How to keep your project from being destroyed by resentment
Introduction
“The quality of our relating is the quality of our creating. “
To paraphrase Erotics of Liberation, communities and projects don’t fall apart because they lack drive, ambition, or innovative ideas. They fall apart because people have Underworlds and unhealed wounds and lack the tools to handle how these elements play out in relational dynamics.
The more consciousness, transparency, and integrity we can bring to our relating spaces, the healthier our collaborations will be, and the better the chances they will have of creating real, lasting change.
Technology: Naming the Elephant
As Nina, Jonas, and I embark on the project of creating Regenera, a Living Systems Laboratory for Post-Capitalist Cultures, one of the technologies we have implemented as a form of relational hygiene is called Elephants. Also known as “clearings” or “withholds,” Elephants is the practice of making space to name any “elephants in the room.”
By checking that nothing has gone unsaid, we can prevent resentments from building up and quietly destroying the project from the inside out.
This practice can be done daily or weekly, depending on the cadence of your project. We allot 30 minutes to this practice at the end of each team meeting.
Case Study: Hannah and Jonas
During one of our team meetings, Jonas proposed implementing a resource sharing project at Youtopia, the community in Brooklyn where Nina and I currently live.
The initiative, inspired by Will Ruddick’s Grassroots Economics, would start with everyone listing the gifts or contributions they could make to a common pool (e.g. baking, massage, cleaning, maintenance tasks), as well as their needs, and identify where contributions and needs overlap, so that people can begin to exchange resources within their community, rather than outsourcing trade to a globalized economy.
When Jonas propose the initiative, I felt some low-level anger, but wasn’t conscious enough to know what it was about. My Gremlin (the part of me that protects my Box and my survival strategies) immediately handled this anger for me by saying, “You’re not even going to be here to implement the project. Nina and I would be the ones to actually do it.“
Because Nina is radically on my team, she calls me on my bullshit. When it was time to name Elephants, she said, “I feel scared that we skated over your Gremlin’s passive-aggressive comment from earlier, and that there is resentment there. Will you check what’s really going on?“
I did. Her scanning was entirely accurate—there was resentment.
A couple weeks prior, Jonas (who currently lives in Germany) had told me he was going to apply for a visa that would allow him to stay in the US for up to 6 months.
Then, a week later, he told me he had bought his flights, but that he would fly back to Berlin in January. He did not acknowledge that his plans had shifted. When I asked, he clarified that he wanted to be in Berlin for January to fulfill some obligations there.
At the time, I felt angry about the lack of communication from him, but did not voice it. Why did I not voice it? We will come to that in a moment.
Now, I told him that I wanted clear communication from him, and that the flip-flopping on his decision did not work for me.
Yet there was still something deeper going on. Because Jonas is a sensitive person, he could tell, and gave me another doorway: “I’m scared that you also feel sad I won’t be there for more time.”
Again, his scanning was accurate. I did feel sad at the time, when he shared his change in plans, as well as angry—but I did not tell him how I felt.
Because Jonas has struggle with setting boundaries in the past, I have wanted to encourage him to make his own decisions—sometimes at the cost of voicing my own feelings. In doing this, I have lost integrity by veering into rescuing him and trying to make him comfortable holding his boundaries.
In the Elephant process, I shared that I felt sad because he would not stay for a longer period, and because I wanted to share my feelings with him.
“I want you to make decisions that are right for you, and I may have feelings or emotions about them, and that’s OK,” I said.
Jonas answered that he wanted me to share my feelings—and that he would appreciate it if I still affirmed his right to make his own decisions. He requested that I deliver my communications with an affirmation first, and I agreed.
Wrap-Up
The result of this process: we created a path forward for future communications, and I cleared the resentment I had created towards Jonas. I discovered more about what was happening underneath the surface and was able to share that with him. At the end, I had the sense that the energetic field between us had been cleared—even though I had not been aware of the smudges on the glass before. Not bad for a 30-minute process!
The Elephant process makes space for these unconscious elements of our psyche to be revealed, so we can come into deeper connection. If you wish to employ Elephants, I highly recommend applying distinctions from Possibility Management, including the 4 Feelings, Feelings vs. Emotions, Expectations and Resentment, and the Feelings Form.
The full recording of this interaction (including my Gremlin comment and the Elephant process) can be viewed below.
Enjoy!
Love,
Hannah
Leave a Reply