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Observations from a podded, multi-day retreat (with many friends I also share Twitter space with):
A lack of common knowledge that most people want X to happen seems to block X from happening just as surely as a vocal minority not wanting X to happen.
My personality seems to change in different groups bc I am unique in relation to others differently in different groups—in one group I am the most confrontational, in another the least. Stay in place long enough & I begin to believe such traits are immovable characteristics.
Having no new people present means we can’t readily slide around our conflicts with each other, or take the pressure off older, more complicated relationships by focusing on new people with whom our relationships are not yet complicated.
My identity boundaries are influenced by physical space-I let myself believe the majority of other people’s stories about me inside the house, & a 10 min drive down the road I can instantly sort out what is mine and what is theirs, what I want to discard and what I want to keep.
Much conflict seems to swirl around people getting angry or anxious in response to other people’s strategies for coping with anger or anxiety. This builds tension alongside whatever the conflict is initially actually about.
I have less faith in ‘talking things out’ as a way to resolve conflict than I used to, and than I think that those around me have. It seems like if a problem is gridlocked and you’ve already tried talking, that a unilateral change by one or all sides is the only hopeful strategy.
Often people pressuring me to feel ok feels worse than however not-ok I happen to be. Particularly if the not-ok-ness has a sense of movement or meaning or life that they don’t see or share or value.
The question ‘did you have a good time?’ seems so difficult to answer. I feel pressured to conform to other people’s ideas about what is good, and ashamed of experiencing supposedly ‘bad’ things. ‘Was that a time worth having?’ feels much clearer and easier to respond to.
When a group of people is trying to manage each other’s anxiety it feels like a hovering cloud of bees.
It feels like my capacity for joy and my capacity for pain are inextricably interlinked, such that an experience can simultaneously be the best and the worst and perhaps then be more meaningful and worthwhile than one which was merely fine, or comfortable.
