I walked the stage for my PhD graduation yesterday. A year late, bit still an important milestone to mark. It didn't feel as much as a BFD as I consciously know it to be. This is probably where the usual timing of a graduation shortly after you've just busted your ass to finish writing and editing a 90,000 word tombe comes in handy.
But there were moments of feeling the glimmer of the significance. Some of it manufactured with the help of supporters, and some of it arising organically. Like when I recognized I'm one of a dozen or so in a crowd of hundreds, wearing a red gown and not a black gown. I remember being an undergrad or masters student at ceremonies, looking at the PhD students in awe. I was now that person. What if someone else is looking at me with the same awe?
I also felt the significance when an ally/supporter/friend asked me what I felt like I was celebrating today, given it being a year after completing my PhD. She asked, What does it feel like is being ended or closed today? And I thought - the ending of a particular phase of my coming into myself. There are several reasons I chose to pursue a PhD (again) and I won’t go over them again here. But one thing I really learned about a PhD is that it’s about putting a stake in the ground and planting your flag. This is what I believe, this is what I know, and this is what I found. I’m going to tell you why I wanted to find/unearth this knowledge, how I’m going to do it, and tell you what I found and why it is important. I’m going to tell you why my interpretation of what I found is valid. This is hard to do when a lot of your formative years were spent being told you deserve abuse and that you’re stupid and only good at getting good grades but not actually smart in ways that matter. I had already worked through the idea that a PhD is what would make me smart or worthy. (Phew! Thank goodness.) But I hadn’t worked through the - how do I plant my flag and stand next to it? How do I defend that flag and its position, while also being open to others’ flag position and the reasons why they have put their flag somewhere else? How do I be open to being swayed by others’ positions, while being rooted enough so that I don’t easily blow in any which direction, either to be agreeable and pleasing, or because I hadn’t fully thought through my position deep enough to be really rooted?
These are the types of things I learned. It was the ending of the “I want a PhD” journey, the end of the journey of PhDing…A PhD really is a stamp about the fact that you sufficiently went through a process, as much as it is about the product you produced from that process. And what’s important is to become disillusioned by the PhD. That you know a lot about a one part of a subject, but not a lot about a lot of subjects. People with PhDs don’t know it all and you aren’t protected from life’s wounds. To me, the phrase "research is me-search" rings true. Not just because I literally researched a topic related to my own experience, but also because the process of discovering, creating, and claiming knowledge required me to have a solid enough sense of self. I could write more on this another time but for now, suffice to say that if you are a PhD student and really open yourself to new perspectives and information, new ways of knowing (new epistemologies), you can have your world view completely transformed. And/or, you can be pushed to justify your current worldview to yourself and therefore become even more convinced, or have stronger conviction, of your current worldview. Either way, unless you have come to the PhD to validate what you already know, you have little to no imposter syndrome, and you bring a conviction to validate your hypothesis, your world view is challenged by the PhD process. Or so it was for me.
I want to share the things that were challenged for me, but what I want to get to in this blog is the fact that I went to a training immediately after my graduation held by LJIST called “Effectively Handling Leadership Attacks Effectively Handling Leadership Attacks”. First, you need to understand that at the heart of LJIST’s theory of oppression is the idea that adultism (the systematic oppression of young people, not individuals adults) is at the root of all oppression. Having studied and implemented practices based on attachment theory and the neurobiology of trauma, this rings deeply true for me. Having worked to heal from the child abuse I was subjected to, this also rings true for me. And let me be clear, just because someone does not suffer from child abuse does not mean they weren’t subject to adultism. Our world is organised around the needs of adults and not children. Children are still fighting to be treated as whole human beings. Even if children are not “fully developed”, this does not mean they aren’t fully and whole human and this is how we often treat them - not yet whole. I could go on and on about this, but for now, I’ll share this…
One of the insights that came to me about my own leadership and the ways I get stuck is this - When I was a child, no one ever stood up on my behalf against my parents or other adults who were targeting and abusing me. They, too, were doing what they were taught. And yes, they too, can be held accountable. However, what is important for me is that I live with this unhealed major wound. No one intervened. I have felt empathy towards the adults who knew me when I was a child and can understand the limitations placed on them to intervene. And to those of you who are reading this, I still have empathy about this. However, I also felt hurt, angry, betrayed, and alone and I still carry this around. The way I carry this around is varied. First, I stand up for others, children and adults, who are being targeted. I am doggedly committed to fighting for the underdog. This is a lovely behaviour that I want to keep. However, part of why I do this is because I am trying to make up for having not gotten it from others. And because my actions will never change the past or replace that I didn’t get this, I can become stuck in the feelings of burnout, resentment, and isolation.
I can feel burn out for standing up for other adults where I fight for them, instead of with them, the way I wanted someone to fight for me. I can feel resentful in the ‘I’m doing this for others, why can’t they do this for me?’ kind of way. I can feel this even though I might not have asked people to do this for me, or without recognising that even when I ask, people often don’t yet have the skill to know how to do this with me (instead of just for me). And then because I don’t ask for this and let people know this is what I need, I feel alone, isolated, and tell the story to myself that I always have to stand up for myself and no one else will.
I definitely stand up for myself. But not always, and especially not when attacks are vicious, persistent, and from multiple people. One of the most painful memories of this is when I was approaching my first wedding and marriage. A group of people, led by a particular person, supported by a therapist, engaged in an attack on who I am and my capacity to love. Although I did protest, I did not have the internal resources to access the external resources I had available at the time. The pain of this attack still lives with me today. And although I am aware that my childhood wounds set me up for that, and I no longer blame myself for it, both the childhood wound and the adult wound, still hurt. And just so it doesn’t go by, I use the example of my previous wedding/marriage (which was successfully derailed and not able to get back on track) as a leadership example on purpose. This might not seem like the leadership attack that we think of when we think of leadership. I imagine most people think of attacks on work-related leadership roles. But leadership isn’t just a role. In this situation, I was leading my own life (as I suggest one should and has a right to, and insofar as we can direct our own consciousness to lead ourselves…-see debates on consciousness and the self…)
So - I stand up for myself, but not always and (a) I am starting to think that some pernicious attacks cannot be stood up against on our own - we need a team; (b) the effect of these attacks are to make one feel alone and isolated because usually one person recruits others and it makes you question who to trust, and especially makes you question your self; (c) I have old tapes/wounds that I have not healed that keep me from standing up for myself. The tapes sound like, “who do you think you are? Maybe their attack is right. Maybe you are (enter untruthful thing here). You’re full of yourself. This is not an attack, this is tough love and the truth coming at you and you need to accept it.”
One truth I actual know about myself and that somehow becomes lost/fleeting in the moment is this - I actually listen to feedback and am willing to change, if the feedback is delivered with kindness. Other truth about is that even if it is not delivered with kindness, I will still look inward, have an honest conversation with myself, and reflect on whether there is any truth in the words. I try to hear the message separately from how it was delivered. But most of the time, when these attacks occur, the message wasn’t the point. Hurting me, as a passing on of that person’s hurt, was the point. That’s the real message. The person was showing me, not telling me, about their hurt. And because I am open to my feelings and to others, I do feel the hurt.
One tactic I have tried is to alchemize other people’s hurt for them. This was my role for my mother, and in adult life, I am great at holding space for others’ hurts. I think that if I can love them enough, I will heal their hurts and their pain will all go away. I take in the hurt, and I say, “well they are hurting, and I don’t want to perpetuate hurt, so I won’t say or do anything. I can tolerate their pain for them. I am strong…” This is (a) not helpful and (b) grandiose! Ha! But this way of thinking is supported by a lot of people’s desires for someone else to take our hurt away. Sadly, our hurts are our hurts. Our emotional wounds are ours to heal. Imagine breaking your leg, and assuming that someone else can heal it for you. All people can do is add some bandage/casting, empathise, and hold space for your healing process. But your own body needs to do the work of healing and we gotta let it.
Another tactic I’ve tried when attacked, is to throw the person’s hurt back in their face. I was part of a therapeutic community that called this tough love and helping people see their blind spots. But this was done with a lot of judgment and viciousness. This is similar to call out culture. “Oh you think that about me, well you’re acting out how you were dominated by your mother.” Let me tell you, this is not effective. Shaming one another into changing behaviours that are no longer self-serving or are destructive does not work.
But there has to be a 3rd or even 4th and 5th way.
I am now pretty practiced at not throwing the hurt back into someone’s face. I’m not saying I don’t feel it - I can even feel the desire to pass on my hurt, let alone someone else’s hurt that they’ve given me and I’ve accepted. Oh there are times where I want you to feel it. I want you to carry this burden for me and sometimes I think and feel the only way for you to know it is for me to given you 1% of the experience I had. But I have learned that this does not work. Passing on the hurt only temporarily relieves the pain. It does not heal it. And, passing on the hurt is what perpetuates oppression. If my leg is broken and I broke your leg, you might now feel it too, but it doesn’t heal my leg.
So, accepting the invitation that LJIST has offered me, I am implementing a “No attacks policy.” This means I will say no to attacks upon me, and engage others in standing up with me, and I will not engage in attacks of others. This is where the rubber meets the road and I can feel a hesitancy in me. Am I, and are we all, willing to give up our own desires to attack, in an effort to stop the cycle of attacks? Knowing that our attacks of others are rooted in previous hurts, caused by individuals and individual representatives of systems, can we heal these so that we don’t have to pass them on?
Can we truly focus on our own work, and not just “calling out” others who need to change? I’m not saying that we don’t need to support others to change the same behaviours. And I know that some people are so defended in their place of hurting that they will fight tooth and nail to still be able to attack (because they feel they are attacked and are at war with something…). But for those of us who want to think we are “the good ones”, can we look at how we also perpetuate this system?
Can we commit to doing this together? For me, this is where my belief that individual and collective healing must come hand in hand. One cannot come without the other.
I am always grateful to be reminded of these truths that I know, and to deepen my practices of these truths, when I’m engaging in a LJIST training. The way I did my PhD required me to do this healing work to get to the finish line of my PhD. But there are many more hurts of my own to heal to do the other things I want to and am doing in my life, such as lead an organisation, and lead in my family. Most of the time, I love that I get to create spaces in the world for others to do this individual and collective healing. It does require feeling the suppressed hurt, but this is the life long learning that I am committed to. Learning how to end oppression from the inside out, and together.