We Have to Get Better At Getting It Wrong

The pandemic not enough folx are talking about

Why is ‘getting it wrong’ so hard?

Because we are raised to fear getting things wrong.

In our colonial reality, we are taught to equate ‘wrong’ with being a bad person. We learn to avoid the label, rather than to act for the good of ourselves and others. We are taught that ‘owning up’ leads to punishment and shame, rather than repair and learning. We are not given the tools to emotionally regulate while holding the consequences of our actions. We are the children of a coloniser’s reality, in which harm is repeatedly caused on a mass scale, and no accountability is taken. Our blueprint is denial, guilt, shame and compounding of harm. For some of us, we experience Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria (RSD), fear of abandonment, fear of being misunderstood, when we are told (in different ways) that we ‘got it wrong’. This fear of getting it wrong is a colonial sickness that can and must be cured in order for us to reimagine the reality we wish to see. The remedy has three parts…

1. Compassion. We have to develop a deep compassion for ourselves and all beings. Many people think they understand what compassion is, but at best they understand empathy and at worst sympathy. I talk more about the differences in Detangling Empathy And Compassion. Compassion has to include a desire for ourselves to be well, to be fulfilled, to have our needs met. It must also include this desire for others. ALL others. Compassion is not selective. Why is it key to navigating ‘getting it wrong’? We need to have compassion for others in order to maintain our humanity, to perceive the harm we cause and to be able to hold the interests and needs of others clearly. We need to be able to show ourselves compassion when we get it wrong, to be kind, to be gentle, to be forgiving and to be loving towards ourselves when we screw up. This self-compassion is especially important when we screw up in a way that harms someone else. In order for us to be able to navigate the next step of accountability, we have to be able to love ourselves fiercely through our own wrongdoing. Cultivating compassion leads to our own healing and contributes to the healing of others, it also supports us to act in alignment with our true purpose; our innate drive to contribute to the thriving of our earthly kin, the one that exists before, after and outside of colonial constructs.

2. Accountability. We have to develop the skills needed to repair harm and learn to do better. This starts with compassion, because without it, not only do we disregard (or not even notice) the harm we cause others, we will get lost in shame and guilt and our own self-loathing, which prevents us from taking this step. Accountability is so rarely demonstrated in our colonial reality, and doubling down on harm caused is normalised and even celebrated. When apologies are made, often they centre the feelings of the person who caused harm, not the needs of those harmed. The expectation is that apologies should be accepted and we should all move on. This is fundamentally abusive and manipulative. No one has to accept an apology from us. No one has to believe we won’t do it again. It is up to us to reflect on our actions, seek help and support outside of those we harmed, and preferably from someone with the same level or more access to whiteness and colonial advantages than ourselves (unless we are paying them, which can gives us access to expert support but it still doesn’t give us the right to traumatise!), to take tangible steps to lead to behaviour change in ourselves, and seek to repair harm on individual, community and systemic levels. Developing a strong accountability ‘muscle’ drives us away from individualism and isolation and towards connection and community.

3. Decolonisation. We are so deeply indoctrinated into colonial ways of thinking and being that seeing the bigger picture can be challenging. The survival of colonial systems depends heavily on our inability to navigate getting it wrong. The reality of contemplating the amount of harm those who benefit from whiteness, from colonisation, from the construct of normal are causing is designed to overwhelm us into denial and inaction. Developing a robust system, process, technique for navigating getting it wrong, that supports the needs of our own mindbodies, is a huge step in the direction of dismantling systems of harm on a global scale. An established approach at an individual level can be adjusted to apply to your community, to the systems you take part it and to divesting at every opportunity. It is all deeply connected, and every time you successfully navigate getting it wrong you are taking a step towards a reimagined reality.

It is an act of resistance to reject shame and guilt. It is an act of resistance to love ourselves and others fiercely. It is an act of resistance to take full, self-aware responsibility for our actions. It is an act of resistance to accept consequences with grace and humility. It is an act of resistance to redirect our attention to doing better. It is an act of resistance to reject the self-obsessed, pathologising, colonial affirmation of ‘I’m a bad person’.

So take your medicine, and let’s get to work.

—AJ

Today’s Neuro-Embodiment Prompts:

Suggestions and questions to help you engage with mindbody decolonisation:

• What happens for you when you ‘get it wrong’? What emotions do you experience? What behaviours do you default to? How can you engage with redesigning your approach to getting it wrong?

• What support do you need to unlearn the colonial approach to ‘getting it wrong’? What healing needs to happen, and who can help you to engage with that process?

• Which of your mindbody features interact with ‘getting it wrong’? Do you experience Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria? How can you develop a deep compassion for your mindbody features, while redesigning your actions and techniques for dealing with ‘getting it wrong’?

• Consider individual, community and systemic levels for ‘getting it wrong’, what can you observe about your own actions? How would you like to start engaging with compassion, accountability and decolonisation in each of these spheres? What support do you need?

• How can you role model a decolonial approach to ‘getting it wrong’ for the young people in your life? What skills can you help them to develop? What values can you help to instil? What forms of colonial teaching do you want to reject, leave behind in this new approach?