Lost in the morass of pure wrongness
When we realize our understanding of the world, our friends, and ourselves is all wrong
Kathryn Schulz's Being Wrong has given me a new framework by which to consider the struggles of care work. It's not news that care work is incredibly emotionally taxing. Typically, though, I think about grief, compassion fatigue, coregulation (and codependency), emotional boundaries, and other topics that get a lot of traction on Instagram. I hadn't thought about it from the premise that much of our emotional distress comes from, well, being wrong.
Schulz explains how most of the time we experience wrongness in a blip. We may gradually shift our beliefs over time, often losing track of our original beliefs and coming to imagine we always believed what we do now. We also often switch from one belief to another, experiencing the feeling of wrongness for an instant. Many of us can easily conjure up a collection of memories of these experiences of wrongness. However fleeting they may be, or trivial, they haunt us.
What struck me was Schulz's explanation of the state of pure wrongness. This is when someone realizes their current belief is wrong, yet lacks a new belief to replace it with. The old belief is irretrievably lost and we become lost in the morass. It's described as a feeling of chronic terror, inner chaos, and a deep sense of abandonment.
When someone tells me that they cannot believe this has happened to them — be it a serious diagnosis, a layoff, an accident, a divorce, or sudden financial distress — because they did everything right, I know they are stuck. It's not a time to discuss options, because options are for people who have accepted their current reality. I often found myself feeling frustrated with the stuck, despite how long I spent among their number.
Reading Schulz's description of pure wrongness provided me with a way to understand and have more empathy for that stuckness, including my own. It's not stubbornness or naivety. It's not clinging to wishful thinking, the fantasy that we can turn back time to change the outcome. It's the sense of abandonment from being cast out of the plan we had for our life and our vision for our future. It's the inner chaos that leaves us unable to trust our own judgement or even trust that we know who we are. It's the chronic terror of having no idea how to make sense of the world anymore. What are the options outlined by a friend or a therapist compared to that? Who could possibly move forward when lost in the morass of pure wrongness?
Only somehow we do make it out of that morass. Often after many months, or, as in my case, years, of a circling that’s a mix of stuckness and progress. Grappling with all those hashtag ready pop psych concepts is part of it, although certainly not the only route out. Perhaps recognizing the intensity of this struggle, the immensity of this loss, will help us keep the faith that being lost is part of the process.
If you're looking for musings on grief, I picked up Being Wrong because I so enjoyed Schulz's book on grief, Lost and Found.
What causes loneliness and how to be there for our friends during hard times.
How to give help that’s needed and isn't wanted.
How to defuse an angry person.
“I often feel like, “Why am I in a body?” And it’s like, “Oh, to figure out how to be in a relationship with others.” Which is not what we’re told. I feel like the decolonial practice right now is: my body is not to lure in my mate. My body is not to impress men. My body is not to be starved or controlled or waxed or perfected in some way. My body is actually not really about the visual imprint I have on other people. My body is to be in relationship to those other people, which may include fashion, which may include other things. But my body is not for my suffering; it’s for the whole experience. And then my body is also part of how I can recover from the experience. Embodiment is also about what we practice, what we’re taught to practice, what we begin to practice, what we choose to practice.”
Thank you for putting words to what I've been experiencing. When the bottom falls out we desparately cling to the side - somewhat relieved that the ground has stopped shaking, but wondering what happened and do I dare move? With the absence of what no longer works -- how to be, where to go -- when we don't yet have the belief, behavior pattern, etc. for the new. This is so often overlooked. Removing the toxin is only one part of the healing.
Novelist Lous McMaster Bujold often has character’s say some version of, ‘Wait, what?’it captures the morass of pure wrongness well. I also regularly remind myself: “Check your assumptions, in fact, check them at the door.”