Curiosity is the Antidote to Contraction (TPTC Preview IV)

In the hope it might support you in dealing with the uncertainty and complexity of the current events surrounding coronavirus, I have decided to share several parts of my forthcoming book, The Power To Choose, a book about growing more skilful at dealing with complexity and uncertainty. This article is part of that; you can read it without having read any of the other parts, but if you want to read the preview in order: click here to read the first part or click here to find links to all the articles and PDF versions of the preview.

If there is one single attribute that we need in order to create the shifts that will lead us towards our skilful, clear, nimble Higher Self, it is curiosity. In Chapter One, I explained that you can choose from different sets of beliefs and assumptions far more than you think. To do that, you need to engage your curiosity about the way you are thinking: What am I assuming here? What else could I choose to believe or think? Which choice would best enable me to live life as my Higher Self, living as the person I wish to be? Throughout Chapter Two I asked you to work your curiosity with the people around you, asking What if everyone is doing their best? Getting curious about the perspectives of others enables us to step out of judgment, see things more clearly and live more as our Higher Selves in our relationships with other people.

In this chapter, I will ask you to turn your curiosity on yourself again. Not on your thinking directly, however. Through the key idea of this chapter – curiosity is the antidote to contraction – I will invite you to delve into your Deeper Self: the unconscious parts of you, from your genetics and your life experience, that often govern your behaviour. When we do this, we give ourselves a greater opportunity to choose not to act on out-of-date evolutionary or learned instincts. If we want to live more as our Higher Selves, then in the long term it is vital to be courageous enough to look deeply at our experience of life. From this place, we can begin to untangle the patterns which hold us back, which leave us contracted. Curiosity is the path to understanding our Deeper Selves, where we come from and what matters to us at our core. By understanding our Deeper Selves, we can see more and more the traps that we sometimes fall into. Once we see these traps, we can choose to make the choices of our Higher Selves.

The Opposite of Contraction Isn’t Openness

Around the time of the involuntary stop I described in the introduction – the break-up of the relationship which at the time had lasted all of my adult life – my brother, writer and coach Ewan Townhead, sent me a recording. It was of a conversation he had had with Guy Sengstock, a coach, trainer, facilitator and philosopher, and one of the founders of Circling, a relational practice which supports people to develop authentic connection with others. Ewan sent me the conversation in part out of sympathy and a desire to connect with me at a time when I needed it. He asked for some feedback, which I gave, although as far as I know the recording never saw the light of day. But it certainly had an impact on me.

Ewan and Guy’s conversation opened up some important language for me as I grappled with a set of circumstances that I didn’t have the skills to deal with. The language we have available to us affects much of our ability to describe our own experience; once we can describe something that is going on for us we can take perspective on it. And, as I have discussed already, once we can take perspective on something then we can choose.

One of the terms that Ewan and Guy introduced me to was ‘triggered’. At the time, this term wasn’t much used outside of psychology textbooks and therapy rooms. Now, it has become far more commonplace, so much so that for many readers it may not require a definition. In the world of psychology, however, it has a very specific meaning: something – often a sight, a sound or a smell – which brings back feelings of trauma. This might apply, for instance, to someone suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Today, that meaning has expanded as its use in broader society has increased. For the purposes of this book I give a definition as this: being triggered is when something in our life brings a historical experience from our past into the present. Even if we haven’t experienced the kind of deep trauma a psychologist might work with, each of us has had difficult experiences, particularly as a child or adolescent. We all also have a set of evolutionary responses, such as the commonly discussed fight/flight/freeze[1] response to danger. And sometimes there are times when we slip into a different state, the stimulus in the world seeming to lead directly to a change inside us (although for most of us it will thankfully never be the extreme reaction of someone suffering from PTSD).

Guy and Ewan also used another word, ‘contraction’. This was a word that, in this context, was new to me, too. But with the gift of the language to describe it I began to notice the ‘contraction’ feeling in myself: it was happening all the time in the aftermath of the break-up. This is the state I discussed earlier in this book: a feeling of our breath changing, our mood changing, sometimes our whole physiology changing as a response to something that has happened in our world. For me, contraction is a feeling of tightness in the chest, almost as if my shoulders are being folded in on themselves, squashing my heart in between (it feels like my body is literally contracting). It can be a state of fight or flight, or more often, freeze. In that final case, I simply can’t react. I don’t know what to do. I feel like I need to escape, from my situation or from myself. It can be frightening. I came to notice that it tended to follow some kind of trigger and – through reflection and greater learning – I came to see that this state is almost always a historical response, sometimes an evolutionary one and sometimes from my past. It brings with it fear and scarcity: it is not a place I want to spend time; it is certainly not a place where I can be my Higher Self.

I had to listen to Ewan and Guy’s conversation several times to grasp these new concepts and begin to integrate them into my experience of the world. Sometimes it takes a long time to learn something that changes your perspective. It may take a whole book, read slowly and then applied over weeks or months. Or it takes three different people sharing the same thing with you in different ways. That’s what happened with the principle What if everyone is doing their best? I had years of that idea popping up or being shown to me, but only at the Brené Brown talk did it finally sink in. At other times it takes just one moment of insight, combined with a chance to immediately put the idea into practice over and over again. That moment arrived in the recording when Guy said: ‘The opposite of contraction isn’t openness. It’s curiosity.’ And then, ‘Curiosity is the opposite of contraction.’

This idea has been my tool in my most difficult moments ever since; it is quite fundamental and requires a little more explanation. First, we need to distinguish between states and processes. This sounds like it could be a small distinction, but is important. A state of openness actually is – in my experience and maybe yours – a pretty good description for the opposite of the state of being contracted. So, if we are feeling contracted then it seems sensible to wish for openness, to strive for it. Unfortunately, striving for openness is a little like striving for calm when you are panicked or trying to clear your mind by putting in more and more effort (‘Meditate harder, you fool!’ says my internal voice, definitively not helping me meditate). Note again that openness is the opposite of the state of being contracted (or at least a good approximation for it). Contraction, however, is a noun which means the process of becoming smaller. The question is then: what on a psychological level, helps slow or stop the process of becoming smaller? What helps us with the process of becoming bigger, the process of becoming more open? And the answer, in my experience and that of Ewan, Guy, my clients and many other thinkers, is curiosity.

Curiosity is the kryptonite for contraction. Curiosity is the equal and opposite force to the force contraction. If you’re contracting, it won’t help you reverse that process of contraction to think of openness (no matter how hard you think). In fact, my experience is often that I can’t even remember what the state of openness is like when I’m in that contracted state; it feels a long, long way away. What you need in those moments is a force to help you, something that will slow and then reverse the effects of contraction. You need an antidote. And curiosity is the antidote to contraction. Through curiosity you will find the path to your Higher Self: in the moment, out of your contraction and back towards your normal self; and also over the long term, as you learn more and more about yourself through your most difficult moments and gradually open up your patterns to reveal the deepest version of yourself.

As I heard the phrase ‘Curiosity is the opposite of contraction’ from Guy in the recording and as he and Ewan explored ideas around it, the concept slipped into my awareness. At the time, I desperately needed something to help me: I had tried everything else and things were not going well for me. I had been living in contraction: thoughts, ideas and reminders triggered me into that state, taking me back into grief for the lost relationship and the lost future that I had imagined. I was wrapped in guilt for who I had been and fear that I didn’t know who I would be next. I resented people around me who I felt had let me down and I was resentful of the loneliness at losing them. I physically moved myself away to a different town, to get away from those reminders and to give myself the space to deal with the loss I was feeling. Getting away did allow me to insulate myself from at least some of the reactions I was having, but still the reminders were everywhere, trigger after trigger and contraction after contraction.

Some things made a difference: developing my understanding through conversation, ideas and learning helped. But still contractions came, and I felt helpless, lost and adrift. I was desperate to feel better and – although I couldn’t see it clearly at the time – the ‘better’ that I wanted was the feeling of control and agency in my life. That, in the end, was what arrived through the key idea of this chapter.

I don’t think the maxim is true: time doesn’t, in fact, heal. I think it’s perfectly possible to sit, ignoring a problem, ignoring an unresolved part of your story for many years without anything shifting and without feeling any better at all. If we want to genuinely heal our mental or emotional selves, I think that what we need is more understanding, not more time to pass. And understanding comes from curiosity.

Guy’s idea – that curiosity is the opposite of contraction – gave me the power to act in the moments when I found myself contracting. It gave me something to do when I felt helpless, and that something worked. It gave me a way to deal with what was coming up for me, to take control of my situation. It gave me an antidote to my contraction and to my hopelessness. And the change was powerful.

It’s Not About the Chicken

Recently, my brother shared a story with me. It’s a story he heard from Fred Kofman, the consultant and author whose work on difficult conversations I mentioned in Chapter Two. It comes from his work on authentic communication and it goes something like this.

Kofman was having dinner in a small restaurant. As the dinner went on, he became aware of a couple sitting a few tables away, engaged in some kind of disagreement. The size of the restaurant meant that he and the other diners gradually picked up on the tension between the couple. A few minutes later, as the disagreement came to a head and discussion in the restaurant quieted, the woman looked up at the man and said, ‘It’s not about the chicken, Harry. It’s about the last 20 years.’

This is what is happening for us when we get triggered and find ourselves contracting. In the present moment we feel pain or contraction, but the pain and contraction are almost never about the chicken: they are almost never about what they first appear. Rosamund Stone Zander, in her 2016 book, Pathways to Possibility, writes about how our strong emotional reactions can be viewed as memories. What happens in our life is what our definition of ‘triggered’ says: something in the world in the present brings back a historical experience from our memory, just like a sight, sound or smell may for someone suffering from PTSD. From her career as a family therapist, Zander speaks from experience, using clients’ examples to demonstrate that these contractions are memories from our childhood, when life was much scarier and further outside our control. When our behaviour comes from these memories we are much more childlike, different to the more adult clarity of the Higher Self. Curiosity in the face of these memories, these contractions, can teach us about ourselves and our upbringing. It can show us how and why we developed our patterns and behaviours and allow us to integrate them into our adult selves with compassion. We can look at them, then, and see them as a memory rather than a fact about our present circumstances. With the perspective we gain from seeing them in this way, we can choose in the present to act or think differently to where the memory would otherwise take us.

Sometimes we are taken even further back, triggered and contracting into the ancient evolutionary patterns of our ancestors and into the parts of our brains that we share with vast swathes of nature’s creatures, including the fight/flight/freeze mechanism. In the lives of our ancestors, let us not forget, the risks were very, very real. Abandonment by the tribe or the family, exposure on the plains, predators in the jungle: these and many other risks could, and often would, lead to death. For almost the entirety of the existence of the human race, that was the harsh reality, and we have evolved to deal with a world where that is the case: where there is real, present danger.

In the modern world, for most of us, we are very rarely faced with a true life-or-death situation. And what a wonderful thing that is. Sometimes, though, our outdated biology can leave us trapped in a kind of short circuit. It can be confused or tied in a knot because we are operating in a world which has changed beyond recognition compared to that of our ancestors. The instinctive parts of us – like the parts of our brains which are no different to those in lizards or other mammals – don’t know everything our conscious mind knows and they can act without our conscious thought. Sometimes those instinctive parts of us feel the significance of a situation without knowing, as our conscious mind does, that we are physically safe. They sense the import to us of what is happening and they act as though it is literally life or death, triggering neurological and hormonal responses as if we were in actual danger. The response of our body to situations like these – often a contraction – can be frightening to be inside. In these situations, following curiosity toward this contraction – asking, what is happening here? What am I frightened of, deep down? – can often lead to deep evolutionary fears like abandonment or death. This kind of confusion from our instincts is why public speaking regularly tops surveys of people’s biggest fears: our instinctive parts think that we are actually at risk of death from the judgment of an audience, even if our rational mind knows this isn’t the case.

Once we see these deep, underlying fears for what they are, we can forgive ourselves the stresses we feel: if my entire existence feels at risk here, then no wonder I am incredibly anxious. With that greater perspective, we can acknowledge the fear for what it is and also see in the light of day that it is unfounded in the present. This leads (sometimes very quickly) to a lessening of the fear and contraction, and enables us to see that we can choose.

After my break-up, emotional and evolutionary triggers were regularly happening in my life and so I experimented with Guy’s idea and focused my curiosity on the contractions. In my experiments I found that the hypothesis held true. It wasn’t always easy, and it didn’t always work right away, but overall it made a difference. As I looked inward at what was happening for me when I felt a contraction, things shifted and some of the reaction eased. And when I looked outward at other people and their behaviour and examined them with curiosity, that helped too. Often, for me, this was about a shift from blaming myself to understanding myself. That understanding allowed me to integrate my behaviour, to own and understand and forgive myself. That, in turn, lessened the power of the contraction in the moment and over time allowed me to understand myself and the world more deeply, developing my resilience to contraction: I began to contract less and become more skilled at bouncing back when I did. More than that, I began to heal and to grow.

Choose Responsibility

There is another important thread to draw out, here, which for me also originates in that discussion between my brother Ewan and Guy Sengstock, and which complements the idea that curiosity is the antidote to contraction. It takes us back to an idea I shared in Chapter One: that suffering is caused not by what is actually here now, but by resisting what is actually here now. Here in Chapter Three, what this means is this: fundamentally, it isn’t possible for one person to trigger someone else; it is and can only be the responsibility of the person being triggered and their interpretation that causes the trigger. That is, if I am triggered, it is down to me, rather than the person who has said or done something. It is my interpretation that causes the trigger.

Choosing to believe this is vitally important because it puts us in control of our own experience. It was this idea, along with the new antidote I had to my contractions, which helped me feel the kind of ‘better’ that I wanted after my break-up. If I choose to believe that my emotional reactions are my responsibility, and not something to be blamed on someone else, then this takes me out of the victim mindset and into control of my life.

Does this mean that we shouldn’t blame people for the cruel ways they victimise and trigger other people? No, it doesn’t. As societies, we have to organise ourselves and in doing that set boundaries on what is acceptable and unacceptable behaviour, via laws, customs and common practices. And as individuals on this journey, we have to create boundaries for ourselves and those around us, even while assuming that everyone is doing their best as we discussed in Chapter Two. However, even where someone has behaved unacceptably, it is almost always better for the victim of that behaviour to believe that they have the power to choose their response to it.

For me, wrapped in a cycle of triggers and contractions, this belief was transformational. If it’s up to me, I can change it. I am not a victim of the situation: my response is down to my interpretation, so it is within my power to choose something different. I can choose. In particular, I can choose to stop feeling like this. However, there is another side to this coin. There is a freedom in being able to affect what happens inside us, but it is also a dreadful freedom, because suddenly, everything is down to us.

If you can choose that it is down only to you whether you are triggered or not, then that is a lot of responsibility for you to hold. It takes courage to choose that, instead of placing the blame outside yourself, but it is worth it. If you are committed to deepening your understanding of yourself and to spending more of your time as your Higher Self, this is the only adventure to choose. It is the adventure of a creator, not a victim; the adventure of contracting less and less in our lives; the adventure of growing more capable and more skilful as we navigate the complexities of life. It is the adventure of taking responsibility not just for our actions in the world, but for how we interpret the actions of others.

What if that person, that event, isn’t upsetting me? What if instead my interpretation of the person and event is what is causing me to feel this way?

There is the responsibility. It’s down to me and it’s down to you. With the responsibility comes wonderful and dreadful freedom and with that freedom you truly do have the power to choose.

It’s Not About the Suits

It’s not always easy to take that responsibility. Even if you are committed to this journey, as I am, it can sometimes be very hard to choose curiosity in the moment and follow it to the understanding that helps. When we were planning our wedding, my wife and I were sitting on our balcony, having a conversation about some of the logistics of the event. We had moved to the balcony because I was struggling, getting anxious and stressed. But out there it didn’t get better, in fact it got worse. I can feel it now: sitting there, faced with a ‘simple’ situation, about ushers and suits. Who would be ushers and who in the wedding party would wear what? But it somehow wasn’t simple: I couldn’t think, I couldn’t speak. My normally incredibly active rational mind was completely still. Worse than still: empty, frighteningly empty. I sat, looking at the balcony rail, unable to look at Emma. I was waiting desperately for a thought to come, grasping for it. Anything. I wanted to say something, to talk through it with her. Nothing came. No thoughts, no words.

It was frightening, and it was clear that this wasn’t about what Emma was saying or doing; it wasn’t about ushers or suits or any of the logistics. It’s not about the chicken, Harry. On the surface, our conversation about the wedding had left me feeling like this, in perfect ‘freeze’: like a rabbit in the headlights, frozen and hoping in vain that the threat would pass me by. But of course, my life wasn’t at risk and, rationally, nothing about the ushers and suits should have left me feeling that way. Something different was happening: something about the conversation was triggering something in me. Something about my interpretation of what was going on was taking me to a historical experience: a different place, a different time.

I shared this experience with my psychotherapist. And as he suggested a way to work with this kind of thing if it came up again, I almost laughed. I was working on this book at the time and here’s what he suggested. First, notice what’s happening: ‘Ah, I’m shutting down here. I’m getting triggered.’ Then, he suggested, get curious: ‘That thing is happening. What is going on?’

And he went further: ‘It might be hard to do that yourself sometimes. You could even ask Emma to help here, ask her to say something like, “It looks like you’re shutting down, Robbie. What’s happening?”.’

A week later, after sharing this suggestion with Emma, we were having another conversation about the wedding. And it was happening again. Emma caught it: I could see it was difficult for her – she was getting frustrated with our exchange – but she managed to catch it anyway, assumed I was doing my best and said, ‘Robbie, you’re shutting down. What’s going on?’ She caught it quite early and even then it was still hard for me to shift out of the contraction. I struggled to bring curiosity in the face of that question, but managed get outside the contraction just enough. After a minute or so I found I could speak through it. And I shared what was going on in that moment, a fear: If I can’t even make this decision about suits, how can I support you when you need my help? And how can we work together for the rest of our lives? And her curiosity, engaging mine and then enabling me to share what was really happening for me did shift the contraction. The openness and access to my rational mind returned to me, a little in the moment and then more over subsequent minutes and hours. And, gradually, I found myself returning to my calm, adult self. Only from that place could I solve the problem and make the decisions.

Later, through more conversations and more curiosity about another deep contraction around the wedding and the suits, I saw two stories, two memories from another time. These were, perhaps, the historical events that were being triggered in me.

The first was a story of being trapped and alone without the answer, feeling cornered. Perhaps the story of a small boy, home educated by incredibly understanding parents and then later sent to a primary school with people who didn’t understand him, a place with so many rules he didn’t know and questions he couldn’t answer. Alone and without the answer, feeling trapped and afraid.

The second was a story of just wanting everyone to be happy. Perhaps the story of a small boy in a family struggling with the challenges of step-children and long-distance relationships: a mother who wants her partner to move to live with her; a father who is struggling to juggle his son and partner in one town and another son from a previous relationship in a city many miles away; and a half-brother who, underneath, just wants his father to come home. And the small boy is the only person who just wants everyone to be happy, together.

And somehow, in awareness of those stories, everything becomes easier. Next time, I will have more perspective on what is happening as I find myself alone and without the answer, feeling trapped and afraid. Or as I find myself stuck, unable to make things work because I just want everyone to be happy, together and that isn’t always possible. I know where those feelings, those contractions, come from. I can see them and I can forgive myself for finding them hard. And if someone else had been through those things, well, they would probably find the same things hard, too.

And so, these things that I do – the contractions that catch me – they become things that are separate to ‘me’, rather than just being ‘me’. They are stories I tell myself and they are stories I can tell others. So next time I find myself in that space, I am a little less trapped, unable to speak or move or decide. And a little bit less the time after that and the time after that and the time after that. They are parts of me: the young boy alone and without the answer and the even younger boy who just wants everyone to be happy, together. They are parts of me I want to integrate into my adult self. They deserve to be loved, not pushed away, just like all the other parts of me do.

I can use curiosity is the antidote to contraction. I can get outside of those stories, and then I can choose.

It’s not about the suits, Robbie. It’s about the last 34 years.

The Patterns That Keep Us Safe

This is just one example, but I could have shared many from my own life, as situations like this showed up and I struggled. I could tell you client stories about the energy shift for people when they understand and then integrate into themselves the source of their struggle. This often happens, like it did for me, when they can see the time in their past from where the stories they tell themselves originated. They see that at those times it was perfectly understandable to feel and react as they did: it kept them safe. It really helped back then but now, in the present day, they don’t need its help anymore. They can love the part of themselves, the memory, that is causing trouble instead of trying to shut it down and push it away.

The contractions we feel, once upon a time, perhaps, protected us. Perhaps, for me, sitting on the balcony unable to think or speak is the freeze mechanism from the parts of our brain we share with other animals[2]. Perhaps it is a sense that I am not safe and I need to stop and hide. Perhaps it is a way for us just not to make anything worse. It makes me think of a deer, or other animal, trapped in brambles, who instinctively knows that moving is making things worse. Something is going wrong, just stop. But it doesn’t help us anymore. Not really. Almost all the time in the modern day, this part of us is an outdated mechanism that doesn’t make anything better for us, but can absolutely make things worse, like the rabbit in the headlights, freezing in vain as the car races towards it.

If you are triggered at your work, the way to succeed in work is not through contracting further. We don’t do our best work when we are fighting, fleeing or freezing.

In your romantic relationships, the great joy that love brings to you and your partner is not manifest when you are contracting. Worse, your reactions from within a contraction will often carry pain and arguments and hurt to those you love, as a response from your own fear.

With your children, the guidance and wisdom they need is hard to come by when your chest is tight and your fear is high.

If you are committed to living as your Higher Self, to being the person who you are on your best days more as your life goes on, then the idea that curiosity is the antidote to contraction is not something you will want to overlook.

Guilt is the Path to Growth

I need to warn you about something. If you use curiosity is the antidote to contraction, and through this learn more about yourself and develop more and more perspective, you will find things you regret. But that is ok. That is a part of growing as a human: as time goes on and we learn, our perspective develops and our decision-making processes become more effective and sophisticated. And, if we develop our perspectives on ourselves and the world, then sometimes we will look back and realise the things we did, the choices we made in the past, are not things we would do now. In the story with the suits, I was freezing, but there are plenty of times in my life where I have ‘fought’ or ‘fled’ out of some outdated fear. Once we have greater perspective on the deeper parts of ourselves, we suddenly see this behaviour in a new light, and upon reflection we may feel regret for the ways we have behaved. This brings us back to guilt and shame, as I described in Chapter Two.

Guilt is healthy. It is realising we have done something in the past (even if it is sometimes the very recent past) that contradicts our values in the present, that contradicts how we now think people should behave, that contradicts our Higher Selves. It is I did something bad. Or, if ‘bad’ is too strong, it is I did something I’d rather not do again. Guilt is how we learn. It shows us we have developed our perspective and our ability to respond skilfully to the challenges of the world: we know something different to what we knew then. It is how we decide ‘never again’ and ‘it will be different next time’. Shame, on the other hand, is a different beast altogether. Shame is being unable to distinguish one’s actions from oneself. Shame, remember, is I am bad.

It is impossible to integrate and accept a part of our self about which we feel deep shame. Shame, in fact, wraps us in patterns that stop us owning and accepting parts of ourselves. Guilt teaches us that there are things we might have done in the past that we shouldn’t do again, for the good of ourselves or others. This helps us be socialised creatures, and gradually adjust our behaviour for the better. Shame, on the other hand, teaches us that there are parts of ourselves that shouldn’t be.

To fully give all our gifts – to achieve our potential and be our Higher Selves – we need all parts of us to be at our disposal. We need to develop perspective on our shame and reintegrate those parts of ourselves which we have pushed away.

The Castle

Writer and Leadership Coach Vegard Olsen talks about this like a castle. When we are young, he says, we run around the castle, playing freely in any part of it with the beautiful freedom that children have. As our life goes on, we learn that certain parts of the castle are not safe for children, maybe not safe for anyone. Or that ‘good little children’ don’t go there. We learn this from our parents, from our teachers, from our siblings and from our internal interpretations of what we see in the world around us.

The top of a tower, perhaps, or a dark room in a cellar, is unsafe or is where ‘good boys’ or ‘good girls’ don’t go. So we don’t go there. But we are children when we hear these messages, and sometimes we confuse them. We are so frightened of what might happen at the top of the tower, or in that particular room in the cellar, that we don’t go in the tower or cellar at all. Out of fear of accessing that one particular room, we deny ourselves access to a whole part of the castle, a whole part of our playground, a whole part of our selves.

For me, the top of one of my towers is the kind of anger which could lead to physical harm to someone. Only bad people get angry like that. Perhaps, I am bad when I am angry like that, so I will not go there again. But somewhere I got confused: I haven’t locked just the top floor, I’ve locked the whole tower. Somewhere lower down that same tower are other parts of the same quality, anger: the ability to stand up for myself or others, the ability to be direct, the ability to speak my mind when it might offend someone. The ability to debate healthily with someone else is in the same tower, too, as is the ability to express my frustration when someone oversteps my boundaries. These things are perfectly healthy, perfectly acceptable things for any adult to do in the course of their daily life. More than that, without them I am powerless in certain situations. I admire deeply people who can be direct, people who are able to debate with others, with clarity and humour, people who express their frustration rather than letting it fester. My Higher Self is someone who can do all these things – I know it is – but with the tower locked, my power to do each of these things is locked away too. My ability to be myself is reduced. My ability to create change – for myself, my loved ones and the world – is lessened.

The key distinction, then, is guilt and shame.

Shame is I am bad if I go in this tower, if I access any of those things. Shame is a fixed way of being and requires a fixed response: a lock on the door of the tower. A hiding of and a restriction on certain parts of ourselves, at all costs, in all situations.

Guilt is knowing that acting in a certain way is bad. Guilt is the power to choose: will I do it again this time, or will I be different? How much of this quality should I use in this moment? Guilt is the tower left open, unlocked, so I can choose. With guilt – healthy, important guilt – I know what could happen if I go to the top floor of the tower at the wrong time or in the wrong way. I know it may be unsafe, I know it may conflict with my values and how I want to be. It is there and available to me and I choose not to go there. I don’t need to lock it away and at the same time lock away the other floors of the tower. Instead I can integrate and own the things I have done and the person I am, knowing I will do better next time. This is what we need if we are to access our greatest potential.

Without guilt, it is impossible to grow and to change. The stories I have shared across this chapter started very much from a realisation that in my previous relationship I had not been the person I wanted to be. I had not behaved well; I had made mistakes and I had hurt someone I cared deeply about. I hadn’t done anything terrible, by most measures. I hadn’t slept with someone else or been violent. But there were many ways in the relationship that I could have been better or kinder. I hadn’t been the kind of man I’d always hoped I’d be. One of the ways I was supported in the aftermath of that break-up was to be in guilt and not shame; I remember now the words of my mother on several different occasions, giving me the message: yes, you could have behaved better, but you are not a bad person.

That isn’t the first time that I have behaved as I would rather not, and I’m sure it won’t be the last. In each of my romantic relationships there are things I wish I hadn’t done. I have said things I really wish I hadn’t said. I have let down, even betrayed, friends. I have been violent, although thankfully not since schoolyard fights. I think about many of these things regularly. They come into my mind with at least a wince, and sometimes a much stronger physical reaction. A contraction. As I engage my curiosity on that contraction, what I realise is that the contraction is a message: I don’t want to behave like that again. I don’t want to forget these events: I want to remember them, to savour them to make sure that next time I choose to do something different. I don’t always manage to be my best self, but the guilt I feel enables me to integrate my behaviour into myself, taking me further towards the person that I want to be, the Higher Self that I am being called to become.

Through guilt and curiosity, these mistakes become the foundations and building blocks of the person I am and the person I want to be in the future. For each of us, they allow us to understand our Deeper Selves: the values we hold dear and the patterns and memories we may be trapped in. They show us where to draw boundaries with others and with ourselves.

Follow the contraction of the guilt and get curious. And there you will see what you want to change about yourself, what value you did not live up to, what you want to be different next time. Seeing those things gives us a choice, a freedom, to make next time better.

Having compassion for ourselves, being able to see that we did our best, enables us to stay out of shame. Having the perspective to understand our previous actions in the context of our lives, our upbringing, our assumptions and our humanity is what makes our feelings a wince of guilt, not years or decades of shame. When we are in a space of deep shame, we are in a place of extreme scarcity. If I am bad, then what can change? If we are committed to growing, to bringing our Higher Selves into the world more regularly, to making the times we are knocked down fewer and further between, and to enabling ourselves to get up faster each time, then we will have to face things we aren’t proud of. The regrets and the things we wish we hadn’t done. When we do this, or when we catch ourselves feeling guilt or shame, we can choose to ask a question: ok, maybe I didn’t live up to the standards I set, or those others set for me, but what if I was doing my best?

Your curiosity, bit by bit, day by day, is vital to helping you grow. It might take time and commitment with some of the things you regret, especially if the regret runs deep. But engage the curiosity: go back to those questions from Chapter Two but turn them on yourself now. What did it take for me to behave like that? What is going on here? Where is this feeling of guilt or shame coming from? The curiosity could move you from shame to guilt. And from guilt, closer and closer to your Higher Self.

How Do I Do This?

This chapter is about how understanding your Deeper Self is a fundamental part of your journey to living your life as the person you deep down hope to be. It is about using curiosity to grow, ever bigger, in our capacities and capabilities for dealing with the complexity of the modern world, by looking at the tangles of our psychology.

As we face people or things that are ‘triggering us’[3] and we get curious, we will find out what it is that leaves us feeling contracted. Often, we will find something which we deeply care about, a deeply held value that someone – ourselves or someone else – is acting outside of. This will tell us what matters to us.

As we use curiosity is the antidote to contraction, we will uncover memories and patterns from our past, stories which may be forming a fundamental part of how we relate to ourselves or to others. Curiosity will give us the perspective to see these memories and patterns as they actually are. Once we realise that our behaviour, our patterns and the ways we are acting are a part of our past, are part memory and part story we tell ourselves, we realise that we have a choice. This – looking at our patterns and the responses we make that carry us into these contractions – creates freedom and agency for ourselves.

Curiosity is the antidote to contraction can take us to those two things: what matters to me here? And what stories, memories and patterns am I living out in this moment as I struggle and contract? Each of these will give us a clearer understanding of our Deeper Selves: the reasons we do what we do and the ways we hold ourselves back.

Once I learned via Guy Sengstock’s insight that (in my slightly rephrased version of his idea) curiosity is the antidote to contraction, I embraced curiosity by delving into myself, my experience, my history, my assumptions.

A new habit began to form. The contraction – a feeling impossible to ignore – was now followed by curiosity. The questions were: 'What’s really happening here? I’m not at risk of death, even if it feels like that. I’m not even at risk of harm. So, what is actually going on?' I began to feel Guy’s wisdom. By shining the light of curiosity on myself, using the understanding I had picked up through books and podcasts and conversations, I found myself, in the end, opening up. I felt my contraction dissipate under the light of curiosity like mist in the morning sun. More than that: each contraction became an opportunity, a chance to learn even more about my Deeper Self, a chance to free myself from another chain that might keep me from my Higher Self.

When I was young, I used to have a kind of vocal tick, a way to slow the conversation down to give myself time to think or avoid getting things wrong. I used to say, ‘Mmm… interesting.’ Now, that has become a part of the way I shift from contraction to curiosity.

When something unexpected happens, and particularly when your emotions crack like a whip and your tensions or your tears rise, you can deny and you can fight. You can even strive, desperately, for openness. But those options won’t take you out of contraction or the sense of being trapped; they won’t give you a sense of possibility or access to your Higher Self. What you need is curiosity. It isn’t always easy to stop the contractions, to make that shift. Sometimes you’ll need help from someone around you, noticing when you find yourself trapped in contraction. Sometimes you might be able to bring yourself to it. In times like that, ‘Mmm… interesting’ can be helpful. Use it to shift.

Bring humour and a smile with it, if you can: ‘Mmm… Interesting! Wow, what is happening here? What part of my hilarious and wonderful humanity has short-circuited here? What am I up to? What’s going on, really?’

Bring love with it: ‘Mmm… interesting. There’s something deep happening here, something from the past. No wonder I’m struggling with it. I am human, after all. What could really be going on?’

And then engage your curiosity and follow it to the possibility of remembering, of better understanding, a part of yourself. Follow your curiosity to owning that part of you and integrating it into your view of the world, accepting it as part of your Deeper Self. It is from this place that we can find the agency to act differently – to choose to act as our Higher Selves – and also to change ourselves, at that deepest, most fundamental level. We can begin to think ‘Do I want to act from this set of beliefs or memories? Or do I want to choose a different belief here?’ From there, you can choose.

Not all of the things we are dealing with involve delving into deep feelings from our past, into those childhood patterns and stories, but sometimes the changes we seek in ourselves do require looking in deep places. The path away from contraction and towards possibility is a strange one: it involves a counter-intuitive facing of the things that are difficult to face, and it takes courage. Through examination of these difficulties we increase our understanding and, as we learn about them and about ourselves, they become easier to face. As we accept the things we have done as understandable actions, we may regret them while still knowing I was doing the best I could with what I had at the time. At this point, they become easier to hold and to own and then we – I – become easier to love.

This process is hardest when we are in deep pain, when we are filled with regret, when we think 'I am a terrible person', ‘I am a broken person’. And it starts with a small step. Perhaps now is the time to change your thinking, to choose a different adventure. It isn’t about shame; it is about guilt and the path from shame to guilt and on to possibility, and it starts with asking yourself a question. It starts with getting curious.

Chapter Three Summary

Key idea: When you feel yourself contracting – becoming more upset, anxious or reactive – use curiosity is the antidote to contraction. When we use our curiosity to face our struggles, when we understand our Deeper Selves, we can choose to step away from our instinctive patterns and reactions and step towards our Higher Selves.

Exercises and Practices:

What if that person/event isn’t actually upsetting me? What if instead my interpretation of the person/event is what is causing me to feel this way?
Remember: It’s not about the chicken and it’s not about the suits. When you feel a trigger and a contraction, it is almost never about what is happening in the moment. Instead, it is taking you back to something deeper. Try to bring curiosity in the moment: what is really happening here? And, in the moment or later, look for any links to memories: when do you first remember feeling a feeling like that? Who does it remind you of?
Look for the ancient short-circuits. When you find yourself afraid of something and you have a sense it may be an irrational fear, ask yourself: What am I frightened of, deep down? When you have an answer, try digging deeper: If that happens, then what am I frightened of, deep down? See what emerges: when you see what your instinctual short-circuits are combining, you may be able to have more compassion for yourself about the fear and you may decide to choose to act anyway. We’ll get to a similar example to this in Chapter Four.
Use The Castle Metaphor. Think of a person you really dislike. It could be someone you know or a famous person. Answer the question: what three qualities do you really dislike in this person? These may be qualities which you dislike so much that you have unknowingly closed off a whole tower of your castle. The game then is: what is a smaller version of each of those quality, a more acceptable one? In my example from this chapter, the quality of anger was one I disliked, but that led to me shutting off the ability to stand up for myself or others, the ability to be direct, the ability to speak my mind when it might offend someone, the ability to debate healthily with someone else and the ability to express my frustration when someone oversteps my boundaries. What might be possible if you allowed yourself just 5% more access to the qualities you like in your daily life? What might that look like?
What’s really happening here? I’m not at risk of death, even if it feels like that; I’m not even at risk of harm. So what is actually going on?
‘Mmm… interesting.’ Develop a habit of bringing this phrase to mind when you notice the contractions. Bring humour and a smile with it, if you can: ‘Mmm… interesting! Wow, what is happening here? What part of my hilarious and wonderful and flawed humanity is short-circuited here? What am I up to? What’s going on, really?’ Or bring love with it: ‘Mmm… interesting. There’s something deep happening here, something from the past. No wonder I’m struggling with it. What could really be going on?’
What if I was doing my best? Maybe I didn’t live up to the standards I set, or those others set for me, but what if I was doing my best? Yes, I could have behaved better, but I am not a bad person; I am doing my best.
What did it take for me to behave like that? What is going on here? Where is this feeling of guilt or shame coming from?