Do We Need Other People? Or Go It Alone?

After last week’s talk, I had a bunch of fascinating emails - people starting to see where their unconscious Parts have been quietly trying to get everyone around them to see the world the way they do. And with that came the realization of just how much relational damage happens when others don’t line up… or we pressure them to. I’ve done it myself - trying to get others in my life to see the world through optimism, not realizing that my preference for optimism is just my unconscious Parts desire to not feel powerless. That awareness has been a bit staggering.

This week, in our Undercurrents series, we’re going to keep going - but using a different question: Do we need other people? Or go it alone? As we wrestle with that question, you may start to see why you show up the way you do - in relationships, in community, with your friends and family, even in how you’ve engaged with church. It’s the kind of insight that can shift how you understand your own behavior in a really meaningful way.

It’s going to be a fascinating one. Come out to the Spiritual Gym and let’s build a little more awareness—so we’re not getting pulled under by these Undercurrents caused by being unconscious of our Parts when we least expect it.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Okay, today we're going to be a little bit more participatory. So I'm going to have you put up your hand at different points of the message. There's this term that I don't remember growing up with this term, narcissist. Anyone, did you grow up with the term narcissist? Okay, a little bit. I understand what the term means. But what I hear more and more now in popular culture, in comments, in people in my life, people saying, oh yeah, they're a narcissist, or I was married to a narcissist, or you know, my so-and-so is a narcissist. And at first it kind of seems a bit like, oh, okay, that's the trendy word, whatever. But I think that word is actually scratching an itch of something we feel. How many times do we have people in our lives that when you really sit down and think about it, they take. And they don't give a whole lot back. Don't put up your hand at this point, but and don't elbow the person sitting next to you if that's the person. I I heard a or read an article. Someone, uh a woman was creating the Christmas dinner for her family, inviting parents, siblings. Her siblings said, I'm gonna bring this salad. The girl who was hosting it said, Yeah, I don't like that salad. You're not invited to Christmas dinner. And she wasn't joking. Narcissist? Anyone have those friends who, when you get together with them, they tell you the story of their life and how all this stuff's going on. But when you leave, you realize it never came back to your side. How are you doing? How's life for you? And when you think back to their life, you realize this is kind of a pattern. It's always them. The neighbor who always borrows your shovel, but when you go to their house, they're like, Yeah, I don't have that. So I just keep all of your tools and then at my grads, and then you just borrow them and I pay for them, right? That's how this whole relationship works. The person at work who is very comfortable asking you for help on their project, but when you ask for help on your project, they're kind of like, Yeah, I'm busy that day, whatever day that was. Is this not the term narcissist? A person for whom this is not reciprocal. Can you throw up the relational model for me? This idea that says, no, no, we live in this I against them. It's them or us. There's no we. There's no like, hey, you helped me. Next time let me help you. Oh, you you I borrow your your lawnmower all the time. How about this? I'll buy the snowblower, and then when it gets snowy, you can borrow mine. That's we. The person who says, You want to bring the Waldorf salad to Christmas? We can make that work. We just had a discussion about Waldorf salad the other day. I don't know if that salad's any good. But we can have it at Christmas dinner, can't we? Is there a Waldorf salad lover over there? Two enthusiasm. Wow, three, four enthusiastic Waldorf salad lovers. Did not see that coming. But when we're in Wii, we go, hey, look, let's make it work. We'll we'll put the Waldorf salad on this the table for it, and I'll take a little bit and we'll bring some actual salads as well. Just so you know, they are hilarious. She's kidding. Yeah, we're fine. The narcissist. So when we're if we can go, look, there is narcissists in the world. Chances are we've experienced them. It makes us ask the question: if there's I against them in the world, why in the world would we do group things? Think about that. Can you throw up the question for me? Why would we do things together instead of doing it alone? Together, I have to deal with my it's not my sister, but you know, my theoretical sister who won't let me bring Waldorf salad to Christmas dinner. I get uninvited for that. Groups say, I have to deal with the narcissists and my wife. Why? Why would we do this? Now, this isn't. I'm using a story to get us thinking about how we interact with the people around us. Whether we prefer to be alone or we'll deal with the narcissist as long as we can have people around us. Because that tells us something about our inner life. What did Kyla say? She says, I have this ruminating part inside of my head that I'm starting to become more and more aware of. I'm starting to become more aware of how much energy that thing burns doing nothing. Is that a fair statement? Not productive. She's giving me a sideways yes.

unknown 5:20

It's kind of burning it to try and protect.

SPEAKER_00 5:22

Right. It has a purpose. It's trying to protect her. It just doesn't do it efficiently. If two kilojoules would work, it's burning 200 kilojoules. The idea is that we have these unconscious parts inside of us, these undercurrents that are pulling us in certain ways to reflection, to protection, to mandating things. This is how it is. No walder or salad at Christmas dinner. What we realize is underneath that daughter's voice is probably a part that says, I have a picture of what Christmas dinner looks like, and nothing can be there that's not a part of my picture. Do not put up your hand. But anyone have a controller part that's a little unconscious that you're like, shh. Last week we started this series by asking the question, um, what shape do you think the world is in? And which direction do you think it's going? I got a bunch of emails this week about this. Now, remember, what we did is we're trying, we're not doing this to try and explain, is the world getting better or not. What we're doing this is to say, which answer is my brain, my unconscious parts, attached to so that I become aware of them, so that they don't hijack me. Someone sent me an email this week, said, you know, because I the way I did it is I showed a bunch of facts. The world's getting better, the world's getting worse. And I asked, which one do you resonate with? Someone sent me a message saying, Oh, I resonate with the positive. I didn't realize that it was a connection from a part. What I thought it was, it was facts. So when the people in my life who I love said, Oh, things are bad right now, I would beat them to death with facts that the world's getting better. To the point where they would want to ignore me. They wouldn't bring it up around me. They're like, oh, geez, don't the news is coming up. Let's just not talk about that. Because they could not experience the world through a negative lens. They said at the end of the message, they said, you know what? Up until that message, I thought this was a factual issue. What I'm realizing now is I have a part inside of me that cannot handle the negative. I have that part. Negativity makes me feel powerless. And I have a part who dedicates a tremendous amount of energy making sure I never feel powerless. It does not like that feeling at all. It will do anything to make sure I don't feel that feeling at all, which is crazy because I married somebody who lives in the negative as a way to deal with her parts. You can imagine how our conversations have gone over the years. She's like, Well, things aren't going very good. But but but they're good. You have to see that they're good. Undercurrents. They will grab you when you least expect it. My counselor once said your choice is either to become conscious of it, or it will make you conscious at the very most awkward times of your life. I had a friend go off on their dentist the other day. Their dentist. An unconscious part fired up, and it was like, How dare you? Like, went off on his dentist. He says to me after, he's like, I think I'm starting to see a pattern of unconscious parts. Okay, we came to this series through the work of Paul. Paul says this line, he says, I keep doing the stuff that I don't want to do, and I don't do the stuff I'm supposed to do. I don't understand what's going on inside of me. It's like I have this force inside of me that's doing things, that's making me do things that I don't want to do. If you know this translation, if you went to Sunday school and you're a recovering Sunday school person, and you know that verse, that verse actually, the second part says, Sin is making me. Not I sinned, but this force in the world that he calls sin. It's this force that makes us do the things we don't want to do. I call them unconscious parts. When someone is negative, I cannot deal with that. I need you to be positive. That's the unconscious part. We came to this through the series of work by a book called Immunity to Change that says, when we want to make these changes, he gave this beautiful framework. No, it's not he, they. They gave this beautiful framework. They said, we start with what's the change we want to make? What are the things we need to do to make that change? And then we start to realize there's parts inside of us specifically designed to make sure we do not do the change we think we want to do. And he said, the goal is, the the gold is the ninja level awareness is when you understand what those parts believe. I have a part that believes negativity makes me feel powerless. And I can't feel that. Kyla says, if I think more and more about this, I will feel safe. I won't feel scared. When you understand the beliefs of your parts, then you can make different decisions. When your partner comes close to you, instead of being like, ha, you're like, oh wait, yeah, I got a part that just showed up. Hold on a second. Okay, let me move forward. When your kids, when you're friends, your family, you can make different decisions. That's the beauty of this. We are not stuck with our unconscious parts pulling us under all the time. Okay, today I'm gonna use a different question to get you to start becoming mindful and conscious of your unconscious parts. But I would do it by a story from the Bible. There's a story, it's called the Tower of Babel story. It's from this part of the our our the biblical records that theoretically are called an etiology. It means this got really complex, didn't it? Think of it this way: a kid says to their mom or their dad or their parent, mom, why does everyone speak different languages? And mom says, Oh, there's a story. Now, is the story true? It doesn't matter. It's not about its historicity, it's about seeing something of humanity. They said, at one point, all of the world, all of humanity, everybody spoke the same language. They voted the same, they dressed the same, they wore a Misfit t-shirt. We all wore skulls. That's just how we did it, because we were all together. Y'all need to go buy Misfits t-shirts after this. There was this time when everybody was the same. We were a group. We worked together. Now, you know this story maybe isn't true because in the coming together, they said, What are we gonna do with all this togetherness, this groupness? They said, Let's build a tower. A tower so big and so tall that it will rival the gods. Now, just a quick theory or question, uh, hands up. If you had a group of people and you could do anything in the entire world, how many of you think we should build the highest tower we can come up with? Anyone? Well, in their story, that's what they came up with. This is how they're gonna use their group power. And so they built this incredible tower. You can start up, let's build something that rivals the god, a tower higher than any tower ever built. Let's reshape the world in a way that only the gods could have before. That's how much power we have. That's what a group did. A bunch of people unified in the same direction. And so they started building. Not little house from Mexico, not normal house from Calgary, a tower. Now it says in the story that the gods were sitting up there going, Holy crap, that tower's getting big. Holy crap, that tower's like really big. Holy crap, that tower is like more than we could possibly do. And so they got together, the gods got together and said, Okay, we cannot have this happen. These people are too powerful, they're gonna build too many towers. I'm not sure why they're scared of towers, but that's the story. We can't have them unified this way. How are we gonna change this? So, what they did is they changed everyone's language. Again, fantastical story. Suddenly, everyone spoke a different language: French, Spanish, Swahili, whatever language you have in the world, everyone suddenly spoke different languages. And suddenly they went from this group that was unified to individuals who couldn't communicate with each other anymore. The group fell apart. And you know what happened? The building of the tower stopped. In their individuality, they realize I asked you guys, how many of you guys, if you could have a group of people, you would build the highest tower you could do? Not one of you put up your hands. Because if you sat down and you thought to yourself, what do I want to do with my time? None of you were like, I'd like to try and build the highest tower I can possibly build. That's what I want to do with my life. You see, in the group, the group can get you to go in a direction that's beautiful, potentially, it's powerful. Do people actually want to do it? When they all got individuated, they were like, Yeah, I don't want to build a tower, that's dumb. How about I go plant some crops or go play with my kids or like read a book or have a nap? We've been carrying bricks all day. This is stupid. And so it asks us this question that I want to use to dig inside of our unconscious. It says this question, can you throw it up for me? Do we need other people? Or should we go it alone? I'm gonna give you some facts that give answers to that question. They're all true facts. All of them. Your job, if you're willing to try it, to start to understand what's going on inside is to become aware which facts do I resonate with and which facts do I dislike. And then we're gonna start to find what unconscious parts are tied to those answers. Now, if you're saying, Vince, facts are facts, this is not a preference. I've not chosen a direction. Groups suck. Individual is the right answer. But be mindful. This is a choice that you make in your mind. Probably there's an unconscious part of you that's saying, no, no, this is the way it needs to be. And if you're not conscious of it, you'll say, no, no, this is right. I can't be around people, or I I have to be around people. You can't leave me. We get these really unconscious reactions. But when you realize, oh wait, there's an unconscious part of me, an undercurrent in my life, that's driving how I feel here. Then you can make choices. If you're still going, Vince, this is BS, it's all facts. Come on. Just think of this as a thought experiment. Imagine that there's an unconscious part inside of you that's doing this, that's picking this facts. And become mindful of it. Okay, let's go. Nathanael, you can put the first one. Okay, so this is uh groups are better than not groups. Here's the facts. Social connection increases your odds of survival by 50%. That's a big deal, isn't it? If you want to live longer, group. All you who are thinking group right now are like, yes, we're gonna live longer. We're gonna take over the world. Okay, next one. Loneliness is as dangerous as obesity. That one shook me. We have all this literature on diabetes and uh carrying too much weight and all the things that it does. Loneliness is as dangerous to your health. All cause mortality. That's a shake. Okay, next one. Isolation literally causes heart disease. In men, especially. This is really bad, which is not great because my dad's living by himself. Luckily, he's in an old folks' home, so when he gets lonely, he just goes down and sits with the men in the hallway as they do, and they visit for three hours as they do. It's great. Loneliness, heart disease. You can see it. The literature's clear. Next one. Who declared the World Health Organization declared loneliness a global health crisis? You'd think there's bigger ones, right? Food insecurity, water, loneliness. They estimate that it'll cause or uh it will impact health care by billions, possibly trillions. Next one. Being connected reduces inflammation in the body. We can measure this. You put people in groups, their cortisol levels drop. Sometimes. Okay, I just gave away the which one I go to, don't I?

unknown 20:13

Crap.

SPEAKER_00 20:14

This is all group stuff, right? Community belonging protects against PTSD. There's a reason why 12-steppers, who often have a lot of stuff going on in their lives, come together as a group. Because it does something. There's a difference between coming in here, sitting together as a group, and watching this online. It feels different. Religious community adds years to your life. I want to caveat healthy community. But I don't know, if you grew up in the meadow, Kyla talked a bit about it again this morning. There's a sense of togetherness that that group has. That's pretty beautiful, isn't it? Now, if you don't fit in it, not good. But let's just say, if you fit in the meadow, there's something beautiful there. They'll take care of you, they support you. Groups are better. Be mindful. Which way is your brain going? Is it like, yes, preach it fence? Yes, I love it. Yes. Or are you going? Have you seen the people out there? Do you know the word narcissist? Do you understand how this works? Okay, is that the end of the list? Oh, loneliness makes you twice as likely to get oppressed. Yeah. That would kind of seem self evident, but it's not. Okay, let's go to the positive or the uh individuals better. Solitude measurably reduces stress. Yes. I mean, um, how many? Don't don't put your hand but how many of you are going, okay, finally, now we're getting some proper. Facts here. Can you notice which way your brain is connected? Which one is like, yes, that's me. Next one for me. People who spend more time alone report better health. Also a true fact. It's funny because the other one says it causes problems, right? Depending on how you break out the groups, impacts how the stats come out. Next one for me, Nathaniel. Alone time boosts creativity. So bad. I can see the people have. Well, I'll ask you at the end which one you resonate with. Okay, Nathaniel, keep going. More than half Americans say alone time is essential. That's because they're Americans, they're not Canadians. Okay, next one, Nathaniel. Solitude builds emotional resilience. We'll talk a bit more about that. Next one. Spiritual traditions have always prized solitude. Always. You look at almost every group. In the Christian tradition, we have the desert fathers. It's mostly fathers with a few mothers, but people who lived in isolation wrote from isolation. Isolation gave them insight into the world that people inside of the group could not get. Is that the end of the list? Or is it we have one more? Alone time gives you autonomy. Can I just get a hell yes for that one, please? Okay. So there's no judgment. Because again, this is not about factuality. This is about what parts resonate with us. How many of you are on the alone side where you're like, yes, aloneness, that makes some sense. Those facts resonate with me. It's okay, put up your hand. Yeah. Hallelujah. Okay, how many people are on the other side? Now, here's the funny part. For those of you who are coupled, how many of you are on opposite sides of the team here? Yeah. How many times is it, you know, do you say opposites attractive? We're like, oh no, no, no. During the first year when you're in Limeress, when your brain is literally on drugs, you're like, we're the same. By the end of 16 months, all of a sudden you're like, you like, what? I remember I had one girlfriend, she'll never hear this because I didn't get her permission, but we'll get over. She said, if you don't have plans, you have plans with me. Doesn't that? It's like I barfed into my mouth a little bit, and I was like, oh my goodness, oh my goodness. This needs to bend right now. And then some of you are going, I don't understand the joke. What's what's what what? How is that? Why did she even need to say that? That's just self-evident, isn't it? Can you see how your brain, which parts resonate with? Now here's the thing: immunity to change asks us, do we understand what the belief of the parts hold such that groups are disgusting to us? Or aloneness is just like a waste of bloody time. This is the ninja work. This is the work of understanding what's inside of us. This is the work that Paul said. What is the thing inside of me that's causing me to do this? I can tell if I don't get a certain amount of alone time, I start to become a bit of an a-hole in my relationship. I'm spicy, I'm cranky. What don't I understand? So let me let me try this. Attachment theory says inside of all of us is a pattern, is an unconscious part. They lumped them into two or three groups, but I'm gonna give you the two that are most salient today. Avoidant attachment says to you, when I am upset, I need to be alone. Because I can calm myself down. Anyone find that when you're really kind of like life is crazy or stuff's going on, you just need to be alone. If you can be alone for a little bit, then you can like, oh, I can calm myself down. Yeah. We're going on this Mexico trip. I'm like, um, did somebody put alone time into the agenda? Because I don't see it. And if it's 15 minutes, we're gonna need to up that one a little bit, like a lot, like a day. Two. Randall's looking at me like I just grew two heads. Like, what do you do? Group trip? Do you understand the words? We're going as a group. Yes, but I need to self-soother. Any self-soother, just put up your hand, loud and proud. Self-soother. Every one of us needs to have two skills, at least. One is to be able to calm ourselves down when we're by ourselves. Avoid an attachment. That's all we got. It's like one trick pony. That's all we got. When we're upset, we have to do it this way. Because anxious attachment, people who are anxious say, no, no, no. When I'm upset, if I have someone around me, someone who can give me a hug or hold my hand or look me in the eyes or have a conversation with me. It's like magic. I feel better. Anybody have that feeling where you're like, yeah, like why in the world wouldn't we do this? I like the yes, preach it, brother. This is called relational soothing. For healthy humans, we should probably be ambidextrous. The problem is we tend to not be. If we skew to one and we can't do the other, we don't have options anymore. So if I have an unconscious part inside of me that says, look, I can only relationally soothe. I know this. If I start getting isolated, if I start becoming alone, this is a threat. I can't have this happening. Which one of those facts do you think you would uh gravitate towards? And if you have a part that says, I can only self-soothe, there's no relational soothing. I cannot do that. If I'm upset, you just gotta give me some quiet time. Leave me the frick alone. The stuff about groups making a better life, you're like, that's all horseshit. Pardon my French. Sorry, guys. Two younger kids in the front of the audience here. My bad. She wasn't paying attention. Sweet. Can you see how these unconscious parts, if you can only self-soothe people getting too close, it's kind of freaky to you. You're like, but don't get too close, because I I'm gonna need to be, I'm gonna need to be by myself for a time. And if you're on this side where you have a part that says, no, no, no, if I get too alone, I can't calm down. I need people to calm me. Can you feel how isolation would feel threatening? Again, do not look at your partners at this point. Eye straight ahead. I can see these. Okay. As we go forward, be very mindful of those unconscious parts. In fact, now that you hear me say it, I want you to watch for it in your life. For those of us on the Mexico trip, we're gonna be mindful. Not because there's something wrong with us, but because a world unconscious will cause us to behave in ways that we don't value. Instead of saying, so I'll say to my wife, hey babe, can I have an evening this week where you just go off with your girlfriends and I'm just gonna stay at home, I'm gonna watch the most violent TV I can find, and I'm gonna drink a cider. That will just fix all of my problems. If I don't ask that, what happens is I wait for a week and I can feel it building in me. And then I wait for another week and it's it's building. Now it's kind of like in my throat, and it's I'm starting to get snippy at things. So I get cranky. I can't handle things. She comes home and wants to share her day. I'm like, can you feel that? When you're mindful of it, you're like, oh wait, I just haven't given myself a little bit of time over here so that I can do the things that I want to do in this world. Be the human I want to be. My neighbor says, Can I bore you? You're not like Yeah, actually, you know what? But it's feeling a little bit one-sided. Can we figure out a way that it feels more we're like together, more we? That's the healthy way. When the unconscious is running the show. It's ugly. So let me end this way. May we start to be mindful of our inner parts and how much they show up in our lives and where they show up. So that we can do the opposite of what Paul says. I don't find myself yelling at my kids, snapping at my partner, selfish, voidant, anxious. I can live in a way that I value, honoring me and the people around me in balance. That sounds pretty beautiful, doesn't it? But it doesn't work if these parts stay unconscious. So we may we do the very, very difficult work of becoming conscious of our unconscious parts. I need to go old school. Amen. It's like saying hell yeah, that's how that works. Okay, have a great week. We're back next week. Price is gonna be up, it's gonna be a great time. Follow the blog on Frenchchurch.ca, see what's going on in Mexico. It's gonna be a great trip. Let's all go take care of them. Thanks, everybody.