Needing Each Other Well
Needing Each Other Well is a year-long in-person program I am developing and facilitating with Thalia Ryer. More information about the program is available below. (Scroll down!)
If you’re intrigued and would like to experience some of the transformational power of this work, we are currently holding weekend in-person workshops in the Seattle area every other month, to introduce people to the work.
These 2-day workshops combine interpersonal practices, reflection, and discussion, to give you an experiential sense of the work (because this work is about how we are being, not what we know). The cost is $250/person.
If you’re interested, let us know by filling out the form at the right. If you cannot afford the full fee but are still interested in attending, please say so. If we are able to meet our budget and still have space, we can consider offering space for additional participants at a reduced rate. We will be in touch to answer any more questions you may have and interview you for admission to the workshop.
Why This Work?
Because we have to unlearn the idea that we are autonomous, self-sufficient beings, and re-learn how to be healthy in interdependence. There is no such thing as a human being outside a relational context. There is no such thing as not needing each other, there is only needing each other well or needing each other poorly. Needing each other well means attending to relationship in ways that do not come at the expense of our well-being, but are instead generative.
Paradoxically, and contrary to what popular culture teaches us, we need relationship with each other in order to be ourselves. Many of us struggle with self-actualization and healing because we think it’s all about becoming more independent and emotionally self-sufficient. Because we have been compromised by difficulties in relationship, we have come to believe that we need to get away from relationship in order to be more fully ourselves. This traps us in cycles of continual disrepair, making the problem worse instead of addressing it.
We end up trying to avoid relationships when problems arise, because we don’t know how to proceed. When we get hurt in relationship, when our boundaries get violated or we feel unsafe or compromised, we either withdraw to protect ourselves, or compromise our internal integrity to preserve a relationship. In both cases, we are not really in a relationship. Either we’re not really there, or the relationship is not really there.
The idea that we need to choose autonomy over belonging, or that, conversely, we need to sacrifice our autonomy to belong, comes from experiences where our relationships were ruptured and we did not know how to repair relationship.
This undermines our ability to grow, to heal, and to develop healthy cultures. Most of what underpins developmental trauma, and most of what drives oppressive systems of culture, is wounding which occurred because of problematic relationship. But what was wounded in relationship requires relationship to heal.
The generative part of relationship comes through proper relational attunement. When we are relationally attuned to one another generative interactions become possible. Our nervous systems are actually built for this. It’s a practice, an embodied process - you don’t think it, you experience it. When you do, it becomes obvious how to relate generatively - to be able to be fully yourself and also in touch with others, without compromising either.
All the same, relational attunement and attachment are not ideal states that we can achieve and then preserve indefinitely! Relationship inevitably involves cycles of closeness and distance. But our cultural ideals of relationship are often aimed at preservation – for instance, avoiding the possibility of hurting one another at all costs, instead of learning to move through and heal inevitable wounding.
We compound the problem by trying to make moves to repair relationships so that we can become attuned, but in fact, what we need to do is become attuned so that we know how to repair in a way that is genuine and works. Because we end up trying to repair without attunement, we end up making moves that aren’t authentic or don’t really address what needs healing. Then we discover that what we thought would fix things didn’t work, and we lose faith in the process. It’s a vicious cycle.
When our environments have not shown us how to navigate these cycles, we end up defaulting to one side or another, either trying to preserve closeness at all costs, or avoiding closeness to avoid the inevitable rupture. Learning how to navigate rupture and repair, and learning how to negotiate relationships capable of doing so, resolves the dilemma.
Attunement and repair are possible, we just need the right process!
What do we learn in this program?
Relational attunement – the process that is the basic building block of all real relating. This is an embodied practice, something you learn by doing, not by talking about it or learning information.
Healthy, generative forms of bonding and attachment, another thing we learn through practice. Modern research on attachment has shown that connection with others is not something that is always on. The attempt to be always in contact, or always out of contact, is a sign of injury. We learn how to thrive by navigating healthy cycles of distance and closeness, liberating ourselves from the prison of either-or, always-on or always-off relating (which doesn’t work anyway).
Trust and skill in the process of co-regulation, the biological process that our nervous systems are built for, through which our bodies develop capacities of self-regulation.
Consequently, we develop real self-regulation and deeper attunement to self. Self-regulation is not coping or making ourselves feel better. It is learning deep resilience and capacity to weather the emotional intensity of life, no matter how it feels.
Healthy interpersonal boundaries, properly expressed, connect us instead of separating us. We are not always in contact. Consequently, we need to learn how to negotiate contact, in ways that are generative and not at our expense. We will work to develop awareness of, and experience with, healthy boundaries.
A deeper understanding of intergenerational trauma, family dynamics, and systems like patriarchy and white supremacy. All these systems undermine our attempts to relate, and we have all been conditioned by them in one way or another. Learning these relating skills naturally exposes this conditioning and helps us to address these issues in community as part of the processes of healing and self-development.