Community is about weaving different relationships together
A diverse “relationship portfolio” allows different parts of you to come together
Hello dear Connector!
A warm welcome to all who joined this week — I can see quite a few of you in here! Thank you for coming in to the Hub. :)
Before I dive into this week’s post, two exciting announcement of what I’m co-hosting this June!
Ecstatic Dance Retreat with Laura Walter (aka Laura “Yoniverse Tantra” for some ;). I was so thrilled when she invited me to collaborate on this! I am going to bring some Authentic Relating into this wonderful retreat at the banks of Loch Tay, 14-16th June.
Authentic Community Leadership Training with
and from Authentic Revolution at The Salisbury Centre, 28-30th June. Sara and Geof are my main teachers and mentors, and I’m so excited to welcome them in Edinburgh!
If you’re interested in either of these, please reply to this email or email me at hello@martabrzosko.com. I’ll give you more information!
Now, continuing with the community-building theme… Here’s a piece I birthed this week.
It has officially been over two years since I “stepped into community.” I remember setting this intention in the first days of 2021, in the height of lockdown.
Back then, community felt further away then ever.
At the same time, I felt in my bones that my “hermit period” was coming to an end. I was just closing in four years of solitary writing work, coupled with moving places so often that I couldn’t root myself in any community.
In January 2021, I was sowing the first seeds for community as an adult. With my two friends we lived in what we dubbed the “Polish House in Bonnyrigg.” We created a three-person family, who stuck together through the dark winter of 2020/21. We pulled out all kinds of skeletons from the closet as we healed in each other’s presence.
As 2021 turned into 2022, I moved into The Salisbury Centre. There, I realized that community was something even larger than that.
Community isn’t simply about bonding. It’s not just about support and friendships. It’s not even about the healing.
As much as these things have been important, I realized that, to me, community has been about experiencing different relationships and levels of proximity with people. That’s what allowed me to integrate different parts of myself, some of which have previously been at odds.
You’re more than just one person — and that’s great
I wrote in the past about how diversifying your identity creates psychological resilience. Here, I want to mention it again — in the context of community.
A variety of relationships contributes to our emotional resilience, too. That’s because we develop a more robust identity when we interact with different people.
In a community like The Salisbury Centre, I know some people from close-up and others, from far-away. Some of them are really good friends. Others became collaborators. Others still come to my workshops or community events, and that’s the main context we interact in.
With all of them, I feel differently, have different conversations, and show different parts of myself. And, that’s giving me strength.
If you’re familiar with Internal Family Systems (IFS) Model, you may be used to thinking about yourself as a collection of personalities — rather than just a singular fixed one. The IFS Model proposes that “it is the nature of the mind to be subdivided into an indeterminate number of subpersonalities or parts.” Human development and healing is largely about getting familiar with all your parts — and, facilitating interactions between them.
When all parts talk to each other and work together, they resemble a highly collaborative crew on a ship. Author and educator Meg-John Barker, PhD captured it beautifully in this illustration from their Plural Selves zine:
However, as Barker points out, our “plural selves” don’t necessarily live in such harmony. Because of our conditioning and traumas, our ships may be run in a less-than-healthy way.
Some of our parts are disowned — while others take over and “run the show”:
Because of how our society is built, most people have been taught that certain parts are more “okay” or “acceptable” that others. That’s how we come to the second ship crew scenario.
Now, how does all of that relate to being in a community?
My experience — backed with some theory — tells me that having many different relationships can help us welcome more of our parts.
Your community is your “relationship portfolio”
Will you excuse me this stock market parallel here? ;-)
I realize it may feel a bit off to mention stocks when we’re taking about community. At the same time, I find this is a perfect metaphor. It explains why we need different relationships to build a healthy ecosystem of our plural selves.
First off, a diverse “relationship portfolio” means that you have different types and levels of proximity within your community. You invest in some relationships more than others. There may also be times when some of them “pay higher dividends” — while others plummet.
That doesn’t affect you so much when you’ve diversified your portfolio.
Secondly, all those different relationships make it easier to welcome different parts of you. This hit me when I came back into The Salisbury Centre after being away for 1.5 months, and reconnected with my community.
I walked into a communal dinner straight from the airport. As I was greeted by different people after being away, I felt the multitude of my parts being welcomed.
A regular participant in my authentic relating sessions greeted me with a specific type of respect. They saw me as a “facilitator,” a knowledgeable person. This helped the confident and competent parts of me feel seen.
My housemates, who’ve seen my tears and pettiness many times, also said hello. I could feel our relationship holding those vulnerable states they saw me in. Thanks to that, my fragile and insecure parts were also welcomed to the gathering.
My partner, who’s seen my intimate and sexy side, was there too. Because we had a relationship where I showed my playful and sensual parts, he saw me through that lens. He complimented my tanned skin and flirted with me. Thanks to that, the sexual and physical part of me also felt honoured and welcomed.
During that dinner, I saw how my outside community mirrored the internal crew of different parts. Because I had many different relationships in my “portfolio,” different parts of me were met and validated.
Thanks to that, I also experienced more harmony between my parts. They were all able to be acknowledged in one room, at the same time. None seemed more or less important than others.
How exactly the community of parts impacts your wellbeing
Do you know that strange feeling when you’re surrounded by people who normally belong to different contexts in your life — but for some reason, they’re suddenly meeting?
Let me give an example. Say you’re on a walk with your mum and you bump into your old high school friends. Suddenly, you need to have a conversation with people who reflect two quite different sides of you.
How easily you’re able to do that depends on how well-acquainted you are with your different parts— plus, how used they are to speaking to each other.
If they’re largely separated, it may likely feel strange and uncomfortable. You may feel the need to hide a part of yourself from your mom that you’d comfortably show in front of your friends (or vice versa).
But if those parts have some practice of being together, it can be a positive experience. You may discover a whole new way of being. You may notice that jokes you thought were only “appropriate” with your friends are also funny to your mum… or at least, they allow her to get to know you better!
How well our different parts talk to each other is one thing. But there’s another reason to recognize and validate them — and it has to do with how they are (or, aren’t) included in your identity.
Patricia Linville from Duke University who’s done some research on this talks about it as “self-complexity.” She calls different parts of ourselves “self-aspects” — and highlights different life roles they represent.
For example, within your self-identity you can have an aspect of a mother, daughter, co-worker, wife, artist, friend, athlete, and many more. The trick to better psychological wellbeing, Linville says, is spreading your identity across those different aspects — rather than over-identifying with one.
That’s what self-complexity is all about.
In her study, Linville found that nurturing different self-aspects builds a “cognitive buffer against stress-related illness and depression.” It’s because if we “fail” in one of our roles, we can fall back on other identity aspects to keep our overall self-esteem intact.
For example, if you feel you screwed up as a mother — you can rely on your work performance for your sense of competence. But this is only possible if you identify with your role as a mother and worker in equal parts. Linville showed that people who don’t attach their identity to just one role are better predisposed for coping with stress and life’s challenges.
In fact, the more self-aspects our identity includes, the better.
Now, to circle it back to your outer community of people that you know.
The more diverse your “relationship portfolio,” the more it helps you cultivate various self-aspects. This means you recognize yourself in many different roles and hence… build resilience.
Research and experience showed me that it’s not just close relationships we need. It’s undeniable now: humans are build for living in wider communities, not nuclear families.
Ideally, we have a wide spectrum of connections. Relationships big and small, close and more detached, more and less important, allow us to see ourselves in different ways.
That’s what helps us thrive — and not just survive.
Thanks so much for articulating this so well Marta! It's something I've been thinking about myself for some time (I even wrote about it in a much earlier post when trying to talk about play as a tool for improving our confidence; quoted below). I love the distinction you're making here about relationships serving as the means through which we can welcomes all parts of ourselves. Would love to hear how your thoughts on this evolve and refine.
For myself, I've noticed much more comfortably in weaving together different relationships, even small things like talking on the phone to people in earshot of others (which I used to struggle to do, and now realise it was because I was different people to different people and didn't know how to integrate them). Such a fun lens to play with.
"In the improv and acting environments, we are given full permission to be all of us. We’re encouraged to try on different versions of ourselves and play with different aspects of our voices, bodies and perspectives. There is no pressure to perform, reach a goal or achieve a metric. We’re not expected to ‘be’ a certain way. We can fully inhabit our whole selves. In IFS, it’s suggested that we are all made up of parts. Could it be that in the contexts where imposter syndrome creeps in, we feel unworthy, not good enough, [fill in the blank] because we tie so much of our worth to the performance of one part of ourselves and forget to nurture our whole being, in all its facets, richness and complexity?
Many of the environments we operate in as adults require a certain ‘part’ of ourselves to show up. And for many, these environments become limited and limiting. The opportunity for us to habit and embody other parts or aspects of ourselves becomes narrower and more limited as we grow older and we engage less in activities that fulfil us and opt for what’s familiar and comfortable. How often do we do something for the sake of doing it? How often do we pick up a new hobby, skill or activity? How often do we share the parts of us ourselves reserved for those closest to us with our colleagues or clients instead? Could embodying our full-human selves create the conditions for a firm self-confidence to spill over into all areas of our lives?"