MFT Solutions: Healing Relationships

Tag: connection

  • Load Rage

    There’s a long, wandering nerve in the body called the vagus (means “wandering”). It goes to the heart. It goes to the stomach. It goes to the face. It goes to the larynx (voice box).

    It has two main branches.

    One is covered with myelin. Insulated, it conducts faster.

    One is not covered with myelin. It’s older. Reptiles have it. It’s the slower part of the nerve.

    The fast part of the nerve goes to your face and voice box. It helps you to attract attention. Make expressions with your face and sounds with your voice, other people come running. Useful in an emergency.

    The slow part goes to the heart, and other places, to start up your internal emergency system. Fight or flight. Fast heart rate, high blood flow to the arms and legs. Also useful in an emergency. But uses up a lot of energy.

    Because the slow branch of the vagus uses so much energy we have evolved from reptiles, and developed this faster system of signalling to others for help. Energy-efficient survival.

    But it only works if we’re willing to trust others.

    I was following a car that was going slower than I wanted to go – he was a little under the speed limit – and so I passed him. He accelerated as I passed but I completed my pass safely. Then he came right up behind me, passed me, and zoomed up the road.

    I found that I was shaking. Adrenaline. My amygdala was activated. I was prepared for conflict. When he passed I wasn’t sure that he wasn’t also going to pull in front of me and brake suddenly.

    You may have had a similar experience. It happens to me a lot (is it me?). Once, I passed a guy in a pickup truck (never argue with people who drive pickup trucks) and then he passed me and abruptly slowed, blocking my path. I pulled onto the shoulder and waited for him to go away.

    Tamara Lich has been organizing far-right protests since 2018. She was arrested in 2022 and convicted of mischief for her role in leading the “Freedom Convoy” protest in Ottawa.

    She posted on X that she no longer feels safe, respected or free, [1]. I don’t use X anymore, but her message was echoed on Instagram, and when I read it, I responded that I did not have a lot of sympathy for someone who went out of her way to make others feel unsafe.

    And of course I was attacked.

    It made me think of the good people on the highway.

    I felt the same amygdalar reaction from people calling me vulgar names on social media as I did from the people (trying to kill me?) on the highway.

    You may think that I am overreacting. I am. That’s the point.

    We have forgotten how to play with others. Anyone who dissents has become an enemy. I have my way of looking at the world, and if you disagree, then I have nothing to do with you. You are my enemy.

    Which means that I am on my own. I have to use my own devices for survival. The “slow” branch of my vagus. Fight or flight. No facial signs of distress or calls for help allowed. No cooperation.

    There used to be a TV network in the U.S. called PBS. They had a song about cooperation.

    That network has been dismantled. It’s every man for himself.

    Mostly men, have you noticed? They want to roll back women’s rights. Probably because women would favour cooperation.

    We have been developing this myth, especially in North America, that we can each live independently. We don’t need other people.

    Others have been sounding the alarm bell on this. “Hey, we’re mammals, not reptiles. It costs less energy to cooperate.” PBS. Notable neurophysiologists[2].

    Cooperating means sharing my energy. If I can’t see the longterm benefits, I might be disinclined.

    And now there is all this doom and gloom about climate change. Recently a pandemic. And now perhaps an alien visitor traversing the solar system.

    But that’s okay. I can solve all these problems by myself. Without you.

    Maybe not.

    [1]         https://x.com/LichTamara/status/1952736918963167718

    [2]         Darcia Narvaez (2014). Neurobiology and the Development of Human Morality: Evolution, Culture, and Wisdom. New York: W. W. Norton

  • Lane Departure

    I used to drive somewhat faster on the highway than I do now. I have been influenced to change by several factors: when we had children, I became concerned about safety; then I learned that most gasoline engines operate at peak efficiency at about 80 km/hr: therefore by slowing down I was saving money and reducing carbon emissions; and I worked for several years as an emergency room chaplain, where I met individuals who drove too quickly – or rather, I met their families, and helped with the viewing of the bodies.


    And I got older, and paradoxically came to the conclusion that life is too short to drive fast. But there is a limit to my speed limits.

    Where I live, the speed limit is 80. I have hearsay evidence that a local police officer recommended driving at 90 to avoid rear end collisions. I’m a rule follower but only to a point. So I usually drive around 90 km/hr on the local highway.


    Coming up the highway today there was a car ahead of me, following closely on a truck and trailer ahead of him (“he” is a generic pronoun – I have no idea who the drivers were).


    They slowed down. The car put on his brakes.


    The weather was good, the highway was straight, there was a dashed line, and there was no oncoming traffic. It was legal to pass.


    I signalled, pulled out, and checked to make sure that neither of the two vehicles ahead was signalling or turning left: they weren’t. The truck was turning right and the car was continuing to slow down behind him.


    I passed them both.

    All hell broke loose.

    The guy in the car leaned on his horn. I checked my path. There was no danger. There was perhaps outrage that I would dare not stay in my lane. After the truck turned, the car came tight on my bumper, and hung there. For several kilometres. Until we passed the police station. Then he pulled back. After the police station he pulled up again.


    It was interesting that he did not seem to think that the police would share his sense of injustice.

    I was concerned that he was going to follow me until I stopped. I decided that I didn’t want to have a chat with him. I turned off at a random intersection, let him pass, and continued on my way.


    We live in a curious time. A few years ago there was concern that we, as a species, were becoming too independent. We’re mammals, after all. And there is safety in the herd. But nobody seemed to care for anyone else’s safety.


    I don’t think that this guy in the car was concerned for my safety. That hasn’t changed.


    What was he concerned about?


    I think that he was upset that I wasn’t following his rules.


    On the anniversary of Hamas’s attack on Israel, I think that the same sort of thing is happening over there. We’re getting upset when people think, feel, or behave differently. For that matter, we do it here to our First Nations sisters and brothers. And to immigrants (no, they’re not eating the dogs).


    We’ve gone from independence (which in itself isn’t good for mammals) to something resembling kingship – with each of us as kings, demanding that everyone else do what we do.


    Otherwise, we are not amused and we will lean on our horns.


    One recalls Fritz Perls: “I do my thing and you do your thing. I am not in this world to live up to your expectations, and you are not in this world to live up to mine. You are you, and I am I, and if by chance we find each other, it’s beautiful.”


    I should put that on my bumper.

  • Two Roads Diverged

    I belong to an organization that has imploded recently. We were anxious about running a large public event after the pandemic. We divided into two camps: some of us had a lot of faith that we could pull this off and that it would be of benefit to a larger audience. Others were more cautious and concerned about costs.

    Our anxiety got the better of us, and we were not on our best behaviour as we talked with one another. We tried to persuade the other camp. We stopped listening. We escalated our attempts to persuade until we were clearly stepping out of our norms for talking to one another. We broke rules of civility, and rules of order. We called the other camp on their bad behaviour, oblivious to our own.

    It did not go well.

    Now you haven’t seen this anywhere else, have you? Republicans and Democrats? Liberals and Conservatives? Regional conflicts, pandemics, and climate change have us all on edge. Some of us want to help. Some of us want to build walls.

    I tend to demonize the Conservatives. I try to fight that. I understand that at heart their message is, “Don’t tire yourself out so much. Stay home. Rest. Here’s a tax break.”

    I lean towards the Liberals and their message: “There is so much need out there. Give before more people die.”

    “To which camp do you belong?” Is a trick question. Both have merit.

    Paul Tillich, a German theologian, argued that all life has to wrestle with these two conditions. Staying home he called “self-integrity”. Taking risks he called “self-alteration”.

    Even a single cell has to deal with self-integrity and self-alteration. If it just sits in the Petri dish, protecting itself, never venturing out, it starves. If it divides too quickly, or spreads itself out too far, it dissolves.

    How much more does a society have to wrestle with these twin goals of self-preservation and self-alteration. Life is a dialectic: stay home, and go out. You can’t stay home all the time or you’ll starve. You can’t stay out all the time or you’ll die of exhaustion. Find a balance that works for you, of protecting yourself, and venturing out to help others.

  • Legacy

    I am eight years old and leaving my parents for the first time. Leaving the country even. My grandparents are taking me on a road trip to visit my Great Uncle Carl.

    This is us, Carl the younger and Carl the older, at my grandparents’ home in Burlington, Ontario.

    You will notice in the picture that I am younger than 8. Uncle Carl came to my grandfather’s house to visit when I was two. And at 8, I went to see him, in Vermont.

    My grandfather Kenneth Sr. came from Vermont. He married the daughter of a southern plantation owner. They met at university in New York.  She played the violin and had a dramatic flair, the middle of two equally entertaining sisters. He was a middle child, too. His brother Carl was the oldest in a family of all boys. As am I.

    Kenneth Sr. worked for the Beechnut Cough Drop company. In fact they sent him to Burlington to introduce Beechnut Cough Drops to Canada. Some time after he arrived, the company was restructured, and Kenneth lost his job. The man who fired him, Banker Bates, also lived in Burlington, and became his best friend. I met Mr. Bates. Such amazing magic tricks.

    So my grandfather, unemployed in a foreign country, with a wife and family, picked himself up and started again. In life insurance. Eventually he founded his own company. He did well. And he remained in Burlington and raised three children: two girls, and late in life, a boy.  My father, Ken Jr. 

    Not only was my father named after his father but he followed him into business: went to the Wharton School in Philadelphia, then returned home to work in his father’s company. For his entire adult life, except for two years when he lost his job and worked as a night security guard to feed his family, my father remained in insurance until he died. As his father had.

    I was given permission to be somebody different. I wasn’t named after my grandfather. I was named after his talented, wacky, older brother.

    I remember this trip still, the long drive to Vermont.  Motels and candy racks. Nanna asking me if I wanted any candy. “No thank you, Nanna, but I would like some chocolate.” Chocolate is in a class all by itself.

    Aunt Eva provided an endless supply of pink lemonade. They had an outdoor shower hooked up to a garden hose. I stood under it all day.

    At night, I shared a bed with my Nanna – once. She never slept with me again. Apparently I kick in my sleep (although I learned this at 8, I didn’t warn my wife before we got married. Some things you don’t tell…).

    My cousin Margaret took me out to buy chocolate and dinky cars. She taught me you could be safe in a thunderstorm by sitting in a car.

    The best part of the whole trip was watching my Uncle Carl play. He played the piano, the harmonica, and the bass drum – at the same time. I remember him sitting on the piano bench, hands on the keyboard, a metal frame holding the harmonica to his mouth, legs twisted sideways so that he could reach the drum pedal. 

    I was told later that he was being careful not to show off in front of me. Usually, they said, he plays four instruments at the same time, and four different songs.

    He also made things. For years I wore a belt that he had made, and had given me on this trip. And I have a chair that he made.

    The purpose of the trip was to connect me. Later my father gave me a copy of the family tree, going back to the late 1700’s. “We belong to the MacMillan clan,” he said. “Mary Queen of Scots kicked us out of Scotland. We came to America. Your great grandfather saved the life of the president of the United States, by jumping in his carriage and stopping his horses from bolting over a cliff.”

    It was a little scary, belonging to this family of talented people. What would be expected of me?

    A few years after that road trip, my grandfather had a stroke. A year after that, he passed away. And then my grandmother moved to Toronto – closer to her children – and I lost that mythical connection with my ancestors that seemed to flow through Burlington.

    Small wonder that I felt a strong pull to return to the area as an adult. To be different. To be my own person. And yet to be connected.