My teacher has a theory about fear. He believes that every person struggles consciously with one of three main fears - rejection, abandonment or worthlessness. We all fear these three on different levels but it is the conscious fear that most dictates the way we interact with others.
This theory can be an interesting way of seeing our ego. It may seem oversimplified, but having a simple structure to work from can be helpful sometimes.
Someone who is most afraid of rejection wants others to see them completely, as they are, and accept them. Yet because the fear of being rejected is consciously experienced, they might hide from others and be afraid to show their true self. Or they might reject others as a defense mechanism.
Someone who is consciously afraid of abandonment wants to be connected to those around them, to feel in control of the connection so they won't feel alone. Yet because this fear of being abandoned is consciously experienced, they never really trust the connection and take any difference of feeling or any loss of control as a personal threat.
Someone who is consciously afraid of being worthless wants to feel valued by the people around them. They want to feel that they have something to offer - information, a gift or some function they can perform that others will appreciate. Yet because they focus on what they do or what they bring to a situation, they rarely feel that they as an individual are worthy just as they are.
During zen workshops, people identified with one of these three fears and split into groups. It was really funny and interesting to see the way we each saw or labeled our own conscious fear and those of others. The rejection fear group were often labeled as loners or abrasive jerks. The abandonment fear group were dubbed control freaks or manipulative. The worthless fear group were seen as know-it-alls or workaholics.
Which brings me of course, to Jean-Paul Sarte. In his play, No Exit, three characters are confined to share a room for eternity. Each of them triggers the ego of another person in the room, causing the famous line - 'hell is other people'.
I don't remember if I attended a workshop on the three fears or read this play first. They are completely enmeshed in my memory. I am laughing as I write this because I'm sure it seems like an odd reference to make regarding a zen workshop. Yet divided into three groups, each spoke of their conscious fear quite openly and the others reacted quite obviously from theirs.
The abandonment group talked about just wanting to be close to people, yet the way they expressed it completely terrified or annoyed the rejection group who experienced the abandonment group's need for control over a connection or a shared way of being/experiencing/feeling to be a rejection of their individual self/experience.
In turn, the abandonment group felt disconnected and confused by the rejection group's need for space and autonomy.
Meanwhile, the worthless fear group were trying to understand the whole situation so they could offer some valuable insight or figure out what action could be performed to set things to rights. The rejection group tended to make them feel worthless by judging or rejecting their ideas/functions/offerings and the abandonment group made them feel like they had to constantly offer proof of connection, and wanting to have a clear task set for them so they could complete it perfectly, they grew frustrated by the vague concept the abandonment group seem to have about what they needed.
On the other side, the abandonment group was frustrated by the worthless group's way of offering functions or information instead of feelings and the rejection group felt that what the worthless group offered wasn't individual or personal because they put so much emphasis on what was correct or perfect or wanted by others.
This Sarte-like zen workshop is a great example of the idea of shared reality I wrote about in my last post. Each of the characters in No Exit, like each of the groups in the workshop, had their own ego fear which in large part created their individual reality. When we are locked in this reality and experiencing our conscious fear, hell truly can be other people. We see them as threats to this fear or as people to banish this fear FOR us. We interact in ways that will protect us or make us feel accepted, connected or worthy. And since the people we are interacting with have their own egos and their own realities, we can become slaves in a sense to these fears.
Luckily the zen workshop ended better than the Sarte play. After the initial ego bouts of each fear, we reached a point where we were compassionate enough with and aware enough of our own fear to recognize that the way others acted really had nothing to do with us but with their own fear. And once we stopped taking their actions/perceptions personally, we were able to see their fear with compassion.
At this point, the zen workshop again resembled what you might think a buddhist gathering might look like. There was a shared reality where everyone was saying what they were experiencing and it was accepted by the others, who were sharing what they were experiencing. It seemed like the key point in creating this shared reality was recognizing that our egos could go on for eternity trying to be sated by or protected from other people. But they never would be.
But that the shared reality offered a different kind of connection than the ones we had been striving for from a place of fear. Yet in order to participate in the shared reality, we had to take ownership of our conscious fear and try to understand and heal it ourselves instead of wearing it like broken limb for others to bandage or re-injure.
I'd be all like, "I'm not sure which group to work with; I have all of these fears!"
ReplyDeleteI feel like there are specific people who make specific fears move to the forefront, for me. Sometimes, I'm really aware of how I react/fear with specific people, and then there are others who I'm still figuring out which triggers we set off in one another.
there were some people who had difficulty picking one main fear they identified with. others, like myself, were like -yep. i got this.
ReplyDeletethere's also the idea of the unconscious fear which we tap into when our conscious fear is assuaged. for example someone afraid of rejection, when they feel accepted by someone and stop fearing rejection, might begin to become afraid of abandonment. someone with worthless fear, when they feel comfortable and valued by someone, might begin to be afraid that their more individual self will be rejected. someone who was afraid of abandonment who begins to trust the emotional reliability of someone might begin to fear worthlessness. 'ok, it seems like you're not going anywhere, but why? what do i have to offer that makes you stay?'
the purpose of this workshop and most others is to try to see our ego more clearly - the screen that we've been looking through so long that we don't recognize how it alters our perception of the world. we don't see the screen, we see the world altered by the screen.
the more clearly we see the screen, the easier it can be in situations to double check - hmm. this looks like i'm being rejected/abandoned/deemed worthless but then...that's what my ego often thinks is happening. let me double check to see if it's my ego or what's really happening. this can give us the chance to stop reacting immediately from the ego and acting in the world in the same patterns our ego has dictated for most of our lives.
Great post, Kelly. I have spoken with M about this quite a bit, as she and I find it a great framework for trying to understand people. It is interesting to me, how these principles are re-packaged in so many different self evaluation frameworks. At work we took a test called the SDI (Strength Deployment Inventory), where people are either Red, Green, Blue, or some blurring of the 3 (Blue-green) for instance. Red people are action oriented and forceful, Green people are planners and very cautious, and blue people are very helpful and nurturing. But then there is something called the conflict sequence, which shows you how you change when you are in conflict. It was pretty interesting. In my program at school they make us take something called the LSI, that's the learning style inventory. In the LSI there are 4 learning styles (Accommodating, Assimilating, Converging, and Diverging). I am Accommodating. I see tons of parallels in these 2 Inventories as I do with the fears. However, I feel that these more corporate training tools let people see these ways of being as strengths, even if they are not. I like the fears much better, in that the fears force people to be more self aware and identify a weakness or vulnerability in themselves. This is a great strength in anyone, to admit that they are vulnerable and afraid. I feel once someone sees that inside them, they are well on their way to becoming stronger. Celebrating weaknesses is something very fearful people do. By the way, I know I am worthlessness fear, but I prefer calling it worthiness fear. Makes me feel better about myself ;)
ReplyDeleteThanks, PK! I agree that it is a strength to be self aware and recognize our weaknesses. This particular theory has been incredibly helpful to me. In one of the workshops we also talked about the inherent strengths of these 3 'types'. Yet the way it has helped me most, in practice, has been making me aware of the way I approach certain situations. When I consider fear as part of the reason for that approach, I'm much more likely to try to alter my usual patterns. If I were just to focus on the strengths, I might not see the value in trying a different way.
ReplyDeleteBTW, in your presence I will now adopt your Patrickly Correct phrasing of 'worthiness fear' :)