Misbehaving or Deconstructing the Patriarchy

Words and language have interested me for most of my life. I am fascinated by the forms they take as well as by their inherent usefulness. I am a firm believer that words and language exist to facilitate communication and understanding between people, and peoples. I’m curious if miscommunication or chasms in communication have been showing up in your relationships and daily interactions lately. Frustrated communication is something I have experienced a lot of late, hence today I awoke thinking about communication styles. Ultimately contemplating their usefulness and noticing how often they are used as an oppressive apparatus. A tool for disconnection as opposed to connection. For judgement instead of sympathy.

As a young scholar I was always offended when I felt others were trying to ‘talk above’ me, speakers using the most obscure vocabulary to say something just to show their level of knowledge. I felt like it was the opposite of the purpose of words: to be understood by others. Of course, I have since discovered the joy of using language and words creatively. Sometimes even using the most obscure words to describe something because they are just a bit more accurate or a beautiful way of saying it. However, even when giving myself creative license I always try to assure the meaning of my words will be understood by whomever is receiving them, through context if not the exact word choices.

Because I have this value and intention, it is deeply frustrating to observe that I am regularly misunderstood, seeing that my words are not landing on those with whom I speak in the way I intend them. For months I have been frantically, unsuccessfully trying to figure out how I can say things so that others will understand them. I know myself to be a very good communicator, so I’ve wondered why I suddenly don’t make sense to others. Now, I’m more curious as to why it triggers me so intensely when I am not understood, and why I assume I hold the responsibility for this dynamic.

I am very empathic, in simple terms, it means I can see or feel things from another’s perspective. It has come to mean a person who is sensitive and able to read the people and the environment around them. And those things are true, but really, at its core, being empathic is just being able to see and hear beyond our own viewpoint or belief long enough to recognize there are other ways of seeing and hearing. It is being able to lower our defenses and quiet our ego long enough to recognize that other perceptions are also quite possibly accurate. Even when contradictory to or not aligned with our own views. Essentially, it is having good comprehension skills.

I have witnessed the ability to understand, to truly comprehend what another person is saying become labored and rare. We see it daily on the global stage, and I see it in my personal life as well. I have watched us lose the capacity to hear someone’s meaning and intent through their words, sometimes when they aren’t the words we would choose but often when both parties are using the exact words and language. I find this dynamic chaos producing for my nervous system, it completely dysregulates me. I have observed myself becoming incensed with others for not having more agility in their comprehension of me. Becoming furious with myself for not being able to say things in a way that is understood by others. Wildly out of character for me, these reactions are alerting me to my frayed nervous system.

I recently learned about nervous system coregulation. In basic terms it means using our connection to and supportive communication with others to help us stabilize our nervous system by feeling seen, heard and understood. I recognize these co-regulatory behaviors in myself, and I believe I have been trying to calm my nervous system through coregulation for months now. Unfortunately, instead of being met with the connection and comprehension that would help to regulate my nervous system, I have been met with misunderstanding, judgement and a lot of blame for the miscommunication. Which as you can imagine, has only further dysregulated my nervous system. In response, reaction is probably more accurate, to eliminate the overactivation of my already taxed nervous system and to avoid continuing to be misunderstood, I have withdrawn and become silent.

As I have gone inward, the second thing I have learned about is an empath’s Silent or Sophia stage. I use the term empath here in a way that aligns with the sensitive person I spoke of above. The Silent stage comes in an empath’s life when they have done everything they know to do to connect emotionally with and feel understood and cared for by another. When they have tried to coregulate their nervous system through connection for some time and they finally recognize that emotional support in that relationship is not forthcoming. Or simply that the other nervous system is not able to participate in coregulation. Possibly because it is too dysregulated itself or maybe because that person isn’t able to suspend their own perspective long enough to see it from the empath’s angle.

Whatever the cause of the unreciprocated coregulation, once it happens the empath turns inward, we look for alternate ways to regulate our nervous system. We become silent outwardly as we look within for stability and safety. We withdraw emotionally and physically because that relationship, social circle or society no longer feels safe. At this wild and wonderous moment on planet Earth, I have arrived at the Sophia stage. It comes as a result of repeated failed attempts at coregulation, unmet attempts at soothing my nerves through connection and understanding from another person or people. Oddly, or maybe predictably, instead of coregulation I have experienced a bizarre sort of co-dysregulation.

Nervous system dysregulation can be observed on a large scale at this time in humanity. We see it in the inability to be civil and display common courtesy. It shows up as aggression. It shows up as everyone yelling and clamoring to be understood yet not listening and trying to understand. We see it as a lack of empathy. Meanwhile, it has become harder to identify when our nervous system is dysregulated because there is so much to actually fear in our current reality. As a result, our nervous systems are chronically overactive and hyper-vigilant. And because we can’t easily feel beyond our own internal dysregulation, it causes us to lose the ability to notice when others are trying to extend an offering of connection and coregulation. We don’t see the willingness another is showing us to suspend their own perspective and attempt to view ours. And because we can’t perceive it, we are unable to receive or reciprocate that support.

I’ve come to believe there is a paradigm shift that is mid-process in the collective and ‘the powers that be’ don’t like it. We are feeling the waves for and against this shift crashing into each other, creating a riptide. Those who are trying to communicate in a more authentic way, that is connective in nature and truly reflective of their life experiences slamming up against those who are still fully immersed in the patriarchal system of hierarchic communication. Personally, it feels as though I am being batted around in a paradigm I can clearly see no longer works for me, attempting to find the exit as I violently bump into ideologies that tell me I’m wrong, bad, lesser, stupid, a feminine body that is misbehaving. Telling me my communication style is inappropriate and that my words are incomprehensible.

As a post-menopausal feminist who (thank Goddess) no longer feels it is her obligation to accommodate the patriarchy, and as an empathic woman who no longer thinks she is responsible for the wellbeing of everyone around her, I feel like I am stuck in a system that is trying to squeeze any last sense of freedom out of me. A system that hits me with fear and brutality to try to convince me that I should stay, that I don’t have permission to walk away from its dying oppressive hold on me. I feel I have awoken the sleeping dragon of patriarchal communication, and it is lashing out at me hoping to convince me of its power, or annihilate me, before it takes its final labored breaths and fades into oblivion.

I am an empath in a world trained to respond unempathetically. A post-menopausal woman in a society that doesn’t honor crones’ wisdom. A woman living in a civilized nation that would still rather see me raped and cover it up, take control of my body, and eliminate my right to vote if I’m aligned with a man through marriage, than elect me to be President. That’s the world I am trying to dismantle. That’s the style of communication in which I will no longer partake.

I find I would rather be alone than face all the people who are unable or unwilling to understand me. I hope to someday live in a world where we feel safe enough to notice when another is trying to connect with us. One in which we have the ability to recognize when others are trying to help us calm our nervous system through communication, kind understanding and coregulation. I would like to live in a world in which we make the effort to understand another’s views, to see it from their angle, instead of blaming them when we fail to grasp their perspective.

I hope to see you all there.

So much love, Tawa

P.S. We recorded a fun new Astro Praxi5 chat about how burnout can be seen in planetary movements. It seems a good time to share it as this blog is at least partly about the social and political burnout that I, and probably many of you, are experiencing. We include practical ways to work with the astrology to ease the burnout. Thank you for being curious about a different perspective. And please share yours in the comments.