We also saw this in social therapy and Rojzman wrote a book called "how to avoid violence thanks to conflict".
Actually he disagree with the extension of the word conflict to violence.
We need places and ways to express conflict more and better and more safely! Of course, in that case, conflict just mean you disagree and oppose views. Personaly I just want my view to be seen and see the other's.
A big piece we saw to avoid escalating from conflict to violence was to be true, even already to oneself, about our possible responsability. If there is safety to express it, it can lower the emotional level.
Then being personal enough to keep seeing we are humans!
Thanks Matthew you are pleasant to read and obviously walking your talk!
I cannot copy from my phone now I was reacting about taking others values into account because when people do, I feel they are not true to themselves.
If you read me about veganism, it is easy with some neighbours because we have respect for our values. But if I felt hidden contempt , that would be different.
About vocabulary, I am super picky about meaning, with the challenge of a foreign language added... because I got it transmitted by my mom unconsciously.
As a child she realized quite late that her mom had not lost a child in the forest but that this elder brother had died.
We all have some sort of emotions behind our reactions!
Not a lot, all. And all of us except enlightened persons (I know only one...).
Trauma has different definitions, but if you take it as ANS (Autonomous Nervous System is so long to write!) consequences of past events, we all have some sort of trauma, and the inprint can have Little to do with the intensity of "trauma as event".
Trauma response is quite relative, and comes from all that was too strong or too early or too repeated or too soon, or most or all of this… The ANS was literally stuck and wounded, same as any other body system, like when you break a bone. But it is not considered as such and is not treated as a physiological issue though it is!
A lot of so called bad behaviors seem to be calling for a repetition of the trauma. When you know this, you can sometimes guess the type of trauma a person had had (though often you Will not get the story, just the field). this has neurological explanation: the body is stuck in an unfinished response and try to complete it, (if you read Peter Levine about it). So, we have some sort of "antenna" or instinct that tells the ANS "here you can have some hope to be in the same situation, and it Will give you the opportunity to actívate what is stuck, and be successful and this Will discharge and let go the stuck energy and then you Will be fine."
It is true but in general we fail to solve the nervous activation, and need to repeat. When we get it, in general we have a strong body reaction and if well sustained, then the extra energy that had been waiting or years to go, can discharge as if connected to an earth rod. The biggest problema we have to solve in order to do this is shame. We can hardly show the trembling after just escaping from a car accident and we are told to be strong too soon!
Barb Allen, you have a way to answer that seems to be inspired by plants… A form of mirroring... or it is the miracle from plants, because we have to use our imagination and recall what we feel when we are with plants.
My welcoming of imagination comes from my somatic basis... it is about the ANS - Autonomic Nervous System - and I think that our nerves can be like antennas and receive some subtleties. Our nervous system obeys 2 rules:
1) there is no tense, past present or future, as all is felt in present time,
2) and there is no difference between reality and imagination. Or else we would see no interest in a movie!
The ANS is a good way to make see some things are not woo woo but scientific!
and language is many things. People who see their plant dries out and give water do not see that they communicated? You see illness or yellow leaves and you try to guess what to do = what to answer to the plant message!
Ok now I can see it, like different examples of how we can value each theme. What can make us feel we reach achievement, or feel security…
I try to express my values in terms of "this is how I see this in terms of causes and consequences".
In my somatic tradition, "meaning" means how our mind "glues" things together to make sense of our experiences and integrate them. The same story can one day change meaning because after an accident as a child, we had for example seen the anger of our dad and it felt bad and then after some personal work about the memory and the emotional let go, the person can suddenly see another meaning, dad was not angry at me and my mistake, but so upset that I might have died! So he loved me and now i can feel it and see it so clearly! This is the sort of thing that i call meaning.
Joe Moon wrote:Giving time is the greatest thing we can give.
This is true. I often say "take all the time you need".
I trained in somatic Experiencing. We let go of emotions, but at embodiment level, and this is more tan emotions actually.
Once in a practise, we lost time and I was left with barely 10 mns instead of 30... So we just started at once. I had the idea... I said exactly this:
"I know you know this, that we need to take time, but how does it feel if I tell you that though we have Little time, you can take all the time you need?"
She took a deep emotional breath and sighed. Then it was with very little talking but reflecting what was happening, and it felt like waves going up and easily discharged! I saw in the eyes how much everybody was stunned at seeing it! Sometimes we do not even do that much in 1 full hour session!
Letting go is to allow the wave of sympathetic activation to grow and resolve by itself in parasympathetic, without staying stuck in the activation and without dissociating from the intensity. More easily said than done!
There might be quite some difference when people live and now even grow up in a city, or in nature. in nature, I think we can share much more. I get along pretty well with some neighbours, but if you had told me beforehand I was going to be friend with people who are practising catholics, vegan and from the extreme right… I would not have believed it!
About politics? Now I see it from a nature point of view and I agree with none of the sides, and I could justify it though it would cost an effort. Let's say I feel it with almost no words.
Oh I try now! I see the right side as using too much resources and being based on irrealistic "growth". I see the left as not giving enough responsability to individuals and trying to replace the support of small groups by welfare. In both cases, some people benefit from either approach. And in the end none of us will really beneficiate from the earth being sucked up without thinking of resources being needed for ..how many centuries more? Even diatomaceous earth will one day be in short supply!
Dave Burton wrote:
From the video description:
"Are we dehumanizing people who are part of our out-groups today? Humans are tribal creatures, and we tend to view our in-groups more favorably. But research has shown that some people can see out-group members as less-than-human."
This is definitely what we saw in my training in Social Therapy… Rojzman even says the definition of violence, to make the difference with anger and defending one's own limits, is if we still considere or not the other person(s) as human or not. And dehumanizing can last the 3 seconds we use a depreciative comment!
He also advised to always read newspapers that are not from our political bias etc!
I do not really see how to use this big diagram!
We cannot either be some sort of false chameleon trying to use others' values in order to be créate some bond... This looks like strategy I have seen dating men use, or comercials trying to sell!
I find true though that meaning in the sense of making meaning of life, has to do with values, but who has ever met somebody who shares all the same values?
…..
This largely tells the truth about "meaning" being the cement that creates some of our personal coherence, when it has been hurt by some life events and that we had to find a meaning out of it… As we say "so that it makes sense"... and we believe that things happened to us so that we could learn a lesson, learn from a mistake... Then of course, try to make meet 2 persons who received opposite lessons! Who Will want to encounter an old trauma hidden behind a belief, that can even be a false belief that is easier to believe than what really happened…
Lito George wrote:b) My wife thinks I am the King of her World (and says so frequently)
c) Have a child, things break down (I am there every moment in support, she now calls me SuperDad and give me a physical TShirt that says it)
This just tilted…
I have also studied social therapy and thus communication in case of violence, and you did not see it coming : it starts when people exagerate the admiration they have for you! Deception Will come. Violence is about not seeing the humanity of a person, and this is what she did from the start! She over-sees you, you are King or superDad, but you are an image, you are not really the real simple man you are. I can tell you that I flee any excessive admiration because I know the reverse Will come one day.
I have also learned in this course that there is no way to find a way out of violence if both parties are not seeing - both - that it is interesting to do so. It means the good conditions happen when involved people are forced to go on living so close one to the others that it becomes a better option to talk about it and find solutions.
It is true that apart from what says Burra Maluca, a lot of the chores when done by men are called "helping", lol...
And now with the developping transgenderism and no fixed gender roles, what Will happen if pair 2 people who have the same knwoledge and capacities? We cannot learn everything, so I think that the traditional division not only of chores but of work - and this can be quite different from culture to culture - was not a bad idea.
In the modern world, when both work outside and both tend to buy ready made food and rely on professionals to repair most of the stuff at home and in the garage… nothing looks very clear to me!
I must say that, as living in nature, I am quite happy if a man can save me from doing what I am not strong enough to do! And then my thankful heart Will look for the best way to signal my happyness and be equitative in the sharing.
Chris Kott wrote:Please don't misunderstand me. I care for the welfare of animals, especially those that I eat.
I know I care, and anyone who pays any attention at all will get that.
I feel for you and she hurt with her violence the point of making you have to stand for you real care and show what should not need to be shown. Sometimes this violence can be subtle and I have received it too. It is immoral from those people and should be condemned already tacitely as it is not by law. If you had received the same violence for your sexual orientation,t henn you would have been allowed to sue her!
Chris Kott wrote: , but those too alien, too far-removed from us, like fungi, plant life, and bacteria, are fair game. And I am the specist?
I know I care, and anyone who pays any attention at all will get that. I don't source what meat I do eat from reliably sustainable and ethical sources because I like paying the premium.
Is there a kind but clear way to let vegans come to the conclusion themselves that they could be as guilty of specism as they claim omnivores to be, and because they've limited the scope of their systems, their concept of organisms that can feel pain, to those who can express it closest to us? Or am I off-base
Has any permie already seen that animals other than humans are actually specists?
Apart from the case of mothers who rescue some lost Young of another species, I can see everywhere that animals care for their own species, and that it Works very well to maintain balance in nature! Anti-species are actually violent to their own species more thann to other species, and this is not acceptable in terms of respect. Again, I admit all diets including people who eat what I cannot, and I would not even interfere if people hurt themselves, as long as they do not ask me for advice. Who knows if my diet absolutely suits me?
But discriminating people on their way of eating, and being violent within our own species while other animals are much SAFER within their OWN species, NO!
Speciesm is not a valid discrimination and hides violence against people who made different choices.
Lito, others need to have a good reason for communication, it needs both sides to want to.
What you need is to look for the way to stop the fight that is in you, and I know you cannot do this with a snap of fingers. I am trained in Somatic Experiencing, and this is the sort of modality that would do you good, as it is from the somatic levvel and deals with the pain. I am sure your pain is as real as if you had been hurt physically! This is why I hate the words our languages use, when we say "mental illness". No this is not mental but organic, physiological, physical! The somatic level is the kind of work that Will ease the pain in you, and Will allow you to fight if necessary, but with much less pain and thus much more strength.
This might help you recover your energy, as this sort of story is drenching. The good news is that this somatic work is a sort of inner alchimy, and that you can have a good surprise about an inner transformation of this pain… Trust the laws of the autonomic nervous system and learn about it… Become an alchimist dude!
I started carnivore diet thanks to permies forum and Matt Walker who explained his experience and healing.
Most of my neighbours are vegan. We know each other and they have seen me getting better. They know I would love to be able to eat my own fruits but that I say they hurt my guts.
Some of them even tell me that I showed them that, truely, not everybody can eat vegan, that it is not as universal as they thought! But some others have told me that they would prefer to stay ill than quit their vegan diet.
So the 1st argument is to say that we all have a different microbiome, and that unfortunately you cannot eat the way they do.
2nd point is respect. I want to make sprout the idea that we should ask for laws to adapt to this new wave, and considere "EATISM", discrimination on your way of eating, to be as reprehensive as sexism and racism. If we let people love as they want, I think that to let people eat as they need is a basic right!!!
I have nothing against people and they can eat plant-based, which is what say people who want to signal they are not fanatics, but veganism is linked to convincing others to change diet and embrace veganism. I do not considere it a a sect or a religion as some say, but as an extremism that basically need others to become vegan. I do not mean all the people, but the definition of veganism as a movement. I do not deny that some people seem to be ok on this diet, and do not pretend that they all become ill just because some really do.
It is just not for everybody. Who pretends the reverse is just violent. This is the difference I think there is between those who eat plant-based and those who eat vegan. (well some say they eat vegan also because the name is beautiful! I know vegan who eat animal products also when they feel the need. When I wrote so once, I was furiously answered they were not vegan but flexitarian!! )
Dale, what you say is one part of the communication, but the meaningful conversation Kenneth was talking about is something else and goes beyond words meaning. lol I cannot understand paul's accent very well, so I ever listen to any podcast (if they made transcripts I might have chance...). I am sure I can have meaningful conversatios though, because meaning beyond translation is a global view of the world, it is how we give meaning to all that is not very coherent. It is about story telling, as we learned from a recent autor here, Matt dicks.
But ok, something is about vocabulary too, and yes if we want to go deeper, we need more vocabulary.
If we need to use the words "insect" or "tree", we cannot talk about our environment with people who really know it!
I am Reading the free chapter 6, and already got a nice heart felt at Reading the special introduction to explain why this chapter.
And for fun, llet me quote and comment… about how do we know we’re not acting on false beliefs...
" We even think we’re more likely to win the lottery if we pick the numbers ourselves instead of having them randomly assigned. While obviously wrong..."
what what? How do you know you do not have a false belief here? ;)
Part of it might be projection and imagination, but if it helps, no problem to do this.
Then I have had flashes or images coming, like a special suffering mixed with an image of an animal wound while seeiing a new cut of plants or trees.
I have leaned against a mother faya tree while talking about the forest, and felt myself suddenly lifted by energy.
I can also feel their behavior, like what they like, how they group or grow alone, differences between species… I can feel they need water, and only then try to look better and interprete the leaves. When you kow a species, you know when you see one, if it has had enough or not of sun, water, or too much…
So we need to know them in order to have some real communication.
Red and blue represents yin and yang and we cannot avoid the waves and changes of life, the ups and down of action and rest. Hot and cold are on a thermometer that will always vary from red to blue to red.... Therefore, a balance can never be like the immobile pic of 2 plates at the same level. It is movement.
This is where unification would only mean stillness thus death. Unifying is also proposed by extremists, conveying the dream that we should be all the same, because it indeed feels more safe.
Non duality is where there can be a unification that does not try to erase the pendulum oscillations but include them. Then we can be more resilient because we are more able to hold more intense heat and cold. I mean this either for our inner world of ups and downs or for our outer world of more extreme temperatures happening.
Travis Johnson wrote:Story Telling can be practical too.
And in some ways new farmers have it great because they get the excitement from looking, searching and researching a place; me...I knew what i was getting when I was 4 years old. This is all I would ever have; some good things for sure, but also some bad things...but it was all I would get.
I believe indeed they are always practical!
I measure the balance you put between the excitement of not knowing and the somehow stuck feeling of knowing. I see your story as very practical here too, because relating to so many generations is helping you to stay here and be related, connected. I guess it makes you feel that you chose what you might also have felt was not a choice.
I am happy to know this story and to imagine what it feels to be related to a place both spacially and timely!
I would have loved to have more exchanges on the topic, as this is a main one I use for nervous system management, and was part of ancient traditions for this purpose: Creating group coherence, inner personal coherence, and coherence with all the close environment, allowing to "fractal out" into the further environment.
Our life should be guided by our inner wise and body feeling, as I view it as more extended than gut feeling or heart feeling. But our potent human mind needs to not be lost and thus, we make stories as a way to cement the bits of our experiences that are not enough integrated.
Our culture has tend towards the opposite: our life is often guided by our logic mind and then our body feelings manisfest by bursts, causing physical, emotional and mental unease. The best permanent remedy I have found is to exercise my use of my senses so that I let the world come into me through each time more opened eyes, ears etc. In order to integrate what comes from the outside and litterally digest it, I make stories about it so that the world makes sense, which is quieting.
We can recognize in us the tendency to make more stories from unprocessed emotion than from unprocessed sensory inputs. Who has not been ruminating about experiences, mixing emotions with many questions starting by "why"? When this happens, here is something that can be tried out of curiosity… Connect with the present moment through your senses, notice what you notice around, let it come to you more than you try to go into it. Let is come into you through your eyes and ears and nose and skin. What story starts to form? Maybe you notice the heat of the sun and bees buzzing and you then see that a plant would need water and you make a story about those flowers turning into almonds or oranges thanks to the bees and your care with watering. Or maybe you notice it is windy and refreshing but that the wind is too strong for the bees and you then go on and also wonder about local pesticides and you start to imagine what other flowers you can sow for having more bees be safe at your place...
The story goes on in your head and starts processing what you feed it. Grass fed is better! Slow chewing is also required. This is what happens in group when we share stories and vibrate at the same level. it slows down the mental process so that our different inner parts can also vibrate at the same frequency and create coherence. When we lack group or time for this in the group, things go to fast. Then you can help yourself with writing down your stories, because writing also slows down the process.
And a permies forum is the perfect intermediate: not as close as a local group but making stories about a way to see the world that can feed our sensory inputs much better. Because obviously, for the best sensory experience, we choose nature. And if we have extended our consciousness through storytelling, we do not see nature as a just going trekking to a national park while forgetting about the monocrops that fill our pic-nic bag. We connect to what is out of sight through storytelling. We listen to the stories of those who have seen and heard it with their eyes. It is real experience, and the story creates in us the same experience, as if we had lived it.
Storytelling is infectious! Choosing stories is like choosing a strain of probiotics!
Anne Miller wrote: Autosomal DNA is all these tiny pyramids.
Companies like Ancestry, 23 & Me and others offer tools that make your search easier. It is all done by Computers matching your DNA with other DNA in their files.
I hope this has explained.
I will look for autosomal... Up to Mendel, I understand genetics...
The point I did not get was HOW they test, ok so many people do it that they can see who matches, but only if the person is in their files. So how do you find about an ancester, who is dead and had not left any DNA test!?
and lol, I have Charlemagne even moer than once.... Same for some others, so a "tree" is literally never as this design but very tortuous! My mother had covered a long wall with the down side of wall paper rolls!
One word caught my attention : persuade. I am not sure I am happy to see this word in this context of story-telling. I think we want to persuade more than to be persuaded! In a wide sense, this is manipulation, and we have a fear to be manipulated in a wrong way if we believe false stories. I see stories as a way to tell my world and where I am, but not to persuade at all. I want to be a firm point with my firm opinion, so that others can lean on it and push and rebound. We all need to integrate what happens around us, and we need connection for this to happen.
My DNA knowldge is absolutely ridiculously poor! I cannot even understand how you could use those tests to find your ancesters or your cousins!
I have some more that comes back to me. I went to a course about psychogenealogy. Stood out that a member of the tree was a woman called Blanchard who married a Blanc, which means white. i was asked what it meant.... I answered a bit shocked that it showed very obviously: She had been amputated from the last syllable of her name! The wise teacher gave me a good lesson because he found other 2 possible arguments. i remember one, that it was emphasising the meaning of her name, as Blanchard would be a bit pejorative like "whitish". So he told me to ask all that the familly knew, as it was not that far away.
What did I say "amputation"? i did not even say "cut" nor 2suppressed"!. Well how couls I have "felt" this? This young lady had a father who got amputated during war! i think WW1. So I concluded directly that she felt a lot for her father and found a way to show her familly belonging.
I also think it had to do with whitish turning white, and restauring the family image.
The funny bit I realize only now: this blue blood stuff seriously has to do with hierarchy, and as I have Asperger's, I am the further you can imagine from understanidng the concept of hierarchy! If droping this concept has repaired something in my familly, well all good!
My mother was doing the genealogy of her familly. This is how I know I am descending from Charlemagne and St Louis for example. But I have learned a bunch of more stupefying things!
On my mother mother's mother's side.... she had to stop at my great grand mother. Why so short? Protestant familly, and papers that have been burned by the catholics!
My grand mother's maiden name was in 3 parts, a veeeeeery common name + "called" + "beautiful tree"
There's a story there!
I have an ancester that was very tall and serving in Napoleon's army. Who you might know was a short man,,,, One day all soldiers had to kneel in chruch and Napoleaon asked to make him kneel too, but as he was, Napoleon exclaimed "What a beautiful tree!" and then he was called like this and it was added to his official name.
It was like giving nobility to a simple man. You are going to see the incredible coincidences... It cannot be something else than trans-generational stuff.
As I said, some sides of my familly were indeed from the nobility, but there was a loss of lands and prestige through time. I think there is a form of regret and that it shows in coming in the familly a simple familly made more prestigeous. But ONE case would not be enough to guess ! It just happen that the story repeated with ALL my female cousins. That's only 3 but....
- one married a guy with also a veeeery simple name, with a meaning close to our famous ancester's.
and his 1st name is long and double and was one of an emperor.
- one married a guy with also a veeeery simple name and a double 1st name that sounds from a duke.
- then I thought it was not the case of my 3rd cousin, until I considered that it was a contracted name that started with the root of "beautiful" and meant "being noble"!!!
And by simple and short names, I mean like sock, bud or pawn, something worth little.
Context is for example climate, like when Paul said he did a PDC that was contextualized for cold climate.
So I said exactly that the issue with using stories is context, thus that it is not adapted to transmit everything.
When telling a story that happened in a heavy wet soil, I do not mind that much about this superbe pond because I have to do it in rock for example. I will appreciate to know the science of the soil, but I will appreciate that someone tells me a story about having made a marvelous compost with branches like at my place where wood will end up light and full of powder while eaten by wood bugs!
It is not about badly contextualizing, it is just that anyway there are multiple contexts. And no story can be out of a context, when and where it happened.
Then there is the other case, of a story not being a real personal story, but a way to tell something in a more amuzing way. In that case I understand it can be seen as a technique made to keep the interest of beginners or children. I would suggest that such type of story is no more relyable than any scientific stuff that will become obsolete. An imagined story can make people think it is more true than the mere information, or the reverse who knows?
A personal story is always true if it is what happened.
A story will be more open to creatively remember and use the knowldege. As you were given the context, it is clearer where it has to be adapted to a different situation. When they do not tell you any story, but some facts and numbers, they tell you the conclusion they want you to remember. You can learn it and apply it, and you'd better learn more stuff, to take context into account when needed. It might be why some people do more than one PDC!
Yes I agree. Stories mean for permaculture that you need to be in context. If you look at his-story books, or any field actually including agriculture and other permies topics, the academic/scientific parts are conveyed in rather unpersonal ways, because they are not in context!
They do not tell you any story, they tell you the conclusion they want you to remember.
When native people were displaced, they were rather lost, because they had lost their context. They came in a new land with stories that were no more working. Some would still be useful, but others if not most, would not.
So I find it easy to make stories during a training. The teacher needs to know the context of her students and have experience in it herself. A story needs to be situated in an environment. When we hear a story from a friend, that took place in a place that we do not know nor understand, the description is not easy and we loose most of its interest.
If I teach something I have experience about, when I have the academic part in mind, a story will automatically pop up! Just because I have lived it and I remember.
Schools are trying to be unpersonal so that all kids receive a sort of neutral, insipid, facts based view of the world, but actually from a very cultural and biased point of view.
I had an history teacher though, who was telling us the lesson as if she had been part of it! i did not like history but the stories yes. Unfortunately, with this teacher I also discovered that teachers could tell false facts, which led me astray from studies.... Yep, she made stories about inuit as she had visited them, but she made the story from books, or else she would have known that igloos were not made with blocks of ice!!! (and I should have known, but did not, that it is not the best idea to lift the hand and tell the truth to a teacher in front of the class!)
Also, when the writter explains it personally and with passion, we know that the person really knows her stuff. It has been lived and experienced.
Story telling is actually about nervous system integration of what we have done, so that it stays better in us. It can also help to process better what was intense - either pleasurable or difficult - when the memory is still recurring. It needs a story listener that knows what is important: find in the story what the teller has not processed and mirror it. I remember a person telling me twice the same story, so I mirrored the emotion I saw, and this changed the story and it made more sense, because actually, the importance of the emotion had not been acknowledged by anyone before, but dismissed.
most people who are said to be negative or that share "too much" are just in need of this, and I am sad to see too much the advise to "avoid negative people". they are not negative, they just miss this fundamental story sharing. And they will share too much until they meet a story listener. When the story is not nice, we want the change of mood happen in one direction, so we should not be empath when we listen, because it means that we will not be of any help, and will hurt ourself and thus will try to avoid the "negative person". If we are a mirror, the sad energy stays outside. Eventually if we have had the same issue, our mood will come up but the mutual support can help to feel better about it.
And then we can share nice stories that have also been too intense to process! We will get more good things from the intense nice story if we share it too. We can tell or write, the goal is to make more sense of it, to integrate evenly at the level of its meaning, its eventual change of meaning if it was a aha moment, and also at emotional level or relational level. So it helps coherence in us to happen.
The ol' ways to tell stories was to do so at dinner. most of us have been around separately and doing her own stuff, and we all meet again. As a mean to keep in touch, everybody tells what happened and brings it to the group, so that the link stays among all members. I remember very well that though my dad was also telling about his day, I have never been able to fully connect with what he was doing until I actually went to this place.
So this, instead of writing, telling and sharing, thus listening too.
Matthew Dicks wrote:That's quite the story. Stephen King stuff.
I write novels, so I deal in fiction quite a bit, but the storytelling in Storyworthy is nonfiction. Personal storytelling. But that can be terrifying, too!
Have you written about storylistening Matthew?
I think people would story tell more if they were listened to in the right way! Personal story telling comes rather naturally when we are in need of inner support. But accompanying the story - because I meant more than just listen - needs a certain ability and knowledge.
The most frequent result of personal story sharing is :
- to receive advises that give more helplessness (when you answer "I know but I cannot because ...")
- to receive material help that might help but bypass the physiological/emotional need to process the inner feelings.
- or to be received with an empathy that puts the listener in a bad mood - which motivates less and less to listen to needy persons - even when they are you friends!
It results in the sad advise - a common one - to stay away from so called "negative people". They are the ones who need the most to tell their story so that they can integrate their emotions. It is perfectly possible to listen to difficult stories without absorbing the emotion, as long as we know how to. The best is to know how to help, and how to make the person process the sad stuff until the deepest feeling of connection can emerge, like the sun from the clouds!
Then, the feeling of shared connection will largely compensate for the time you have spent with this friend. And your connection will be better, and with a guarantee of return. (well, we have culturally lost so much about how to do it safely that there is a big need there!)
It is a big part of communities. Andy and his colleagues did not talk the same story about the same situation. A real group has a story in common. Not only a past story, because they all the time create their new common past.
With my parents, dinner was the moment of telling about our day. It helped to integrate the challenges, well... as far as the parents were able to do this. Eventually we would learn what to tell because it was useful, and what not to tell because instead of integration, you would just be scratching a wound by retelling it.
Telling our story again scratches the wound in our culture, when it is not used for integration! And I can tell you this from my background in Somatic Experiencing! Children tell stories, and maybe stop when they are not believed or when they are made responsible for what they were not. People would story tell MORE, and there is a reason they learn not to.
We need more than story telling: we need to get back the right STORY-LISTENING !
There is a way to help each other integrate the emotional side of a story, by giving a certain type of support and listening, by asking the right questions to encourage the process. It also needs to be slow and paused...
The alpha stuff has been found not true, either in wolves or in dogs! But it was loved by some animal trainers who would remove the guilt from their clients, and persuade them to use FEAR.
About tribes:
- think like for wolves: familly systems, even when the familly enlarges. It means you know each other since ever, except new partners from the outside.
- your habits are mostly the same and shaped by the area.
Compare with people from outside who just want to live their ways in a place that did not create their said ways.
Please also, do not oppose hunters gatherers (who did not move randomly at all) to civilized people, because they also were civilized. The main difference might be the size of the group and spliting it instead of all the group moving from one place to another according to seasons and harvests and other jobs.
Anyway, it si very difficult to re-create the conditions that stabilized those groups in time.
Big presentation that keeps mouth shut for answering. So complete already!
I just went thinking about when I had tried to tell a story, in the hope to connect.... and came a not pleasant memory at all.
So i thought I might share.... or else, how to create a personal story about the topic, so that we can connect?
My permies project is actually stopped for years because of neighbours issues and bad building work issues. Of course I have a story about it! I remember being in full problems with caterpillar etc, and I met a new neighbour. Cool girl, social person involved in theater, nature lover and more. I opened about part of the story, just hoping for some sort of support. just hoping some emotional reaction would help me to stand my ground and regain the strength that was starting to be missing!
You know this, when you tell a story that is not a happy one. You do not want the person to be sad and "fall in the pit" with you do you? You want the person to stay outside of the story but react and tell you that it is not fair, and how much you certainly are angry, and what a shame that people act like this! And you would expect a person who is an actor to know how to embody an amotional reaction and make it looks even more grandiose through art!
Nope.
She just told me "Ho, as long as I do not know the other point of view, I cannot take side. " !!!
In personal story telling, I connect with the teller, and I help the emotions to come out and be integrated. Actually, when TWO persons have been involved in a story and are in a fight about it, I can speak with both independently, and give SUPPORT TO BOTH, I mean with the same heart. I don't give a damn if one is right or not! I just know that they speak up because they have some emotional charge about it, and the one that might be wrong and responsible and even guilty ALSO NEEDS support to get out of the emotional pit!
Of course if there is no emotion and I can feel that somebody is just trying to make me have an opinion, I will step back on the thinking level.
This topic interests me so much thanks for being here!
I should not say that I will buy the book or else they will remove me from the give away sorting! ;)
I actually teach a lot with stories already and want to be better at it. I think I have used this method because I am an Aspie, so it made it easier for me.... I have a big access to images, each time I want to tell about a meaning, some story pops up!
Also, I believe we use stories for integrating past events, at both personal and social levels.
The main issue with this "seems to be toxic though ecological because biodegradable" is that it throws DOUBTS UPON its use! Because they do not say from WHAT source was this plastic made from! Are they all equal?
I fully agree and this is what I mean. I have written elsewhere about the problem of fear of death. I am happy about the compost solution, but it is very different from wanting to be just burried and let the body decompose by itself!
