On Helping Others Metabolize Mistakes

Published on 11.6.23 at garyborjesson.substack.com

[The beautiful soul] lives in dread of besmirching the splendor of its inner being by action and an existence; and, in order to preserve the purity of its heart, it flees from contact with the actual world…. - G.W.F Hegel

In the last couple notes I’ve reflected on how to think, and feel, about mistakes. In this note I consider how valuable the help of others can be. Specifically, I point out a few basic things we can do to help others metabolize mistakes and failures.

But first, let me observe a fact about helping relationships that is relevant here: much of the help we offer others we can also offer ourselves. This sounds promising for individualists prizing our independence. Yet, by now you generous readers who have been following these notes will recognize a familiar refrain: Some of what we need we can only get from others. Severely abused or neglected children are unlikely to flourish as adults, precisely because they didn’t get what they needed from othersduring critical neurobiologically mediated stages of development.

Something similar may be said of the higher reaches of philosophical and spiritual development. In the Phenomenology of Spirit, for example, Hegel describes a “struggle for recognition” through which we become more fully ourselves by engaging with others—by putting ourselves at risk in the world. In the last note I described a patient whose fear of making mistakes had led her to avoid risky situations generally. In this she was like Hegel’s “beautiful soul”, who “flees from contact with the actual world” (and the struggle such contact inevitably brings) so as to avoid “besmirching their splendor”. The consequence is that, like abused children, they suffer from arrested development. To get an idea of the beautiful-soul type, think of the artistic genius who never realizes their potential because they won’t sully themselves with practical affairs; or think of the person whose moral conscience is too pure to bear the besmirching compromises required to be actually effective in the world.

My point is that it’s often valuable, and sometimes essential, to have help working through mistakes and failures—those besmirching experiences that the beautiful soul fears, but which are “correct practice” for learning and growing. Hegel's point is that engaging with others is the way out of our inner being into a fully actualized experience of our selves in the world. It is the way to wisdom. It is also the way to healing and learning from mistakes and failures.

Let’s move now from theory back to practice. If I had only one word to describe what we’re doing when we help others, I’d choose ‘attunement’. This includes the key skill we need here: deep whole-bodied listening. Nothing else we try to do—not all the brilliant methods and advice in the world—will help if we’re not able first, and last, to listen and take in where someone is coming from. On the contrary, if we don’t listen carefully, we’re likely to do more harm than good.

Attunement includes awareness, not only of what’s happening in the moment, but of the wider interpersonal field in which it’s happening: How are we relating to the person? How much trust is present? What have we learned over time helps them feel seen and heard? What triggers their defensiveness? And so on. For now, let’s assume we’re so fortunate as to possess this field awareness. What comes next?

Well, in order to listen, the other must speak. Unfortunately, when it comes to mistakes and failures, many of us prefer to avoid talking about them, especially in the open vulnerable way therapy encourages. Actually, we’d prefer never to have our shortcomings seen at all! Part of what drives the beautiful soul’s retreat from the actual world is precisely this wish to escape being seen as an actual, imperfect human being who needs the help (damnit!) of imperfect others.

With this in mind, the basic practice is to hold space in an empathetic non-judgmental way; this enables the person to lower their defenses and speak more freely. We do this by attuning and adapting to where the other person is coming from, emotionally and cognitively. If someone is too upset or flooded with feeling, we use our body language, breathing, and speech to encourage a calming co-regulation that helps them think and speak feelingly. Contrariwise, if a person reacts to mistakes by feeling numb or empty, we help excite curiosity and engagement so that they can speak more vitally and feelingly of their experience.

A spirit of curiosity helps counter resistance at the cognitive level. In the last note, I showed how my curiosity invited the patient to explore a painful experience. She had started the session by saying that her “final judgement” about herself was that she’s “just stupid”. This summary judgment sparked my curiosity. I told her we could circle back and reality-test just how (not) true that was. But first I was curious what she felt as she shared that judgment. She replied, “I’m ashamed and angry with myself”. She told me all this, yet she hadn’t told me what terrible thing she’d done to invite this heap of scorn. What she’d done was ruin a favorite pair of jeans because she forgot to check the pockets before washing them. I looked at her expressively, as if to say, ‘Uh, so that’s it?’

This is often how it goes, isn’t it! Many of us judge and find ourselves guilty and shameful before we have sorted out the merits of the case. Indeed, we may never get around to sorting things out precisely because we’re trying to avoid any additional “besmirching’. Thus our first habitual reactions, and unexamined stories, often carry the day. But if we calm down and get curious, we can learn and grow by understanding and metabolizing what happened—including, in my patient’s case, why she had such a disproportionate reaction to a low-stakes mistake.

All of this is easier when we have a good, warm, trustworthy companion to accompany us as we make contact with the actual world, and our imperfect selves. Indeed, being with others in our difficulties is making contact with the world. A good ally can help us be more gentle (and firm) with ourselves; help us know our feelings and feel our thoughts; help us unpack and reality-test our stories; and, not least, their tender recognition helps us feel more connected and less alone.