How do we un-split ourselves?
I think it involves community
In seminary, I had a professor who gave us an assignment that involved sorting through a vocation-related question or issue currently on our minds.
Bravely, he offered an example: a paper he’d written, wrestling through an issue he was facing in his own life. The Biforcated Life, it was called.
(Of course, I noticed the typo right away. Bifurcated, not biforcated, I thought. Because an Enneagram 1 is gonna be an Enneagram 1.)
Anyhow. The point of the paper was that my professor, at the time he wrote it, was feeling like he was living one life inside his job as a pastor and another life outside of it. He pondered what it might look like to live with more integrity—more integratedness. A stronger sense of authenticity that carries through the different parts of his life so he wouldn’t feel like he was being split in two.
I appreciate this wrestling. Who wants to live life split in half? It’s bad for the person who feels split, and it’s bad for the people who know and love that person.
Kudos to my professor for recognizing that he was heading in this direction, working hard to turn around and walk a different way, and being willing to share this journey with our class.
At the same time, though, I wonder what we’re missing when we assume that the “biforcated” life is entirely a personal issue. One that needs to be resolved through personal self-reflection, through personal changes toward living with more personal integrity.
What about the forces outside of my professor that made him feel like he had to act a certain way at church and another way at home or with friends?
I thought about this sort of thing as I read
’s reflections on emotional regulation and workplace stress for sensitive people. In her book Social Justice for the Sensitive Soul, Cheng-Tozun writes this:“The effort to regulate emotions while doing such emotional work would be significant for anyone, but for feelings-driven individuals, the energy required is even greater. This is another reason why the people you interact with in the course of your social justice activities are so important. Perhaps you need to be careful about expressing your emotions with the general public or community leaders and elected officials, but what about your colleagues? Your supervisor? Do they give you space to express your true emotions, or do you have to hide it from them as well? How much time do you spend with people who require you to manage your emotions, compared to times when you can express yourself more fully? Staying in a position where you have to be ‘incongruent,’ where what you’re feeling is different from the emotions you’re allowed to express, ‘is stressful and will increasingly shift you into chronic and eventually traumatic stress,’ explains Barrie Jaeger [author of Making Work Work for the Highly Sensitive Person]. But working with and around people who are supportive and authentic can bring greater joy to your efforts, amplify your courage, and sustain you for the longer term.”
I found this so thought-provoking.
I’ll admit that part of me reads Cheng-Tozun’s words and thinks, Wait a minute. There are colleagues and supervisors—supervisors, especially—around whom you don’t have to manage your emotions?
I don’t think I’ve ever experienced that in my life. I’ve had good supervisors, people I liked and trusted. But isn’t it the nature of work that you think before you express an emotion?
And perhaps it’s the nature of being a mature human that you’re a little careful about which feelings you want to show, and how you show them?
I think there are different degrees of this. I don’t think Cheng-Tozun is saying we shouldn’t be managing our emotional expression in some way.
Maybe it’s not necessarily managing our emotions at work that gets us stuck in that long-term stressed-out state, so much as it’s that pressure toward what Cheng-Tozun calls incongruency, or what my professor called “biforcation.”
Hopefully we’re choosing not to yell at our colleagues when we feel angry. But hopefully we’re also not having to pretend to be someone we’re not, feel differently from what we feel, stay silent when something feels important to us, or pretend our values are something other than what they really are.
I don’t know if complete emotional authenticity in the workplace is possible, or even desirable. But I like where Cheng-Tozun is going with this: She’s saying we want to work with generally supportive, authentic people, with whom we generally feel safe to be supportive and authentic in turn. And we deserve that.
It doesn’t seem like too much to ask for. And yet, how many of us have worked in spaces that were not like this? In nonprofit work? How about in Christian ministry?
How long did we stay?
I think about my seminary professor’s “biforcated” life and his efforts to restore integrity. I appreciate these efforts—and I wonder if they’re only part of the story.
Maybe, when we feel ourselves starting to split, it’s not only a matter of personal integrity but also a matter of wanting and needing to be in spaces that encourage us to bring our full selves and not suppress any part of who we are.
This is harder in some jobs than others. I certainly don’t envy the pressures pastors face from their congregations at every turn. But maybe some congregations carry a little less of bifurcate yourself now, or else kind of vibe. Maybe pastors who desire integrity and authenticity can find these congregations. Maybe they can build these kinds of congregations.
(Are you a pastor? If so, have you been able to do this, or does it feel like a pipe dream? I’d love to hear.)
Maybe it is a pipe dream. But I don’t know. I know I want to be part of communities like that. I don’t expect leaders to be perfect; I do want leaders to live with integrity. To be whole. To not feel split, like they can’t be who they really are among the people they’re leading.
I want to be one of those supportive and authentic people who helps others—even, especially, those in leadership—do the same. I don’t know that I’m fully there yet. But it feels possible.
Maybe we can seek to live with personal integrity at the same time as we seek to build systems and theologies and communities that empower everyone to be able to do the same, even and especially those in leadership.
Maybe we can work on recognizing when we’re pressured to express emotions we don’t feel—or suppress emotions we do feel—to make others comfortable. Maybe we can interrogate this. Maybe we can learn to have some hard conversations about what we’re really feeling.
Maybe we can be willing to leave an environment if necessary—if it doesn’t support our integrity and won’t change, or doesn’t want to change.
Maybe we can learn how to live un-split lives not just individually, but together.
If you need more…
- is over here writing so thoughtfully and beautifully about brokenness, healing, and being opened up.
- hit so many nails on the head (in my view, at least) in this essay about men who respect women…and why so many men just don’t.
Interesting post... as a spiritual director I often will hear people I'm sitting with say "I don't usually cry but I always seem to cry here". I imagine therapy is similar for many--that safe enough space to finally feel some of the emotions that have been held back. But I agree with your wondering of how can the places we exist--live, work, even our homes--be safe enough to not fragment ourselves from our emotions. I'm about to present on integration using the Enneagram so your post feels timely as I consider the value of integration (for so many reasons).