Why I had to complicate myself in order to heal

I’ve been thinking about how simplicity compels us. 

It compels us down to the neurological level—we’re wired to look for patterns, create explanations, and search for connections that help us make sense of it all. In an ever complicated world, our affinity for simplicity serves us. It helps us cope with overwhelm. It helps us feel at ease. It has a rightful place in our minds.

But, simplicity also has the potential to constrict us and the people around us. It can fragment what’s observable from what’s not, creating powerful associations that have a satisfying quality to them, associations that may relieve us from the difficulty of inquiring further into what’s underneath, adjacent to, or interwoven with what we think we know. 

I’m curious about what gets left behind in these simple associations. What comes to the forefront and why? How do our minds decide what deserves our focus and what doesn’t? How does this shape the way we move through the world and make sense of those around us? What is so particularly demanding for our brains about the stuff that gets left behind? What might this stuff be in conflict with?

I don’t know for certain, but I think that it’s becoming increasingly difficult for us modern humans to remain open to surprise, contradiction, and wonder. When we lock away our awareness of what’s not observable, clear, or simple, we (often necessarily) protect ourselves from what’s difficult. We create a story that’s complete and neat, but is it real? Is it fair? Does it do justice to our human-ness?

What I’m saying is, in the act of simplifying our internal and external experiences, our minds are bound to, once in a while, weave together a story that is as reductive as it is simple. We avoid the demands of complexity, but at what cost?

In my own experience, the cost of what I’ll call self-simplification is great. It can be emotionally and psychologically and physically painful. It can be painful to reduce ourselves to parts rather than a larger (albeit hard-to-define) whole. It can be painful to see ourselves as this or that, nothing more. It can be painful to fit into boxes that are too small. It can be painful, literally, to feel this level of constriction in the body.

I lived with this kind of pain for a long time, and used the left over fragments it created to try and pick out the source, fix it, and expected myself to feel better. “If only…” I’d tell myself.

I didn’t feel better. Focusing on the problems with my thoughts, or my body, or my brain, or my past, or my relationships did not make me feel better. Because I was only focused on what was observable and immediately available to me, I was effectively turning away from my wholeness. And my wholeness, I know now, is one of the things I really needed to tap into in order to feel better. I thought that I could fragment myself into pieces in order to isolate the problem, but in the process, I lost touch with my humanity. I made it so much harder for myself, unknowingly. 

I understand why I did it. Survival mode narrows our vision in this way. I can forgive myself, knowing that there was a strange necessity in simplifying myself and my world at one time. I can still rely on simplicity when I need it without over-applying it.

Letting go of this fragmented view of myself was (and is) fucking hard. Letting go of anything that has once aided in survival is fucking hard.

Even the process of becoming aware of my pervasive self-simplification was hard. Seeing the emotional cost increased my internal demands for a while, because I had to contend with the ways I’d been treating myself. I had to take a hard look at how I’d been getting in my own way (or, how my protective, adaptive strategies had been getting in my own way). I had to look at my relationship with myself and (kindly, gently) implicate it as a source of my enduring pain. I had to consider how I’d been holding and viewing myself, and then permit myself to imagine other possibilities other than the objectification I’d clung to so tightly. I had to grieve it all. Painful, yes, but ultimately the most complete form of love I could ever offer myself.

So much of me had been missing from the too-simple story that I’d constructed about myself. Inviting all of that back into the picture is less painful now… it’s more exhilarating. I’m not all the way done, but now I know I might never be, and that can be OK. Instead of saying I’m fully better, I like to say I’m on the other side.

Making space for my complexity is something my brain continues to actively resist. That simplistic narrative still compels me sometimes. But now, even the resistance is something I realize I can actively turn toward with curiosity, care, and compassion. I can see the resistance as something that needs my attention, rather than something that is trying to sabotage me.

There’s more fluidity now… which is messy, but that’s human very of me, isn’t it?

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass the world is too full to talk about. — Rumi