Harnessing Polarities To Guide Inner Work
It is often the personal dynamics that can make or break a great work environment. Are you willing to see yourself in them?
We're invited into relational tension and drama all the time. Especially in the workplace, it is often the personal dynamics that can make or break a great work environment. These tensions can also manifest in broader cultural themes we refer to as polarized social issues. Getting swept up in this drama is not good for our well-being, or for the work we're here to do.
We often hear about how we need to:
dissolve tension,
eliminate the drama,
or depolarize political or social issues.
Do you find it soothing to imagine a world where there's no tension? Do you envision a harmonious, peaceful, and fluid world and workplace where each and every diverse body and voice is honored, valued, and celebrated? If so, I invite you to look deeper by considering the following questions:
Why do so many people keep returning to these inspiring visions, yet the conflict remains?
What role might we be playing in contributing to the perpetuation of tensions that we might not realize?
How can we increase our self-awareness in order to show up in ways that honor our wholeness, while also allowing our own transformation to become the force that breaks these seemingly indestructible, codependent cycles of conflict?
It's tempting, and rather easy, to develop narratives about how "only if" that one colleague would change, then things would be better. Or "only if" that manager would recognize their toxic approach to leadership, then everything would be better. And in many cases, there may be validity in the intuitions and perceptions we feel about how others show up. However, the misstep here is when we solidify the belief that others need to change in order for us to feel okay.
But wait, you might say, if I am the one being treated wrongly -- then why should I be the one to look inward towards growth?
I invite you into this inquiry: Does letting go of our pain or pursuing our self-liberation mean that other people get away with harmful behaviors? What if pursuing our liberation is, in fact, the most effective way to end cycles of victimization and oppression?
It still may seem like our small presence is nothing compared to the systemic issues we experience at the collective level. Yet, let's consider for a moment that the very tension we feel activated in our body when we are in relational exchange with someone is the precise guidepost to how our own unique presence on this earth has the potential to align our self-liberation with collective liberation.
When we feel an invitation from the external world to shift into blame and reactivity, or in other words, to polarize AGAINST another person or worldview, how might we be able to harness this tension as a way to unlock our inner power, creativity, and compassion? What if it's not about eliminating these feelings of tension, but rather using them as the fuel we need to step into transformative leadership?
Humans have the capacity to harness polarities that activate in their bodies while in relationship dynamics and alchemize such reactivity into the reclamation of wholeness and presence. Leaders who find the willingness to do this inner work are the ones serving at the cutting edge of socio-cultural change. This is what it's like to bring compassion into relationships, serving as leaders paving the way and not expecting others to be the ones to transform first.
As we increase our self-awareness of what's happening in our bodies and minds when we experience conflict, we gain our authentic power to reclaim our agency in how we want to engage, rather than be swept into anger, defensiveness, blame, and a tendency to create villains in our perceptions of others.
Let's explore some examples.
My friend Eldra was molested when he was young. This unresolved trauma was an integral part of what led him into gang life. He allowed his feelings of victimization to lead him into a role as a violent perpetrator. However, later in life, he found a support group in prison that offered him a place to learn how to process his shame, anger, and repressed emotions. As Eldra took responsibility for increasing his self-awareness when complex emotions would arise in his body, he learned to grieve, feel, and express himself in healthy ways -- allowing him to approach conflict in ways that became generative instead of escalating the tension. It wasn’t easy at all, but he was willing to stop suffering. Eldra is now out of prison and serves as the executive director of Inside Circle, the same organization that offered him the community of support.
My friend Hope's father was brutally murdered in a racially-motivated crime when she was little. At the time, her body was locked up in traumatized fear, and her family environment didn't have the capacity to turn toward grief with conscious emotional awareness. When Hope was an adult, she began to recognize how cut-off she had become from the world. Her unprocessed pain and blame swirling around this incredible loss were inhibiting her from showing up in her fullness and embodying her values. Hope began to find the strength to turn towards feeling, allowing grief to flow, and finding ways to show up in care for her body, such as yoga and meditation. Through inner growth practices, she learned to leverage her inner tensions as a source of her liberation rather than let them keep her locked in resentment towards the man she blamed for her father's death. Yoga might sound simple, but this whole shift was difficult for Hope, proving to be a process over time transitioning to a new way of life versus one destination. Her inner liberation, built from being willing to take responsibility for her emotional state and show up in the world with embodied presence, unlocked her leadership potential. She now serves as a leader paving the way for transformation as a way of being, rather than as an expectation of others. The man who killed her father is still doing his time in prison, but she's able to handle the court logistics to keep him incarcerated with compassion rather than blame. She's free.
I'll use my own personal example here as well that shows how this can relate to social issues. As a woman navigating work environments that often deliver different expectations and access points to men, I began to discover patterns in how I felt anger towards men for what they would 'get away with.' It wasn't until I began to leverage this polarity (instead of letting it leverage me) that I was able to get free from these cycles. As I learned to look inward to the places I was disowning my voice, where I was allowing unconscious boundaries to be crossed, and discover other previously subconscious behaviors contributing to the dynamic -- I was able to unhook myself from these conflicts. Instead of walking away with quiet anger and resentment in these relationships, I began to let triggers, such as anger, be my guidepost and lead me to what words I needed to say, what boundaries I wanted to advocate for, and ultimately step further into living the values I claim within the dynamic. Part of the dark night of the soul that allowed me to reckon with these shadow parts included leaning on community, learning to grieve as a beautiful way to access humanity, and learning to process pain without suffering. It also took breaking down belief systems and not letting my thought loops override my sensations. Now, if I feel the invitation from a man towards inferiority, I simply decline the invitation and stand steadfast in my values -- there is no longer a place of traction for the cycle of superiority/inferiority to get a grip anymore. From shifting blame into self-liberation through my own inner shadow work, I stopped my cycles of inner victimization, ultimately halting forms of oppression around me.
By harnessing polarities to guide us into our inner work, we can remove ourselves from systemic victimization at the individual level, allowing us to lead the way out of systemic oppression.
The invitation here, if you feel called or intrigued, is the following: when you feel tension arise in your body to get curious about it, turn towards it, and allow it to lead you to places you might not yet be free. Harnessing the power of our full self is ultimately a reclamation of owning the sovereignty of our whole inner world. No one has control over our feelings, but us. No one has control over our dignity, but us. It’s up to us to claim it.
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This article presents concepts about conflict that are completely outside of our current popular cultural values of polarity and finger pointing. It does this in a remarkably forward thinking way. Like asking a person who feels wronged to look inward towards their own inner growth in tense social situation instead of attacking outright. Not to mention introducing the idea that there can be an approach to conflict that is “generative instead of escalating the tension.” This article is full of gems that our polarized world would do well to explore!