I’ll begin this piece by mentioning a phrase that was drilled into me as part of my counsellor training years ago.
The phrase was “I am who I am as I hear myself say it”.
On the surface, this seemingly innocuous dictate appears useful, logical, even attractive. As I have progressed through my career as a therapist, however, I have begun to regard it quite differently.
This most postmodern of concepts, rooted in the idea that our subjective realities are created almost exclusively via language, therefore granting us an inalienable right to define ourselves as we see fit, makes sense on one level.
We can call ourselves what we want, and obtain membership to any particular tribe. Fine – I have no quarrel with this. Knock yourself out.
Where my underlying anxiety emerges however is that after nearly a decade of counselling people of vastly divergent ages, ethnicities, sexualities, and gender, I’ve come to observe the perils of over-identification sometimes associated with this impulse to define ourselves.
Let me say from the outset: this impulse is natural. Normal. Extremely human.
Humans, like any other ape, seek to belong to a tribe. One of our fundamental fears is to be denied the sustenance supplied by the group with which we feel affiliated. This group helps us feel safe, affirmed, and secure. Chimpanzees have been observed shunning members of their group that have transgressed in some way. The rejected chimp will almost certainly perish as a result of this, being denied access to vital resources secured by the wider group: food, shelter, and defence.
This fear of ostracization resides deep within each of us, and can sometimes lead us to act in ways that may appear overly reactive, and even trigger-happy. Attempts to signal our fealty to the tribe will sometimes result from this tension.
Bolstered by our fear of rejection, we seek to ensure that the wider community regards us as an upright person, a good person, thinking the right things, making the right moves, in line with our chosen in-group.
In essence, it’s rather akin to a child looking anxiously to its parent, seeking an approving glance.
Do they still love me? Will I still be fed? Am I valid?
The main pitfall with this way of being is that we can end up deciding that our in-group doesn’t just define a part of us, it defines the whole of us. It’s a clumsy, haphazard way of avoiding censure that ultimately creates more issues than it solves.
This is what I have observed in my consulting room over the years. It’s a normal enough impulse for a person to encounter, yes, but it denies the complexity of the human ape and risks reducing us to dehumanising descriptors.
We are multi-faceted beings. When we routinely avoid this fact, denying the various sides of ourselves, the trouble starts.
Staunch devotion to an in-group rewards conformity with comfort, certainly, but it also prevents the development of crucial resilience - essential for moving through life - and can encourage an us-versus-them mentality.
It also denies us access to moments of authentic diversity in our communities, which cannot be found in the anodyne, supposedly “inclusive” teams currently assembling themselves in boardrooms and community organisations near you.
Put simply, it’s tribalism, and as history tells us time and again, this never ends well.
There is a Great Evil out there, apparently, threatening you, undermining your fiercely-clung-to identity, and ready to dissolve your tribe.
This tunnel-vision leads to many behaviours, one of which is simplistically referred to within contemporary culture as “virtue signalling”. This aspect of human behaviour has been studied by social psychologists for decades, yet it has been weaponised in recent times.
Again, we wish to be viewed as good, devoted to a cause, and ready to fight for it. The Instagram model who is suddenly an expert on racism. The actor who suddenly decides they’re trans and proclaims it loudly on Twitter, supposedly for some greater good. The male politician who’s decided they’re a diehard feminist. You get the picture.
This propensity for lightning-quick labelling and rampant “othering” - seen at its most repugnant on Twitter - naturally comes from a simple desire to know the world as easily and as expediently as possible. In doing this, however, it often inadvertently reveals both a fragile self-concept and a deficit in intellectual rigour on the part of the signaller.
The danger is that this anxious foreclosure of common sense will lead to behaviours that erode the individual’s integrity and cause damage to those within their environment.
It supposedly comes from a place of knowledge, kindness, and compassion, yet often manifests in reality as aggression, narcissistic grandstanding, an air of moral superiority, and an infantile inability to regulate one’s emotions.
Put simply, the labeller doesn’t know themselves, yet they assume that they must be complete or righteous in some way. Because they belong to the right tribe, no?
By extension, they therefore tend not to bother regarding their fellow human beings as the inherently complex, fallible apes that they are.
Additionally, those amongst us quick to label or otherwise “cancel” others for perceived transgressions are, somewhat ironically, the ones who fear it most themselves.
They wish upon others the very thing that they dread.
True self -awareness however – found only through hard soul-searching and experiential learning - leads to an enviable strength. It is found by adopting an attitude of “you can call me anything you want - it doesn’t change who I know myself to be, warts and all”.
This person is someone who feels no need to accuse others of being racist, transphobic, or <insert label here>, because they have done the necessary inner work and examined what the Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung referred to as the Shadow - the part of our psyche where we store the bits of ourselves that we don’t like. It’s an unconscious process that can only be surmounted through uncomfortable self-reflection.
Compassion for others starts with compassion for oneself by acknowledging and integrating aspects of ourselves that may be less than palatable.
It’s knowing we have the ability to be hateful, revengeful, bigoted, and electing not to act upon these attributes. Having a sword at our side, and choosing not to take to out of its sheath.
We are all capable of rushing to label some group or individual as “the evil other” rather than seeking to acknowledge that this maleficence also lives within ourselves. Labels are easy. Thinking about the complexities of human nature often isn’t.
If we’re scared of our darker bits and actively seek to deny them, then we’re in trouble.
We’ll simply project our own lack of self-awareness – our Shadow - outwards and, in this state, have nothing to contribute to the world other than anger, incuriousness, and uncritical bile.
We’re also potentially signalling to those around us, despite our protestations, that we’re struggling intellectually, we take most things personally, and we’re incapable of regulating our emotions in a constructively adult manner.
So, do yourself a favour and check those Shadow projections. Having been in Jungian analysis myself, I can tell you that the journey will often be difficult, but the rewards at the other end – circumspection, humility, and grace being among them – are well worth the price of admission.