Holding the Space
One of the loveliest concepts I learned about in seminary is the idea and practice of being a “non-anxious presence.” Or, more realistically and non-perfectionistically, a less anxious presence.
Most of us know what it is like to be around someone who provides a non-anxious presence when things are difficult. Often, that person is someone who knows how to fix whatever has gone wrong.
Recently I noticed water on our kitchen floor. The strange thing was that the water was welling up from under the floor, beading along the grout and forming puddles on the tiles before my eyes.
I was certainly not a non-anxious presence in that moment, but I knew someone who would be, and that was our plumber. (If you have an old house in a smaller town like we do, you end up knowing plumbers and electricians pretty well.) And now we have a new dishwasher, and the leak is fixed; as our old one was the cause of the leak.
For the clergy, being a non-anxious presence means something a little different. This is the person who practices being able to remain emotionally present with others, in crises and conflict, without becoming lost in the uproar.
I don’t usually get called when something can be fixed. I get called when something seems irredeemably broken: crises that cannot be fixed, but only lived through.
I have learned how to remain present with people in their anger, confusion, and grief, in the face of a dreaded diagnosis, or an unexpected death. I also have learned that human resilience and healing are as real as grief, and that new possibilities for life emerge eventually.
I also have learned that this is a messy process that takes time, much more time than anyone wants it to take.
For me, the secret to being non-anxious (or less anxious) when things get messy is to remember that we human beings are built to be resilient, and to heal. And that things will look different, and better; if not tomorrow, then a few months from now, and almost certainly a few years from now. (Note: during my own crises, I am the one in need of someone who can be that non-anxious presence for me.)
The main thing that people who practice being a non-anxious presence are doing, is holding the space.
You are holding the space for people to express all kinds of emotions. And in holding the space, you are also often holding the inward knowledge that crises have a life cycle, that things do change and settle. You are also holding the quiet hope that people’s natural resilience and healing processes are more powerful than the things that break us down.
We all have hopes and dreams and visions for the way we think life ought to be; which often bears little resemblance to how it is.
So the person who can bring their non-anxious presence is a person who can hold the space in a messy situation with no obvious fix; and yet trusting that there is something more life-giving quietly at work underneath.
Getting over a death in the family, or learning how to live with a chronic illness, is not like getting your dishwasher fixed.
There is no fix for these things. But there is a process.
Growing Into Your Values Is a Long, Messy Process
I think the slow, winding, unpredictable process of human resilience has a lot in common with the slow, winding, unpredictable process of real human growth.
Who has been a non-anxious presence for you, when you have been frustrated with your aspirations? Who has held the space for you when you’ve made mistakes or failed?
Maybe you have done something that took you years to accomplish. Something where you had to develop new practices, where you had to stretch yourself and be uncomfortable. If you have studied something like martial arts, or have worked hard to become a professional photographer, or have earned a degree, this takes years, and it takes learning new skills, and it takes mistakes and failures as well — sometimes very public ones — to get there.
Other things we do might also take years, with less outward recognition.
No one gets a diploma for learning how to be a good friend, or a good sibling, or a good spouse, or a good parent; but it also takes years, and also mistakes and failures, for many of us to learn how to navigate our closest and most complex — messy — human relationships.
Who has held the space for you?
There’s a story about a monk at a monastery who was asked what they do all day, and he replied, “We get up, we fall down, and then we get up again.”
This is an excellent description of what it is like to actually try to live out your values.
The growth process is messy. It has fits and starts, recursions and regressions. It is iterative, not linear.
It is full of falling down, and getting up again, and falling down, and getting up again.
And perfectionism despises this.
Perfectionism has no tolerance for messiness; but learning processes, especially about deeper things, are messy. Learning how to live into your values is like any other kind of deep learning: filled with mis-steps and do-overs and revisions and fresh starts.
There is nothing wrong with this. There is nothing right with this, either. It is just how the growth process is.
You might decide, for example, that you want to live into the value of being a good friend. Let’s say you have a close friend who is a musician, and it means the world to them when you show up at their gigs.
And let’s say you promised to do this, but you struggle.
Perhaps the performances are late at night, and you’re an early bird. Perhaps you’re worried about covid. Perhaps you couldn’t navigate your way out of a GPS-equipped paper bag, and you get lost whenever you try to find the ever-changing venues. Perhaps you have a life-long battle with the clock, and your showing up on time for anything is occasion for comments and jokes.
Perhaps you fail to live up to this promise.
You may end up having a conversation with your friend, and say something like, “I love you, I really want to see you play, but let’s face it, I’m going to be late to my own funeral, how else can I support you as your friend?”
What does the voice of perfectionism say to something like this? “What’s the matter with you, how hard can it be to get out the door and get somewhere on time, for a change? Why can’t you manage to show up for your best friend? ”
This voice kills.
This voice is the stomper of seedlings. This voice withers the tender green shoots in your soul that are not yet what you might become. This voice is afraid of allowing any deviation from its rigid and narrow vision of what being a good friend looks like.
What if there are a lot of ways to be a good friend?
What might someone who completely accepts and loves you as you are, in all your glorious and difficult human messiness, say to you?
What might someone who holds compassionate space for both your anxious perfectionism, AND your capacity for creative change, say to you?
What might someone who is a non-anxious presence say to you?
The practice of learning how you will live out your values is a slow, messy, iterative, unpredictable process of healing and growth.
It needs room.
It needs compassion.
It needs space.
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