Freedom and Responsibility
The next Existential fear that we’ll explore is the fear of freedom. This one at first blush is perhaps a little less intuitive than the others, but it has to do with the way that we minimize and displace our responsibility to take full control of our lives. Sometimes this is easier to see in other people than it is for us to see in our own lives: you might see how your friend is refusing to take responsibility to find a new job even though they clearly have a toxic work environment, a family member that blames everyone else for the fact that they have an addiction or a disgruntled citizen griping about the way their municipality is run even though they never bother to go to the assembly meetings. The freedom we have to make our own decisions and act autonomously can present a double edged sword in that we have to own the consequences of our choices to take action or not take action when our quality of life is not our ideal.
The truth of the matter is that engaging fully in our lives is hard work. We are all born with the freedom to start making life what we want it to be and yet many of us hide from the responsibility to engage that freedom. As with the other existential challenges we’ve explored thus far, anxiety is a common emotion to experience when you are consciously or subconsciously shirking your right and your duty to take the reins of your life. I hesitate to use that type of language because it seems to imply a “get moving” quick-fix. Sometimes it can be that simple, but for many of us, the reasons we get stuck in inaction are usually very complex. We might not even consciously recognize them. Sometimes what we know, even if it’s not ideal is more comfortable then embarking on the change process with all its unknowns. In addition to fear and anxiety, at the extremes, there are typically two different emotions that tell us that we’re skirting this existential dilemma: the emotion/experiences of shame or blame.
On the blame end; It’s so much easier to blame others for why our lives are not going the way we want them than it is to roll up one’s sleeves to undertake needed changes. In terms of where blame weighs in on the spectrum of emotions, it registers somewhere between anger and disgust. Not all experiences of this emotion are bad: sometimes it’s a sign of health to be able to attribute wrongs to an “other.” Its ideal function is to help us in recognizing when a boundary has been crossed in a way that has injured, tarnished or destroyed something precious to us. It also functions to help us marshal our boundaries to protect against those people or systems that caused our pain. Like anger, the emotion or state of blame should be more of a journey than a destination. When we settle into or get stuck in it as a default emotion it tends to ferment and cause problems. In the long term it becomes an excuse that we repeat hollowly for why we are not taking action to better our lives.
Dialectical Behavioral Therapy has some wisdom to offer for folks that get stuck in blame in their idea of “radical acceptance.” Radical acceptance means that you accept the world as it is, warts and all, and start to roll up the sleeves to build skills or start projects that will make it, or your experience of it, better. Radical acceptance does not minimize or sanction bad things that have happened to us, rather this attitude acknowledges that these events are now in the past so that you can address the impacts that remain in the present. The old adage, “simple, but not easy” applies here. It takes work to hold this attitude well, and yet in some measure this is what allows us to begin to rebuild our lives after bad things have happened to us.
Shame is another signal that tells us we are sailing near the shoals of this dilemma. Shame presents a double edged sword when navigating this existential crisis because as a physiological experience, shame has a lot of overlap with the trauma freeze response. People living with toxic shame from traumatic experiences get caught by that freeze response which in turn can impede their ability to change their situation. Inaction in the face of needed action can also create more shame, causing a negative feedback loop that can really auger a person into a state of collapse.
Moving on from shame is a complex topic that has occupied the minds of major religions, philosophers, counselors and the field of medicine. Shame usually causes us to shrink away from being seen or known by others. If shame had a message, it would be something along the lines of “you are damaged beyond repair” or “if people knew about this, they would think you were a monster." Empathy is an incredibly important ingredient for the process of healing shame. Bearing your shame to another safe, caring person as you share your story can be a transformative experience. For shame with deep roots in trauma, resolution can be much more complex - often necessitating a gentle, slow, rhythmic movement out of the freeze response. Peter Levine’s approach to trauma called “Somatic Experiencing” uses a process he calls “pendulation” to help the body slowly break down the freeze response by oscillating between neutral/safe stimuli or movements to more triggering ones; allowing the body to release hormones and energy it generated for the fight/flight responses that became inhibited. This type of work is best done with a trained professional well versed in trauma therapy.
As you read through this blog post are there any actions in your life that you’ve been procrastinating? Do you recognize any shame or blame that has kept you trapped in inaction? If you’ve found this blog post helpful or insightful, please feel free to share it with others.
