Leadership: allowing the sensation of the other within your surrendering self
“Sometimes we're responsible for things not because they're our fault, but because we're the only ones who can change them.”
Lisa Feldman Barrett
As I read this quote, I notice how my body seems to detect changes in air pressure, as if constructing a resonance of the words “the only one” in such as a way that is seems another person is telling me this as an assignment, pointing towards me, simultaneously addressing the distance between us.
I don’t really want to hear this, I tell myself. And now I only see half of myself in this mental image, casting a shadow over the person in front of me, something I dare to blame the wavelengths of light surrounding me instead of lurking in the ceilings of my unconscious, the birthplace of mental magic.
The little bits of humanlike magic with which I (we, thank you reader!) create a particular reality out of Feldman’s citation – how intriguing.
Comes to mind a dear friend, highly gifted in such way that social complexity is smoothly summarized by eloquent and accessible simple truths which resonate emotionally long after the swift moments in which she shared them with a change in air pressure that feels both joyful and desperate…
We were talking about certain qualities of another dear friend present during the meeting, contextualized within the context of dysfunctional family dynamics and how these led to his caretaking, a miniature example of leadership. Now, this kind of leadership was surely not synchronized with all of his complex needs back then, parentification and loneliness in relationship to siblings rose out of the dynamic and life's energy leaked away (this way, he was less able to explore freely and playfully), but since the enlightenment of honesty, crying and yelling had already healed those painful inner wounds, we also spoke rather lightly, constructing and deconstructing the way this life story could be told more creatively and acceptively.
The ‘leading’ friend responded plainly yet touchingly:
“Well, that is also how it just is, as far as I can see. You are wise. That is just what it is also. Maybe you are just that, a leader.”
Silence followed and told us how the body of the receiver of this complex yet simple message probably processed so many different sensations that the brain could not yet create a new meaning – narrative - out of it that could be shared verbally with the broader world of mind(s) emerging from this interaction.
I come to think of the many conversations I had with gifted people trying to figure out their social and emotional journey and, well, place in “the world.”
Conversations are constructions and deconstructions of personal narratives, and in this way a (re)creation of emotional meaning, an integration of a-live-ness in such way, I would say hopefully, that one senses a degree of emotional anchoring and freedom to go on exploring (the) complexity of yourself and the world without the constricting influence of limiting beliefs and conditionings.
Sensations rising up while speaking about life’s experiences recreate emotions, and the interpersonal exchange during a conversation is intended to offer the social and bodily conditions to go through such a recreation that emotions are processed deeply. So that sense-making is offering those beforementioned degrees of freedom. Authenticity and creativity. Adaptivity.
“An emotion is your brain’s creation of what your bodily sensations mean, in relation to what is going on around you in the world.”
Lisa Feldman Barrett
Of course, emphasizing one’s leadership qualities without paying attention to hardships that may be intertwined with this social structure and context of highly subjective experiences can be an emotional bypass. Freedom (to be authentic) without considering responsibility arising out of different social positions (such as the child’s dependency on the caretakers) is not really freedom but a way to avoid the vulnerability of interdependency, and what is means to be a human-animal. Attachment needs overpower authenticity needs when (and it is) survival is at stake, like Gabor Maté addresses in this video.
But, in the journey of giftedness integration, at some point that we can’t pinpoint on forehand, the emotional room is felt to harmonize attachment and authenticity in such a manner that it reflects back a social dynamic repeating itself frequently without directly implying one needs to, again, reconstruct the meaning of the intensity of related emotions to personal wellbeing. Acceptance is a-live-ness. Awareness of leadership is just what it is. Awareness. It is a way of being responsive to both the self and others, of the relationship between them, that is the reality we live (in):
“It takes more than one human brain to create a human mind.”
Lisa Feldman Barrett
Our mind, also as unusually bright persons, is not to be found, particularly in our brain. It is a cultural artifact, embodied and contextualized cognition. The much emphasized sensitivity that for many comes with being gifted (and can take on many different forms), is this responsivity on the relational level, whether the relation is qualified by a meeting of the person and the materialized, concrete sensorial world around them or a social merging of different sensorial inner worlds (as if, when zooming in and out at the same time, we are talking about a difference here..).
If being gifted means for many being intensely responsive, this responsivity comes also with a response-ability. Letting yourself chew on this, letting your body process whatever responses come with reading the latter phrase, reconstructing and deconstructing what this means in relationship and endless interaction and merging with the world around you, is frequently a giving into some form of socially mirrored leadership.
There is pain in the story, there is joy in the story. There is life flowing through you. You do not need to do something with it. It is what it is. It can be “useless,” it can imply intense moral ambition. Something we get, feel, and narrate, social recognition, sometimes we don’t. It is intensity. Feeling. Living.
Now, being “the only one,” referring back to the first quote by Feldman Barret, does not mean we have to do everything alone, even if it can imply there is a lot do and process alone. And aloneness does not per se imply loneliness. But it can come with the emotional experience of loneliness. This also depends on how we construct and reconstruct the sometimes-unpleasant sensations we experience when being, processing experiences or working alone. Even the word unpleasant is the way we give, have learned to give meaning to and communicate the physical experience...
Do these unpleasant sensations mean we are in need for social connection? For support – something we might also have missed when we were younger, intense experiences that keep reminding us of how our mom, dad, both, or other care takers could not provide us with the presence our vulnerable young beings much needed?
It might imply that we are about to take on leadership in a way that may not directly mirror the achievement-based representations we have been taught throughout our school years. It might be possible, here comes the creativity of emotions and the way we construct and reconstruct meaning through them, that leadership in that moment actually implies asking for help rather than being lonely...:
And that kind of leadership can be really threatening. Particularly when one has somehow, at some point, decided, in interaction with the world ‘around ‘them, that they will do everything alone, safeguarding one’s sense of self of the threat of being an outcast…
But this, sadly, may imply that one is not responsive enough, so to speak, towards oneself, one’s own needs. And this self-leadership is one of the aspects I see myself and I see other gifted people at times struggle with.
You are the "only one" that can ask for help if you really need it, sensing its expression on a physical level, Lot.
Take on that response-ability. Not to be a good leader according to someone's norms, just to be with what is, spontaneously leading the stream of awareness towards that cuddle...
Surrendering.
(post-blogpost: once I met someone that I trust as a leader, if you will, I am learning to give into this surrendering. This has been a long journey. The irony is that now I see how this situation and process comes with an increasing awareness of how I can reflect leadership “in” another person by providing help, that cuddle, surrendering to a horizontal, reciprocal relationship. Complex. True. Touching. Beautiful, isn't it?)