I was so excited about blogging this morning, I woke up at 5:40 am.
I just graduated with my degree in political science last April (took me 20 years!), and politics has weighed heavy on my mind of late. Politics is as much about policy as it is about psychology, and I would like to offer a politics “therapy session”, something I myself have needed during these past five or six years. I know other people bring politics into the therapy session too. I’m still trying to figure out how this would look, because obviously I don’t actually want to discuss the merits and drawbacks of such-and-such a policy, but it would likely be a safe space for people to talk about their reactions and explore their projections (while looking at their birth chart?), with the goal of mindfully exploring the “charge” they feel (or don’t feel) on certain topics to see what lies beneath them. Jupiter is the planet of the political left, and Saturn is the planet of the right. Obviously both planets are needed for a healthy, balanced psychology- Saturn is the planet of discipline, contraction, and personal responsibility; and Jupiter is the planet of expansion, generosity, and wisdom. I don’t believe we can necessarily tell someone’s political stance through their chart, but we can certainly explore any reactions that come up around those two often opposing approaches. I have gotten some other insight during these past 6 years, though, and it’s been thanks to mindfulness and the Enneagram.
One of my most interesting discoveries was around what I believe to be the projection and introjection of Rachel Dolezal, the white American woman who was publicly
“outed” by her family as pretending to be Black. I could be wrong, but I believe she’s an Enneagram type 4, and I recognized something of myself in her, a need to introject the sorrow of others. This insight allowed me to deal with the charge I have around race a lot more effectively. And mindfulness has helped over the past ten or so years as well: being mindfully aware of my breathing has allowed me to breathe through and be present to my reactions around race a lot easier and excavate some big themes.
Good policy comes from integrating the three brains: the knowledge of the head, the relationship-orientation of the heart, and the quick-thinking protection and defensive gut instinct, but when one of those brains is out of balance, there are going to be unhealthy reactions that need noticing and exploring; otherwise we can be a danger to ourselves or others. This session wouldn’t be to get rid of your political views, but rather to explore the psychological waters hiding underneath them to untangle fears (“what happens if this policy gets instituted?”), anger (“I feel attacked and vulnerable”), or shame (“what is my image around hot-button or politically correct issues?”)
But also what are we projecting and needing to integrate into ourselves? Parties in their rhetoric can cast an institutional shadow, and by participating in them, we darken the collective shadow on either side, increasing the hostility. We can claim our shadow by noticing what we want to cast away psychologically, the part of us that we deny compassion to.
I don’t know exactly how this would be structured, but I’m going to see if I can come up with a methodology that would feel safe and avoid getting into the head. Ultimately I don’t care about someone’s political views- to me the interesting part is where the reactions are most intense and someone’s willingness to explore and notice the tension in their bodies around their reactions, because our bodies are going through a lot of collateral damage in relation to politics these days.
