Getting Back to Ourselves Through Each Other
The Art of Accountability
One of my favorite scenes from the show 30 Rock was the airplane scene with Liz Lemon and her boss Jack Donaghy. Here it is in all its glory.
In moments of duress, people may say or do things that have *ahem* interesting consequences, including perhaps awkward conversations to follow. I can tell you that the concept of accountability is one that has dichotomous connotations for me, both as a person who lives with mental health issues related to trauma and as a person raised in legalistic faith communities.
The thing that we find most challenging, showing our true selves through confession, deep truth sharing, and being brave enough to step out from behind the vale and be seen, warts and all, can be terrifying for some of us. But the hardest thing we can do, emotionally, intellectually, and socially, can be the thing that saves our lives.
I use the term accountability very loosely these days.
The term used to mean confession. But an odd form of confession. The evangelical church, particularly Calvinist adherents, value absolute candor. Often, this looks like sharing deeply personal traits and behaviors that are viewed as sinful. But that baring of one’s heart can be exhausting and humiliating, particularly when no one can offer real advice other than dry, apathetic recitation of scripture confirming what you already thought you knew.
My faith has certainly evolved to see the world differently. I am a proud supporter of the LGBTQ+ community as I am a card-carrying member; I support bodily autonomy for owners of uteruses and have devoted study to developing more antiracist traits and behaviors. I have come to see the divine as this thing that is everywhere and nowhere at all. But mostly I find it in other people. I am quite a distance from how I was raised. And yet, I still have more to learn.
The reason I broached those last two paragraphs of background is for you to understand that my approach to accountability was not real accountability. I shared things with people. Too many fucking things. You have certainly met people who play their cards close to the vest. In my family of origin, we told all the people everything, showed them all our cards and it was….*cringe*.
I had to learn that this practice of hitting people with all you’ve got is not practicing accountability at all. It is in fact the opposite. I’ll explain. You’re in the breakroom at your retail job and you are talking about a new policy change that is going to complicate work, or maybe a new system that likely has not been tested properly. Now imagine a coworker saying, “Oh you think that’s bad, well I just got back my STI panel and now I have to get on antibiotics for Chlamydia.”
Woah. Hella overshare. You will likely be stunned and unable to respond effectively. The coworker then internalizes that no one cares about what they are going through. Your coworker has, perhaps unintentionally, avoided real connection by annihilating you with too much information. Unlearning that practice takes time, just as much as learning the practice of sharing more when you are scared to do so, scared to be seen.
The other challenge is that accountability sometimes looks like challenging beliefs, attitudes, or behaviors that you don’t want to challenge. The version of accountability I saw in our religious community was often utilitarian in its application; you have a thing about yourself you want to change in order to be more righteous, more christlike, or holier, or more pious if you were being truly honest here. A sudden, myopic focus to address symptoms becomes the theme of the conversation while failing to address the real cause.
Real accountability; healthy, interdependent accountability sometimes means being challenged on things you didn’t think you wanted to change. Maybe it’s something benign or something more serious.
When I first started back to therapy in July of last year, I had no idea that my accountability would be so intense. Not because my therapist is mean, she’s lovely. I had stuff that I needed to address that were blind spots. I’ll share a few of those with you:
- My short temper
- Alcohol consumption
- A previously undiagnosed set of behaviors that look like an eating disorder
- Unresolved rage stemming from my abrupt removal from my faith community
There are more but in the spirit of avoiding annihilation by confession, I will talk about these four at a later date.
I have a total of four people, including my awesome therapist, that know varying levels of everything about me. My husband, my best friend Ari, and my Aunt Julie.
These people all know varying levels of me, based upon our relationship, which is good. It is through my relationships with these people that I have learned my guideposts for accountability.
- The trust, love, and compassion we have for each other cannot be threatened by truth-telling
- They have all earned the right to know my story and help me care for it
- Each person offers a unique perspective but will only offer it if I ask for it
- There is no shame in sitting silently after a hard thing has been said; quick responses signal to me that a person cannot handle emotional discomfort at the moment, and if they perpetually cannot sit with uncomfortable feelings, I don’t share my truth with them. They are not a bad person. The relationship just isn’t at that stage yet or maybe they have their own stuff going on.
- Do not use accountability as a way to avoid sitting in the discomfort of your own feelings privately. You are ultimately responsible for learning self-soothing skills to reduce your own reactivity in a situation and finding a way to give the higher brain a chance to sort it all out.
- Do expect that not every issue you encounter will be resolved immediately. Be compassionate with yourself; it took a lifetime to become who you are now, it may take some time to become who you want to be.
I hope that if you are contemplating more accountability, more deep conversations with people who you love and who love you, that my guideposts help you to have accountability that is truly soul-enriching, nurturing, and grounding. They certainly help me.
Take care.
