Openness, Growth, and Dialogue: Exploring Diverse Perspectives in Our Big Calm Journey

Growth is such a cool thing and truly evidence that we’re alive.  Growth occurs in organic ways that often has an ever-unfolding, outside of our control element.  We often find new awareness popping up in unexpected places helping us deepen our understanding of important facets of ourselves and the world around us. 

To have access to the richness of growth moments along our journey, however, we need to remain open… open to new ideas, open to learning from others, open to the awareness that our initial understanding of various experiences might be limited in some way.

Our Big Calm team is committed to maintaining this posture of openness as we evolve as a group, and it only took one podcast for us to access such an opportunity.

We hope that sharing our experience of openness, growth, humility, and nervous system regulation that supports dialogue vs. debate will be relatable to other things that you find yourself encountering in your own lives.

Our first podcast was created as a casual introduction to Big Calm and an opportunity to share how we’ll be weaving in Nervous System understanding to our show to help people know how to get unstuck from everyday situations that cause hurt, frustration, overwhelm, relationship challenges- you name it.

As we reviewed the podcast as a team, we were discussing how easy it is to create material that holds useful information, bright moments, and yet gets a little fumbly here and there- not perfectly articulating a certain point, or even presented in a way that may feel insensitive to some of our listeners.

We reflected on this from a what do we do about it perspective. 

We played with these ideas in the context of addressing a specific moment in the podcast where a few statements Scott made as he introduced a new question took on varied meaning amongst the Big Calm team members.

If you were listening, perhaps, this section of the episode caught your attention too.  Scott was exploring the meaning of the word ‘energies,’ and noting that in his system the word ‘energies’ takes on a kind of woo-woo, mystical connotation that does not naturally jive well with his “intellectual” approach to the world. 

Nikki shared that this presentation was somewhat offensive to her as it seems to carry the underlying assumption that those who do jive with the language of energies are not intellectual.  She pointed out that there are growing bodies of research-based knowledge associated with energy psychology.

The very notion that things must be researched to be credible is, perhaps, itself a very Western social construction of reality.  Prior to modern research, how did people build trust in various healing practices?  We assume through trusting the experiences that helped them know what was working.  So often it seems that in the world of emotional, psychological, relational healing, the research is catching up to what we’ve known through experience, not the other way around… though, we certainly recognize that many broader truths are not either/or in nature but rather exist as both/and, bi-directional realities.

Scott recognized that what he associates with respectable, intellectual material is based on what he has learned over time, and his introduction of the questions, then, ironically reflected an intellectual knowledge base that is not yet familiar to him in the ways it is to Nikki. 

Scott relayed that he imagined, however, that he is not alone in associating the reference to ‘energies’ as woo-woo, mystical and less than credible.  He noted that his intention in his introduction was to create a relatability for others who might have similar reactions to words like energy, and help listeners know that the work we’re doing in relation to helping others understand and optimize functioning of their nervous system is, in fact, credible.

A second point of discussion on the team related to Scott’s reference to certain patterns that were more likely to apply to men.  Specifically, Scott alluded to the ideas that some tough guy patterning might tend to be associated with struggles remaining emotionally connected, or nervous system aware.

His intention, again, was to speak to other men who may have military backgrounds, or other histories that generate operating systems with a focus on being tough and related protective states.  He acknowledged that this reference point may also apply to military women or women who have also developed a being tough type of program in their operating system.  To further expand, we recognize that regardless of sexual or gender identification, all humans are vulnerable to experiences that would produce programs involving dissociating from certain aspects of their human experience.

This brings us to several questions:

• Is it ever useful to reference certain people groups when we’re discussing programs/ patterns?  (i.e. people with anxiety; people with a history of abuse; people of a certain cultural heritage; people with a certain skin color; people with neurotypical or neurodivergent brains; people who identify with certain sexual orientations or identities; people with military backgrounds) 

• Do we want to discuss the things that some of these people groups have in common?  If so, why? 

Referencing patterns that may tend to emerge more often amongst certain people groups can be a short-cut to finding pathways for resonance.  If I identify with being neurodivergent, for example, I am more likely to find material associated with my needs when I find written or spoken material including references to experiences of people who are neurodivergent. 

We all need pathways for resonance and knowing that we’re not alone in our experiences of ourselves and the world.  We also need pathways for understanding that just because we have an affiliation within a group does not mean everyone in that group is the same- that what applies to one member of the group is not going to apply to every member of the group.

We’re grateful to live in a world where many people are growing in their understanding and respect for how a person’s context deeply shapes the approach to life they are living.  We are, perhaps, better positioned now than any earlier time in history to build a view of the world that is inclusive of the many uniquely, beautiful ways the human story can unfold.  Perhaps, we are also better positioned to see the many things that people across groups (cultural heritage, skin color, socioeconomic status, overall health, availability of social support, education level, sexual orientation and identity, religious affiliation) have in common… nervous system challenges related to trauma experiences; a desire to feel safe and loved; a longing for meaning and purpose.

How do we approach the world in a way that is empathic, kind, caring, and sensitive to all the possible meaning that might be generated in our efforts to share with the world?

Perhaps, the best that any of us can do is maintain openness.  The associated meaning of any one thing that a given person says might land well with one person and not with another- regardless of the groups that person belongs to.

It seems it will be debilitating for all of us if we expect ourselves to choose words that perfectly align with every potential listener- be that for the Big Calm team as we’re podcasting, or whether that be for each of us in the interactions of our everyday lives.

That said, the feedback loops, like the one we experienced amongst our team, are vital to our growth.  We want to remain open to learning how we impact each other.

The reality is that even in intimate connections these patterns of discussing how various messages land in our worlds of meaning can be complex, much less in the context of public discourse.

While we will fail to have messaging that lands comfortably in the mind-body systems of each of our listeners at any given time, our underlying intention is to create a world where it is safe to be you.

We want to honor each person, their perspective, and the story that brought them to that understanding.

We also encourage you to be open to expanding with us.  Through bi-directional feedback and learning to share with the intention of building understanding rather than defending ourselves, we believe, we’ll build a more connected world.