Befriending wild cats and other disowned things (pt. 1)

     

Henry

     Since last December I’ve been working a couple days a week at Stray Hearts, the local Taos animal shelter. I work with the cats. Part of my job includes socialization, helping cats who’ve had either negative interactions with human or little exposure to them get used to people. This is a long, slow process that’s a good exercise in patience. It’s more about befriending than taming.

     From befriending these unsocialized cats I’m learning a new way to befriend the unsocialized parts of me. We all have ostracized and disowned parts of ourselves. Those parts can be strengths, longings, fears or other emotions. The common denominator is that each of these parts holds a wounding of some kind.

     None of us woke up one morning and randomly decided to disown some aspect of who we are. That choice is mostly unconscious although it is intertwined with how we relate to the difficult parts of life. If we’re in the habit of staying in our comfort zones and avoiding or ignoring the hard stuff, that pattern can make it easier to automatically disown the hard parts of ourselves. We tend to disown things that feel too big to deal with and/or threaten our safety in some way.

    When we ostracize part of ourselves, we cage it, shove it onto our shadow and hope we don’t have to see it again. That works about as well as thinking my left big toe is going to disappear if I ignore it.

    Those things we cage don’t stay confined. They erupt in behavior we often feel ashamed or embarrassed about later. They slip in to sabotage our intentions and derail our longings when they brush the edges of what we’ve disowned. In our journey of becoming our wholeness depends on being all in with ourselves. That means befriending what we’ve rejected in us.

    That starts with the magic moment when a disowned bit surfaces and we’re able to see it rather than unconsciously shoving it back into the dark corners of us. At that point we have a choice: engage and integrate or push it away. If we chose to engage, how do we do that? How do we befriend those ostracized parts of ourselves?

     For the past couple months I’ve been working with Henry. He’s a big stripey, green eyed guy. When he first came to the shelter, even walking past his cage scared him. He’d shrink back as far into the cage as he could get. His eyes got huge. His pupils dilated. He bristled with the readiness to either get out of the way or attack to protect himself.

     Henry being fed and safe in the shelter didn’t predispose him to being friends with those of us who work with him. Likewise, just because I’m aware of a part of me that I’ve disowned doesn’t mean that part wants to have anything to do with the rest of me. I’m the one who pushed it away over and over. It has no reason to trust me.

    Befriending Henry began with talking to him. I’d grab a stool, go sit next to his cage and just talk to him. I kept my voice low and gentle. I told him how handsome he was and how much I loved his green eyes. Sometimes I just told him about my day. For a couple weeks Henry shrunk back in his cage, staring at me with saucer eyes while I talked to him.

    Slowly he began to relax as I kept talking. His pupils returned to normal size. He stretched out a bit, laid down and even half closed his eyes. Then I began talking to him with the cage door open. His immediate response was to default to shrinking away in alarm. After a couple weeks of that Henry began to relax. Then I opened his cage, put my hand in and talked to him….and we repeated the same process. Henry got alarmed. I was gently persistent. Henry got used to my hand. I began offering treats and resting my hand a couple inches away from Henry. He got alarmed. I was patient and moved slowly. After some time Henry began eating treats out of my hand.

    During this process with Henry I attended a 5 Rhythms workshop. In the workshop a disowned part of me surfaced. I kinds knew it was there but hadn’t really seen it. The next time I worked with Henry I had an “ah-hah” moment where I saw how he would’ve reacted if I’d come at him the way I often go after disowned parts of me once I discover them.

    Once I get past the “oh shit” reaction to discovering some piece of me I’ve ostracized I’m usually pretty pushy. I want to dig that part up, chase it down and integrate it right now. While that does work, it amounts to a cross between stalking and a full frontal assault. If I’d approached Henry like that by say reaching in his cage and scooping him up…yikes! I’d have terrified Henry. I’d end up losing some skin. Henry might still be shrinking in his cage whenever someone walked by.

    With Henry I knew I needed to be gentle and move slowly. When I’m dealing with myself I’m not so good at slow and gentle. Time for a new strategy. What happens if I treat the disowned parts of me like I treat Henry?