The Willingness Project

Using behavior therapy, contextual beahavioral science, Eastern philosophies, and poetry to make a difference

[thewillingnessproject]

Single-narrative thinking and Covid

POOR COMMUNICATION

The other day I received two emails from two colleagues. I'd expressed my concern about the high level of people who've died after receiving a mRNA vaccine, and that the side effects and deaths aren't being acknowledged or accurately reported in the media.

The response from my colleagues crunched some numbers for me and expressed how the number of deaths is a small fraction compared with how many people have died from Covid and how many vaccines have been administered, making the fraction of vaccine-related deaths acceptable.

They were missing my point.

No other vaccine would have remained on the market with that many deaths. They also missed that my concern focused on how there is a risk, (higher for men in my age range), and how it's ignored by the media. I was not comparing Covid deaths counts at all.

Their responses were rhetoric, rote, and ignorant (in terms of ignoring). What they were both engaging in is what I call “Single narrative thinking”.

This thinking views the world in terms of a very confined, narrow narrative. It operates off of narrow definitions. For instance, “Science” seems to mean something specific and yet something vague at the same time, but the idea of multiple sciences having different ideas on something because impossible to consider.

Sadly, highly intelligent, educated, professional people get trapped by this way of thinking. My colleagues who messaged me are incredibly bright people who are very good in their field.

In fact, highly verbal people may fall victim to this way of thinking even more than less verbal people. This is because language has a way of acting like a... well, like a virus. Language reproduces and mutates and clings.

Media and advertisers know this and can harness this. Inherently, therapists have sway over many of their clients, merely by the set-up of the dynamic. Therapists vow (and I've held to my vow) to be aware of our ability to influence others and to do everything we can to do no harm. Part of what allows therapists to do this is that our tools for our work are often words. We try to utilize language to increase awareness, insight, and to help people broaden their choices in behavior. Tools can be weaponized.

LANGUAGE CAN TRAP US

For instances, if someone under certain conditioning relates “selfless acts” with certain types specific behavior, or directed towards a certain situation, then the mind automatically begins to develop a narrative for “selfish” acts, even if that wasn't necessarily part of the conditioning.

In other words, as a network around “selfless” develops, a network of “selfish” simultaneously develops.

Under “selfish” will come actions that, no matter how considerate of others' wellbeing- if it does not fit nicely into the behaviors associated with that situation- then even things that are intentionally for the benefit of others, will be considered “selfish.” As a thought experiment around this, is it selfish for a single father to not get his son any Christmas gifts because he needs the money for buying a phone for himself because that's his only device to apply for jobs?

Sometimes we gain enough broadening experiences that this natural tendency to close around language and language-based actions stay flexible. Many people who “do a good job” remaining neutral are likely able to flexibly move their languaging around.

Many people might know or have known a toddler, who, learning language, conflates “I” with “you.” They might point to their mother and giddily shout, “I! I!” This is because language floats a little until it obtains definition, and therefore some rigidity. Eventually, most children learn when and how to use “I” and “you”.

Yoga- perhaps one of the best ancient sciences that utilizes language into its understanding of wellbeing- talks about this through the skandhas, daughters of the mind that attempt to abduct a person into narrow thinking.

One of the original intentions for a liberal arts education was to provide a broad set of topics, ways of learning, and opinions. If you'll notice, liberal arts education has been receiving increasing rates of criticism. I now hear teenagers say, “I don't want to go to a school with a bunch of White people complaining.” Certainly, my alma mater was replete with White people complaining (I was one of them). But it also allowed me to study dance, creative writing, Buddhism, artificial intelligence, and sexual psychology. Liberal Arts learning is a risk to promoting a dominant narrative.

Creative thinking counters the pursuit of capitalism, in that people who study enough and broadly enough begin to see how events and sciences interact. Life gets more complicated, but it comes with more options.

SINGLE NARRATIVE THINKING AND COVID

One thing to notice in people who fall into categories such as “pro-vaccine” or “liberal” right now is that they're paying attention only to the pandemic- only to Covid and the narratives around Covid. People I trust for information, conversely, aren't talking about Covid! They're talking about manipulation through media, psychology, ethics, epidemiology, biology, herbalism, political science, social justice... The list goes on.

At this point, anyone who spouts a hip term like “antivaxxer” or who says, “masks protect me and you” get discredited. And not even by the content of what they're saying. I would argue there is some evidence behind masks- but how they're being used now counters what many, many studies have shown us. So they become discredited because it means their source of information is limited to those that reinforce the narrative they've been conditioned into following.

They're trapped and they keep trapping themselves by only consuming information that supports the narrative. One term for this is confirmation bias. This is a natural tendency, but with the pandemic it's really causing a lot of problems.

Also, moderate thinking gets squeezed out because that requires holding more than one narrative at the same time. If you say, “Trump was actually right about some things, but he overall messed up,” people will force your statement into pro-Trump or anti-Trump. If you say, “vaccine side effects are real,” then the narrative says, “so you don't care if people die.”

It's hard for many people to know what to do with people who wanted the vaccine, got them, and also believe you shouldn't be mandated to get one. Those are some of my favorite people right now because they make it difficult to force the world into a singular narrative.

This is what's brilliant about the manipulation tactics. They often leverage truth. Sometimes they're flat out lies, but often they've taken something of minimal truth and woven it into the narrative.

This is a psychological tendency. Both the partner who is a physical aggressor and the partner who is remaining in the relationship even though they get beaten are engaging in this natural tendency. They continue to shape their worlds into only that of this way of being, and seeing a life of safety and temperament becomes harder to do.

I might hear one say, “She deserves it” and the other say, “I have nowhere to go.” And these statements will force their world to act in accordance with those beliefs.

Proper therapy for both people in this couple would include no shaming or blaming, but would rather help them both learn more, gain insight, and take perspective. In other words, expanding beyond the slim narrative. Once people see alternatives and are willing to begin neglecting the unworkable ones, people can start to change their lives.

When I argue with people lately, it's entrenched in this paradigm. The mRNA “vaccines” were at first meant to stop the spread of Covid. Then, when they didn't, instead of changing behavior to fit the experience (maybe by halting vaccine advertising and mandates), the use of the shots needed to change. They then became helpful in making symptoms less severe.

Meanwhile, health freedom fighters are trying to point out the blatant and abrupt changes in messaging from the government, as well as pointing out that millions of people have been seriously injured, traumatized, or have died from the vaccines. There's more to the story, or, rather, more stories. And yet people seek out a more coherent singular narrative.

HOW TO MOVE FORWARD

But notice that in order to accept this information someone would need to psychologically step back from beliefs that carry a lot of pull. Words like “safety”, “caring”, “health”, and “protection” are being said often right now. If someone has a compelling story about what safety is, then when they get injured they tend to try to make the situation fit the narrative... Instead of trying to not get injured.

In other words, someone would need to admit that staying inside, wearing a mask everywhere, getting painful shots (three of them!!!), working from home, dealing with kids being at home- all their stress, worry, lack of sleep, increased drinking and drug use, all the fun events they gave up--- they would need to admit that these weren't actually as helpful as the narrative promised.

So instead, research has to become “misinformation”, health freedom needs to become “antivaxxer”, not wanting to take an experimental, sometimes deadly (new kind of) vaccine becomes wanting “grandma to die.” What? Seriously?

Well, that's the dark side of language and schema.

Have you noticed that entertaining the idea that there are nefarious and intersecting plots developed by the world's richest narcissists is being called “conspiracy theories”? That's another example of how to make the incoherent truth fit the incoherent lie. Conspiracy theories are automatically discredited, so make truth a conspiracy and it no longer matters that it's fact.

And all of those affronts fit nicely into the schema. It allows a coherent understanding of why I stayed inside for months while others went to the beach and the bar. The reason is because I am noble and they are villains.

Otherwise, I'd need to build a broader, less coherent (although more accurate) psychology around what's going on- which is complex. We have government, education, media, healthcare, racism, classism, and economics all rolled up into this disaster. That's a BIG schema to begin to step away from.

We have to be willing to accept some chaos, not just in the world, but in our own minds. We have to be willing to have challenging ideas coexist for a while. We have to allow seemingly competing values rest openly in our psychologies, if we want to move forward effectively. This is true whether you're into western science, philosophy, yoga, Christianity, or anarchy. All of these point out that we are illogical people with logical minds. And the world is illogical. Don't let your mind try to make it too logical. Because we too frequently allow such a thing, we're marching beyond ecological sustainability, we have a bulging military creating wars so they have something to do, a defunct education system, and skyrocketing psychological distress (yes, skyrocketing).

So whenever you're talking to someone and they begin to spit out rote responses, taglines presented by the media- just walk away. Don't argue. The truth does not meet the narrative. Save your energy.

They will likely need to contact the reality more firsthand. As vaccines continue to fail, as governments continue to lie, as basic human rights continue to be stolen, as people continue to die from vaccines- they might be forced into assessing beyond the limited scope of what I'm calling “Covid-only narrative thinking.”'

They don't see how emergency rooms have been “overrun” for decades, just not being headlines until it helped panic brew. They don't see that hospitals are scrambling because half of their staff left because of idiotic mandates. That is beyond a Covid narrative. It would mean looking at all the facets of the operation.

Our best approach is to continue to live lives that model the alternative. To never have received an mRNA vaccine and to not get Covid or get mild Covid, models that. To gather in groups and have interesting conversations because you're all reading a broad range of topics that put all this mayhem into perspective- that's a win. To not engage in the narrative in any way. To continue to read the science, not the headlines. To turn off the news. Donate to freedom fighting movements and independent journalists who you trust. Go outside and breathe!

Follow my favorite saying: Be the change you wish to see in the world.

[thewillingnessproject]

What is the antidote to Pandemia? Five steps towards paradigm shift

A metaphor

Let's talk a little about behavioral principles, and we'll do so in the context of a family, where two parents have a small child, roughly five years old. We'll make the couple a stereotypical cis couple for convenience's sake, (that means a man and woman).

Let's put that family at home, in the living room, just before needing to leave to get to grandma's house for an important birthday dinner. And the child has been playing all afternoon. Mom says, “Charlie, it's time to pick up your toys.”

Charlie barely looks up from his blocks while he insists, “No!”

Mom repeats her directive several times as she continues to get ready and periodically notices that Charlie has continued to play.

Finally, Charlie says, “I want you to pick up!”

Mom argues with Charlie about who will pick up, lecturing him on why it's important to pick up. She has a good case: helping out the household, taking responsibility, etc. But Charlie sticks to his fussing. “No! You!”

And here we have a classic parental conundrum. The pressure is on; Grandma and the whole extended family is waiting. Does Mom give in to Charlie's demands and pick up so that they can hit the road, or does she stand firm in her directive?

What classic behavioral principles will tell us is that if Mom caves and picks up the toys, she's done two things: She's reinforced both her own willingness to cave and she's reinforced Charlie's persistence.

A few days later, in a similar situation, Charlie (who loved avoiding picking up last time) attempts his same maneuvers. He throws in more whining and foot stamping to ramp up the likelihood that Mom will clean up- not only to get in the car on time, but she hates his whiny tone, and picking up will relieve her of the annoyance.

Each time Mom caves she's encouraging many unhelpful behaviors in Charlie. She's also abdicating her control as the parent. In time, this abdication will likely generalize. Charlie will refuse to take his bath, get dressed, get into bed, etc. And he'll employ all his skills to get his way. Mom's caving will generalize as well. Soon, Charlie will have the heavy end of control in this Mom/child relationship.

In order to break this pattern, Mom will need to, under no circumstances, cave. If she runs late or has to cancel dinner; if Charlie cries all day; if he screams, “I hate you!”; if she has to hear his whining all day... Mom needs to hold out.

Had mom held out the first time, their dynamic would've changed quicker. But weeks or months have gone by with Charlie's methods heavily reinforced, and so now she'll likely need to hold out many times, perhaps over the course of months.

She has to. If she goes three weeks and then caves, Charlie's measures get re-upped. He's reinvigorated because now he knows that if her persists long enough, Mom still caves after three weeks.

Not only does Mom need to hold out; she needs to refrain from lecturing Charlie about the importance of him taking responsibility for himself. He's not going to listen to this and she's going to run herself thin pursuing this path. She needs to retain her energy and just wait Charlie out. Eventually, Charlie will be forced to change his behavior. He's simply not getting the reward he wants. He either needs to find it a different way (maybe by asking Mom politely to help him as they do it together) or change his desire (by relinquishing the need for control of this particular context).

The problem complicates when we bring in Dad.

Dad doesn't even argue with Charlie. He just picks up the toys. He avoids the discomfort of a stand-off. Plus he argues with Mom about her approach. “It's not that big of a deal,” Dad says. “Just pick up the toys. He'll change when he gets older.”

I cannot count how often I have conversations with parents about having a unified approach. Without that, change is still possible, but it takes a lot longer and requires more resolve in the one parenting alone. Charlie will go to Dad for support and create what's called triangulation against mom. Mom now has pressure from Dad and Charlie; when really Dad and Mom should align and support one another against the common enemy- no, not Charlie! Rather, Charlie's behaviors.

Does any of this sound familiar?

There are people in powerful positions who are throwing tantrums right now. They want to have complete control over the situation. Like the screaming child, control becomes even more important than being seen as mature, competent, or even being effective. They'll create mandates simply to exert control.

Like the mom, we need to change our approach. So far, I've heard many people leaning on reason to argue their point. This is the same as someone telling a screaming child, “You're embarrassing yourself, and me!” It just won't land and now both people are exhausted.

I truly believe that if we can employ some well-researched behavioral fundamentals, we can leverage change against the group of people ignoring what will actually be useful. The pursuit of profit (not picking up the toys) will require them to scream, hit, throw things... and they're willing to do it all.

If you implement the following strategies, and if we ALL do it, with commitment, we will see change. Remember, mom can't give in or she's just taught Charlie that if he pushes a little harder, mom will cave. Moms tend to think that standing next to a child having a tantrum will mean they'll be perceived as a “bad parent.” So be it. In the end, the child and mom will learn better ways of working together. She'll need to risk a little social rejection for the greater good.

Most important social movements have used the same principles as I would suggest for a mom and her child. Martin Luther King, JR. didn't budge. He let people feel really uncomfortable, and his words were usually optimistic- he encouraged a change. Gandhi was similar. He simply refused to play the violence game. He opened up his heart and waited.

Let's look outside of mere immunology and biochemistry to make changes. Let's look into the psychology of humans, especially those caught up in mass psychosis.

Here are the steps:

Start by stopping

I tell parents to give up trying to reason or lecture their children when in a conflict situation. For younger kids, they don't have the mental processing skills needed for critical thinking in those moments. And for teens, their minds are hijacked by emotions and they can't process well either. Anyone who believes they're in a crisis situation (perceived or actual) will not be thinking with the parts of the brain used for perspective taking, seeing the long view, and empathy.

How many conversations have you tried to have, whether with friends, family, or politicians- sharing hard data from numerous studies? And how do they react? They react as if they haven't even heard you. Because they haven't.

So stop. Stop playing the same game. The logic game doesn't move anyone forward. You have to be willing to stop trying to convince people. This has to stop being about one side winning over another. It has to be about something bigger than that. This doesn't mean we ignore the science or stop providing the research altogether; it means that we don't use data alone to make a point.

You achieve this in a few ways. Firstly, simply stop arguing. Disengage. Secondly, cut through the logical bologna by speaking from your heart. I know that sounds cliche, but when I coach parents to say, “I'm feeling very frustrated that we can't work together. You are beating me down with words and it means you win, but our relationship is hurt,” then usually children slow down.

Why is this?

We're hardwired for empathy, just as we're hardwired for fight or flight. The two aren't compatible, however. We can't be fighting and feeling another person's pain at the same time. When you shift from trying to convince another to sharing in pain with them, you're playing a different game.

Speak from your heart about how stuck you feel. Share with them the consequences of their actions, (in this case, potential genocide, civil unrest, death...). And turn your empathy on. As hard as it is, imagine what a politician needs to shut out, to turn from, in order to grip tyrannical behavior. If the people he supposedly represents is sharing out their disappointment in him, then there's a chance you'll awaken the empathy pathways in his psychology. Hold him accountable to his own pain. He wouldn't be ignoring evidence if his psyche didn't perceive the truth as dangerous.

Know that you're working with fear, and fear can hijack our brains. Our sympathetic nervous systems are designed to boost us for only a few minutes, to get out of a dangerous situation. If those systems are taxed, we do interesting things to manage. Our sleep, eating, relationships, and hygiene take the back seat to mere survival. Even if the need for survival is only perceived, and not realistic.

Pandemia has succeeded in pumping us full of fear. People are seeing reasons to be afraid everywhere. We use anger as a tool to flee danger. Anger allows us to be more aggressive, violent, and less prosocial than when we're calm. If our ancestors were being chased by a lion, empathy for mama cat's desire to protect her cubs wouldn't have saved us.

Imagine how your whole approach might change if you looked at every politician, every newscaster, knowing that they're trapped in their own fear mechanisms... You might give up giving them a battle to fight and try a different tactic.

Calm down

I know it sounds counter-intuitive to be saying slow down and relax in a time when we need to be taking action, but when you're calm you can access your own empathy and perspective taking skills. Have you ever been so flustered by hearing about a new mandate or watching a politician slander and whine on TV? Do you ruminate on it? That's your own fight-mode turning on. You can counter that by remaining calm. “Stress is a tool of oppression”, said Ziggy Marley. Part of what's made Pandemia stay strong is that it feeds on stress. Nothing like not seeing people's faces, not feeling safe indoors, and doom scrolling to feed our fear pathways.

Turn off the news. Take Twitter off your phone. Exercise. Meditate. Center yourself through various practices. That way you can meet Pandemia promoting considerate perspective taking and empathy. We're social creatures and we co-regulate. If you maintain your calm, if you refuse to play the logic game and the stress game- then your fellow humans will be more likely to join you.

As a therapist, my number one strategy to help anxious clients is to modulate my breath. Throughout a session, most people calm down simply by me being empathetic and breathing deeply. Isn't that amazing?

Putting your energy into anger and hate fuels the same fire we're trying to put out.

Hold your ground

Remember, we humans get attached to our behaviors when they reinforce a desired outcome. For a hijacked brain by fear, you have to be bigger than the situation. Bigger then the fear. Bigger than the argument.

Mom may have to cancel her plans. She may have to wait thirty minutes for Charlie to try something else. In the same way, you may need to shop at different stores, cut back on your social media habits. I've started sharing words of wisdom and accolades for stories of resistance. I won't share stats anymore.

What are you willing to change in your life in order to stick to this commitment?

And remember, when you hold a boundary like mom, those “in power” and all their followers will throw a bigger fit as they try whatever they can to get the same outcome. We have to withhold that outcome AND suggest an alternative to get it.

Everyone deserves to feel powerful, but there's a difference between empowered and powerful. My alternative for policymakers is empowerment.

So stick to it.

Work together

Another major thing I tell parents is to connect with others in the same situation, like parent walking groups. Sharing stories, strategies, and simply uniting under a common goal is very empowering. Parents often feel alone.

You are not alone. Across the world, hospital workers are leaving their jobs, protesters are gathering, and we simply are not alone. The movement has lawyers, doctors, artists, poets, filmmakers, homemakers, teachers, young, old, right-wing, left-wing... Enough to be creative. Enough to start fresh. The old paradigm doesn't need to exist anymore because there are enough of us to construct an intentional new one. Meet with one another; empower each other.

Commit and recommit

At times, anger will get the best of us. We will ruminate and hold grudges. When you catch yourself, just come back to your commitment. Behavior change in kids can take months or years- imagine what needs to happen for our governing paradigm to shift! We all make mistakes. It's about admitting to them, learning from them, and readjusting that can separate us from the people lost in Fearville.

As for specifics

I know that these strategies don't tell you exactly what to say and they don't ensure the change you want. Everyone is different and so local councilmen, the president, and the parent next door all require different nuance. Our government is supposed to work for us. We have to take the power back.

We do this through these steps:

Start by stopping

Calm down

Hold your ground

Work together

Commit and recommit

Thank you.

[thewillingnessproject]

ANOTHER POEM ABOUT YOU

Funny that tobacco should become a source of serenity for me, but those were years of togetherness; we weren’t scared of the night. We embraced it with liquor-stained tongues and nicotine-stained fingers. That was the only time in my life where I didn’t fear the dark. I held the starkness of shadows in hollow hands. I remember you in your coat, floating in and out of high-brow conversations. A beginning for me: angels showing their influence. Spirits became aware of me, and I of them. I walked from cornerstone to last brick, tracing feeling with numbness; blankness with depth. Nights such as this one, a hopeless November nothingness, and I somehow enliven. I crave your neck, the scent of touch. The touch before the touch.

[thewillingnessproject]

If we’re debating distance learning or in-person, we’re having the wrong conversation

Parents and students alike talk to me about their fears about the fall. The reasons vary; some people want their kids to have the social interaction and believe that new school protocols won't allow for that. Others are nervous about a COVID-19 outbreak at school.

Meanwhile, whether from families or from schools, conversations also revolve around distance learning. Parents are worried about the dual role of teacher and parent, not to mention working themselves. As offices open back up, many parents aren't able to stay home.

However, this is really the wrong conversation.

Schools are built like prisons (a whole other issue, as prisons shouldn't be built this way either!). Lack of natural light, air flow, windows, and open spaces make schools enclosed places where, every winter, viruses run rampant.

Classrooms are over-stuffed, too many students in a crowded space.

Also, as much as people like to talk about Common Core and our classic school subjects as what school is about, it's all simply back set to the social/emotional learning that takes place. School learning is really about learning how to play nicely together, share resources, and be a part of a community. However, these subjects play second fiddle and schools are hammered into focusing more on raising test scores.

However, student grades continue to decline, behavioral challenges increase, anxiety flourishes. The current educational system doesn't work. Yet the conversation is about getting kids back into the same environments that haven't worked for decades.

As for remote learning? Get real. Teaching online is an entirely different skill set than working in a classroom, and teachers are neither prepared, nor is it what they signed up for when they became teachers. Similarly, students feel infuriated by the busywork.

Schools have, for too long, been built around following rules- getting grades, deadlines, social norms. While not “bad” in their own right, without the context of schools, many students are struggling with lack of commitment, motivation, and interest. School is overall boring, especially striped of lunch, recess, and seeing friends.

The pandemic has actually offered an opportunity to assess school overall. The environment could be moved to outdoor classrooms, wilderness education, and so on. Time together should be about processing the lack of knowing the future, expression of the trauma and dramatic change all students have endured.

Believe it or not, many kids aren't interested in homework, essays, or presentations. Even students who enjoy learning are feeling burnt our on Zoom and sharing with me their lack of motivation for the fall. Way beyond the virus, people are tuning into the errors of education that have existed for years.

We're currently trying to fit a new structure into an old paradigm. That's what's going to fail, more so than an explosion of COVID cases.

Online learning is simply problematic because kids needs less screen time, not more. We will see an ever decreasing amount of motivation, an increase in anxiety, more boredom, and less engagement, and likely poorer sleep.

Until schools drastically shift to more nature-based, values-based, project-based, individualized, and centered around teaching social, community, and mindfulness skills, we will be having the wrong conversation.

[thewillingnessproject]

Why you shouldn’t shame a narcissist

We can trace narcissistic behaviors to a narrow set of coping strategies for anxiety.

In other words, a method for controlling the environment to reduce certain thoughts and feelings that are painful to experience. Someone who is "a narcissist" is someone who engages in behaviors to manipulate the environment in order to reduce the turmoil that's inside of them.

Most narcissists suffer greatly from feelings of inferiority and fear of abandonment. They lack a fledged out "I"- a sense of "self"- and make up for that by generating a grandiose, bold identity. It's an armor. It looks tough, but it's frail.

Narcissists put a lot of effort into controlling their environment, too. Because life is often unpredictable, and the sad truth that people do leave (they die, change jobs, etc.), trying to hold onto the goodness of connection and so on, results in the unwanted feelings. For instance, I have a mentor who lived nearby for a few years. She then moved hours away. It happens. For some people, however, abandonment (or FEAR of abandonment) can lead to developing narcissistic traits.

Narcissism isn't a disease. It's an adaptive method of control. Some LEARNS these behaviors.

So narcissists will tend to make a lot of chaos. As long as they were responsible for it, they feel a sense of control. It's kind of a paradox: more chaos mean more sense of control. Narcissists push people away. Again, they don't get the connection they deeply desire, but at least they were in charge of the pushing, and weren't abandoned by someone else.

It's a vacuum, however. Because the controlling leads to more chaos and loneliness, the temporary relief from fear works, but the long term relief is never gained. So narcissists get very good at manipulating the environment to make it seem like it's not them, it's you. Doing so gets them off the hook for their own self-defeating behaviors.

Partners of narcissists, for instance, are often confused, unsure if they are responsible for problems. They might be manipulated into apologizing for their behavior, when actuality, it's their narcissistic partners who are problematic.

We all possess some narcissism. In small dosages it's normal and not often an issue. Many celebrities and politicians are more narcissistic than others, though- reaching a status of power creates a sense of control. Again, the environment might be controlled, but the internal fears and lack of "I" festers and festers. More power is gained. More fear.

Only narcissists who are willing to step out of this cycle can begin to develop new, more functional behaviors.

This article is about the narcissist who isn't:

So, let's just say, hypothetically, that we have a narcissist in a position of extreme power, like a president, (or something). And let's say that this president (or whatever position) is nearing the end of his term. That's right: he might be losing power, losing control of his environment. It's very likely his manipulative behaviors will increase in a desperate grasp for control.

Someone in this position will lean towards eliciting chaos, fear, anger, and so on because, once again, it's more predictable than harmony, closeness, and wellness.

Let's say someone like this is president during a pandemic. He likely didn't start the pandemic, but he will absolutely want to leverage the chaos and fear a pandemic creates in people.

And if the climate is- (still hypothetically, of course)- in a terrible state, this same politician might want to disrupt the climate more, harm the environment more. He might want to drill deeper. There's some power in that, when the reverse- trying to heal the planet- is a bigger unknown.

And let's say that something like racism is an entrenched and horrific source of separation and anger. This guy didn't start racism, but he will leverage it for his own benefit.

Therefore, you have someone who wants you to feel angry at him, to yell at him, to fight him. This ensures he has a sense of power and control. He adds it to his armor. He's not the problem. You are because you're the one yelling and fussing. He's in power and only doing his job.

And, like most narcissists, this person of power will likely be very good at having people feel confused, angry, isolated, and so on.

He may, for instance, want people in masks, not because it's a healthy thing to do, but because it covers up our faces. We can't see or connect with people. The masks elicit a sense of fear and division. This matches this guy's own inability to connect with people, and constant fear of "getting to close to someone."

If he can't get close to others, he won't want you to be able to either!

If you don't agree with the policies, bullshit tweets, and responses to global crises that this person makes, you might call him out. You might swear about him on social media. You might argue with him. You might feel angry, scared, and so on. It certainly feels productive to hold him accountable by not ignoring his unhelpful, destructive behaviors.

However, I urge you to consider that your approach might actually be fueling the narcissist.

He wants to be pushed away, wrong, and terrible. This proves his schema of a broken, messed up fake. He doesn't have to change because he's right. You're wrong.

To work with narcissists, I'm going to encourage you to get beneath this armor and speak to the wounded, frail disaster within. When he wants to take rights away from the LGBTQ+ community, you can say:

"I can see why you'd want to do that. This community has been gaining support and rights, and is a strong, beautiful community fighting for the goodness of all people. I'm not surprised you're trying to hurt something so much more powerful than you are."

When he tells police to "not be so nice" to "criminals", you can say:

"I'm not surprised you want people to be meaner to one another. If people are kind to one another, there's no disconnect. We're all working together. Except you. You're on the outs. No one can work with you. It's us against you. Too bad you can't be a part of us. We are strong and powerful."

Beyond that, can you love the narcissist?

I'm not saying adore, praise, or admire him. I'm saying love him. A mother who loves her child will hold him accountable for his actions. Love is unpredictable, uncontrollable. To tell the narcissist, "You must be suffering a great deal inside. No one suffering that much would try and hurt others. I see your vast suffering. I'm going to ask that you find another way to heal your own pain. This way will not work."

I read many honest, sometimes humorous stabs at particular narcissists in power right now. One by Motley Crew drummer Tommy Lee is particularly enjoyable.

I appreciate the brutal pushing, the naming of his fucked up behaviors. I also know that this gives the narcissist the sense of power he wants.

We do need social change. Big time. Our education, penal, food, and health systems need drastic overhauls. Any anger, confusion, hatred, or scorn you feel is completely valid. I'm not asking you to ignore those feelings. I'm suggesting that how you go about making change isn't going to work. It's going to make things worse.

I, for one, hope to help narcissists contact the pain beneath their armor. I want them to know that I see them for who they are beneath the facade; wounded and scared. I don't want to let them trick me into interacting with the armor. There are many ways to fight injustice, times and places to shout, scream, yell, speak, be heard. Don't go silent.

Hold boundaries with the narcissist in a dispassionate way. Say, "This is the limit." And importantly, don't disconnect, isolate, operate from fear or rage. This feeds the narcissistic traits in an otherwise hurt person.

[thewillingnessproject]

The Values-Driven Education Model Pt. III

You may want to check out the posts on part one and part two before continuing to this post.

3. School inadvertently reinforces emotional avoidance

Points one and two likely clicked with you in some way. Point three might take some more buy-in, but bear with me.

Emotional avoidance, as well as thought and sensation avoidance, can be called "experiential avoidance" because these are private, silent experiences internally processed. Avoidance insinuates that people intentionally try to change, erase, ignore, or hide these experiences.

For instance, not many people like to feel sad. When we're sad too long, we tend to call a friend, go for a walk, or watch a funny movie. After these kinds of activities, people report "feeling better."

This means that "sadness" is categorized as "bad" because feeling less sad means feeling better than bad. Commonly avoided feelings include, shame, guilt, confusion, and anger- but some people even avoid things like pride, joy, and excitement because for some reasons these aren't safe or appropriate to share. Children of parents who are histrionic, for instance, might get invalidated if they express joy, so they curb it.

Straight A students sometimes try and avoid the feeling of satisfaction, pressing it down in order to take on the next task and stay praised. Some students feel awful pausing to be happy with their projects or test, afraid that they won't then want to keep up the pace.

Many, many kids are in this bind. Most kids have thoughts and feelings of inferiority; it makes little difference how valid the thoughts are. Popular kids just want a simple life, poor kids want wealth, and so on.

Thoughts of inferiority are normal, (as proven by how many people have them!), but adults often respond by saying, "Don't think that!" "No, you're not!" "That's not true!"

Contextual Behavioral Science (CBS) has spent the last four decades studying the science of language, and it's a double-edged sword: while language provides us a stellar mode of communicating to our groups, it also has the ability to trap us. For instance, a child who feels sad often is told, "Don't feel sad." That kid may then associate sadness with "things that upset Mom." Mom being upset is "bad." Now feeling sad is bad. But the child continues to feel sad. If sad is bad and child is sad, then child is bad.

Yes, it's that easy, that quick, and that dangerous.

When I read through behavior plans in schools, I see that goals are set to have kids regulate in the classroom, to not scream, yell, or something else disruptive. Great goals, certainly, but the techniques used to achieve them often tell kids to suppress what they feel. Kids who are upset in class get removed. They're no longer in the context that elicits the discomfort. The training is to avoid the thing that sucks.

Worth repeating:

Kids get told to not feel or think things that are hard, and if they attempt something hard and struggle, that thing is removed so they never find appropriate ways to confront the difficulty.

This happens everywhere often. I know someone who went to get a massage and found it was too rough and not relaxing. They now avoid massages and when asked say, "Yeah, I don't do massages."

Schools rarely successfully help students meet their uncomfortable situations by promoting acceptance of tough emotions; kids either get pulled out (e.g., "Stevie has a hard time in big groups, so he sits out") or are told to suppress emotions (e.g., "Don't get angry, or we will need to leave.")

Schools need to be teaching kids how to stay in uncomfortable situations and make space for things like fear and anger, and to respond with compassion and openness.

Again, most schools don't actively teach emotional suppression and experiential avoidance, but by nature of not teaching acceptance and openness they're reinforcing avoidance.

To recap, modern students have the following difficulties:

1. An increase in avoidance activities, most of which are unconscious or inadvertent (e.g., texting, video games, getting taken out of class for special ed.)

2. Lacking emotional vocabulary (alexithymia) that inhibits their ability to act empathicaly and self-regulate

3. Decreased coping skills that involve acceptance of thoughts and feelings instead of suppressing them, which ultimately leads to increased intensity

4. Lacking clarity around what they truly care about and how to live a life according to those values

Students who are busy running from their own thoughts and feelings, pleasing others to avoid scolding or shaming, and who are busy carefully constructing a persona that allows them social clout have very little capacity left to learn Math or Science. In fact, core subject might become aversive activities because they're taking up valuable time needed on the achieving avoidance and social acceptance.

To better meet the needs of modern students, schools need to:

1. Actively help students have a sense of "I" in the larger "we" and to understand how "I" contributes to "we" and vice versa.

2. Actively incorporate restorative practices so that kids learn how to grow from mistakes

3. Actively teach compassion, empathy, and mindfulness

4. Actively help children face not only difficult situations, but the difficult thoughts and feelings that result in acting out

5. Actively help students develop lives built around personal values instead of simply goals set by other people

Thankfully, behavioral science offers a lot of research that helps us understand how to achieve the above list. CBS is careful not to claim their science is best or the end-all of sciences, but they do seek functionality, the property of finding tools that help achieve the desired action. It doesn't need to be the best if it works.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy is a counseling modality developed by contextual behaviorists, and promotes what's called psychological flexibility. In essence, psychological flexibility is the ability to perform mental gymnastics: on, around, through, over, and under thoughts and feelings without needing to change them. It also means dancing with discomfort in order to choose living a meaningful life.

Imagine students learning to be psychologically flexible so that they can find meaning in their lives?

The Values-Driven Education Model is my own response to how psychological flexibility helps humans be humans, and how impressive science on language and cognition can be applied to the education system. Looking at the inflexibility many students inadvertently learn in school, a model of education that teaches flexibility seems appropriate.

Actually, more than appropriate: necessary.

[thewillingnessproject]

The Values-Driven Education Model Pt. II

You may want to check out the post on part one before continuing to this post.

2.  School sends mixed messages about being an individual

Granted, we all spend our lives in the dance of needing separateness and togetherness. We naturally learn as toddlers that we're separate from our caregivers, and as teens we actively despise some of our caregivers' qualities, (Ugh, Mom! As if!). Moving out of the house is as much developmental as anything else.

A shift in perspective has caused schools to move towards valuing the individual student. Increasingly, schools offer outdoor ed. programs, personal projects, independent studies, and internships. Students receive their own email addresses earlier now. Western culture is synonymous with the individual; from celebrity fashion to spray painter tags, what can you do to offer "something different?" Social media supports this even further, asking people to find cover photos and profile pictures, designing hashtags, and so on.

At she same time, school curriculum is designed to meet a set of standards, which right away introduces a normal range, a bar to meet. Students continue to be graded on their work, going off of criteria which is developed as a standard. There are still star students and kids in remedial classes. As much as schools attempt to normalize special education, any kid I've talked to is well-aware of the othering that is "the sped class." The efforts aren't working.

Only kids who are really struggling to the point of disrupting the class tend to receive individualized education plans (IEPs). In many ways, the introduction of IEPs has been very helpful, securing for many students supports that help them feel successful in school.

Although a day in a classroom reveals numerous instances of a child being told they're special, wonderful, and creative within moments of sitting at a special table for kids needing extra help. A kid well-below his peers who finally completes an assignment is told, "That's amazing! You're such a rock star!"

For completing a task that they're supposed to be completing? A rock star? Really?

Praise, individual plans, supports, and standards aren't inherently unhealthy, but the application of these tools confuses kids. I know this because kids tell me that they're confused. I wish it were more complex than that, but it's basic. Kids don't know what to think.

Students who feel othered tend to act out. When this happens, they're usually pulled out of class, given a paraeducator, scolded, told to do different work than their peers in another room, and so on. The antidote to feelings of exclusion is not exclusion.

Classrooms lack a fostered context where students are able to confront one another on bullshit. See point one for this, because many kids are lacking skills in healthy confrontation. Kids are reintroduced to their classrooms after completing a behavior plan that makes them feel shitty in the service of getting them to not make so much trouble for the teacher.

Do you see the paradox?

Classrooms can't be cooperative and authoritarian. Children are simultaneously rock stars and outcasts. Confusion sets in, and confused kids tend to act out inappropriately, or they hide the fear away and no adult learns about it until it's reached enormous repercussions.

Anytime I'm in a meeting with a student and someone mentions their "potential" as a student, I stop the conversation. "Potential" invalidates how this human is struggling. I usually respond, "And in what ways have you not reached your potential?"

The modern student requires an individualized learning plan. All students.

If we wish to view the child as whole, we need to take in their contexts. A student can be getting all A's, but if he's bullied for being a "nerd", then his education should include assertion training. A student who hates Math needs to not just tolerate their Math class, but find an application in their life that makes it worthwhile to learn Math. Students might be excelling, but at the cost of poor sleep and high stress. Students might be failing, but no one's addressing their diet or lack of exercise.

At the same time, classrooms need to introduce restorative practices that allow all students to fuck up and be met with compassion from their peers, must be allowed to make amends, and must be understood as a human being who is struggling.

Are we raising kids to live in the society we currently live in, or helping them create a more ideal society?

I wager we're doing the former. Meanwhile, the modern kid is more dissatisfied with the status quo, more inclined to complete college in more than four years, to live at home longer, to not start a career until later in life, to have multiple careers, to be self-employed, to hold multiple jobs, and to value more vacation and leisure time.

It's just plain annoying to try and shove square pegs into round holes. Education is currently trying to make the square pegs round.

Good luck.

More to come in part three...

[thewillingnessproject]

The Values-Driven Education Model Pt. I

Education has stagnated while what children need to learn has changed dramatically.

Our education system has roots in ancient China, when the same leaning opportunities awarded the elite became offered publicly. Science, Math, History, and Music were pillars in this model. We ditched Poetry and Dance by the time we hit the 21st century.

So consider that our model for teaching youth is hundreds of years old. Doesn't that sound outdated to you?

In hopes of keeping up with the times, schools continuously support proposals for Chromebooks, Smart Boards, and Google Classroom. Adding technology, while helping young learners in some ways, also contributes to the problems that form the roots over over-diagnosis of Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, and the godfather of over-diagnosis: Attention-Deficit/Hyper-Activity Disorder.

If you keep reading you'll learn quickly that I'm quite vocal about my distaste for our education system. I want to be clear that I'm in support of teachers. Many, many friends and colleagues are teachers. All of them want to help young people learn skills and gain confidence as learners. My critique works best when seen systemically- no individual is at fault, although many stakeholders (parents, teachers, administrators, legislators, special educators, students) are playing the wrong game. Showing up to a ballpark with a soccer ball keeps you in the realm of sports, but you're not going to win.

You'll also quickly learn that I'm supra-diagnositc. I loathe the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, the current bible of mental health disorders. Once we crack open what people are doing we'll see that we're working with adaptive and learned responses to contexts. The DSM talks about human problems like aliens have landed and injected people with poisons. Once a child is labeled "ADHD" they've been charted a course towards inferiority, frustration, learned helplessness, and increased suffering. Outliers discredit my critique, but having worked in youth development for over a decade, I see this happen more often than not. We need to move away from these labels.

Thirdly, you'll learn that I have many reservations about capitalism, and see it as a major sore in the side of the education system. Theoretically, capitalism should work, but we're training kids to be victimized by it, not to use it effectively.

When I say "education system" I'm most often referring to the public school system of the United States. In that way, the education system is an organism responding to its environment. A broken leg, without proper care, will heal- but it might heal at strange angles or force other bones to shift. A broken education system continues to find ways to heal, but without proper alignment, it's askew. It's currently limping along.

Three areas seem to be most problematic: School inadvertently reinforces isolation; school sends mixed messages about being an individual; school inadvertently reinforces emotional avoidance.

1. School inadvertently teaches isolation

The number one "mental health disorder" plaguing the U.S. is anxiety. Each year, increasing numbers of high-anxiety accounts in our children are published. The second fist is Depression. Looking at what anxiety and depression do is a behavioral set of responses to uncontrollable and unknown situations. Someone who fears being abandoned can develop anxiety behaviors (seeking constant reassurance, perfectionism) and depression behaviors (self-hatred, staying in bed). In other words, anxiety and depression are different means of controlling the same problems.

Teens spend an average of eight hours in front of a screen every day. Social media is now part of the social territory, and teenagers are, developmentally speaking, hyper-focused on fitting in, being different, and looking cool. Hormones jump start sexual maturity, so most teens are constantly thinking about bodies, body language, and sex. These are related to social status (the football quarterback gets more girls, for instance).

Social media becomes yet another platform for status and competition, with the added component of editing; instead of talking to others in person and fumbling over your words, you can edit your post and include emojis, expressing an emotion you may or may not be actually feeling.

Filters allow feature touch-ups, while ugly photos can be avoided all together. The web-based identity is constructed, rather than representing the genuine self.

Again, there are outliers, but even the most grounded teen becomes very aware of every wrinkle, mole, and hair on their bodies. It's okay. It's developmentally appropriate. But there's danger in access to augmentation; kids no longer need to practice accepting their faults, nor do they have to do the hard work of changing something (like committing to the gym in order to bulk up and look good with your shirt off). Social influence can be very anxiety-provoking in teens. Now they're connected to people from all over the world. Influencers of all kinds consume teenager's time online. The gap between reality and possibility stretches farther and farther apart with more apps.

The other silent threat is video games. Games are now designed to allot for downloadable upgrades, and multi-player games integrate real money- you can buy "skins" for your characters. In essence, more social comparisons and trying to keep up with the most popular. There's always something to be getting that you don't currently have.

Too many adults dismiss the concern that kids aren't together in person enough, and that they spend too much time in front of a screen. Even adults that believe this is a problem don't actually facilitate changes in kids: "He's on that thing all day," I often hear, without a parent taking the device away. We've been hearing this blame for decades, and there's truth to it. I can say this because I work directly with parents and teenagers in a mental health setting: it's a consistent issue.

Kids are craving connection- real connection. They love spending time together. But our culture popularized screen time and kids are using "social" media, with all of their friends, so they're very confused about why they feel lonely.

Schools have been working diligently to provide students with personal computers for school. Much of the workload has been moved online (no more Trapper Keepers, like from my school days). I've sat in libraries and seen all students with headphones on, heads almost buried in their computers as they plug away at school work. Lunch rooms have kids both talking and scrolling on their phones. Bus stops, backseats of parents' cars, and in their rooms: checking email, texting about a group project. In a way, this allows ongoing communication that could aid schoolwork, but the issue is that free time is now screen time too.

If kids had weekends filled with time together, playful and sporty, then screen time at school wouldn't be too much, but kids are now starting school lacking in social skills. Social skills include things like: how to write a letter, how to address an envelope, how to provide compliments, how to provide criticisms, how to show you respect someone, how to ask for help, and empathy.

I'll offer this again, because it's a huge reason the V-DEM is needed:

Kids have undernourished skills in communicating feeling, disappointment, and interest. Many teens I work with as a therapist lack a wide vocabulary to describe how they feel. "Good." "Bad." They don't know words like "provoked," "gregarious," or, "entranced." A wide vocabulary helps us name our experiences, which we can then understand better.

The issue is not that schools actively promote isolation; it's that they haven't added in social connection as a core course for children. Certainly, classrooms offer circle times, group projects, discussions, and so on. I'm focused on implementing a framework that helps kids learn about their value to their school community, as well as the value of their schoolmates. This would help balance the growing isolation brought on by social media, screens, and just the general cultural shift towards more indoor time. Helping kids communicate can reduce bullying, sexual harassment, depression, anxiety, and can disrupt dysfunctional gender norms.

More to come in part two...

[thewillingnessproject]

The Willingness Project

We will look back in history with a clear distinction: before COVID-19. And after.

The pandemic has stirred searching for meaning: Is this a message from the Universe? Do we blame mankind? How long will this last? What's next?

What we can already say is that economies, politics, spirituality, and healthcare will forever be affected by this virus. Most agree that things will not "go back to normal." Instead, we will need to find a new norm. That means we're tasked with designing that norm. It can't be passive, or history will repeat itself.

And while I won't pretend to have the answers on how to do this, I think there is one lesson from the pandemic that we deserve to learn and hopefully will integrate. I fear it will be missed, so I'm here to speak up about it.

It's called willingness to change.

Basic enough to write out, but spend a moment with it.

As a therapist, I spend much of my time working with people who want to experience change in their lives, and most are terrified to make the changes, believe they can't, or have tried and failed;  they're ready to give up. Part of my job as a therapist is to help them find new ways of working with problems, and usually the first step is assessing and addressing their willingness to change. Committing to leaving a toxic relationship, quit a job, stop smoking, start dating, call Mom, and so on is so easy to wish for and sometimes so hard to implement. To do so will mean experiencing fear, sadness, loss, confusion, and the unknown. I foster willingness to feel these things and still stay committed. To see the change through so we can celebrate the success.

It's this action of willingness that I think we'll want to improve on as a global community, moving forward. Are we willing to feel the discomfort that comes with change and stay committed to the change?

Let's look at what this would mean:

There seems to be two kinds of willingness. The first I'll call "tolerance" and the second, "acceptance".

Tolerance is doing something with a sense of tension, pain, and struggle. The best example I can think of is unclogging a toilet. You will likely have to tolerate the odor, some splashing onto the floor or your clothes, and so on. Tolerating is synonymous with "dealing with" a situation. You'll have to deal with the wet plunger afterwards, for instance.

Acceptance, on the other hand, is willingness with a sense of opening up to the experience, approaching it with curiosity. I love watching toddlers because they engage in this kind of willingness often. They waddle to the stairs and want to climb up. When up, they want to climb down. When down, they want to climb up. They want to see if they can do it holding a small toy, and then a big one. They don't mind being unsuccessful. They will cry because failure can be a saddening experience. After a good cry, though, they get back to investigating.

When I first talk with people about willingness, they usually think I'm talking about tolerance. With exploration, we understand what acceptance would look like instead. Of course, sometimes we need to tolerate experiences (toilets and such). Other times, however, we can choose acceptance. Yes, it's a choice.

A previous colleague of mine, the wonderfully brilliant and articulate Melody Brooke, quoted a saying- I think it's Abanaki in origin- which is: "Do things that make you a good ancestor."

Isn't that beautiful? Not a good dad, or grandfather. An ancestor. Do things now that, in several generations, will help your kin. You may never get to witness this goodness. And I've been thinking about that in terms of people suffering in China and Italy, among other places, that I will never meet and never know if my efforts have helped them, not directly, anyway.

I still choose to help them.

Global threats have been growing for a while now. COVID-19 is a Corona virus, like SARS. And there's global warming, and mass flooding and wildfires. Regardless of your religious or political convictions, we can witness floods and wildfires. They're happening.

How will we adapt? How will we respond? These questions are being asked in many circles, especially mine, as an educator, spiritual healer, and therapist. What I want to offer up is that we foster willingness. We allow ourselves to look at our actions now and see how they will affect things in the future.

Because there's another quality to willingness, which is that it's not all-or-nothing. We can shift our actions just a little bit. There are billions of people on the planet. If we all shifted our behaviors five percent, that's a lot overall. When I talk with people about changing how they're approaching problems, we look at pivoting in this way.

Research is pretty clear that people on diets who are focused on losing a particular amount of weight by a particular time rarely make that goal, and if they do then they rarely keep the weight off; it usually comes back. But people who choose, instead to "exercise more" or "eat healthier foods" often obtain more sustained weight loss. They also are less hard on themselves, feel better, and keep up their positive behaviors.

So I talk with people in terms of that. Maybe "the journey is the destination" is cheesy, but there's wisdom in it. Can we be willing to eat less meat? How about we work fewer hours? Can a CEO that makes millions of dollars each year give up five percent of their income to help rejuvenate our economy? Can we all be willing to spend more money on local products?

Notice that there's no prescribed amount. We don't need to give up all convenience. One reason that people who "exercise more" find more success comes from what's called Behavioral Motivation. In other words, the Snowball Effect. If our eyes are always on the completed snowman, and all we're holding is a palm-sized sphere of snow, the whole project is daunting. But if we just set that ball down and start rolling it around, eventually we achieve the snowman.

Willingness is just like that. It's allowing ourselves to step away from goals that seem enormous, and instead to just start rolling. Just eat more vegetables. Just carpool to work more often. If we foster willingness of this kind in the political ring, the capitalist ring, the social ring, the educational ring, and the community ring, in time we will see tremendous change.

Giving up a lifestyle is terrifying. People are forced to do it often, sometimes because they lose a job, need to move, have children or lose children. I know that I've been on food stamps and off of them several times throughout my life. When we talk about changes that need to happen to preserve our planet and our people, the reaction usually stems from this place of total lifestyle change. Ideally, yes, but realistically no.

If we foster that five percent change willingness, however, we have a snowman before you know it. Why should we do this?

The term is "prosocial" and speaks to doing things as individuals for the good of the whole. If we can all be five percent more prosocial, this means that we consider how our actions affect the whole. Many, many years ago, the whole used to be your clan or village. You knew everyone by name (and were probably in some way related to them). Considering the whole was easier then. Now our whole is global. Anything you buy, use, see, hear, or make likely has global implications of some kind.

So, just for a moment, imagine a world where everyone addresses their actions and chooses to keep in mind how they can do more that benefit mores people, and work towards wellbeing for this generation and all those that follow. The thing we educate on, practice, and celebrate, is the willingness to change.

This won't be the solution to recovering from COVID-19, but it is an invitation from me to you. It's an invitation to not give up anything, but instead to do more of what will help.

I call it "The Willingness Project" and it's about opening up to the unknown and the will-never-know, and committing to change anyway. I've done it myself. I've seen it in others. I believe that as a world community we can use it to prepare for the next worldwide event and respond flexibly and with compassion and fortitude. I'm willing to try? Are you with me?

[thewillingnessproject]

What we can do to help

"I want to be doing something to help."

"I feel like I'm just sitting around."

"I feel guilty for enjoying this extra time I have."

Many people have voiced these thoughts to me lately. I have them too, a complex mix of gratitude for time at home, fewer daily responsibilities, catching up on shows- and then fear, sadness, and some guilt.

Guilt is a feeling people often avoid. I was one of them for many years. I experienced a lot of it. I like to see my commitments through, do my best effort with a job, and I like to help people in need. When I can't do those things, I feel guilt. However, guilt is merely a message that we are doing something other than what we believe to be the virtuous, right, or best thing to do. If we can see guilt as a message, then we don't need to change what we're doing. It's like, "Are you sure about this?" You can respond, "Yes, I am." You can say, "I'm not sure, but it's the option I have right now." Or, "I'm just trying this out to see how it goes."

I read about doctors working round-the-clock, putting themselves in danger. I read about Burton Snowboards making masks and goggles for hospitals. I get emails from yoga studios posting livestream classes. Meanwhile, I keep working from home, but I'm not on the frontline of a pandemic. And I feel guilty for the privilege of catching up on Netflix shows and having time to slow cook chili. My yard is also looking really nice.

While I study with interest evolution science, I'm not an expert in it. I use evolution science to help me as a therapist. By understanding how human behavior developed to adapt to changing contexts, I can better help others work with their human-ness, instead of against it, which is something I witness often. Guilt, for example, is an evolutionary tool that people put a lot of effort into snuffing out. Good luck. Guilt saved us as a species time and time again.

Especially in Western cultures, we forget that homo sapien is a social creature, surviving due to social coordination and thriving due to social cooperation. COVID-19 is highlighting our social qualities. People very quickly posted on social media about the spread of it. People post tricks to helping children through this time, as well as family activities. Platforms like Zoom recognized their social responsibility to connecting with people. Even corporations like Verizon stepped in to keep people connected. Hospitals said, "We need masks," and loads of people started making that happen.

These might be acts of kindness, but kindness is an act of social cooperation.

Another element to evolution is diversity. In fact, there's more diversity within groups than among groups. Consider the beautiful impact of diversity: A group of only empathic people will have unlimited emotional support, but might not get to building fires to stay warm or go hunting for food. And a group of people wired for systems thinking will have strong walls for safety but won't know how to support each other after a hard day's work.

I'm simplifying our behaviors, certainly, but you get the idea. A society with tallness, shortness, directness, passiveness, calm, anxiety, and so on, help everyone learn the skills. Highly empathic people can train less empathic people to use empathy, for instance. Groups that have spiritual leaders and scientists are likely to win out over a theocratic group.

What does this all mean about the pandemic?

Our community is now global. This comes with benefits and problems. One problem is that our ancestors lived in villages of maybe 100 people. So you knew everyone, they knew you, and you had inherent usefulness. Maybe you were the poet, the farmer, the priest, the elder... You knew your role. In a global community it's harder to know how we all fit in and what we bring.

For many of us, simply staying home is helpful. No, you aren't doing as many things as a doctor in New York City is doing right now. But step away from individualistic thinking, something hard to do (I know it takes intentional effort on my part). We are a large system. We can use the human body as a metaphor for this: To step forward, one foot stays in place; the knee lifts; the pelvis shifts, and so on. Different parts of your body perform different tasks, some larger than others, in order to the collective whole of the body to move forward.

Walking is hardly just one foot in front of the other.

Throughout this pandemic people will be called to do large and small acts. They all contribute to the greater whole of moving forward.

Eventually, the doctors will do less, and the artists will need to do more. In something like an amoeba, which is very small and basic in make-up, it's easier to look at how each cell works. Our organism is now billions and billions of people in size. It's a complex critter.

Small acts of kindness, generosity, and love contribute to a greater whole. When I was younger I thought that people who meditate or pray to help heal others was bypassing doing the "actual work." I no longer believe that. Cultivating compassion and presence is incredibly valuable.

Anxiety begets anxiety, for social reasons. If I'm in a very anxious group and not anxious, I might be missing something important. It's safer for me to feel anxious too. This works the other direction, too. We co-regulate one another.

Take time to chill and watch movies, but make sure to get off of screens and social media. Contribute to the whole by seeing what you can do. It might be small, but it's not about you; it's about the global movement towards healing. When the community heals, you will heal.

As a therapist, I sometimes step up a bit more with my clients, offering suggestions, questioning their motives, and so on. At other times, I lean back. It's a social dance; we're partners working together. Know that your thoughts about wanting to help come from a deeply held passion for your species. It's hard to believe that doing less helps us do more, but very often this is the case.

[thewillingnessproject]

What if social distancing is the problem, not the solution?

What if social distancing was the problem, not our solution?

To investigate this question, we need to jump through time and look at a broad picture of our circumstances. I believe it's worthy to do so because of something troubling I noticed:

Stores and restaurants flying through boxes of latex gloves, bottle after bottle of sanitizer pumps and sprays, takeout food loaded in paper or plastic bags with small packets of sauces, and plastic utensils. I see reusable bags forbidden.

And I got worried.

Our distancing from nature is part of what got us into this mess of a pandemic. Over-consumption of natural resources has forced us to dig deeper into forests and therefore the unknown; we encounter new creatures there, new bacteria, and that's where COVID-19 came from.

A world where we're driven farther away from time outside, time in nature, and engaging in activities like growing our own food strips us of connection to these natural resources.

In a way, it's a sort of learned helplessness. I certainly know very little about farming, and can't make my own fabric for clothes. I don't know how to butcher an animal. I don't know how to track one to hunt it. Even hunters shoot from afar with guns. The act of running an animal and looking it in the eye as you kill it is, for the most part, not something we do anymore.

I don't say this as a hypocrite; I am someone very happy in my modern world of technology, of going out to eat, and being able to buy soy cheese and barbecue seitan. I speak from the perspective of someone within this system of de-naturalization. I know the change has been and will be hard for me, too.

It's troubled me for years, especially when I was developing waste reduction programs in schools. Kids (and the staff) really had no idea how much they threw away. Recycling is great, but we're using too much and over-burdening the recycling system, and now it's failing. Composting is great too, but people get it wrong so often that it's often rejected for "not working", even though it's human error.

As much as we're trying on the back end to clean up the mess, we're making too big of a mess for this plan to work.

During that time I would scan lunch rooms and see pre-packaged mini-cups of applesauce, juice boxes with plastic straws, and even little pre-packaged baby carrots. I saw treats like mini-Snickers in flimsy wrappers. Waste is everywhere that pre-packaged food is.

This distance from the doing disconnects us with effort. When I was farming for a short time, I remember spending a couple of hours every afternoon picking strawberries. I will never mindlessly consume a strawberry again; I know how they grown, how people were on their knees, scooting slowly down a row of plants, individually plucking berries off. Eating those strawberries will forever be more rewarding than those I buy in the store because of my physical connection to them and the effort it took harvesting them.

The best strawberries had hornets or bees nestled in them. The insects, attracted to the sugar, would dig a nook, get drunk, and lay around digesting. These warped, "ruined" berries were the sweetest, and we'd eat them. But to sell berries, only the largest, plumpest, and least ugly will do. The farmers ate the ugly veggies and fruit. It was still good, but we couldn't sell it. And still, a lot wasted.

People are spinning a yarn about Mother Nature teaching us a lesson about going back to basics, working less, and so on. But I foresee high anxiety when it comes back to reaching into the baked good shelves at the grocery store to take a raisin bagel, and fear around bulk items. When will we be grinding our own coffee again? That's when I think our fears about contamination and illness will really settle in. I worry we'll associate a way of living that is bulk, open, sharing, and full of touch will be linked to fears of sickness.

That association can hurt us far, far, far worse than COVID-19. It will create a sea of fear and the response will be more plastic, more individual servings, more separation of man from what he consumes.

We will need to not only get through that fear, we will need to increase our shared living ways. We will need to decrease our reliance on plastic. We will need to increase re-using materials. We will need to invest in more compostable products and composting systems, a variety of renewable energy, and we will need to simply buy and have less.

I carry reusable bags, a metal water bottle, a steel coffee mug, an empty jar with a lid, a set of bamboo eating utensils, and handkerchief. I continuously find ways of walking lightly and I'm still practicing.

The deeper our prints, the more we'll take with us in the next step, and we're not going to like everything we track in.

Be open, be courageous.