I’m sure you can picture this scene with uncanny precision: you’re entering a room, someone is leaving it, and at the door you engage in the dance of left-right-left to let each other pass, but it becomes increasingly harder the more you try to predict the other person’s movement, because they are also predicting yours, and this leads to an endless back and forth that only ends when one of the two accepts they have to be assertive.

Similarly, in social relationships, we think prediction and pleasing will get us far. But they rarely do. The only thing they get us far in is the — real — reason we do it in the first place: to avoid clashing and tell our ego we’re not selfish. But don’t get me wrong, we don’t do it consciously and we’re certainly not self-taught at that. We learn it’s valuable to read other people and anticipate their needs, because it benefits the ones who raised us. They might not know other ways themselves.

Donald Winnicott said it, and he was not alone: sometimes the child learns his mom’s (yes, he was still a man of his time, but let’s not take him literally) face is something to interpret and read. On the accuracy of this prediction depends the child’s emotional and physical survival.
“I can’t ask mom food directly, because crying will annoy her or make her feel guilty. Her emotions will take up all the space, and mine will be set aside. If I want food, I have to cuddle her needs first, and give her the best possible conditions to make her want to feed me”.
Saying a toddler learns manipulation might earn me some side-eye, but at the core that’s what it is. If we learn that simply asking gets us nowhere, we’ll learn how to get what we need by pretending we don’t need it, or by asking for something else.

These are not the right premises for a good upbringing. Winnicott was not too ambitious, he said the mother had simply to be “good enough”. Making mistakes is allowed, but repair is mandatory. Let’s extend that to all genders: a parent needs to be willing and able to recognize and take care of their needs. Then, they will be able to recognize their child’s too, and act accordingly.

If we’re all caught up in ourselves, anything anyone asks us we’ll take personally, and make it about us.

Let’s go back to the dance of pleasing that benefits no one. There are two people, two explicit desires and two hidden ones. Both want to let the other pass, but underneath that there’s the obvious desire of passing themselves. It’s a simple dynamic, at best it gets resolved in 5 seconds and at worst in 10. It doesn’t have the complexity of a whole relationship, not even that of a short conversation. Yet, there’s everything we need. Two people, their apparent politeness, and their natural selfishness. The best (meaning the smoothest) scenario is the one where none of the two completely overpowers the other. I am clear about needing to pass, and I am aware of the fact we have to find a compromise, and I can’t just hit you in the face and walk over your unconscious body.

The most difficult scenario is the most confused. The one where I convince myself I don’t mind waiting, that you certainly have more valid reasons to pass, that I can move around you and let you go where you need to go, even if that means hitting me and walking over my unconscious body. I’ll tell myself, others, and you, that it’s because my needs are not important and I like helping others. The real, hidden reason, however will be: I need you not to despise me and consider me an egoist. I’ve learned this will mean I’ll starve, in a room alone, where no one listens to my call for help.

I keep my eyes on you to make sure you’re not looking at me. If you do, you’ll find out I don’t want to please you. I need it.

No matter how many times we’ve heard (or maybe you’re hearing it now for the first time?) that our cells renew on average every decade, making us for the most part a different person multiple times in a lifetime, we are still very attached to the idea of a stable, firm self. It’s partly comforting, partly constraining, and we let go of the idea only reluctantly, even when it hurts us more than it benefits us.

We are stuck with the idea that the authentic self has to be found and defined clearly, that after the confusion of our first 20 to 30 years of life, lived for (or against) our parents, our peers, someone else’s approval, the satisfaction of chaotic instincts, ambitions we’ve borrowed elsewhere, comes clarity, and clarity is about lists of dos and donts, boundaries set and enforced, and adjectives we associate to ourselves vs. the ones we reject.
Well, no.

The authentic self is a community.

A community of centered beings, with gravity supporting them, but a whole range of movement, so broad it’d be impossible to predict all their crossings.

For this reason, when someone tells me “Well, that’s just who I am. I’m made for this kind of things.” I wonder how they learned and then kept teaching themselves this strictness of potential. How have we all learned it, after all. We have been, in the best cases, encouraged to know our strengths and weaknesses, improve where we could and accept our limits; in the worst cases, we have received projections of all sorts of musts and lacks, none of which belonged to us, but all of which we feel responsible for thanks to how early and constantly we were fed them.

”I knew you were going to react this way. It’s so you!”

Ah, the comforting illusion of predictability. Comforting until it becomes a cage. Comforting until life shows, gently or not, how only change is predictable.

For the longest time we juggle with certain traits being either curse or blessing, feeling them as tangibly familiar yet terribly distant, but struggling so much to get rid of their defining power. Even after years of self-discovery we might resort to simple prophecies to describe who we are. Sometimes it’s the resume provided by our family (”My mom told me I was always this stubborn, since I was a toddler”), others it’s the diagnosis of a specialist (“This is my ADHD talking”), but it’s never an extra layer of understanding, it becomes a confine within which we have to narrowly move.

It becomes an alibi for not dealing with ourselves, our plan B after plan A (being pure chaos, not having a clue about ourselves) failed.

Let’s take reassurance for what it is: not an end goal, but a trampoline for discovery. A nice, firm wall where we can poke a hole in and look at the beautiful maze it’s part of.

There’s something paradoxical about telling someone to “have fun!”, the same way it’s ironic to invite them to “relax!” (exclamation mark included). It might replace, at times, creating the conditions necessary to do those things, and delegate that to an encouragement. I might be on the sofa snacking chips, with no interest in entertaining you, and “have fun!” is the closest I get to providing some fun for you. Hopefully, you find it elsewhere. You might similarly encourage me to “relax” while you leave, as you’re in no way willing to relax with me or help me do that. Hopefully, I’ll help myself.

Now, these are just figures of speech, wishes that are engrained in our conversations. We also say “have a safe flight” (like it was up to me to land the plane) or “enjoy!” (like enjoyment could be wished or encouraged). But they are a silly example to get your attention to something more subtle.

We mistreat our bodies and minds in all sorts of ways, and while some are well known and have produced endless self-help books (from eating healthy, to meditating, setting boundaries, and exercising), others are less spoken of.

One has to do with our misunderstanding of intention. “Where there’s a will there’s a way”, “Se vuoi puoi”. If on the one hand there are people who barely even recognize their needs or intentions, let alone work to satisfy them, on the other there’s a new group of humans who know a lot about categories of desires. They know how many orientations, whether political or sexual, are out there. They know how manipulation and toxic dynamics work, what respect and limits are, how to approach others and how they want to be approached. They know what’s their type, what red flags to look out for, where to find good and where to find evil. You won’t surprise them with new strategies or reasoning, because they are hyper aware of where they’re going and what prevents or facilitates that trajectory.

Sometimes, however, purpose becomes compulsion. Even though our quotation marks are filled with emotional content, the tone itself is artificial. Our voice reveals an attempt to turn ourselves into machines.

I do this, I add that, I top it all up with some more of these (where this, that and these are all things I know to be good) and I’ll get the predictable result of something good. I set the intention to have fun, the one to relax, I imagine a world in which I’m reaching out for these outcomes, and I get there.

On the way to self-actualization, we missed it and kept running, bumping into entitlement instead, and that led us to misinterpret needs for rights, and intentions for reality. We split our world and ourselves even more, because things do not mutate miraculously, and we looked at them impatiently hoping awareness was going to get us where only emotions can, and only gradually, slowly, painfully and respectfully.

We got angry and frustrated at the part of us who stayed the same even though we realized it was hurting us, and idealized even more the one who can “have fun!”, “relax!”, “enjoy!”. Sure we can learn to get somewhere different from where we are, but only with ourselves as allies.

(Note: I often start in third person and then shift into first. It’s not coincidental, it’s actually very natural and it usually means: what they do, we do.)

One of my favorite activities is dancing. I interpret that in the broadest way possible, from tapping with my foot on the table while music is playing, to mimicking the moves of over-the-top entertainers. In between, there is going to places with live music or DJ sets (preferably during the day, outside, in the sun) and having enough space to get carried by the rhythm, and express myself as freely as possible.

This freedom is however influenced by all sorts of things: the music, the “crowd”, the location, the space available and, last but not least, myself.
Dance like nobody is watching, right? That’s our measure of total freedom, immersing ourselves into the moment to the point of forgetting we’re surrounded by others. To the point it becomes irrelevant whether someone else is there or not.
Yet, being alone brings a different looseness, which costs a lot more when there are other people around.

Let’s imagine these people are facing the other way, or blind, or so far you cannot see them — which means they cannot see you — would it still matter they’re around?
How remote does the presence of the Other have to be for us to feel it’s just us?
Is there perhaps some Other inside of us as well? Some non-integrated insider, who’s there to witness and report?
How much Otherness do we bring to a private room where no Other is present, and how much privateness are we able to export to a public place? Can you feel the eyes of someone else on you even when you’re not looking?

Our skin barely separates us from our surroundings, it barely shields us from their eyes, but we often find out behind theirs there’s ours. It’s us looking, it’s us making the judgement, attaching the label.
Others might see us dance, they might even notice us, but we are the ones who finish the sentence “I look like…”. It doesn’t matter how obvious we think it is, that big flaw, that huge catalyst of attention, it’s something we have learned to pay attention to, and most people don’t see.

When having sessions online it’s important to have a private space. This means different things to different clients, but I’ve noticed throughout the years that even with someone in the other room, with the door closed, even knowing they are watching TV or have headphones on, impacts the quality of our conversation in a specific way: they feel less private.

The Other is not watching, is not listening, but the idea that they are here, close by, makes our eyes turn into their eyes, and the private become public.

It’s important we remind ourselves how much both being private and being watched are illusions. They are two needs and two fears at once, they seem to be the only truth at times, when isolation and crowdedness take over any other sensation, but ultimately they are states guided by emotions. The need to feel protected, safe, alone and the need to feel guided, witnessed, connected.

When I’m dancing and there’s people around, perhaps it would be absurd to forget that completely. But it’s equally absurd to think they are watching me, thinking exactly this: “…”.

“Can you fill up a glass that has holes?”

We have all invested energies in something, hoping for a specific result while getting a different one over and over.

• Asking that one friend to be more present, only to see them ultimately be themselves and unable to satisfy our request
• Trying to stop smoking by listing all risks, only to slack after one glass of wine
• Seeking people who feel like a case to solve, someone to rescue, only to fail miserably in saving them
• Using the same approach to talk to our parents, hoping this time they’d understand our point, only to see the same script repeat itself

The human mind has an impeccable way to optimize its energies to attain certain results. This might be hard to imagine if you constantly end up sabotaging yourself. Repeating these cycles increases frustration and consumes hope, gradually reducing the trust you have in your own functions. Your mind doesn’t certainly seem like a friend, or a good machine. Instead, it seems like a naughty sibling telling on you to your parents, an hostile colleague always trying to get the last word.

If my partner keeps mismatching my desires and expectations, reducing my patience toward them to a thin and wet piece of paper, and I’m here throwing ultimatums, having last conversations that are never last, putting all the effort in the world to voice my frustration, it might seem like I’m genuinely hoping for things to change.

But am I?

Our mind and body are made to be drawn to what gives them pleasure, or at the very least some sort of satisfaction. We might be baffled at our repetitions, frustrated at our inability to learn from past experiences, but if we turn things around we might find a less intuitive explanation. If we keep going to the beach hoping to ski, we might not be as silly as we think. We know there’s no snow at the beach. If we wanted to ski we’d go to somewhere where there’s snow, yet we keep going back to the seaside, and hoping, and getting disappointed, and feeling stupid for having made this miscalculation again.

It rarely occurs to us we might not be interested in snow after all.

What keeps us going is exactly this frustrating cycle, that some dark part of our mind viciously enjoys: expectation, hope, crashing of hopes, repeat.

People change for two reasons:

• One is emotional: They are in too much pain, which makes it unsustainable to keep going this way
• One is rational, and can turn into emotional: They realize they’ll look back in 30 years and wonder who lived their life

Both are not enough to change, but at least one is necessary. Deep, self-sustaining, genuine change is not (just) about developing new habits — this is helpful to live a better life, but doesn’t have a long-lasting impact if it’s not supported by valid reasons.
Authentic change requires making a bet with yourself: I go out to find something, but I don’t know what that is. I only know I can’t stay here any longer.
By getting to know yourself you don’t always know who you’ll find, and how (or if) these new parts will coexist with the ones you know already. Maybe you’ll even have to say goodbye to some you are quite attached to.

The point is: you don’t know what you’ll find when you start walking the on the road of self-discovery. This is why so many times clients seek help with partial requests and partial premises. And this makes our range of action more narrow. They ask to change something specific about their behavior, and they indicate where we can and cannot look. Often, their parents have been “amazing”, their relationship only needs some adjustments, their life is fine as it is except for that thing they want to change. That thing is seemingly small, but takes up all the space, and we inevitably have to look elsewhere to find out its role in their life.
Accepting we have to take a broader look in order to attain real change (not of that thing, but of our unhappiness) is what takes the longest. It demands coming to terms with the fact that their request to fix a part is not enough and we have to question the whole.

Questioning the whole is tough. It’s an existential matter before being a clinical one, it has to do with questioning the meaning of life (living for others? living for yourself? living for belonging, freedom, power, acceptance?) and the sense of identity, values, purpose. We get very defensive toward anything that could contradict our ideas of the world and ourselves. We become rigid, unreasonable, terrified at times. And we might decide the paved road is good enough, because the risk is too high. This might happen over and over, and it’ll become harder to accept we have veered again, despite knowing how miserable that road makes us. It’s important to remember, in these moments, that we are not silly, lazy, or self-sabotaging. We are simply doing what we do best: protect ourselves.

We might have to tell ourselves over and over what we are losing by walking on a comfortable road, but the truth is we will choose the alternative when we’ll realize it’s not that comfortable anymore.

“I am exasperated with myself” a client might say.

”Good” I reply. That’s where change begins.

— The image is Rossano, Calabria by Escher (1931)