We Cannot Manufacture Mutuality

Have you ever been told, “Now it’s time to turn towards yourself and take care of yourself,” and wanted to scream: “I’ve been doing that all my life!”? Sometimes what we need isn't another instruction to care for ourselves, but someone willing to turn towards us and be with what hurts. Yet we cannot make another person meet us there.

Have you ever had someone say to you something along the lines of, “Now it’s time to turn towards yourself and take care of yourself”?

And part of you wanted to scream at them: “I’ve been doing that all my life!!”

Apart from the fact that “take care of yourself” is a piece of advice, there is also a paradox here. While the speaker is evidently caring, they are at the same time locating the care I need somewhere inside me rather than recognising that they might play a part in it.

I am all for turning towards my inner experience with compassion and curiosity. The problem isn’t that I don’t know how to care for myself. It’s more that what I am longing for feels relational, and self-care cannot substitute for it. One of my most helpful self-help techniques is imagining that I have the company of someone genuinely caring about my experience and turning towards me with curiosity and acceptance. Actually also affection. I imagine an affectionate presence that meets me, but leaves space for me too.

I know that this kind of connection is sometimes available with other people. I have experienced it. And yet, being told to offer myself care can feel like the epitome of loneliness while in the company of others. There is a grief in that which can feel almost impossible to express.

Sometimes another person really is stuck looking towards someone who hurt them, desperately hoping that person will finally understand. And from the outside, you can see that this is hurting them and feel helpless watching it. Of course, when we see someone desperately seeking something from another person who isn’t giving it, we want to encourage them to turn away and care for themselves instead.

I think that is usually why I don’t turn to them and tell them “Screw you, what do you think I’ve been doing?!” I can see that they are motivated by some kind of care.

There is also a grief in seeing that the connection we have longed for hasn’t quite been there in the quality we need and that all we have had many times is our own company to somehow square and soothe what’s happened and our pain. So when I’m asked to take care of myself, I am reminded of what it has been like to feel that I only had myself to care about me. I’m aware that partly it’s that pain that comes up, that I don’t want to be reminded of. I know, I know, I know.

And also that sense of: if that truly worked, this turning towards myself and taking care of me, how come I still hurt so much?

And this sense of lostness: you’re here with me and you could turn to me and be with what’s there, but why are you telling me to turn towards myself and be caring rather than meeting me and being caring in a tender way towards me?

Of course, another part of me immediately starts analysing them. Maybe they’re avoiding their own discomfort. Maybe my pain is asking something of them that they don’t want to feel. Maybe… But I don’t actually know. What I do know is that I am hurting, and that being told to turn towards myself can feel like being left alone.

And if I object to this “offer of care and generous wisdom” will I be labelled as resistant? Not wanting to take responsibility for myself and my feelings? Harsh and rejecting of them? As if my objection was in itself evidence, that I should take their advice. When really I want them closer, and I am not experiencing their response as comforting at all. It feels like being kept at a distance while being told that this distance is good for me.

Sure, I acknowledge we can all engage in ways that are harsh towards ourselves. But for some that’s the best self-care they have learned to try to get by in the world. That’s really sad: Longing for care, but the only tool we’ve been given is criticism. And I don’t think anyone will get better at caring for themselves simply by being told to take care of themselves. That’s already what they are trying to do! It’s just that the tool hurts. But when we only know one strategy, we will try it again just because we don’t want to give up on something that is so precious to us. And I actually think there is something healthy in not giving up on care, even when the strategies we’ve learned aren’t working. But sometimes what we need is company. Someone to do it differently. To be so unafraid of their own pain, that they can come towards ours.

And I know this. What I’m learning is how to be with my pain and helplessness when someone doesn’t want company and pushes everything away. It hurts in two different ways: when I want to be close to them, and when I care about them and can see that they are suffering while not wanting the kind of gentle company that doesn’t try to fix them, which I believe is the best thing since sliced bread. But paradoxically, even my wanting to be a little closer than they feel at ease with can feel like pressure—the pressure of wanting them to be different. I know what it’s like to want to give someone exactly the thing I believe would help them, and to discover that my offering itself can feel intrusive.

And this is where I come up against the limits of what care can do. I can offer company, but I cannot make someone receive it.

There is care and compassion that we can give ourselves. And when nobody else is available that is vital and I am grateful for it. I have learned to imagine the presence I wish I had, and that is magical in relation to how well it works.

But I don’t want to confuse being able to survive without someone’s presence with not needing their presence.

For some kinds of pain we don’t need another instruction to turn towards ourselves. We need someone to turn towards us and to grapple with what it means to be there.

Part of the journey of taking care of ourselves is allowing that we need other people’s presence. Recognising when it comes alive. And feeling the pain when it doesn’t happen.

And sometimes being present to that - without turning it into my failure, or your failure - can be the deepest care we can offer ourselves in that moment.