Influential philosopher Roman Krznaric shares his tips on expanding our empathy.

An Empathy Revolution

Empathy – the imaginative act of stepping into the shoes of another person and looking at the world from their perspective – is a more popular concept today than at any point in human history. It’s on the lips of everyone from the Dalai Lama to agony aunts, from business leaders to happiness gurus. And it’s no surprise, since in the last decade neuroscientists have discovered that 98% of us have empathy wired into our brains: we are homo empathicus. Our selfish inner drives exist alongside a more cooperative, empathic self that seeks out human connection.

1. Practise Empathic Listening

We all know, instinctively, that empathy is a great tool for maintaining healthy relationships. Just think of all those times you’ve been arguing with your partner and thought, ‘I wish he could see my point of view!’ or ‘Why can’t she understand what I’m feeling?’ What are you asking for? Empathy of course. You want them to step into your shoes, if only for a moment. That’s why it’s worth practising empathic listening. How do you do it? Next time things are getting tense with your partner, simply focus intently on listening to their feelings and needs – without interrupting (and this might just induce them to return the favour). You might even ask them to tell you about their feelings and needs. It’s amazing how doing this can prevent niggling annoyance turn into serious resentment or full-scale arguments. Ultimately, most of us just want to be listened to and understood.

2. Get Curious About Strangers

We need to take empathy out of the house and onto the streets by nurturing our curiosity about strangers. I recommend having a conversation with a stranger at least once a week. Make sure you get beyond everyday chatter about the weather and talk about the stuff that really matters in life – love, death, politics, religion. You might strike up a discussion with one of the cleaners at the office, or the woman who sells you bread each morning. It’s surprising how fascinating, energising and enlightening it can be to talk to someone different from yourself. Conversations with strangers can really help challenge our assumptions and prejudices about people, so we get beyond our snaps judgements about them based on their appearance or accent. And you never know – you might even make a new friend.

3. Try An Experiential Adventure

Back in the 1920s the writer George Orwell – who had a very privileged background and went to Eton – decided to rough it on the streets of East London, dressing up as a tramp and spending his time with beggars, unemployed labourers and homeless people. It was an experience that totally blew his mind, shifted his priorities in life and expanded his moral universe, as he revealed in his book Down and Out in Paris in London. We can all try out similar experiential empathic adventures. Maybe you could sign up to sleep rough for a night as part of a charity appeal for your local homeless shelter. Or if you are a strong believer in a particular religion, try a ‘God swap’ and spend a month going to the services of other faiths (and maybe a Humanist meeting too). Next time you are planning a holiday, don’t ask yourself, ‘Where can I go next?’ but instead ‘Whose shoes can I stand in next?’

4. Become A Revolutionary

Empathy isn’t just something that happens between individuals. It can also flower on a mass scale and start shifting the contours of society itself, creating a revolution of human relationships. Many of those who took part in the Occupy Movement and Arab Spring were motivated by empathy – empathy for those whose lives had been ravaged by the financial crisis, or who had suffered police brutality. An important way to boost your empathy levels is to join with others to take action on empathy-related issues that matter to you – whether it’s child poverty or the fate of future generations whose lives will be affected by our addiction to high-carbon lifestyles. Even taking part in your local choir or playing five-a-side football are ways to engage in communal activities that break down the barriers between people and promote a more empathic world.

5. Travel in Your Armchair

If all of this is sounding a bit strenuous, you can always throw a little ‘armchair empathy’ into the mix. This is about reading books and watching films that catapult our imaginations into other people’s lives that are vastly different from our own. Think of a movie like City of God, which reveals the violent world of two boys growing up in the shantytowns of Rio. Or the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, with its classic line, ‘You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view—until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.

In a relationship, having your partner withdraw at an emotional level can bring confusion, pain and frustration.

Women who relate to men that do this are often bewildered by why and how this happens.

Speaking as a man, and one who considers himself sensitive and emotionally available, there are particular situations and scenarios that cause me to withdraw. And I imagine that other men, regardless of how in-tune they are with their emotional nature, would respond in similar ways.

Just because a man withdraws does not mean he is withdrawing from you.

Often when a man seeks solace or withdraws from a conversation, it probably has nothing to do with his partner. It has more to do with the emotional intensity and confusion around emotions than with any particular person. It just takes men more time to integrate and understand the watery realm of emotions. And understanding emotions isn’t something that happens for us spontaneously in the midst of a heated discussion.

Often we need space and time to figure out what is happening, both within our own self, and with our partner.

Men have been discouraged from feeling emotional. We have been mocked, attacked, and belittled when showing emotions. Big boys don’t cry, toughen up, and bite the bullet are all phrases men grow up with. So when we are faced with emotional situations, we are novices.

The biggest harm that is not recognized or appreciated for the depth of damage that it causes at the emotional level to a man, is that men are expected to be tough, to protect, and kill to defend their family. Violence, and the expectation of violence, mandates an absence of emotional sensitivity.

It is a quandary for a man to be emotionally available and to have him be able to harm another human being.

Have compassion and understand the kind of conundrum that a man faces when being emotional vulnerable and awakening to deeper sensitivities. It is rare enough to find a man who wants to delve within and unleash his inner passion. It doesn’t mean that he is going to be masterful at it. For men to be comfortable in their own skin and accept their feeling nature takes a growth curve.

A woman has a lifetime of experience navigating the oceanic tides of emotional states.

Women grow up with emotional states and are accepted as sensitive, feeling beings. She is able to observe, feel, recognize and better communicate her feelings than a man. Women are also adept at observing and recognizing the emotional states in other people. And when a woman finds a man who loves her, at some level, she feels a great deal of hope because she has found an emotional match, somebody who understands those hidden tides and influences. Women will share all their heart and feelings, and not understand how this can impact a man. And when a man doesn’t respond as she needs, feelings of being hurt or misunderstood arise. How those feelings are expressed matter a great deal.

The best men want an intimate connection with women, and often don’t know how to do that.

Men don’t fall short in the emotional realm because we are emotionally immature. We are emotionally inexperienced. Men face expectations and pressure about emotions that are confusing and contradictory. And when we find a woman who loves us and we love in return, it brings to life a living fire that had been suppressed for a lifetime. Yet fires burn, and the burgeoning sensitivities is akin to a child learning to walk. We fall down, we make blunders, and we are blind as to how to listen and communicate our emotions.

Men experience a learning curve when awakening to their deepest sensitivities.

And just as any beginner, they make mistakes. Sometimes the mistakes are colossal, and sometimes laughable. Men need an emotional example, how to live with and operate with emotions in a healthy way. We also need to be accepted as we are, beginners with beautiful intention. To demand for a man to have the mastery over their emotions is an outrageous expectation. For most men, mastery over emotions means suppressing them, hiding feelings behind a mask of stoicism, or just turning off the emotions entirely. It takes time to even identify the subtle emotions, let alone to know how they function and their influence on our own self and those around us.

Any teacher knows that mocking a beginner or putting them down, criticizing them or their approach, will stunt the learning curve, if not completely stopping it.

The beloved woman becomes that guide into the mysterious realms of feeling emotions. When she expresses anger, puts down her man, belittles or mocks him, a man feels attacked. When she demands him to be sensitive, a man feels not good enough.

And when a man faces a womans wrath he will respond in the ways he has been taught to feel emotions since early childhood ; with anger. Anger is one of the few emotions accepted in men because it is a necessary emotion to be a soldier-killer. Anger is a natural defensive response for men. And once we become angry with our beloved, there is a host of problems that arise afterwards. Guilt, shame, inadequacy, failure, and fear. These siblings to anger are inevitable when fury shows its face, especially when we know that our loved one has been hurt as a result of our anger.

The words spoken in anger harm the recipient and the speaker.

It takes time for a man to feel comfortable feeling emotions. After all, such a man is challenging the tenants and pressure of an entire society and its deeply in-grained training.

A man’s natural response when being hurt or confused is to withdraw. Almost everybody knows about the masculine need to retreat to the cave. And whether this is physical space, or mental space, or even silence, the cave is an essential healing tool for a man’s mind. The cave allows integration of the experience, introspection to see what is happening within, and understanding to know how to better respond in the future.

Women set the example and emotional tone that allows their partner to feel safe.

When a man faces a woman who is emotionally stable, it allows him to understand his own emotions. The depth of understanding that the woman has with herself and her own emotional nature will give him the security to express and unveil his own strengths. The woman who is emotionally secure brings a presence of emotional security to the relationship. A well meaning man will appreciate this and do his best, and grow faster and reveal the depths of his spirit with increasing strength and confidence.

Granted, the ideal is that a man can figure out his emotional state and come into his own emotional maturity through his own self-generated willpower. Yet the reality is that teachers, guides and mentors accelerate this process and help a person navigate the confusing and mysterious realms of emotions. There are a great many pitfalls and bewildering mirages when it comes to the shifting sands of sensitivities. And as man learns his emotional state, he is also facing the additional challenges from his friends, family, and world that challenge that awakening at every step.

The woman who is insecure with her own emotions will see a man who withdraws as a threat and denigrate him and go on the attack. This is the antithesis of supportive behavior.

She will not realize that he is a man who is brave beyond measure to face his own soul and bare his spirit with vulnerable trust. When a man doesn’t respond as she needs and demands at the emotional level, lashing out will only cause harm. Gentle understanding and compassionate acceptance brings healing and deepens the relationship. One of the best qualities women have, is the ability to nurture.

Nurturing is not aggressive. And with a man, directing aggression at him will generate an aggressive response. He will either fight or run. The flight or fight response is deeply ingrained into every human being. In essence, attacking a man who is opening his heart will trigger a survival level instinct. Once that survival level power fully awakens in relationship, the dynamics in the relationship change and may never come back to equilibrium.

Nurturing is not forceful, instead it is accepting and allows for a natural growth curve. Be patient.

Just as a tree takes time to come into its fullness and blossom, a man who is learning to embrace his deeper truths will need time to fully ripen into his potential.

Appreciate the men who take the time to stand up against society to discover, feel, live and unleash their sensitive side. It takes a lion’s heart full of courage to face down societal expectations and programmed beliefs. Give him gratitude, honor his spirit, thank him for being available with his sensitivity in ANY way that he is able.

Such a person is one of a kind, a warrior in the truest meaning of the word.

This is a hard one to articulate, but its important to try and get it out there.

I don’t think I have ever encountered any psychological pain that rivals the intensity of what I’m currently feeling. Every weekend as I separate out from my daughter, my heart breaks.
No… it shatters…like thin, fragile glass.
Nothing brings me to my knees with more ferocity.

Yesterday when we parted, she screamed for me, her little body contorting as she reached for her dada…I eventually turned my back when she was safely secured in the car, still wailing-and walked into the house with my own hot tears streaming down my face. They formed a small pool at my feet as I sat staring vacantly. I can still see the stain on the wooden floor. After another hour of being in the void, I began to pick up her toys, each one burnt with the memory of her smiling little face.

I still don’t understand what the lesson in this is supposed to be?
I can’t live with my partner, nor can I live without my children.
what a crucifying dilemma.
Sometimes relationships disintegrate a long time before separation happens.
A thousand small wounds eventually bury us in recrimination and disappointment. In our case I hold no blame, just pain and acceptance.

Does one stay together for ‘the sake of the children?’
Does one sacrifice ones self at the altar of family, grimacing and simmering in resentment?
Always wishing for another life?
Was being part of a family just a reparative fantasy?
So many fathers I speak to know this pain. My practice couch is stained with the hidden tears of men. Some stay in irreparably broken relationships, fearing the intensity of the pain of loss, they soothe themselves with addictions (work, women and whiskey). Others sell off primary parts of their personalities, or anatomies (i.e. balls) at the negotiating table, become domesticated, wrestling crumbs of autonomy from their ‘bitter halves’. A pale death. Some flee into the arms of another woman and painfully recreate extraordinary repetitions. Either way the path is dark.

And yet men suffer in silence, maintaining appearances, often poorly. It is still rare for men to share their emotional pain with other men. There is still an antiquated paradigm that we appear to slavishly serve, “I will not under any circumstances show my vulnerability”…

Sometimes I would rather experience physical discomfort than sit with emotional pain. It is difficult for many of us to know what to do with emotional pain as we are not familiar with its parameters. Historically, men have relegated the world of emotional discomfort to the territory of women and the ‘weak’. Many men will do anything rather than feel or communicate their uncomfortable emotional injuries. This often leads to a variety of relatively predictable enactments…avoidance, denial, repression, fantasy. Anything but dealing with that which is.

So how do we start talking to other men about the pain of being separated from our children without it being viewed as something distinctly unmasculine? Can we not begin to entertain the notion that feeling these intense emotions is just a part of being human? Something that we can perhaps learn and grow from, something to face…even as our hearts tremble.

I chose to do an ayahuasca ceremony last week in an effort to reach under my ego and to
connect with something greater than the “I” we all labour under. I arrived at a farm in Noordhoek at 5:00pm, clutching bedding and a bucket which I had been instructed to bring. The bucket was for the “purge” that often accompanies an ayahuasca experience. The thought of purging in front of a room of strangers while ‘off my trolley’ didn’t exactly fill me with joy. I introduced myself and settled down next to a 67 year old silver haired woman who smiled at me warmly and shared that she was going on this journey to explore herself. I saluted her on her courage and internally scolded and coaxed my own out from where it was hiding, after all, I was sure I was going to need it.

The group was a diverse cross section, ranging from an impossibly good looking Aston Martin driving couple, to a pair of seasoned ‘psychonauts’, who had evidently formed a close relationship with our guide Jacques. I was dressed in virginal white, perhaps in an attempt to hide the stains I have gathered through a lifetime of engaging robustly with the world.

The introductions were brief and Jacques used carefully aimed words sparingly,
“If you get lost in there, remember that you will come out and the experience will eventually end…if you get yourself into a knot, come back to my voice, it will guide you back”.

The first serving was offered two by two, I felt trepidation as the strangely familiar earthy brew found its way into my empty stomach. We were encouraged to set an intention for our journey, I listened to the others and was soothed that many were working with similar issues and injuries, I chose rather to be receptive to whatever the experience had to offer.

I could write pages about what happened next (and my journal carries the full weight of those 5 pregnant hours), but this is an exercise in précis, so here goes.

After about 45 minutes I started to feel strangely open, enlivened, slowly the light of the day was beginning to fade which mirrored a feeling of descending into myself. As i dropped deeper, I became aware of my ego based fear walking next to me, like a clucking mother muttering inane, neurotic concerns. I chose to ignore her red herrings and rather connect with the soft tissue of my soul, my wild, tenacious, sometimes wise, gloriously juicy soul that has unflinchingly sustained me throughout this lifetime.

Ayahuasca is a fiercely compassionate teacher. At first she soothed me, asked if I was ready…then she gripped me firmly by the collar and moved me to the precipice of my ego, there, securely terrified, she hung me over the edge and made me look into the chasm where I witnessed parts of myself that words would only strangle. She expertly laid bare my poorly concealed heart wounds and asked me to surrender to the pain beneath, to accept that my defenses were puerile and ineffective and no longer needed if I was to become a creative expression of something greater than myself. If I struggled and pulled away in an effort to avoid the pain, she would hold me fiercely until I surrendered. I surrendered… again and again.

I’m a quick study and soon learned what was required and was able to move through the lessons rapidly. At times the lessons were too intense and I’d have to swim slowly to the surface to find Jacque’s chanting, beautifully containing voice in the tumult, to reconnect and release. I soon realized that the consciousness guiding me through my inner space had a fantastic sense of humor and at times I laughed loudly through my tears which didn’t stop flowing for hours. The Great Mother Aya is not reassuring to the ego, but she certainly supports the soul.

When the purge finally moved through me, it did so with an exquisite ferocity. I emptied the darkness I carried (both mine and my clients) unceremoniously into my woefully small bucket. It kept coming. It was messy, it was grueling, it was liberating. And finally, after what felt like eternity, I was empty, leaving space for clear soothing breaths. The storm subsided and I was left feeling like I’d just given birth. Lying there covered in snot, vomit and tears, I’d never felt so clean. I laughed again at the sheer absurd beauty of it all.

One of the great insights I still carry, is the realization of how we have all suffered from being separated from the Universal Mother from our first disorientating breath, a collective separation anxiety. The story of our expulsion from an Edenic state seems to be much older than our recent recollection of it. I became supremely aware that we are not, nor have we ever been alone.

All our addictions, whether it be to a person, a narrative, money, power, or a substance, are mere attempts at merging again with the Infinite. We become obsessed with the minutiae and forget the bigger picture.

Many of us have been so wounded by religion, that we forget that we have a spiritual dimension and this disconnection is making us sick. I could carry on about this for hours but it would sound like proselytizing, so I’ll step away from the pulpit.

Only now, almost a week later have I begun to find poorly fitting words for such a numinous experience.
I am humbled to my core.
I am grateful that I have what is left of this precious life to be a midwife to healing.
I realize that as a therapist I can no longer in good faith work only with mind, to the exclusion of the spirit.
Perhaps ayahuasca is actually from the tree of knowledge, for it connects one to the Source in a way that I have never before encountered.
Confronting ones Shadow, dropping into the boneyard is difficult work, but once you can just stay in it and feel the intensity which you have defended against your whole life, then the fear dissipates and healing can begin.

There are so many roads to healing the wounds we all carry, but only if we are prepared to do the work.

One of the prolems with new-agey self help literature (which I must admit I have read a lot of in order to see why they sell millions of copies), is that they often take perfectly good concepts and package them in a way that the concept loses any semblance of its original potency as it is processed into thin,watery, mass consumed gruel. While I am a quasi psycho-spiritual kind of chap, I like scientific research for its rigour. With this in mind I am currently interrogating the Positive Psychology movement to see whether its findings are applicable. Read on and try the exercises below, I have (grudgingly) found them very useful.

The following excerpt is from Flourish by Martin E. P. Seligman.
A generation ago, the study of psychology was dominated by a focus on the abnormal and the negative. But more recently, there have been academic movements that have undertaken a data and research-based study of the positive dimensions of psychology, with a view toward prescribing activities that can be imbedded into a person’s life and increase that person’s structural level of happiness. One such effort comes from Martin Seligman and the University of Pennsylvania. The following is a sample of the type of activity this academic school of thought recommends based on its own systematic studies to deal with the increasing prevalence of depression in our society:

“Here’s a brief exercise that will raise your well-being and lower your depression: The gratitude visit. Close your eyes. Call up the face of someone still alive who years ago did something or said something that changed your life for the better. Someone who you never properly thanked; someone you could meet face-to-face next week. Got a face? Gratitude can make your life happier and more satisfying. When we feel gratitude, we benefit from the pleasant memory of a positive event in our life. Also, when we express our gratitude to others, we strengthen our relationship with them. But sometimes our thank you is said so casually or quickly that it is nearly meaningless. … Your task is to write a letter of gratitude to this individual and deliver it in person. The letter should be concrete and about three hundred words: be specific about what she did for you and how it affected your life. Let her know what you are doing now, and mention how you often remember what she did. Make it sing! Once you have written the testimonial, call the person and tell her you’d like to visit [him or] her, but be vague about the purpose of the meeting; this exercise is much more fun when it is a surprise. When you meet her, take your time reading your letter.

“You will be happier and less depressed one month from now. …

“Here’s a second exercise to give you the flavor of the interventions that we have validated in random-assignment, placebo-controlled designs: [The] What-Went-Well Exercise (Also Called ‘Three Blessings’) We think too much about what goes wrong and not enough about what goes right in our lives. Of course, sometimes it makes sense to analyze bad events so that we can learn from them and avoid them in the future. However, people tend to spend more time thinking about what is bad in life than is helpful. Worse, this focus on negative events sets us up for anxiety and depression. One way to keep this from happening is to get better at thinking about and savoring what went well.

“For sound evolutionary reasons, most of us are not nearly as good at dwelling on good events as we are at analyzing bad events. Those of our ancestors who spent a lot of time basking in the sunshine of good events, when they should have been preparing for disaster, did not survive the Ice Age. So to overcome our brains’ natural catastrophic bent, we need to work on and practice this skill of thinking about what went well.

“Every night for the next week, set aside ten minutes before you go to sleep. Write down three things that went well today and why they went well. You may use a journal or your computer to write about the events, but it is important that you have a physical record of what you wrote. The three things need not be earthshaking in importance (‘My husband picked up my favorite ice cream for dessert on the way home from work today’), but they can be important (‘My sister just gave birth to a healthy baby boy’).

“Next to each positive event, answer the question ‘Why did this happen?’ For example, if you wrote that your husband picked up ice cream, write ‘because my husband is really thoughtful sometimes’ or ‘because I remembered to call him from work and remind him to stop by the grocery store.’ Or if you wrote, ‘My sister just gave birth to a healthy baby boy,’ you might pick as the cause ‘God was looking out for her’ or ‘She did everything right during her pregnancy.’

“Writing about why the positive events in your life happened may seem awkward at first, but please stick with it for one week. It will get easier. The odds are that you will be less depressed, happier, and addicted to this exercise six months from now.

Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-being
Author: Martin E. P. Seligman
Publisher: Atria Books
Date: Copyright 2011 by Martin Seligman, PhD
Pages: 30-31, 33-34

There were times at University that were truly inspiring, not many mind you but when they occurred, they were pivotal. Some of the lecturers were gifted in immersing one into a paradigm of thought which could revolutionize the way I viewed the world. Psychology, philosophy and anthropology all served as mirrors to the human condition. While I certainly indulged my hedonistic student fantasies while on campus, there was often a tattered copy of a seminal text close to my recovering body. Whether it was Schopenhauer, Jung, Lacan or Bollas, I’d often re read a page in awe, amazed at the beautifully articulated perspectives offered to my hungry mind. I think that if I had not become a psychologist, I would’ve become an anthropologist, perhaps I watched too many Indiana Jones movies as a kid (yes I know he was actually an archaeologist) but I loved the idea of adventuring to remote places getting intimate with the local inhabitants and learning about their diverse culture. In first year anthropology I stumbled across the following article on the Nacirema (which I encourage you to read through…it won’t take long) and I was hooked. Read on and hopefully by the end of it, something will appear all too familiar…

BODY RITUAL AMONG THE NACIREMA
Horace Miner

From Horace Miner, “Body Ritual among the Nacirema.” Reproduced by permission of the American Anthropological Association from The American Anthropologist, vol. 58 (1956), pp. 503-507.

Most cultures exhibit a particular configuration or style. A single value or pat-
tern of perceiving the world often leaves its stamp on several institutions in the
society. Examples are “machismo” in Spanish-influenced cultures, “face” in
Japanese culture, and “pollution by females” in some highland New Guinea
cultures. Here Horace Miner demonstrates that “attitudes about the body”
have a pervasive influence on many institutions in Nacireman society.
The anthropologist has become so familiar with the diversity of ways in which different peoples behave in similar situations that he is not apt to be surprised by even the most exotic customs. In fact, if all of the logically possible combinations of behavior have not been found somewhere in the world, he is apt to suspect that they must be present in some yet undescribed tribe. This point has, in fact, been expressed with respect to clan organization by Murdock. In this light, the magical beliefs and practices of the Nacirema present such unusual aspects that it seems desirable to describe them as an example of the extremes to which human behavior can go.

Professor Linton first brought the ritual of the Nacirema to the attention of anthropologists twenty years ago, but the culture
of this people is still very poorly understood. They are a North American group living in the territory between the Canadian Creel the Yaqui and Tarahumare of Mexico, and the Carib and Arawak of the Antilles. Little is known of their origin, although tradition states that they came from the east….

Nacirema culture is characterized by a highly developed market economy which as evolved in a rich natural habitat. While much of the people’s time is devoted to economic pursuits, a large part of the fruits of these labors and a considerable portion
of the day are spent in ritual activity. The focus of this activity is the human body, the appearance and health of which loom as a dominant concern in the ethos of the people. While such a concern is certainly not unusual, its ceremonial aspects and associated philosophy are unique.

The fundamental belief underlying the whole system appears to be that the human body is ugly and that its natural tendency is
to debility and disease. Incarcerated in such a body, man’s only hope is to avert these characteristics through the use of the
powerful influences of ritual and ceremony. Every household has one or more shrines devoted to this purpose. The more
powerful individuals in the society have several shrines in their houses and, in fact, the opulence of a house is often referred to
in terms of the number of such ritual centers it possesses. Most houses are of wattle and daub construction, but the shrine rooms of the more wealthy are walled with stone. Poorer families imitate the rich by applying pottery plaques to their shrine walls. While each family has at least one such shrine, the rituals associated with it are not family ceremonies but are private and
secret. The rites are normally only discussed with children, and then only during the period when they are being initiated into these mysteries. I was able, however, to establish sufficient rapport with the natives to examine these shrines and to have the rituals described to me.

The focal point of the shrine is a box or chest which is built into the wall. In this chest are kept the many charms and magical potions without which no native believes he could live. These preparations are secured from a variety of specialized practitioners. The most powerful of these are the medicine men, whose assistance must be rewarded with substantial gifts. However, the medicine men do not provide the curative potions for their clients, but decide what the ingredients should be and then write them down in an ancient and secret language. This writing is understood only by the medicine men and by the herbalists who, for another gift, provide the required charm.

The charm is not disposed of after it has served its purpose, but is placed in the charmbox of the household shrine. As these
magical materials are specific for certain ills, and the real or imagined maladies of the people are many, the charm-box is usually full to overflowing. The magical packets are so numerous that people forget what their purposes were and fear to use them again. While the natives are very vague on this point, we can only assume that the idea in retaining all the old magical materials is that their presence in the charm-box, before which the body rituals are conducted, will in some way protect the worshipper.

Beneath the charm-box is a small font. Each day every member of the family, in succession, enters the shrine room, bows
his head before the charm-box, mingles different sorts of holy water in the font, and proceeds with a brief rite of ablution.
The holy waters are secured from the Water Temple of the community, where the priests conduct elaborate ceremonies to
make the liquid ritually pure.

In the hierarchy of magical practitioners, and below the medicine men in prestige, are specialists whose designation is best translated “holy-mouth-men.” The Nacirema have an almost pathological horror of and fascination with the mouth, the condition of which is believed to have a supernatural influence on all social relationships. Were it not for the rituals of the
mouth, they believe that their teeth would fall out, their gums bleed, their jaws shrink, their friends desert them, and their lovers
reject them. They also believe that a strong relationship exists between oral and moral characteristics. For example, there is a ritual ablution of the mouth for children which is supposed to improve their moral fiber.

The daily body ritual performed by everyone includes a mouth-rite. Despite the fact that these people are so punctilious about care of the mouth, this rite involves a practice which strikes the uninitiated stranger as revolting. It was reported to me that the ritual consists of inserting a small bundle of hog hairs into the mouth, along with certain magical powders, and then moving the bundle in a highly formalized series of gestures.

In addition to the private mouth-rite, the people seek out a holy-mouth-man once or twice a year. These practitioners
have an impressive set of paraphernalia, consisting of a variety of augers, awls, probes, and prods. The use of these objects in the exorcism of the evils of the mouth involves almost unbelievable ritual torture of the client. The holy-mouth-man open the clients mouth and, using the above mentioned tools, enlarges any holes which decay may have created in the teeth. Magical materials are put into these holes. If there age no naturally occurring holes in the teeth, large sections of one or more teeth are gouged out so that the supernatural substance can be applied. In the client’s view, the purpose of these ministrations is to arrest decay and to draw friends. The extremely sacred and traditional character of the rite is evident in the fact that the natives return to the holy–mouth-men year after year, despite the fact that their teeth continue to decay.

It is to be hoped that, when a thorough study of the Nacirema is made, there will be careful inquiry into the personality structure of these people. One has but to watch the gleam in the eye of a holy- mouth-man, as he jabs an awl into an exposed nerve, to suspect that a certain amount of sadism is involved. If this can be established, a very interesting pattern emerges, for most of the population shows definite masochistic tendencies. It was to these that Professor Linton referred in discussing a distinctive part of the daily body ritual which is performed only by men. This part of the rite involves scraping and lacerating the surface of the face with a sharp instrument. Special women’s rites are performed only four times during each lunar month, but what they lack in frequency is made up in barbarity. As part of this ceremony, women bake their heads in small ovens for about an hour. The theoretically interesting point is that what seems to be a preponderantly masochistic people have developed sadistic specialists.

The medicine men have an imposing temple, or latipso, in every community of any size. The more elaborate ceremonies required to treat very sick patients can only be performed at this temple. These ceremonies involve not only the thaumaturge but a permanent group of vestal maidens who move sedately about the temple chambers in distinctive costume and head- dress.

The latipso ceremonies are so harsh that it is phenomenal that a fair proportion of the really sick natives who enter the temple The concept of culture ever recover. Small children whose indoctrination is still incomplete have been known to resist attempts to take them to the temple because “that is where you go to die.” Despite this fact, sick adults are not only willing but eager to undergo the protracted ritual purification, if they can afford to do so. No matter how ill the supplicant or how grave the emergency, the guardians of many temples will not admit a client if he cannot give a rich gift to the custodian. Even after one has gained admission and survived the ceremonies, the guardians will not permit the neophyte to leave until he makes still another gift.

The supplicant entering the temple is first stripped of all his or her clothes. In everyday life the Nacirema avoids exposure of his body and its natural functions. Bathing and excretory acts are performed only in the secrecy of the household shrine, where they are ritualized as part of the body-rites. Psychological shock results from the fact that body secrecy is suddenly lost upon entry into the latipso. A man, whose own wife has never seen him in an excretory act, suddenly finds himself naked and assisted by a vestal maiden while he performs his natural functions into a sacred vessel. This sort of ceremonial treatment is necessitated by the fact that the excreta are used by a diviner to ascertain the course and nature of the client’s sickness. Female clients, on the other hand, find their naked bodies are subjected to the scrutiny, manipulation and prodding of the medicine men.

Few supplicants in the temple are well enough to do anything but lie on their hard beds. The daily ceremonies, like the rites of the holy-mouth-men, involve discomfort and torture. With ritual precision, the vestals awaken their miserable charges each dawn and roll them about on their beds of pain while performing ablutions, in the formal movements of which the maidens are highly trained. At other times they insert magic wands in the supplicant’s mouth or force him to eat substances which are supposed to be healing. From time to time the medicine men come to their clients and jab magically treated needles into their flesh. The fact that these temple ceremonies may not cure, and may even kill the neophyte, in no way decreases the people’s faith in the medicine men.

There remains one other kind of practitioner, known as a “listener.” This witchdoctor has the power to exorcise the devils that lodge in the heads of people who have been bewitched. The Nacirema believe that parents bewitch their own children. Mothers are particularly suspected of putting a curse on children while teaching them the secret body rituals. The counter-magic of the witchdoctor is unusual in its lack of ritual. The patient simply tells the “listener” all his troubles and fears, beginning with the earliest difficulties he can remember. The memory displayed by the Nacirerna in these exorcism sessions is truly remarkable. It is not uncommon for the patient to bemoan the rejection he felt upon being weaned as a babe, and a few individuals even see their troubles going back to the traumatic effects of their own birth.

In conclusion, mention must be made of certain practices which have their base in native esthetics but which depend upon the pervasive aversion to the natural body and its functions. There are ritual fasts to make fat people thin and ceremonial feasts to make thin people fat. Still other rites are used to make women’s breasts larger if they are small, and smaller if they are large. General dissatisfaction with breast shape is symbolized in the fact that the ideal form is virtually outside the range of human variation. A few women afflicted with almost inhuman hyper-mamrnary development are so idolized that they make a handsome living by simply going from village to village and permitting the natives to stare at them for a fee.

Reference has already been made to the fact that excretory functions are ritualized, routinized, and relegated to secrecy. Natural reproductive functions are similarly distorted. Intercourse is taboo as a topic and scheduled as an act. Efforts are made to avoid pregnancy by the use of magical materials or by limiting intercourse to certain phases of the moon. Conception is actually very infrequent. When pregnant, women dress so as to hide their condition. Parturition takes place in secret, without friends or relatives to assist, and the majority of women do not nurse their infants.

Our review of the ritual life of the Nacirema has certainly shown them to be a magic-ridden people. It is hard to un- derstand how they have managed to exist so long under the burdens which they have imposed upon themselves. But even such exotic customs as these take on real meaning when they are viewed with the insight provided by Malinowski when he wrote:

“Looking from far and above, from our high places of safety in the developed civilization, it is easy to see all the crudity and irrelevance of magic. But without its power and guidance early man could not have mastered his practical difficulties as he has done, nor could man have advanced to the higher stages of civilization.”

References
Linton, Ralph. 1936. The Study of Man. New York: D. Appleton-Century.
Malinowski, Bronislaw. 1948. Magic, Science, and Religion. Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press.
Murdock, George P. 1949. Social Structure. New York: Macmillan.

And just in case you’re wondering why you read this…Nacirema is American spelt backwards.

As a society, I find we generally label and diagnose feverishly in an effort to understand our world.

Everyone is allergic to something…gluten, dairy, intimacy, loneliness. Everyone now has ADHD, depression, autism and restless leg syndrome. But somehow, codependency slips under the radar.

We all love love. We find acts of selflessness to be heroic. We honour the martyr.

This is a slippery slope though. As a relatively intuitive empath, I have always been drawn to those who have difficulty emoting, people who are overwhelmed by their feelings. I become a kind of emotional dialysis machine for them. Likewise, I seem to pull pathos out of those who bury it under logos. Consistently connecting with people based on my ability to be available at times of need, contributed to my feeling that self-worth was centered on how helpful and “understanding” I am. I understand that after early separation and loss of my mother, I clung onto women for soothing whether it was my grandmother or aunts, friends or eventual lovers, I soon worked out what they needed (often an empathic ear) and bought proximity through sensitivity.

I had created a dynamic within which I felt safe and valued. I spent years in one-sided connections, giving endlessly of my time and emotional energy. I spent time I will never get back in relationships with addicts (of one form or another), the mad, the bad and the sad. I was addicted to people who didn’t really know how to relate. So I had bought proximity but remained emotionally undernourished. Learning to trust and receive is an ongoing journey.

In less extreme and more commonly occurring examples, I see couples who so love being with each other that they spend nearly all of their non-working time together. Friendships are lost, hobbies abandoned, plans for the future forgotten. The masses may label these relationships as “sweet,” “committed,” or simply “being in love.”

I propose that there is a spectrum of codependency. It may range from the stereotype of the mum, bruised housewife living with the abusive, drunkard husband, to the guy who just wants to “save” his girlfriend from any “negative” feelings or situations, meanwhile feeling jealous and angry when she seems fine and social and interacting with anyone other than him.

When looking at these scenarios, a Buddhist may bring up questions of attachment. As someone who has spent a good deal of time with addicts, I see elements of addiction even when a substance is not involved. Byron Katie says, “Addictions are always the effect of an unquestioned mind.”

So let’s question. Let’s look at how we are in relationship with others.

Read the following statements and choose the most honest answer: 1–rarely true, 2–often or sometimes true, 3–almost always true.

1. People are not trustworthy.

2. I feel uncomfortable asking for what I want and need.

3. I worry my partner may leave me.

4. Other people’s problems keep me up at night and distracted during the day.

5. I give to others much more than others give to me.

6. When someone I care about is upset, it is my responsibility to help them feel better.

7. It is difficult to receive compliments or praise.

8. I don’t really believe other people love me.

9. If people would just fix their own problems, I would be happier.

Brush up those maths skills and add up the numbers associated with your answers. As with any over-simplified system, I invite you to use these results not as a diagnosis, but as a springboard for taking a critical and compassionate look at yourself.

(9–14) Highly Healthy—You have a calm confidence and appreciation of self. You may have moments of doubt or worry, but you also have a strong base of self-worth and trust in others. You can savor intimacy and ask for help. While no sane person enjoys watching another suffer, you can appreciate that your role in their suffering is never the sole cause, nor are you their saviour. You can be present and balanced for both your own and others’ hard times.

(15–21) Room to Grow—You have moments of clarity, peppered with stress. You may find that when alone you can sense being a whole, fulfilled human being, but when around certain people, you can’t hear your inner voice as well and feel a bit shaken. You may be sensitive, unsure of yourself or wanting attention. You may feel pulled in many directions when someone you care about is hurting. Be aware of all of these reactions. I invite you to ask yourself: when (someone else) does (something), how do I feel? Or, when I believe (a stressful thought about myself, someone else or a situation), how do I feel and what do I do?

(22–27) Help is Out There—You have some things going on that would cause most anybody some emotional stress. Not only can this be internally, spiritually damaging, but nothing exists in a vacuum. Are your relationships with other people all that you want them to be? Do you feel, or understand, happiness? What role do other people play in your life? Counseling, Codependents Anonymous (CODA),research on codependency and the development of a mindfulness practice may be paths to the construction of a stable internal core self that can relate intimately with others without losing its own innate strength and beauty.

Something knocked in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering,
that fire,
and I wrote the first, faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense, pure wisdom of someone who knows nothing;
and suddenly I saw the heavens unfastened and open,

Pablo Neruda, “La Poesia”