In order to fully understand and appreciate the words in this piece you will need to have first read the original jellyfish story in one of my earlier posts which you can find HERE.
If you are uninterested and wish to read on without any back story then let me just give you the abbreviated version.
Two people walking on a beach come upon thousands of beached jellyfish. One of them tries to save as many as they can while the other observes critically…
In my first jellyfish post I share about the initial impact this story had on me in my youth as well as a perspective shifting lesson that emerged from it as I was being slowly dismantled by my burnout.
I recently shared this story with a client, as it was very fitting to the conflict that she was in the midst of battling. As I drove the story home with its dramatic and life altering lesson my client responded, “Oh, that’s not what I thought you were going to say.”
“Well what did you think I was going to say?”
“I thought you were going to say that if the person continues to try to save all of the jellyfish that they will never get to where they are going.”
Quiet blinking.
“Well damn, it looks like you discovered another lesson in it. A really good one in fact.”
Let me tell ya, the things I have learned from my clients are sometimes mind blowing. They have often given me more insight, information, and understanding than the most expensive psychology textbooks out there. People are amazing. Deep wells of unlimited and often untapped wisdom and resources. Helping them discover that is the very essence of my job.
Anywho, back to the story… So here I am taking in the third lesson from the jellyfish as revealed by my client. After mulling and chewing through the raw material of these newly exposed truths my client and I come to the following lesson.
If you allow yourself to become all consumed in the task of helping the jellyfish return to safety, then you will never reach your own destination. Your own destiny.
Naturally this intrigued me to the point of laying in bed at night and pondering through the ever unfolding layers of all the lessons being held within this one, seemingly simple story. I began to ask myself a flood of questions driven by deep curiosity from the perspective of being the person attempting to save the jellyfish…
What then does your partner/friend/companion do in such a situation? Stand passively? Offer increasingly harsher criticism or judgment? Continue walking and leave you behind? Have you thought at all of how your choices affect your partner? If you are so worried about the jellyfish in front of you that you lose sight of the person beside you, how much does your labor really matter? What if you lose sight of your own journey? Your own destination? Your own destiny? How much of yourself is to be sacrificed for the sake of others’ wellness? How much more deserving are these helpless jellyfish than you are of returning home? Of continuing your adventure? Of finding safety?
We will encounter people on this life journey that are at varying levels of self-discovery, healing, and evolution. Some will call to us deeply, eliciting compassion that longs to give them hope. We might think to ourselves, as I often have, “Hey I have lots of that, let me share some with you.” So we give them ours out of a belief that it will help them and out of guilt for having it when they didn’t. Guilt that tells us we don’t deserve to have more than them. More peace, more balance, more self-love, more wisdom, more enjoyment in life and in effect we inadvertently end up sacrificing what has been hard earned in the name of martyrdom.
What is truly being feared though? Why the guilt?
For me it was the fear of being envied. I have stolen from myself and given to the needy more times than I can count out of a deep fear of my ‘having’ being a source of any kind of negative emotion in another. My unconscious cry for years has been, “Don’t envy me because you are JUST as deserving!” That then led to, “Here have it! See? You deserve it!” The problem with giving someone something they haven’t gained themselves, is it is incapable of being integrated. It was gifted from the source within me, not within themselves, so no matter how much love or hope I give them it isn’t going to be sustained. Much like trying to grow a redwood tree in a desert.
What needs to be understood, is that someone who experiences envy towards you created it within themselves. Envy comes when someone wants something but is unwilling or unmotivated to put in the hard and sometimes brutal work to get it. Let me make a distinction here to make sure I am being understood clearly. I am not talking about jealousy. Jealousy is an emotion that arises when we are wanting something that another has which we are INCAPABLE of attaining no matter how hard we work for it. An example of this could be a single mother working a minimum wage job and feeling jealous towards the women living in large homes, in safe neighborhoods with full-time childcare. No matter how many hours this single mother works her resources are limited as are her access to them. This is an issue of equity, not motivation.
The most unrealized truth is that WE are our own (re)source center. For many this space was not celebrated and protected but rather invaded and persecuted.
Colonized, enslaved, and oppressed for the benefit of another who thought themselves to be more deserving. The greatest harm one can inflict is the cutting off or dismantling of a person’s sense of safety within their well house. Within their very own being. Breaking a person’s trust with their own body, spirit, and intuition.
I can tell you this.
No longer will I be the source of my own pain in the name of another’s healing.
I am MY source.
My job is to help others tap into theirs. Not to give them a rope and bucket to draw eternally from mine. I first give them a cup with water and then teach them how to refill it from their own well.
Some fear too much to enter into that space due to years and often generations of conditioning in which the brain perceives it as a threat. Sometimes the fight/flight/freeze that gets activated within their body is simply too much. That is fine. Our initial work then becomes one of establishing the first developmental task in life of trust vs mistrust, otherwise known as safety.
Let’s explore yet another level to this story…
What might it look like to simply be present and observe the jellyfish in their suffering without taking any action?
Some of my greatest suffering has come from being an empath and being an emotional/physical/spiritual/energetic witness to others suffering. I feel it deeply, sometimes confusing it as my own emotional experience which then creates a desperate need to end it.
How much of this is actually being driven by my own needs, rather than the needs of those I am bearing witness to?
Well, there are layers to this but I think a good place to start is recognizing that this may in fact be the source from which codependency is birthed. My desire to make another “feel better” is often driven by a need for them to be able to show up for me in some way. To meet an unmet need or resolve a primary attachment wound. This might not necessarily be true for my clients or my kid but if what I am secretly (unconsciously) seeking is validation that I am competent, good enough, making an impact, etc. then it in fact still fits. At the very core the function here is one of seeking worth, or rather seeking validation from others that I am worthy. That I hold value.
This dynamic has played out most potently in my romantic relationships, especially with the father of my child. Meeting him for the first time only three weeks after he was released from prison, the connection was undeniable and the codependency inevitable. As our love for one another grew so did my desperation for him to become the man I needed and wanted in my life. For anyone that has read my post “Two Hearts Hurt” then you already know the outcome of this love story. Addiction hit, chaos and destruction ensued, a baby was conceived, I battled my way back to safety, and the lover returned to prison. In my grief I found hard truths that I had feared to face even though I have always instinctually known them. The biggest being the eternal truth that everyone is on their own journey and that you cannot save them from their suffering for life is suffering. It’s where we gain the wisdom needed to evolve our souls and to enter into truly intimate relationships.
“You are different from the rest. Your heart is pure! Rejoice! The broken are the more evolved.”
The Beast, Split (2016)
There is a well known cliche, “You cannot love others until you love yourself.”
I would add that for the caretakers and wounded healers of the world, that you cannot receive the love you deserve until you have learned to love yourself. Until you have integrated the truth that you are worthy of being cared for.
But what the hell does that even mean and how do you get there?!
It comes down to a simple truth. Others cannot give you your worth because you never lost in the first place. Your value and worth is inherent. Your birthright. Your greatest gift. We have been conditioned to believe that others hold the power to either give this to us or to take it away. It is what built the patriarchy and the social constructs of all the “isms” by assigning or withholding value based on physical characteristics and possession of economic resources.
Where exactly does this powerful self-worth lie?
Within your well house of course.
(If you haven’t noticed yet I give long winded answers to thought provoking questions. Who am I kidding, I give long winded answers to everything!)
Let me bring us back to the question of simply bearing witness without action…
One of the worst experiences of parenthood is being witness to our children’s suffering and feeling powerless to do anything about it. Parents cope with this in a variety of ways including denying it, shaming it, rationalizing it, silver lining it, sprinkling it with toxic positivity, or everyone’s most favorite…. making it about themselves. All of these come from the same root, however, which is lacking the tolerance to their child’s suffering and their emotional responses from it. This is often due to having been raised by parents and a society that told them their emotions were not tolerable. That suffering is not tolerable. Actually that suffering is to be avoided at ALL cost by taking a pill, becoming intoxicated, consuming material things, and losing oneself to the phantasies of intimacy. All of which, by the way, have an impact because of the chemical reactions they create in the brain, providing temporary relief from the neurotransmitters that are communicating pain.
So what is it then that can be achieved by simply observing the suffering? A lot actually. You give it a witness. You give it validation. You give it space to exist free from shame or attempts to eradicate it. By tolerating and accepting the other’s suffering we communicate to them that it is tolerable. That they will survive through it, even if the survival is the releasing of the soul from this mortal body (in the case of terminal illness or other forms of death not inflicted on the self).
This is most often the work that I do with the parents of my child client’s. I help them to become aware of their own discomfort and fear of their child’s suffering. Identifying their own distress that is elicited in the face of it and recognizing that it is actually their own unresolved traumas that are flooding their body. All the stories that no one ever bore witness to.
The truth is whether or not the falling tree makes a sound is irrelevant because it always makes an impact. It always forms a dent into the earth as it strikes, even without someone being there to witness it.
Every word. Every emotion. Every image. Every body sensation. Woven into belief systems that bind people, holding them in fear and in a constant state of survival. A space where it is simply not safe to feel.
This is how generational trauma works. This is how even the most well intended parents accidentally pass on the burden. We never have to hit our children, call them names, or deprive them of basic needs being met. All we have to do is teach them that suffering is unbearable. That their emotions are unsafe. That no matter how loud they scream and cry nobody can help them. They are alone in their own chaos.
Life is suffering.
Let us be witness to it today. Notice how it feels in your body as you do so.
And do nothing but accept it and validate its existence.
For anyone interested in just one more thought…
You can, in fact, continue to walk the beach and help the jellyfish that you feel called to. Trusting that the rest were not intended to be part of your journey. Understanding that their journey is their own. That you are NOT their savior and nor are they yours.
May this be the goal. May this be the way we walk through the world.
May you be filled with loving kindness.
May you be well.
May you be peaceful and at ease.
May you be happy.
So may it be for me, so may it be for you, so may it be for all of us.