Re-Wilding: Seeing the Cage

Exploring Glennon Doyle’s Untamed

Glennon Doyle caught our attention early in Untamed— in the prologue. “Something’s off about my life. I feel restless and frustrated. I have this hunch that everything was supposed to be more beautiful than this” (pxv). This is Doyle describing the inner thoughts of a Cheetah that appears to connect with her instincts in a zoo. What struck us is that we have heard this same sentiment from many clients that feel disconnected from themselves and seek meaning in their life. A feeling of longing, or being lost. A feeling of missing something very important in their life.

At that point, we knew this was a book we wanted to dive into. We hope it speaks to you too. As always, take what serves you & leave what doesn’t. Join us on this rewilding expedition as we play with connecting back to our instincts — or as we like to say, being “wild” — and trusting our intuition.

In part I, “caged,” Doyle introduces the idea that we may be caged in our lives, similar to the Cheetah in the prologue. Often, we aren’t even aware of it. We’ve built our cage around us either intentionally or unintentionally — sometimes both. We take cues from those around us including the conditioning of society and cultural norms.

We know a transition into the cage takes place, because when we recall some of our youngest memories, we often remember feeling free and completely alive. In fact, Doyle’s research shows that at age 10 we “begin to internalize our formal taming” (p.4). It consists of all the rules, standards, and “shoulds” we are all familiar with. How to act, how to look, how to feel. This taming begins to build our cage.

• What did my spark feel like when I was young? What did it look like?
• Do I remember my spark dimming?

Sometimes, we live our lives without ever noticing the cage. But there comes a powerful moment when we can begin to see the bars, see what is interfering with our authentic connection to the world, and decide we don’t want to live that way anymore. Doyle describes what this moment was like for her: “I had finally asked myself what I wanted instead of what the world wanted from me” (p.6). She lists out some questions that came up that might be helpful to explore yourself:

• How much of my life has been my idea?
• Do I truly want any of this or is this what I was conditioned to want?
• Which of my beliefs are of my own creation and which were programmed into me?
• Who was I before I became who the world told me to be?

Later in part I, Doyle seems to point out that our cage is built out of asumptions and beliefs. In “polar bears,” she points out the assumption that the opposite of sensitive is brave. She notes, “the opposite of sensitive is not brave… [it’s] insensitive, and that’s no badge of honor” (p.15).

Instead, she introduces a new belief: Sensitive people are our greatest treasures, especially as the world becomes ever more fast-paced. They feel things, root in curiosity, and want to explore. They’re “critical to the survival of the group because they are able to hear things others don’t hear and see things others don’t see and feel things others don’t feel” (p.15). As we read this, her voice rang so authentically true in our heads. This seemed to feel connected to her core, to her instincts. Based on her experiences, her intuition seemed to have clarified this — once she started to listen. She’s able to begin to break the cage by listening to her intuition and replacing the assumption with her new belief.

• What other assumptions might be built into your cage?
• If you listen to your intuition, turn in rather than out, what feels true for you?

Next, we see how we tame ourselves by putting the focus on others rather than ourselves. This can be one of our greatest distractions from being curious about ourselves and connecting to our intuition. We focus endlessly on what other people think and how we can influence what they think of us.

This pulls us away from our instincts and Doyle notes that it also takes us further away from what is real. “What matters is not what is real, but what I can convince others is real. What matters is not how I feel inside, but how I appear to feel on the outside. How I appear to feel will determine how others feel about me. What matters is how others feel about me” (p.18). In this way of operating we lose touch with reality, with what is really happening in the present moment.

Distraction seems to be a powerful tool for taming. Doyle points out that it keeps us off our center, preventing us from looking within. “We’re like snow globes: We spend all of our time, energy, words, and money creating a flurry, trying not to know, making sure that the snow doesn’t settle so we never have to face the fiery truth inside us” (p.28). It’s the feeling of not wanting to pause, avoiding the discomfort that comes when we have to be alone with our thoughts. It feels like we need to shake the snow globe, again and again, to make sure we have enough chaos around us so that we don’t give our intuition any attention.

• What’s your main source of distraction — what do the flakes in your snow globe represent?
• What feels uncomfortable or scary about listening to your intuition?
• What would your life look like if you built it from your wildness — your instincts — instead of following your training? What if you were never tamed?

Doyle introduces an interesting concept of being caged, and some ways that it shows up in our lives in part I. By noticing our assumptions, our distractions, and getting curious about our own role in building our lives, the bars of the cage come into focus. Now we have the opportunity to choose: we can continue to live in this cage, or we can connect back to our wild instincts, our inner wisdom, and break free.