Stop carrying someone else’s burden

Last week I gave a short online session about Fate.

“Fate” can sound and feel so heavy and inescapable. While Fate is really just a loaded word for “reality”. Therefore, my fate is nothing more and nothing less than my personal situation, my reality. It is how life unfolds for me, with exactly the lessons that are meant for me.

And yes, those can be tough lessons and it can take a lot of your lifetime to accept your reality and learn the lessons.

• If everyone could and would bear his / her own fate, many (systemic) coaches and counsellors would be out of a job. Which in itself is great news, in my opinion.
• If no one would (partially) bear the fate of another, there would not be anyone with burn-out, and who knows what other complaints would disappear.

And yet, how easily we do that, carry the burden of others. We want to be compassionate, (unconsciously) take over the burden, make it easier and better for each other. At our own expense. And even at the expense of the other! Because we deprive the other person of the right to her / his own life lessons! Moreover, we distract ourselves from our own pain and life lessons.

After a short introduction as described above, the participants went into Break Out Rooms in groups of three, and each was given their own speaking time, to tell about their own fate (reality). The other two participants were strongly discouraged from humming, nodding or asking questions. Just being present in the here & now for the narrator was enough. And the most important rule: it was forbidden to feel sorry, to show commiseration, to let any of the other person’s story stick to yourself.

The reflections afterwards generally testified to good experiences, for both narrator and listener. It helped to gain strength or stay in your own strength.

What Bert Hellinger taught us, became clear again: “Carrying what is yours, makes you stronger”.

And now, a week later, it only occurred to me that Hellinger also always said: “Pity is an indictment against God.”

For we as human beings are not at all capable of taking away the suffering of another person; that’s how I always translated his statement.

And I believe I understand it now in a different way: commiseration. Co-misery. Sharing the misery of the other. When you co-suffer another’s fate, you are not only creating an illusion, you are even taking something away. You are depriving the other of the right to their own life lessons. And you deprive yourself from yours.

So, don’t commiserate. But then what? Be willing to accept your own reality. Be available for the other by being present, give yourself, without losing or giving yourself away. Stand next to each other. From person to person, heart to heart, in dignity.

Barbara Hoogenboom

11 januari 2021