Power, freesponsibility and ego states
Growing as a listener, leader, and human being in relationship to others is so much about understanding our relationships, tending to them and taking responsibility for them. Through our time considering Deliberate Development in the Practical Self-Management intensive, I am reflecting on my journey of adult development. The following Transactional Analysis video, and subsequent series, is useful in starting to think about the Parent, Adult, and Child states and how each one shows up inside of us. For a written explainer, How to Use Psychology to Communicate Better and Avoid Conflict right here on Medium is a great read.
I grew up in an anarcho-socialist, youth-led, alternative education community, in a space that welcomed me and allowed me to step into leadership. Even radical communities, however, can be wrapped up in institutional norms and bureaucracy. In particular, between the ages of 16 and 20 I had big dreams, along with my friends, for that context emerging from our experiences in that community. We had dreams of all scales: hosting conferences and processes for people aging out of youthful community, facilitating community processes at the ‘family’ level, building all-gender bathroom facilities on site, and giving over our land to a community land trust.
On all roads leading to enacting our dreams (or so we thought) was our community’s Board of Directors, who were of course adults, mostly many decades older than us. And there was a cultural belief among us, the youth community, that the Board did not want us to do anything too big or too radical at all, especially anything that would have given us significant responsibility over safety or finances. For years prior, youth leadership had ceded more and more power to the adults, and now as the latest generation of young people inheriting a relationship to the Board, we did not know how to claim power back. In this frozen place of inaction, I, and many others, were stuck in our Child state. We stopped ourselves from taking leadership and claiming ownership because of assumptions of how the Board would react. Depending on the project, we would receive discouragement or even direct communication from the Board saying we should water it down or not move forward with it, and we would frustratingly admit defeat, letting our resentment grow over time. We took for granted the assumption that this Board is all-knowing, and that adhering to existing power dynamics was our only option.
In the back half of that period of time, something changed in me. I internalized the idea that we could subvert the Board and the existing system altogether, that we could take responsibility and action as youth without letting lack of permission from the Board or other structures veto our will.
What had changed? First, a community alumnus and mentor, who had co-founded her own initiative within the organization, told me: “Why not just do it? If the Board or anyone else really wants to stop you, great, then they’ll stop you. But seriously, please, just do it! Take your next steps! Just see what happens at least!” In that moment, I realized that I had been operating from a place of fear and anticipation. I had been stuck in Stage 3 of Kegan’s theory of adult development.
Second, we as a youth community experienced our power to effect change without Board permission on the small scale. At a plenum in January 2017, a vote was taken on a proposal to make our shared language more gender-neutral, since we use a lot of Hebrew words and common Hebrew is a very gendered, male-priority language. The proposal was stuck in limbo; no progress was progressing… so those of us who were passionate about already starting to use the adapted language just did. We used the new language amongst ourselves to start, and then it caught on: more and more people used it, understanding what it brought to the community. Now, it is common practice, and one that is wholly appreciated and accepted, including in our official documents. This experience of transformation of the whole system, coming from youth subverting an established process that was not serving them, helped me internalize that simple truth: we often do have in ourselves the capability to subvert systems that we assume are immutable. We knew then that we could effect change beyond the bureaucratic systems of the institution, and instead just reach the people who make up the community.
It is from that place, where power is shared, practiced and (re)claimed, that we can begin to repair, and build a healthier whole system design. Whether that means a different relationship between Board and youth community, or new structures altogether, is becoming clearer over time.
Reflecting on my experiences with Transactional Analysis and the Parent, Adult and Child states, I held a greater awareness of which ego state I was reacting to my environment with as the week progressed. Recently, my social media feed has been more than ever comprised with images, information and resources about social action, whether it’s donations for funds, signatures for petitions or retweets of a call to action. I took some time this week to consider how I relate to this, where I show up on the spectrum of Parent, Adult or Child states. Initially, my instinct was to strive to be in the Adult state wherever possible, to relate to my social world from that grounded, thoughtful perspective. As the week went on, I considered more how to hold these roles in balance.
For me, I now think I am okay to lean into the Child state sometimes. I am okay to see a post, let’s say, and just whoosh share it almost right away. To amplify, without thinking too hard on my own, trusting the source enough to send it off to my Instagram story or Twitter feed. I am also okay to be in the other side of the Child state: to sometimes just avert my eyes, to know that I will not engage in that moment, to let myself make that instinctual judgment.
I am also okay to lean into the Parent state sometimes. I am okay to phrase a post in a way that is directive, telling others what action they should be taking, as if in that moment I am the true arbiter of how they should conduct their life, whether for brevity or strategically. Sometimes, a petition truly does just need more signatures, or a call-out just does need to be amplified, and the Parent state allows me to attach a sense of urgency and energy that will further that mission.
I am most grounded and resilient when I can be more fully in the Adult state. To me, to be in the Adult state in the context of receiving or seeing a post is to notice, to take it in, to listen, and to then follow through with action. To go down the whole U and come up the other side, to have access to the information around me and to hold that internal process so that the action that emerges is true to how the action I want to take. In the end, this may take just a moment, or a few days, and the outward action could look very similar to my actions in the Child or Parent state, but often there can be a deeper, irreversible shift in how I will show up in the world in the future, even at the smallest scale.
I noticed in myself that when I see or receive a social media post coming at me as a directive from someone in their Parent state, there is an instinct inside of me, a trigger, that tells me to reject it. To say “stop pressuring me!” and ignore the call to action that the post is trying to move me into. To push the directive away so I can feel independent and be strong in myself as an Adult. But I know, now more than ever, that this instinct is really the Child in disguise, desperate to be the Adult. To be a more resilient Adult, I want to be more comfortable receiving from those in the Parent state, and to be able to act from a place of true compassion and honesty, rather than from the most fragile wounds of my ego.
A question I’ve been holding for the last four years, and that I have been circling around in this whole post, is: what do we need to do to be both our most Adult, Free and Resilient self, and be grounded in Community, Responsibility, Peace, Justice and Accountability? The inquiry is both focusing and growing in scope as it moves along, as the best inquiries tend to do.
I’m reminded of International Youth Initiative Program (YIP) co-founder Reinoud, who speaks of freesponsibility, the relationship between freedom and responsibility. Reinoud asks the question, “If my freedom is interdependent on yours, how do I have to be for you to be free?” A participant from the 2019/2020 YIP year reflects: “Exploring this question required a back and forth of inward and outward reflection. By experiencing moments of balance between my responsibility and freedom to the relationship I have with myself, with others, with my actions and with the world, I feel that I have grown in my capacity to be in service of the collective without losing a healthy inner resilience.”
May we learn our freedom and inner resilience through community, friendship, family, society and interdependence, not in spite of them.
