The Communication Conundrum

daniel jacob self
May 28, 2023
3 min read

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❣️ Are you a current client? First time here?

I'm self conscious

I want to take a moment to talk about what you're going to hear here.

This is a place where, through the medium of heightened, poetic prose music, and sometimes even dance, everything from the minutia of day to day neuroses — so often written off as petty or melodramatic — to the depths of isolation and despair — so often obfuscated, lest it show us to be weak or sick or incapable — can be given voice without judgment.

Many of us silence these parts of ourselves, but especially, ironically, those of us who facilitate healing for others.

All of the philosophies and practices I share in my writing and my facilitation are the fruits of my own lifelong healing journey. The wisdom that I've been gifted by mentors and family and friends. The community around me and the community within me. All the parts of me: the angry, the hurt, the joyful, the resilient, the despairing.

So much of what I'm able to offer to those I work with comes from some initial moment of pain or discomfort in me that has led me to seek out greater wholeness. Which I'm then able to share with you: my community and my clients.

So often we see the fruits of a healing journey, but don't get any insights into the labor: the twists and turns along the way.

We see the shiny outcomes, but not the pain that often motivated us to seek the healing out in the first place, or keeps us committed to the work of collective healing.

So Self Conscious is, in essence, the place where I honor my 'uglier' sides. The parts of me, that in my journey of learning to care for them, have proven that old Leonard Cohen quote so very true.

"Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in."

Self Conscious is also the place where I honor my inner angsty teen and, let's be real, my inner angsty adult! I hope it might speak to yours as well.

However, please know that the monologues in Self Conscious, while based on my own experiences, are works of artistic expression.

Some of them come from different parts of my life. Some of them were written when I was much younger or are about experiences when I was much younger. Some of them are amalgamations of different moments in time, sometimes told with different details for the sake of the heart of the artistic expression of each piece.

As Pablo Picasso once said,

"We all know that art is not truth. Art is a lie. That makes us realize the truth. At least the truth that is given to us to understand."

So my only request in breaking with the norms that would encourage me to keep this form of artistic expression very separate from the rest of my work in this world is this:

If you are someone I work with in a coaching, therapeutic, or facilitating capacity, please take a moment to discern for yourself if you would like to hear these more vulnerable parts of my journey.

For some, it can be radically humanizing and affirming to hear being able to see the humanity and vulnerability of someone who holds space for us and offers guidance. For some, it can feel off putting or distracting: taking away from our experience of having a place we're able to go that can be wholly and fully about our experience without the complexities that can come from the awareness of another person's struggles, feelings, differences, and similarities.

So I ask you to give yourself the gift of discerning for yourself.

What would be most in alignment with your own healing journey right now?

And to remember that what you do here will not necessarily be current time, literal truth, but artistic expression: drawn from experiences across my lifetime— some of it expanded or shifted for artistic purposes.

All that being said... if you decide, you'd like to listen. I hope you enjoy.

I encourage you to listen with the parts of yourself that perhaps have always felt too melodramatic, or too much, too sensitive, or all alone in parts of your pain.

I hope you can laugh with me at the neuroses and perhaps cry with me at the moments of hopelessness. Some perhaps relatable and some perhaps very different to your unique travels through this sometimes beautiful, sometimes painful journey of life.

If you do proceed, thank you for receiving these vulnerable parts of me.

If you decide not to proceed, thank you for honoring what feels right to you right now.

If you do proceed, I hope if nothing else, these pieces resonate with and help certain vulnerable parts of you feel they deserve expression. No matter how small or how large.

And as always, please join in by commenting below.

I'd love to hear what you connect to, what you feel moved by, and what comes up for you as you listen.

Because ultimately...

I don't know.

What do you think?

I'm self conscious

What is the point of this whole human being together thing?

I'm sitting opposite someone I love so dearly, who I know loves me so dearly. We've both been doing this whole communicating thing for quite some time. We've even studied it... together! And yet when I speak what they hear seems to be... something else.

Or else take this other loved one. Same situation: so much love, both of us really into the whole communicating thing, and we're sitting here opposite each other. And I can absolutely understand where they're coming from. I get it — truly — given their past, given their way of engaging with the world, the way their brain works...

I get it. It makes sense.

I also — get this — get where I'm coming from and my perspective, given everything I've experienced and my way of engaging and blah, blah, blah....

What's more, I can see the effort they're putting into understanding where I'm coming from. I'm putting a lot of effort into understanding where they're coming from.

We're doing great. We're doing communicating.

But all I want to do is give up...

I'm angry, I'm hurt. I feel hopeless because the truth is that both of us, understanding each other's perspectives doesn't take away the anger at the heart of the situation inside of me, which somehow feels tied into some fundamental umbrage I seem to be taking at the reality of... difference.

We are all different. These people I love so much who I connect with so deeply. Their needs, their experiences, their cognition and communication are all fundamentally unique— distinct from my own.

And for some, as yet unplumbed reason right now, that is really hurtful to me.

Okay. So let's hear it.

Why!?

Why is this particular inalienable truth bundled up as a part of the package deal of this plane of existence so fundamentally objectionable to me? It'd be a funny old world if we were all the same. I've heard it said they say. No, you know what it would be? Peaceful. It would be a world where we all got one another. All could just get along because we'd all want the same things in the same ways. All feel heard and understood and cared for by the same means... We'd all... just...

...I suppose it might take away from a lot of... I don't know... the point, I guess?

The point of the effort spent to truly understand — as best as we're able — where a distinct beloved individual is coming from.

It would take away the opportunity to experience that laughter when someone feels so seen. So connected to that they burst out laughing with the recognition of themselves in another's words.

I do really love that.

It's kind of what I've devoted my life to helping people feel, seen, heard, cared about, and validated in the specificity of their particular sphere of experience.

So why the vitriol?

Why this hurt manifesting as some dystopian dream of uniformity? I think it's because. On some level, I must feel as though I'm doing more of the understanding than the being understood. More of the witnessing than the being witnessed.

And beneath that... Behind it....

It's actually got nothing to do with anyone else. The end of that previous self - aggrieved complaint should be something like... "by myself."

I must feel as though I am doing more of the understanding of others than I'm doing of the understanding of myself. Witnessing others more than I'm witnessing me.

Okay, well that's something.

Because we sure do learn a lot sticking with it. Figuring out how to hear each other, how to honor our disparate needs from our disparate backgrounds and our disparate circumstances. It sure can lead to a pretty amazing expansion of consciousness, getting a glimpse into a totally different way, a totally different perspective than your own.

So maybe I just need to take a little time with myself to somehow see if I can manage to make _myself _laugh with recognition at how much I get me. To do all those little things in exactly the specific unique way that I love so very much, and to appreciate how good it feels cuz it's just my way. Maybe that'll open up just that much more room to embrace the wonder of the mystery of the person sitting across from me.

Wholly unique. Wholly themselves. With all their own little ways.

Just like me...