Episode 72: Nadereh Fanaeian

[Namu]

This is one of the most helpful episodes I've heard so far.

When Paul praises the maturity, selflessness, courage, and strength required to behave in such a responsible, restrained way with her long-lost son, Nadereh resists the temptation to get swept up in positivity. Hers is not the lightweight, compulsive, compulsory humility that's characteristic of much civil discourse; it's deep and bravely defended recognition of the range of human experience.

When people recount their journeys of recovery of various sorts, I try to listen with caution; despite commonalities between the content of our respective traumatic pasts, much of how other people describe their current experience is shot through with perspectives and assumptions that differ greatly from my own. It's very difficult to translate much of what people relate into something I can apply to my own current struggles to cope. If I don't filter what I hear through what I've learned from my own experience, I tend to find myself disappointed by results that vary greatly from what I've been led to expect. As time goes on, and the flow of purified optimism continues, my sense grows that my experience is significantly different from everyone else's, and I take less and less encouragement from hearing other people describe how they've outlasted or overcome difficult times.

Lately, I've been slipping a bit deeper into despair, even as I keep trying to create new resources for my own recovery. It's helpful to hear Nadereh dig in her heels to bear witness to the ugly, awful parts of life, which so easily get glossed over in moments of relative success. Here is a person who makes sense to me, who doesn't give in to the temptation and the social invitation to take advantage of a moment of positivity to minimize the negative. Instead, she acknowledges the positive as only one part of a much bigger picture of dark and light. In this way, she gives me the gift of inclusion. At a time when she can speak coherently about her struggles and can keep from getting lost in the darkness, she refuses to take refuge in language that assumes that each step back is erased by two steps forward. Our language and culture insist on center-staging positivity, confining negative thoughts, feelings, and encounters to a small supporting role, or to the role of villain. In this way, negativity is yoked to a script, which amounts to being silenced. Nadereh lets the darkness be, without checking first to make sure Diva Positivity won't have a meltdown about it. She makes a space in which confused and floundering I, so lacking in the experiences and resources that many people rely on to give them hope, might legitimately exist.

... right up until nearly the end of the interview, when she gets caught in the current of her gratitude for how much goodness she has experienced lately, and seems to say that the upswing of her own recent journey is "proof" that others can achieve, or receive, the same happiness.

I think that periods of relief from long suffering, and novel experiences of healing, must be a bit like being newly in love; people want to share their joy, and they tend to believe that anything is possible. We do well to recognize the symptoms of romantic love; we must wait it out until the lover's feet come back to the ground before we once again can relate as basically rational adults. When someone's in love, I'm not motivated to drink that kool-aid; being in love looks very enjoyable, but I don't fall in love with someone just because that person has become the object of a friend's adoration. But this other giddiness is more seductive: I desperately want relief and healing, so when I hear people say, "Look, it happened for me, so that means it can happen for you too!", I want to believe it, no matter how much my situation and my resources differ, and no matter that there is no logical basis to that construct. Many people don't get better, ever, despite asking for help, being vulnerable, following advice, and all the rest.

I'm not convinced I won't ever get better; I just know that, for me, pretending to know the future, believing that fantasies and predictions are "true," is demoralizing and destabilizing, and it sets me up for disappointment and cynicism.

People who push optimism seem to think they're being encouraging, and apparently many people are actually encouraged by unfounded predictions of better things to come. I feel discouraged and alienated by positive predictions that seem rooted in ephemeral feelings rather than observation and reason. Feelings are poor guides for predicting the future, in my experience.

Nadereh's one dip into effulgence was brief, and I deeply appreciate her most-of-the-time defense of a more balanced perspective. From her, I can draw some hope. In her cautious, moderated perspective, I see the possibility that my present could become the past of a better future.

[Glock therapy]

I agree really strongly with you. This may be the reason I find the surveys to generally be my favorite part of the show. The interviews tend to have a “I-once-was-lost-but-now-am-(sorta)-found” arc that tend to lose me. Basically, I feel lost and unable to manage being alive, and so in order to truly not feel alone—as the show’s catchphrase promises—I need to hear from others who are similarly bewildered and overwhelmed. I heard the Nadereh episode a while ago and my memory of it is now dim, but I recall relating a bit better than usual and a lot moreso than I expected to. I appreciated your take, Namu, you're obviously super-bright and express yourself clearly and artfully.

[Namu]

Glock therapy,

I'm so glad you wrote! Thank you. Your praise feels lovely and encouraging, and your sharing my experience is maybe even better. For this moment, thanks to you, I feel a bit of not-alone.

: ^]

Namu

[rivergirl]

Hi Namu,
Your post itself made me feel a bit of not-alone. Thank you so much for sharing.

rivergirl