Isolation Masks | 001

Aaron Tabacco: 00:00:01

Our lives. Move in patterns, things. We repeat things. We return to rituals, stories, people and places, the familiar cycles we experience as our sign posts, our stations of attention, and then sometimes we awaken more fully to these patterns, reaching a moment that asks something of us, a boundary with an invitation to turn those lines into thresholds of growth and transformation. I am Aaron tabaco here again with you tonight you are listening to circles edges.

Aaron Tabacco: 00:00:56

Good wishes and good evening, my friends, I want to begin this first episode of circles edges, thanking you all for tuning in and joining me on these virtual airwaves this evening when I sit in the dark of my home office with a candle going trains gently in the background from time to time, and I look to reach out to you and connect with you. You know, when I was asked to develop this show, I thought very deeply about what the world needs right now and what I can bring to it, and what format would be the most resonant for me, that which would really call to me, speak to who I am in the world and how I want to show up. And I reflected back to my sort of middle school, early high school years. This would have been in the mid 80s through the late 80s, and this continued into the 90s, this trend, but there was this period of time where there was a popular format of late night talk radio show, and in my Oh, Insomniac days, which were many, and honestly, that is continued, I would tune in. I would look through my radio stations and find some solitary voice out there in the darkness, maybe from Chicago or New York, usually from some bigger place, and tune into their voice as they talked through the issues of the day, mused about thoughts and philosophy, spirituality, any number of topics. Sometimes they would take callers, sometimes they would just read letters. Sometimes it was just them. Occasionally they'd play some music in the background. But really the focus was connecting people who were kind of experiencing loneliness in the nighttime.

Aaron Tabacco: 00:03:16

And that really resonated with me as I was developing this idea, because I have found myself in the present world, being awake later at night, feeling pretty isolated and honestly, a little more than overwhelmed with the state of The world. So here we are together, and I'm looking forward to many nights together where I can reach out and connect with you, and you can reach out and connect with me, and we can go deep into these patterns of everyday life we experience together, seeking some wisdom, exploring deep questions. If you've had a chance to listen to the trailer, you know that the purpose of this show is to connect us all human to human as we reflect on these very common experiences, these cycles, these patterns, these circles we find ourselves in, and the opportunities maybe it brings to us when we realize that we are in one of those circles and experiencing a repeated pattern, reflecting together on what that might all mean. I want to emphasize that this is not a show of perfection over engineering AI production. It's not a sales pitch for some service I'm putting out into the world. This really is service of a greater kind. I hope I. And I don't really know that we'll find any answers together in all of this. That's not my goal. I'm going to invoke some words from a very wise and incredible writer, Rachel Naomi Remen, who wrote a book many years ago that came into my life at a pretty critical time, a book called Kitchen Table wisdom. One of her other writings that really struck me comes from her book my grandfather's blessings. She says, perhaps real wisdom lies in not seeking answers at all. An answer is a place where we can fall asleep as life moves past us to its next question.

Aaron Tabacco: 00:05:49

After all these years, I've begun to wonder if the secret of living well is not in having all the answers, but in pursuing unanswerable questions in good company. So here we are, my friends. Thank you for being my good company tonight as we explore some potentially unanswerable questions looking ahead to what this first, I suppose the right word is, season of these episodes has in store. I just want to orient you to how I'm going to approach this, you know, these first three episodes, I want us to jump in to the center of all of our lived circles, the deep, sort of cycles of our internal lives. And then I want to move outward a little bit to our outer circles, those family members, friends that bring things to us in our relational life. And we'll move from there to maybe the context of our everyday lives, those things that are coming and going as we're moving through space and time. And then finally, we'll spend a few episodes looking at long arcs and slow orbits, the circles that affect us at the farthest reaches of our own personal influence. It's my hope that this can lay a foundation we can build on together in the dark of night, way finding as we go. So with that, let's jump in and find our way into the circle

Aaron Tabacco: 00:07:40

For this first evening together, in the fall of 2004 I began taking my first real nursing classes at the University of Portland. I was a young father with three small sons at home. I was changing careers, and I was very excited about finding my next path in this very human centered profession, and I was very lucky to take a course in the fundamentals of nursing from an incredible professor who really embodied everything good and wise and kind and compassionate and intelligent in nursing, Dr Rowe was teaching us one day specifically about personal protective equipment, which does not sound necessarily like a super exciting topic. However, because of who she was and because of her deep centeredness and humanity, she made sure that we focused not just on the doing and the whys and the hows of using a vast array of protective equipment to keep us and patients safe in clinical environments. But she really wanted to impress upon us that no matter what we're doing in our practice, we need to show up and connect with people as healers and caregivers, one human with another human to that to that end, she pointed out that when we are gowned up from head to toe, the people we're taking care of can't really connect with us. It's very, very difficult. For someone who is ill in a hospital room to make a human connection when there are barriers of touch and sight and potentially even hearing. So she wanted us to really think about the fact that, you know, if we have opportunities based on the specific situation to allow the patient to even see our faces below our isolation masks before we begin a procedure, or before we begin some other type of caregiving, that it would go a long way to establish a connection. This is especially true of children, if you think about it, who might see somebody walk into a very scary hospital room wearing strange clothes with no access to maybe even seeing their eyes very much, and could interpret us as interpret us as being monsters, etc.

Aaron Tabacco: 00:11:01

But it really stuck with me that there was this micro lesson in how we connect as humans, and how no matter what the circumstances, as long as those circumstances are appropriate for it, we really need to be sure that our patients can see us as the humans we are. It's so much more healing to know that the person caring for you is, in fact, you know, just like you are another human being. And so as we begin today's discussion, or, I don't know, conversation about these circle edges topics. I want to keep in mind that image of an isolation mask, and how those masks we think protect us actually keep us from connecting more fully and deeply with the world around us. Lots to think about in that department, so let's unpack it a little bit. You know, we encounter masks in several different ways. One of those is, you know, we learn to read the room, and we create the masks we think we need so they're self generated. Sometimes they're personas or masks. We've inherited something from our childhood, somebody at some point, decided we needed to be a certain person in a certain circumstance. As we go along throughout life, and we become more independent and connect with people across many circumstances. We're often given new masks from those in our sort of negotiated relationships with others. And then there's maybe a more nuanced one that has to do with being on the other side of the mask, and how we sometimes give masks to other people to help us feel comfortable with them in some way, or to get our needs met.

Aaron Tabacco: 00:13:14

So masks, these social masks, these way of these ways of showing up in the world as something other than we really are. Are pervasive. We all do this. I am certainly no exception. I think I may have achieved a PhD in masking over the course of my life. And I want to emphasize that you know, these masks aren't necessarily fake, although they might not represent who we fully are, they're certainly protective, and that's why we engage in the behavior. We tend to think that there's some threat in the world around us that puts us at odds with our own needs, and once we sense that threat, we start thinking about, how can we manage it? You know, how do I avoid rejection or shame or some kind of humiliation or punishment? How do I stay connected to this group? I don't want to be kicked out or excluded. We might create masks because we need to feel powerful, and that could be power or influence in relation to others, or it could be simply power for ourselves. You know, how do I keep myself together right now in this situation? Could be a mask that helps us emotionally regulate. It also helps us negotiate our identity. You know, at times, these masks when we are asking ourselves a question, you know, who am I allowed to be here? So these masks, you know, they're they're intelligent. You.

Aaron Tabacco: 00:15:00

So often they're learned, although more often than not, they've been given to us, and they're very context sensitive. Has to do with taking these masks on so we can successfully navigate the world around us. But there's something very interesting that happens with this phenomenon, and it is that it becomes a circle or a cycle. We figure out that we need to put a mask on to feel safe, and we get this short term benefit of maybe feeling it. We feel safe, we feel connected, we feel belonging. But whenever we do that, we end up cutting ourselves off long term. We start to starve ourselves emotionally. We start to become actually more invisible to who we, you know, who we really are in the world. We might have an immediate sense that, oh, okay, I feel good in this moment, so I'm going to keep doing this thing. And then our feelings of disconnection increase, our feelings of not having our needs met, get louder, and so we tend to double down and keep this mask cycle going. I think you probably know, and could name some of the masks I'm thinking of. It might be a mask of, I'm fine, everything's fine. Could be a mask of being a super high achiever, or maybe even the related perfectionist mask. Or how about the people pleaser, the good child, or caretakers, the fixers, but the tough guy, the invulnerable mask, maybe the academic, the intellectual mask. Sometimes we are performers or entertainers, or maybe we wear the rebel mask. Then there's things like the cynic or even the victim, or just the simple, oh no, I don't really need that much. This low needs mask that I'm an easy person. You don't need to worry about me. This making ourselves small.

Aaron Tabacco: 00:17:58

I'm sure you could probably name others. And I'm curious what masks of your own you're thinking about right now as you're listening tonight to all of this. And of course, you know, we we create these initially adaptively, we have perceived some kind of threat or undesirable outcome, and we're trying to manage it by creating a persona, putting on a mask, showing up in a way that reduces our risk overall. We're trying to avoid rejection or some kind of shame or punishment or humiliation, or we just want to stay connected and have a feeling of belonging to a particular group. For some reason, maybe we're trying to avoid losing influence. We want to be respected. We want to have a certain sense of power. Maybe we're just trying to keep ourselves together in a particular moment emotionally, and we find that if we put a particular mask on that it gives us that power we need. Those things aren't unhealthy. We all need to feel safe out in the world every day. What's really interesting about it and how it becomes a cycle, right? Is that we perceive these threats, so we put the mask on, we get some sort of short term relief from it, which reinforces that, oh, maybe I need to put this mask on again. I'll maybe even double down on it. I'll make sure that I really own this mask I'm wearing. And then the next time we're in that circumstance, it goes back on, and we just continue to do that. At but unfortunately, that short term relief is pretty short lived, and we end up paying a long term cost for it.

Aaron Tabacco: 00:20:13

And what's this? Really interesting paradox is that these masks ultimately create the circumstances that require them over and over and over again, without actually feeling a sense of deeper, long term resolution or relief about whatever it is we needed to mask in the first place, the mask caused the conditions that require them, and that's where we get into these deep circles of masking and re masking and creating new masks, or Sometimes just accepting the ones given to us by others, you know, and we're complicit in this, because not only do we buy in and often do we create the masks or receive the ones given to us, but this has become so normal to us that we ask it of other people as well. It's not just that we put our own masks on. It's that when other people around us are making us feel uncomfortable or threatened or aren't meeting our needs, we very often ask them to put on a mask to show us that we're getting what we want from them, and that, my friends, is an absolutely vicious cycle to be a part of. If you're listening in tonight and you are resonating with this show because you are feeling a little disconnected or lonely or cut off from the world, if you're feeling a little empty or a little lost, I want to encourage you to look inward at that internal life of yours and think about the masks you're wearing and how those might be actually contributing to this feeling you're experiencing right now. These examples that come to me from my own life experiences seem worthy of sharing, you know, sensing that someone's going to be disappointed in me and fearing that disappointment will lead to some kind of rejection or shame, you know, for who I am or what I've done, I know, for me, that turned into putting on a mask of sort of fixing things or people pleasing, maybe over explaining to the world something I was thinking or doing, but just trying to be someone who can really get along and make amends in some way that seems outside of what I'm

Aaron Tabacco: 00:23:07

actually feeling or needing. And sure that tension kind of drops, and I feel like I've gained a little sense of control. But honestly, in the long term, it just leads to a state of exhaustion and self erasure, erasing my true self from the situation, simply because I fear that I might be rejected, so I put on a mask to try to cover all of that up. And if I do that, it must mean that I can manage people and feel safe, but the reality is, I lose myself in the process.

Aaron Tabacco: 00:23:49

It's really interesting. I'm going back again to you know, my sort of author companion tonight, Rachel Naomi remin, she talks about these influences of others in our lives and how we get caught up in this masking cycle. And she wasn't intending to write about this, perhaps in this moment, but she specifically said, you know, if you carry someone else's fears and live by someone else's values, you may find that you have lived someone else's life, and isn't that what's happening when we're masking? We have our own fears. Certainly they may or may not feel very real to us, but we have them, so we put the mask on. But what's really interesting is that we're doing that anticipating someone else's values, someone else's fears, that our behavior, our way of thinking, our beliefs, our showing up, isn't adequate enough. We. We're not good enough for them. We fear the rejection because we are carrying the their discomforts, and so we put that mask on, and at the end of the day, that's kind of the problem, isn't it? It may be that in all this masking, we're living someone else's life a different version of ourself, an incomplete version of ourself, maybe someone else entirely. And that is where, my friends, we come to the edge, the edge inherent in all of this masking circle. How do we find and interrupt that cycle? What within us needs witnessing? Where can I exist in the world that doesn't require a mask on my face, and how do I get myself there?

Aaron Tabacco: 00:26:22

So here we are. We've discovered the edges. This invitation. We have to wake up to this pattern of masking and ask ourselves if it's really worth it all, if we're getting the needs met we really have, if we are being truly embraced and witnessed and included for who we really are in all of these situations, or are we going to just kind of linger at the edge of crossing over, into dropping those masks, staying there for whatever amount of time, it feels like, until something changes within us, what does the need to put these masks on in the first place reveal to us about ourselves? What is the invitation it's offering us? Personally, I know how hard it can really be to take some of those masks off after a certain point, we confuse the masks with our own actual identity, and the thought of taking them off becomes terrifying, and the real life implications of taking them off are just as real as life itself, and yet the costs we pay are so high. Not only does it leverage damage in our own lives, but it can really leverage damage in our relationships, sometimes even in the lives of others. I know I'm not immune from this. I'm deeply struggling right now, just getting this first episode together, I discovered in thinking so deeply about masks that I myself had unknowingly put on this mask of competence that I think is getting in the way of my relationship with my producer and my production team, who have all the competence in the world to steward this work forward, and yet I've held on to this mask that no I can do this. I think I've got it figured out to my own detriment, and it's created, you know, a pretty significant amount of stress in my own body.

Aaron Tabacco: 00:29:07

And that's something that I can really relate to, and maybe you can relate to as well that, you know, this cognitive exercise of, gosh, can I take this mask off? Is one level, the emotional discomforts that come from it that start to become a small, quiet voice in the back of our head saying, just take the leap, drop the mask. They become more persistent. Those voices and they stay with us. Sometimes they become louder. Ultimately, I have discovered that our bodies really do keep the score, and the longer and longer we inhabit masks that are not our true selves, the greater the toll on our body and. And the louder it will scream at us to say, enough is enough. We may find ourselves in positions in severe cases of becoming completely immobilized, spending days in our own bedrooms, unable to get out of bed because we don't know who we are, we've erased ourselves from life itself. I mean, think about it, if there's a mask, there's probably a costume, and if there's a mask and a costume, there's probably a script. And the thing about performing our lives like that is that the audiences we're serving only ever want more of our masked self standing ovations, encores are lauded out at us. Well, the world seems to say this is what we like and want more of from you, whether it's really you or not. I don't know that I have your answers my friends, but I know I feel better immediately right now, having just shared that I feel just connecting with you across these airwaves, sitting with these ideas of the masks and the edges, they're revealing. It brings me a sense of peace and comfort I have needed for several days.

Aaron Tabacco: 00:31:35

This is what I want from the circle's edges radio show. I want to be in community with you. I want to be in conversation with you, and in these late nights where we're sleepless and worried and fretting and wondering and lost, I want us to be able to come together in that asynchronously, synchronously, synchronously across space and time. I don't know where in the world you are at right now, what time of day it might be, what your circumstances are, or what this is all bringing up for you, but I want you to know whatever masks you're wearing and whatever is underneath it all, it's all okay. That sounds so trite to say, but it's it's okay in that you're safe here. We can spend our time considering these unanswerable questions together, and know that however you're showing up is the right way, and whatever path you're on probably is the right path for you. And I'm just hoping that as we sit and think deeply, I know I will be doing this about the masks I am aware of, and maybe even the masks more importantly, I'm not seeing that I'm putting on, the masks I'm still operating by that are on some Hidden script in the back of my programming, that those things will come to light, and that maybe across space and time, you and I will be a little better, a little more courageous in dropping the masks. Of course, what I want for all of us is to just remain feeling safe in the world, and that's no small feat right now. So please know whatever course you need to take with your masks, I trust, is the right course for you, and I'll hope for a time and day and circumstance when it's just so much easier for all of us to set them aside, take them off, and be fully present with each other as we are, because another thing I know for a certainty is that we need you, the real You, the unmasked you. I need you the world needs the natural, organic, real gifts and person you are to show up and deliver to us the spark that only you honestly can provide. So I'm hoping that this

Aaron Tabacco: 00:34:41

edge, as scary as it may be, can feel just a little less scary tonight, knowing we're working on it together and you're not alone.

Aaron Tabacco: 00:35:04

Well, my friends, it's almost time for lights out. Time for me to blow out the candles in my office, lower the reclining armchair I'm sitting in get myself to bed. Probably time for you to do the same to get some sleep. But I want to thank you so deeply for the generosity and the trust in showing up here to circles edges, for being willing to listen to my little ramblings about masks and the edges they expose the ways we label ourselves and the rest of the world. I'm going to reflect again in presence one more time, the great Rachel remin, who's helped me out this evening with a few quotes from books of hers I love. She says a label is a mask life wears. We put labels on life all the time, right, wrong, success, failure, lucky, unlucky. Labeling sets up an expectation of life that is often so compelling we can no longer see things as they really are. This expectation often gives us a false sense of familiarity towards something that is really new and unprecedented. We are in a relationship with our expectations, but not with life itself. Such a profound thing to take in that when we put these masks on and perform our lives from behind them, when we put them on others and on situations. Labeling the world through this lens, we actually create a relationship with our expectations. We believe the unreal is real, an d yet, of course, there is no ability for satisfaction in that, no ability for connection, no ability for fulfillment. My hope and I would use the word benediction to reclaim a word I felt was taken from me when I left my religious life behind. I would like to leave you with that benediction tonight, this idea that we can step out and enjoy the silent spaces between where we are right now, in this moment, in circles, edges, and when we will come back together again, that in that space of silence, you'll find a gift of reflection, a sense of new belonging in knowing that this is a place you should be if it resonates with you, and that together, you

Aaron Tabacco: 00:38:14

have found A little bit of a community of like minded people who want to see who you really are and experience the gifts you bring to the world. I'll leave you with that last little bit of light for tonight and offer you good wishes and a good night.