Metabolizing the Real
When events exceed our capacities to cognitively process, we need to foster the conditions for metabolizing.
Given the nature of our first month of a pivotal year for humans and all life on our planet, I am going to keep this note short. The focus for today, is to invite a reflection on what it means, and looks like, to metabolize.
I don’t know about you, but I have a tendency to zoom out and above the fray when things get intense. This can have a cool quality, almost like a detachment; much like a hawk zooming above the landscape, surveying. It is, however, not detachment, but a necessary distance. A vantage point. And I do see this as one of the gifts I can offer during these times. It is part of what it means to be a Guide.
So this is what I am seeing at this moment.
There is a huge amount of data, information, and events that are coming at us.
The wildfires in Los Angeles, which I spoke about on LinkedIn, push many of us, regardless of where you live, outside of our Window of Tolerance (which I named in my TEDTalk in relation to climate and existential threats back in 2019). This window, a term created by social neurobiologist and author Daniel Siegel, is a way of describing how each of us has a “window” of tolerating stressors. On one end is a collapse; the other end is a rigid agitation, an acting out. Most of us toggle across this spectrum, depending on conditions, environment, chemistry, and so on.
The area for us to focus on, right now, is how to build our capacities to expand and develop our individual, relational and collective Windows of Tolerance.
I am going to emphasize this again. We need to be investing in expanding our Windows of Tolerance.
What does this look like, exactly? Practically speaking?
There are three areas we can be focusing on right now.
Create spaces for yourself to metabolize and process. This looks very different for each person. However, one thing we know from the wave of psychedelic therapies, is the centrality of integration and metabolizing. There are specific practices and skills, conditions for fostering the capacities. Many of these I address in my work. They are learnable. They relate to recognizing the necessity of creating spaces internally and relationally to process, reflect, and take in. This is optimally done in a “think, pair, share” format. (Individual reflection, connecting with another person to share openly, and then ideally being in a group format, i.e. a team.)
Invest in training and enabling changemakers, change leaders, practitioners. I can’t emphasize this enough. This is where we want to invest our L&D, HR and change management resources. Now. Having led and designed cohort programs with numerous companies, corporations, NGOs, foundations, etc, I can attest this is what people want and need. They want to be equipped, attuned with, and nurtured. It’s so simple, in a lot of ways. But it requires vision, care and leadership to see this, advocate and resource it.
As a leader: name and normalize the necessity for reflection and taking time for processing and sense-making. If we push ourselves and each other to go into the bias for action, and short-circuit the process of metabolizing, we all lose. We are cutting ourselves off from the very source of energy necessary right now.
You may think I am advocating all of this because I have dedicated my professional life to the psychology of existential threats, and offer programs, trainings, advising and workshops for teams and leaders. I am advocating this because it is aligned with what I know to be true. Yes, what I offer is impactful and enabling for meeting these times. And—I am part of a growing movement of practitioners who are actively bridging the worlds of organizational change, change leadership, psychology, trauma-informed practices and business.
I am especially in touch with this salience now, having returned from a productive and much appreciated writing residency at the Mesa Refuge. This incredibly special place, dedicated to social change and environmental leadership for decades, is for me the ultimate container to metabolize, reflect and integrate. I am working on a new book, specifically about the psychology of existential changemaking, practical guidance, and the need to up-level our theories of change, our tools and strategies, urgently. I am excited to bring this work into the world: stay tuned.
Until next time, see how you can create your own container to metabolize; to reflect, and connect and process. See if you can expand your Window of Tolerance a tiny bit, and notice what helps.
With care,
Renée
If you are interested in a workshop, talks, programs, or supporting Project InsideOut—a 501c3 fiscally sponsored resource, whose grant funds were discontinued by the KR Foundation at the end of 2023—get in touch, as this work is needed, relevant, and immensely scalable. People find this material immensely inspiring, affirming, hopeful and supportive. This is the time to equip our people, and show up as Guides.