Sometimes Thinking in a 'Web' Leads Us to Greater Understanding

As always, I want to share some great content that crossed my desk this week and some of my own thinking about it. I’m going to try to tie a bunch of things together as is our way so please bear with me. I’ve read that INFJs, which not all HSPs are, of course, but to some degree fits the introvert as well, do this - the idea that we think in ‘webs’.

AI describes thinking in a spiderweb as a cognitive process where information is organized as a central core of interconnected, multi-layered and complex ideas, utilizing introverted intuition (Ni) to connect disparate concepts. Here we go.

First, I again marvel at the way in which these two life coaches whom I follow online appear to have lived parallel lives to mine. Both published content in line with the theme of my own posts of the last few weeks which I’ll share at the bottom and which got me to do some fresh thinking. Their posts both relate to our seeming compulsion to help others when what we really probably need to do is stop all the helping for the sake of the both the other person and ourselves.

Where Lauren Sapala poses our helping others as a compulsion that’s a symptom of codependence we likely learned from our childhood family dynamic, Wenzes poses it as a natural inclination as INFJs using our primary functions of introverted intuition and extraverted feeling (focused on outward feelings of others vs. focusing on our internal state). Wenzes is doing a virtual class over the next few weeks on this topic that I’m toying with taking, if for no other reason than because I’m interested in the subject.

Here’s an excerpt from Sapala’s email I want to discuss:

"Because of various factors—too many to cover in this one email—INF people have an extremely strong, almost compulsive tendency to take personal responsibility for things that are NOT our personal responsibility.

Specifically, other people’s problems.

“Other people’s problems” also include the problems of the world.

Our friend is in turmoil because they can’t stop dating toxic people?

Our parent is emotionally immature and can’t get a handle on their life?

Our workplace is a dysfunctional dumpster fire?

The world is going crazy and everything is unfair and unjust?

The INF person sees these situations and feels the same thing over and over:

My responsibility.

Note that I said: we feel this. . . And that feeling is very strong. . .

A few examples of this “helping” in action, and how it usually pans out:

Researching resources and information for a friend who is struggling. Finding out the next steps they need to take to solve their problem or heal their issue. Organizing this information in an easy-to-digest way for them. 

Then we send all this information to the friend, hear nothing, and find out later they did nothing with it.

Coming up with a helpful system for our parent to start to take control of their life. Putting it all together, explaining it to them, encouraging them to try it, or to at least try new strategies, calling to check up to see how it’s going, hand-holding them as they take baby steps within the new system, cheerleading them all along the way.

Then a week or so later our parent is right back to their old habits, and seems confused when we mention all the work we did with them."
. . .

Now, I want to talk about an underlying current of what’s at play in these situations and the outcome that neither Sapala nor Wenzes mentioned in their posts but that come from my own experience. I’ve been in both of the above situations many times. And while I don’t play a psychotherapist even on tv, I do a lot of thinking about the psychology that drives behavior and I can speak to my own experience. Take it for what it’s worth. Maybe you’ve experienced something similar.

Let’s talk for a moment about what’s going on in these situations for the other person we’ve tried to help. For us, maybe overhelping or overgiving is a symptom of codependence we learned along the way and are prone to or maybe it’s just who we are because of our temperament trait, but what about the other person in this dynamic, the one you tried to help? What’s at play for them?

It’s been my experience that these situations often don’t end well because not only are we frustrated that our efforts to help didn’t actually help in the real world, but what the other person is likely feeling is shame. In psychology, shame is a painful emotion based on negative self-evaluation, making you feel fundamentally flawed, worthless or inadequate. It’s not ‘I did something bad’, it’s ‘I am bad/flawed/worthless’.

Because that feeling of shame is so painful, where is the other person going with those painful emotions? They try to rid themselves of them, and ding, ding, ding - you guessed it - it gets projected onto YOU, the one who tried to help or maybe it shuts them down so they stop interacting with you.

It’s a dynamic that can end relationships. This projection is what was the final straw that broke the relationship I had with a parent some years ago. That relationship still isn’t healed and may never be. More on that later.

I’ll share a bit of my own story, one of them anyway. In brief, I had tried to help my parent who lives with a severe disability and who struggled throughout their life with the impact of their own dysfunctional childhood that led to them living a life that often felt out of control. Any help I or in some cases my spouse tried to give was often met with resentment. Even if it wasn’t in the moment, it would often come back as passive aggressive comments or behavior. My parent once commented on how competent I was at deftly handling multiple problems at once during a visit. I sensed they admired me for it but also were perplexed by it and resented me for the same reason.

That resentment built until it led to a crescendo of crazy-making that left me questioning my own reality and concerned for the emotional safety of both me and my family. I’ll add that this was on top of years of stuff.

Sometime later, I received a brief note from my parent that read something like “I see you. I know you’re a good person (not an exact quote).” All I could think when I read it in the moment was that the person who needed to read that wasn’t me but the person who looked them in the mirror each morning.

In other cases, the result isn’t so dramatic, but it often leads to the other person making snarky, denigrating comments, perhaps saying negative things about who we are or the things that interest us or comments like “You’ll never change". Perhaps they question our life choices, even if those choices are perfectly healthy or normative. Despite that, such reactions can leave us questioning ourselves or feeling hurt. I try to remember that those comments aren’t really about me at all but what’s going on for that other person internally. That doesn’t make it ok, and I don’t think we need to just excuse it, but I think it helps lessen the hurt to know where it’s coming from. Oh, yeah, did I mention that we’re often able to see both sides of any issue?

Segue to I’m sitting in my car with a few minutes to spare before a meeting this week and this Substack post was in my inbox from a blogger I didn’t recognize. Intrigued, I read it through. It’s on family reunification from a therapist. While that’s not something I’m currently contemplating attempting, I found the advice both realistic and practical, so if you’re in that situation of wanting to heal family estrangement (maybe any estrangement really), I highly recommend the read:

Why Reconciliation After Estrangement Feels so Hard

Now I’m going to tie this in to a great letter from one of the founders of the nonprofit organization Braver Angels who is a family therapist by trade. It’s worthwhile for what it says about the psychology of deep rifts and how to best respond. While he’s talking about mending the current rift in our society here in the U.S., it’s equally applicable, I think, to our personal lives.

Two points he makes that really struck me were 1) the importance of not letting emotions drive our reactions. Our emotions are there to inform us that something doesn’t sit right for us. Maybe a boundary has been crossed even if we didn’t set one. But our emotions shouldn’t be running the show. It’s in the pause that we can then best figure out how to respond from a calm place. It took me a long time to really embrace that. 2) We too often neglect the repair in his narrative of ‘resist, replace, repair’, both personally and societally. I think he is right to note that from a societal perspective, we in the U.S. are still living with our not making adequate repair between the northern and southern states after the Civil War. We rushed too fast to just move on. Living in the American south, I’m going to attest to that. Bad feelings remain and the southern states remain the poorest economically. When you skip the repair, you haven’t really rebuilt the trust required for healthy relationships.

Take the time to read the letter in its entirety. It’s worth the while.

Dear Monica, 

“These are the times that try men’s souls.” Thomas Paine penned these words 250 years ago to inspire Americans at a low point in the Revolutionary War. We are at another low point now—this time fighting each other rather than a colonial ruler. I live in the Minneapolis area, where I am witnessing the tearing of the social fabric. The soul of Braver Angels is also being tried, with some dedicated members wondering if our mission is still relevant. They are bluntly asking, “Why keep talking to those people?” This is my written response as a cofounder of Braver Angels. I’ve also recorded a video where I speak more personally about what’s going on in Minnesota.

As a therapist, my job is to help clients do two things with powerful emotions: understand what they are feeling, and then act mindfully rather than react instinctively. Political stress is stirring up two main emotions—fear and outrage—and they feed on each other. Fear can lead to one kind of reactivity: shutting down and withdrawing. Outrage can lead to another kind: demonizing and lashing out. The alternative is hard but possible: thoughtful responses informed by our emotions but not directed by them. It means showing up with a non-anxious presence when others around us are escalating, cutting people off, and losing hope. It takes a special form of courage to keep engaging with people in our lives whose views appall us. Ernest Hemingway called courage “grace under pressure.” We live in a pressurized time, when courageous citizenship requires real emotional work. 

So far, I’ve described how we can function psychologically in a national crisis. But what about social action? 

I think of work for social change as happening in three ways: Resist, Replace, and Repair—three Rs. All are necessary, and none alone is sufficient. 
Resist refers to organized efforts to publicly name serious social problems and confront leaders and institutions that create and reinforce them. Resist is about vigorous, sustained calls for change now. (“We Shall Overcome.”) 

Replace refers to what comes next: concrete reforms and changes such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Resistance movements need a Replace agenda in order to be effective. 

Repair refers to organized efforts to heal the social fabric that is inevitably torn by the turmoil and polarization of major social change—what Lincoln called binding up our wounds. (South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and closer to home, Braver Angels.) 
I see all three Rs as essential for successful long-term social change. We have to name injustices. We have to enact concrete solutions. And we have to treat one another with respect while debating the changes—and after one side wins out against opposition. Unfortunately, the repair work is often neglected. 

Consider one example from perhaps the most successful social movement in U.S. history: abolitionism in the 19th century. It resisted the institution of slavery and helped replace it through constitutional amendments. But after the Civil War, the work of repair and healing was tepid and ultimately abandoned by many leaders. We are still paying the price. 
This framing helps me respond to those who call for Braver Angels to speak out about injustices and abuses of governmental power. If we support democracy, this argument goes, then to not publicly resist these assaults is at best timidity and at worst complicity. The time for talking to the other side is over. They are unreachable; the only thing left is to fight them. (This challenge is coming mostly from progressive Blues distressed by the Trump Administration, but I could imagine a time when it would come from conservative or populist Reds upset, say, with a Mamdani administration.) In effect, the call is for Braver Angels to join the resistance. 

My response is threefold. 

First, we should distinguish between Braver Angels as an organization and what individual Braver Angels members decide to do with their own efforts at social change. Some may feel called to step away from Braver Angels and focus on Resist. For them, this may be the right season for that choice. 
Second, I don’t believe Braver Angels can effectively do Resist and Repair. If Braver Angels camps on one shore, we lose the cross-partisan trust that makes our work possible. Organizations seen as neutral on policy and politicians are best positioned to do the work of healing divisions and bridging divides. I ask: Is the nation better served by Braver Angels adding one more small voice to a resistance and losing our ability to Repair? 
Third, somebody has to staff the Repair brigade. Resist often has no shortage of volunteers. Keeping contact through conversation—and feasible joint activities—is essential to the functioning of our democratic republic. 
I believe Braver Angels has an opportunity to make a difference only if we stay in our distinctive lane—one we’ve become pretty good at. What’s more, ours is the long game beyond any political leader or party in power. The forces of polarization that brought us to this crisis moment are not going away soon. Our work, in the Hebrew phrase, is Tikkun Olam—repairing the world. It is a never-ending human endeavor. And it matters, because when the talking stops, the only alternatives are coercion and violence. I’m seeing that danger up close right now in Minneapolis, where local and national leaders have stopped talking, and escalation is overtaking us. I pray that the talking begins and the healing starts soon. We have real work ahead in Braver Angels—and I know we are up to it. 

— Bill Doherty, Braver Angels co-founder 

Find the video from Wenzes here:

Find the post from Lauren Sapala here:

Is Helping Others Really Helping? Sometimes It’s a Lack of Boundaries…

Happy weekend. Stay warm. We’re set to have a wintry mix all along the American east coast.

Peace.