Take Me To Your Leader

Last week, I wrote a post that I thought was going to be about one thing, but which adamantly insisted on being about something else altogether.

Not that the need for sources of real inspiration in the survivor community is not an important topic – it’s really important. So often we are left taking “inspiration” from rotten sources – people who really aren’t doing anything to resolve their own dysfunction, people who say they’re working at healing but aren’t really accomplishing anything in their healing – and yet, they set themselves up as “leaders of the community” anyway.

There is no true inspiration to be found there – what are those people doing that any of us would really want to emulate? But with nothing to compare them to, we tend not to question the “leadership” we end up with, even though they’re not really leading us anywhere.

Healing doesn’t have to be the slow-moving (or no-moving) process it so frequently appears to be when we look at these non-leaders, these people who sit in the same place “working on” the same problems for five or ten or twenty years without making an inch of real progress. Doesn’t anyone ever wonder why, with all that work and all that time, they never actually get better?? Or are we all just assuming that they’re actually doing the best they can, and the nothing they’re getting for all their purported effort is really all there is?

Well, it’s not all there is. It’s not all we can hope for. It’s not the best that can be done. And the boundaries and limits of the healing journey should not defined by people who aren’t actually traveling anywhere. Although we all have to face and overcome our own limitations and roadblocks in healing, we should not take on someone else’s limitations, to define and limit what is possible for us.

When we’re finally ready to really work at healing – to give it the consistent energy and focus and attention it needs – to put our healing first, instead of ranking it behind absolutely everything else in our lives – to leave the safety of denial and the security of being sick – or IF we’re ever ready to do all that – then healing and progress and change will happen.

If we’re really working at our healing, then we absolutely will not be in the same place and talking about the same things five or ten years down the line. The healthy changes, the steps made toward a safer, more stable, more peaceful life, a life that is more ours than our lives have ever been before – will be so dramatic and so obvious that nobody will be able to miss them – because even if ninety percent of the work is done in our internal worlds, between and among and by our internal selves, where nobody can see it – the results of that work will be clearly reflected in every aspect of our external life.

But it’s an unfortunate truth that we can’t look to the so-called “leadership” of the survivor community to help us get there, because ironically, every one of these people, whether they’ve been there for one year or twenty, are still full-fledged, card-carrying members of the dysfunctional brigade – and where will we get, by following where they lead? No further than they’ve gone themselves.

These people can talk the talk well. They know all the “therapeutic” explanations and suggestions for every problem – and well they should, since they’ve spent so much time in therapy themselves. They’re quick to share what they know with everyone, and to rely on their words to be so impressive to others that we become almost dazzled by how much they know, by how much they talk, and we never really examine what they do.

And they have to hope we never do look past their words, because there’s nothing there. A leader should lead by example and action as well as by words – but our so-called leaders are not exemplifying successful healing, or even healing that makes progress. To the observer, the “healing journies” of our so-called leaders are like a soap opera – take a year or two off from watching, and when you come back, the same people are still be dealing with the same problems. If the people who set themselves up as leaders of our community can’t make a step of progress themselves, then how can they lead anyone else? And why are we looking up to them in the first place?

Our community leaders are also wonderful at making the newly diagnosed feel more comfortable with being where they are – and well they should be. They are experts in finding ways to be comfortable with where they are themselves, with rationalizing and justifying where they are, so that it not only becomes tolerable, but almost desireable – and this is something they pass on freely to the masses.

But a good leader should not make you feel good about being where you are – certainly not in terms of healing – because the whole point of healing is change, and if you feel good enough with where you are, then where’s the incentive to change anything?

A good leader should make you slightly uncomfortable with where you are, because they are modeling and exemplifying where you want to be. And if you aren’t there yet, then how good do you want to feel about that?

A real leader should be someone who is living the goals you have for yourself – not someone whose own life is no better or healthier than yours is. You already know how to be where you are – you don’t need someone to lead you there, and you certainly don’t need a leader who exemplifies nothing more encouraging than stagnation.

Of course, it’s not in their own interest for these putative community leaders to encourage you to change or heal or progress – because if you do it when they still haven’t, it makes them look bad. But that’s their problem – and it’s up to you whether or not you take it on to become your problem too.

That being said, we owe it to ourselves to take a good hard look at who we’re looking up to in the survivor community, and why.

What are they exemplifying to you?
What are they modeling for you?
What do they represent to you?
What have they accomplished, in their healing or in their lives, that you hope to accomplish yourself?
What goals do you feel encouraged to work toward by the leaders you look up to?
Are your leaders really showing you that you can do more or be more or heal more than you thought possible?
And if they aren’t doing any of these things, then why are you looking up to them in the first place?