-adjusted independent single woman in her early thirties. As if I could lose home and hearth one minute and, without blinking an eye, feign having my shit together while painting the walls emerald green and millennial pink in some other house for me to occupy. As if it doesn’t hurt like hell. As if it hasn’t fucked me up. As if I am not still grieving a loss that extends from the material into the emotional and spiritual aspects of my being.

For years I had poured myself into the creation of a home-space and it got suddenly ripped away from me. My identity as a spouse, a stepmom, a homemaker, a caretaker of cats and plants, a maker of family meals, a collector of eclectic furniture; it all vanished one moment to the next. My hands left empty, entirely unsure of who exactly to BE now. To truly learn the lessons from this predicament, there was one message overruling all other sentiments in my mind and it sounded like this: STOP.

Stop. Stand still. Wait. Sit in this astounding agony. Be broken down for as long as it takes. Resist all external pressures towards “normalcy” – be wholly, repulsively, irritatingly, frustratingly “abnormal”. Not because you want to be recalcitrant, but because it is the healthiest thing you can do at the moment. However long it takes?

Yes. However long it takes.

The second message of equal weight has been ringing through the hallways of my heart repeatedly during this time: TRUST. Whatever this is, trust that it will bring you closer to yourself. Trust you are supported even in times of relentless turmoil. Trust the light will return. Trust your love and your vision and your intuition. Trust this path. You don’t have to know exactly where it leads.

And so I have been defying norms and convention, a full-grown adult, homeless, single and childless, without even a damned coffeemaker or vacuum cleaner or piece of furniture to call my own anymore. If life has a reset button, someone took a small pin to mine and relentlessly pressed it until the whole system was rebooted. Back at the factory settings. It’s confusing and torturous at times, yet when I look in the mirror I can look myself in the eye and say: “I Love you. I am so unbelievably proud of you, you sensitive, courageous spirit. You are doing so well with all of this”.

There’s a learning curve to losing everything. There’s a learning curve to accepting support. There’s a learning curve to living in proverbial guesthouses for a while. We are all guests, I guess. It’s just easy to forget when we crown ourselves rulers of our insulated Queen and Kingdoms of Domesticity. But do we truly own anything? The planet we get to live on? The bodies we move around in? These roofs, these couches, these cups of tea, these blankets? Take nothing for granted.

We are all reliant upon each other. We have just been taught that we can and ought to be in complete control of our own little private corners of reality, and that if we lose that control, we have somehow failed at life. We judge ourselves and feel the judgement of others. “I didn’t plan for this.” “This wasn’t supposed to happen.” Turns out we don’t really have that much control, not as much as we think we do by a long shot. Control is a rigidity that feels like strength at first, until it reveals itself as a barrier to a life blossoming.

I am, for the time being, experiencing life as a transient guest in other people’s houses, relying on the goodwill of those around me, family, friends, hospitable strangers and hostel hosts. I am floating through a vast stretch of liminal space, which I presume I have to learn to soar through freely now. To live with something I can only describe as a fluidity of presence. To receive gifts, over and over. Receiving is a difficult task for many of us self-reliant, control-freakish, independent creatures of habit. But it’s a powerful exercise. To say “thank you” again and again and again, until all uncomfortable fear-based-pride is pulverized, THANK YOU.

I know deep in my heart, there will be a time I will occupy a home-space to call my own again, with a coffeemaker, millennial pink walls, and a bunch of amazing rugs. I know that I will open that space for others who are then where I am now. To pay it forward. To give what I have learned to receive. To support others on similar journeys. I find solace in that knowing. And I trust it will happen in exactly the right place and in exactly the right time.

“She Feels the Music”

Yvet Youssef5 Comments

Some weeks ago I found myself at one of the most mesmerizing concerts. The sound was perfect, the music was pure excellence, and the venue was beautiful. World class musicians producing sparkling melodies and stirring rhythms. Imagine yourself in this space for a moment. Can you see it? Soul uplifting gloriousness. While I am taking in this incredible soundscape, a group of tall Dutch white men gather several feet away from me. I notice they gather so close to me because I was dancing, and they kinda took my dancing space… I get slightly irked when people invade my dancing space whenever there is actually plenty of room everywhere else. It’s like being in a long row of completely empty toilet stalls, and the next person entering the bathroom picking that one stall right next to you. And now your pee won’t come out until they leave, so you are just staring at the shoes of your new neighbor thinking: “Of all the stalls, in all the world, you had to pick the one right next to mine?” And I know they can tell I am being exceptionally quiet, so there is this awkward silent standoff happening until one of us flushes first. Yeah, OK, so I have public-toilet-issues, I know some of you out there know what I am talking about…

Anyway, I digress. We were at a concert. The men were closing in. But that was not all. In a completely silent concert hall, where everyone is moved by the gorgeous sound, these men begin an absurdly loud conversation amongst themselves. Let me tell you this: Nothing gets me out of musical ecstasy quite as fast as a group of insensitive men talking way too loud about absolutely nothing to each other through a performance. Let’s call this the sonic equivalent of man-spreading. It is incredibly annoying and energetically invasive. Since I feel like I can no longer afford being very shy about making my needs known to people, I begin frantically waving at these guys to please be quiet. But, as was already clear from their irreverent talking, they were not aware enough of their surroundings to notice me. I try to immerse back into the music while attempting to ignore their chatter. The band announces their last song, and as they begin playing the men start talking yet again. I decide to tap one of them on the shoulder and gesture my request for their silence during this last song. One of them nods at me. They stop talking for a while.

As I go back into the soundscape, I feel thankful for getting to witness this music. I close my eyes and my body naturally sways to the beautiful melodies when suddenly a voice interrupts from behind me. One of the men. This guy had apparently been observing me dance and felt the pressing need to unsubtly inform his pals: “She feels the music” – followed by one of those utterly stupid Beeves and Butthead type of chuckles: huhuhh huhuh. I don’t visibly respond to this, but again jolted out of my communion with the sound, I think to myself: “What the hell else is a person supposed to do with music?”

At a different location I am attending a concert by an incredible band that plays some of the best psychedelic rock of this generation. I notice the crowd exists primarily of men and that the venue is a little bit too crowded for my taste. My friend and I find a spot in the back that has slightly more wiggle room. As should be clear by now, I am pretty particular about space during concerts, and if I don’t have at least a little wiggle room, I will likely leave. The reason for this is that I feel the need to move my body when I hear good music, and if I am prevented from doing so in an overcrowded space I get pretty intense claustrophobia. Additionally, I find that if I can’t move freely with the music, I am less capable of receiving it completely. I want to hear it with my ears but, since I have the physical ability, also with my spine and my arms and my legs. As the concert ensues, I look out over the crowd and notice that 95 percent of the people is standing completely still. Two young guys are standing still in front of me. One taps the other on his shoulder and says: “You could also play this” – in a tone that reveals a certain criticism of the sound. As if the fact that this music is playable by other musicians is somehow reducing their ability of enjoying it. 

I try it out for a while, to stand completely still, no movement, just observing. The music comes in through my ears and stops at the brain. I experience the music maybe at a 25 percent, if not less. As soon as I move my body with the melodies I start feeling the music more intensely again and start enjoying what before was merely alright.

Then it hits me. In our intellect driven world the experience of live music for many people is also reduced to an intellectual affair. The very art form that is meant to move every cell in your body and vibrate your entire Being to a different level of consciousness has become, left in the hands of the cultural descendants of the European enlightenment, something to merely observe with the mind. So if you are not feeeeeling the music, then you must be thinking about it: …Is it good, is it not good, can I play this or can’t I play this, which guitar brand is that, how does it compare to the record, are the band members interacting with each other, I think I think I think I will give this performance a 6.6 on a scale of one to ten… 

I look around the static crowd and suddenly feel sad. Because this precisely illustrates the biggest problem of our time. Our inability to feel. Feeling, our society instructs, is something not to be taken seriously, something to be made fun of, ridiculed even. Especially (though not exclusively by any means) by men, who have been systematically trained to repress their feelings and to rely entirely on intellectual capacities for “survival” in a hyper-rational world. A woman intensely experiencing music and swaying her body to the sound is so peculiar that someone feels the need to comment on it followed by an awkward chuckle. Because the feminine, the creative, the physical, the embodied, the sensual has been repressed for so incredibly long it makes people feel uncomfortable.

We are collectively so afraid of the body. So afraid of sensuality. So afraid of expressing ourselves in abundant bliss. We have created repressive barriers where unbridled ecstatic flow should be. (And BTW, this also includes the fear of peeing in public toilets for the strange anxiety of someone else hearing you during the most basic and essential task in human-body maintenance…) We have this idea that we live in relative freedom, but we don’t take into account the ridged complexes of our collective culture of emotional, spiritual, and sensual oppression. And we are primarily just talking about dancing here, but think about what this means for the ways in which people make love to each other…. Holy shit…. That’s really awful. Hyper-rational sex, anyone? I think I’ll pass, thank you very much. I don’t want that. I don’t want that confinement. I want to move. I want to sway. I want freedom.

I have lived for decades with detailed instructions from the headquarters of our culture on how to hate my body. I have been told time and again to “act normal” – which is actually the commandment of invisibility. Don’t show yourself too much, don’t express yourself too much, don’t enjoy yourself too much. I have spent decades struggling to unlearn those messages, and to learn how to love my body regardless. It’s an ongoing process. We are here on Earth in physical form for a short amount of time. Nobody really knows what happens afterwards. Can we afford to let our time here be controlled by fear of our own capacities? Or do we wake up from our disconnected slumber to wholeheartedly, profoundly, and unapologetically FEEL the music?

On Meditating Through the Mess

Yvet YoussefLeave a comment

I am living the cliché: The newly separated woman in her early 30’s seeking guidance from the realms of spirituality and psychology in order to make sense of the chaos that has become her life. You know, the woman who has just lost such large chunks of the identity she had eagerly been building for about 8 years of marriage and step-motherhood in a different country that she now – after being unceremoniously rejected by her partner – simply doesn’t know how to set one foot in front of the other. I have always been deep diving into philosophical quandaries and explorations of consciousness, so this is not new territory to me, it’s just all that’s left now. During this transition phase, I rapidly chartered the help of a Jungian psychologist; I regularly visit spiritual websites trying to find some solace for the godawful, heart wrenching pain I experience every single day; I visit stores that sell self-help books and chakra colored candles to inspire some kind of healing in this wreckage of a human heart. Needless to say: I’ve been having a really shitty time. As a diligent seeker of wellbeing I, of course, have been pointed to the power of meditation repeatedly by every single person who has had anything to say about helping oneself recover after such heartbreak.

Now, I am not an avid meditator. My biggest barrier during the slew of meditation and sound-healing classes that I have taken part in over the years has been my body. If I have to sit cross-legged, straight up, on a hard pillow for an hour, I get so distracted by the aching pain in my lower back that emptying the mind is virtually impossible. Yes, I hear you: Yoga, right? That’s what yoga is for, to train the body for meditation! Well, it is not trained for meditation, and it’ll take some years to fix that. So, in the meantime, I have been laying in bed with my headphones on, listening to a variety of YouTube’s guided-meditation-videos where the soothing voices of strangers lead me through imagined landscapes of lights and colors and energies, through the body and into the Universe. I don’t know if they help, but I can’t afford skepticism right now.

When my psychologist also implored me to meditate to clearly distinguish between my consciousness and the drama that unfolds around me in the shape of my life, I figured I should try to graduate from the kindergarten of mediation, to, well, let’s say 1st grade. (Not dissing the YouTube variety, I love everyone who invests time in making solid meditation videos – especially if they also manage to keep the notifications from their phones silent during the recordings!) So, I got the sage out that I had recently bought in one of those spiritual bookstores, I wrapped myself up in scarfs and blankets, and in the thick sage-smudge that filled my brother’s apartment, (which I reside in when he’s away because I am homeless – in the sense that I don’t have a home of my own anymore/as of yet) I closed my eyes and began to meditate.

Breathing in and breathing out slowly. Letting the thoughts arise as they may, and – without judgement – releasing them. After a couple of minutes of unhooking my mind from solid thoughts I marveled at the astounding variable density of thinking. As in; there are a lot of very obvious robust thoughts, but there also also very elusive thoughts that make themselves so thin and sheer that it almost seems as though they are not there. However, upon deepening your awareness, they sure are there, almost transparent, trying to have their moment! Sneaky bastards! There are bison thoughts, unapologetically barging in. There are mice thoughts, scurrying around in corners, difficult to catch. And there are chameleon thoughts, blending in with the backdrop of your mind so well you have to look very hard to recognize them. So, I sit there for a while clearing away these thoughts, and after some time of stillness I hear myself thinking: “This is going pretty well, I think I am not that bad at meditating” – and suddenly I begin laughing really hard.

I can’t stop laughing for a while and think: “Why the hell do you need to be good at meditating right away? Who is keeping score? What are you trying to prove?” Suddenly all these identities come rushing by, and this need to be “good”. I wanted to be the “good” daughter, never really rebelling, and always being home 10 minutes before curfew. I wanted to be the “good” student, even when basically impossible, I read all the assigned articles in graduate school – all of them – way, way, way too many of them. I wanted to be the “good” wife, making sure I had coffee and dinner ready for my partner exactly after he awoke, right before he had to leave for night shift, hoping to ease his stress, and hoping to connect with him in the unsustainable schedule we had involuntarily acquired. I wanted to be the “good” stepmom, so even when my stepson was pushing my buttons by arguing every single sentence that came out of my mouth relentlessly, I cleaned up his room so he could feel comfortable and at home. Fuck, I even wanted to be the “good” “other woman” to my husband’s ex by watching my stepson whenever she needed it during her scheduled days (nope, didn’t work!) And when I go to an institute for intuition and energy healing in yet another attempt to find some meaning in all of this mess, I get nervous, because what if I don’t have a “good enough” aura? Haha! What?!

As I am laughing at myself, I feel this surge of warmth rise up from my heart and I hear myself quietly whispering: “It’s OK, I already love you” – and tears start rolling down my face.

There is nothing wrong with acts of service, with care, with being responsible, and treating others with kindness and respect as much as possible. Those are wonderful qualities. But there is nothing to win there, there’s no approval to gain, no appreciation to distill from the hearts of others in an attempt to feel safe or accepted. The amount of love others are able to give is simply a reflection of the love they are able to give themselves. Therein lies our true work; to love ourselves. I am an amateur meditation practitioner who is probably going to fall asleep to another one of YouTube’s “guided meditations for empaths” or something along those lines. And each day, as a practice, I am going to love this sweet heart of mine so warmly that it will slowly heal, so that it will be able to meet others along the way with sincere love and kindness. And I will try a bit more “grown-up” meditation tomorrow, because, they keep saying it can lead to some real insights about yourself…