Giraffe Honesty and Jackal Honesty
"I am the victim": A story of barely being able to 'scream in Giraffe'
On a stormy day, I ran up to the rooftop to cover the young saplings in my terrace garden. When I wanted to come downstairs, I realized my mom just locked the door to our rooftop. Thus I'm stuck under a raging rain. Panicked, I shouted as loud as I could, calling my mom's and sister's names. My mom quickly realized I was stuck and went to open the door for me.My sister didn't know what was happening, and she was afraid when she heard my shouts, to the point of running around the rooms looking for me to see what was the matter. When she first saw me coming downstairs, she burst, "What the heck do you think you're doing, screaming like that?! Why don't you just bring your phone for f*ck's sake?!".
I was wet, cold, scared, and when I heard that I was so upset and angry. I thought I deserved more care, she was being so self-centered and her expectation of bringing my phone in the rain was unfair. I went into a bathroom to cry and calm down, and called a friend. During that time, my sister was inviting my cousins to come over for snacks. Usually I would join and we'd have a good time together, but on that day I just couldn't pretend that what happened didn't impact me tremendously. Yet I was trying to tell myself in my head that my inner experience is my responsibility. She wasn't the cause of my anger, sadness and loneliness in that moment.
I was still struggling to find a way to express the impact on me without blame. I wanted an acknowledgement from my sister that my feelings and needs for care and consideration matter. Without that acknowledgement, I cannot easily feel safe in this relationship. I also understood that if she smells blame in any way, she will probably further recoil and rebuff, while the truth was that her outburst came out of worry for my safety. However, in that moment my head was still very hot. There was no way I could face her without spilling my emotions without blame, I thought.
At that very moment, my sister needed to fetch a mask from the room I was in. She knocked and I just screamed: "I'm very sad and I'm very angry! I don't want to talk!". She still opened the door, took the mask and got out. I'm left with my friend still on the call with me, and a sense of relief washed over me. I believed I came the closest to "screaming in Giraffe" in that moment. Although the words are perfectly "I" language, without any finger-pointing, deep inside I still wanted my sister to be accountable for the impact of what she said. I'm still teasing out the nuances between demanding accountability and blaming.
Defining Giraffe Honesty and Jackal Honesty
For me, honesty means expressing what we are aware of internally.
- For Jackals, they are mostly aware only of thoughts:
- "This is what I think/ others think about the world.": "The world is unfair. You care for people and still are treated like shit." Jackals might take their opinions to be facts.
- "This is what I think/ others think about you .": "You're self-centered and hot-tempered."
- For Giraffes, they are aware of the distinction between observation and interpretations, of thoughts, feelings and needs:
- "This is what I observe and how I interpret it.": "When you asked me why I didn't bring my phone, I take it to mean that you want me to foresee that these things could happen and I should do my part to not inflict worries on other people."
- "Along with this interpretive thought, I also feel these sensations/ feelings. They point me to what I really want.": "I feel indignant. I want more care and consideration for how scared I was, and how I didn't mean to scare you. I know you don't have capacity to do that right now so I'm calling another friend for empathy."
In all the cases above, Jackals and Giraffes are both being honest about what they're aware of. Jackal Honesty often puts others in defensive mode. Giraffe Honesty is more likely to induce shared understanding.
However, under the words, there're beliefs about who is responsible for what. I can use perfectly observation-feeling-need language without taking responsibility for my feelings, my choices and my impact on others. These relates to the following skills in the Pathways to Liberation Matrix (Manske et al., 2021):
- Taking ownership of one's feelings: Living from the knowledge that I alone cause my emotions - my emotions are not caused by others.
- Discernment: Clarity, insight, and wisdom in making life-serving distinctions and choices; recognizing one has choice.
- Awareness of response-ability: Freely choosing one's responses to what shows up in life, owning one's part in what happens. Not owning others' parts, and acknowledging that one's actions do influence others.
Self-responsibility
"I am the perpetrator": A story of barely being able to 'take responsibility'
Several years ago, I had a very close friendship. I used to send letters that can be interpreted as romantic. When my friend wanted us to have an agreement of the level of intimacy we were having, I said I only intended for us to be normal friends. My friend expressed hurt feelings: "You encouraged me to have more feelings for you, and now you say it's all in my head only?" At that time, I tried to explain my good intentions, tried to tell them how I was responsible for my words, but their feelings were their responsibility, "we're responsible for our own internal experience", etc. Looking back, I believe if I was them, I would felt lonely and angry. Their needs for shared reality and mutuality were invalidated. I didn't acknowledgement their pain adequately. Of the four parts to accountability suggested by Mia Mingus, I didn't empathize fully with them (self-reflection & apology) or take action to care for their pain (repair).
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| [Image designed by Danbee Kim that reads, “Four Parts to Accountability: self reflection, apology, repair, changed behavior.” Each part is in a separate red box, with a drawing of three small potted plants underneath. A quote by Mia Mingus at the bottom reads, “True accountability is not only apologizing, understanding the impacts your actions have caused on yourself and others, making amends or reparations to the harmed parties; but most importantly, true accountability is changing your behavior so that the harm, violence, abuse does not happen again.” There is a small box at the bottom that reads, “For more, visit http ://bit.ly/BAC2020”] |
What is self-responsibility?
Have you ever told someone, "You have to be responsible for yourself!"? I often do this when I perceive blame or expectation that I have to somehow make a person feel better or make their lives easier. Personally, I've experienced the profound freedom that comes from taking ownership of my inner interpretation of an experience. For example, my neighbors singing karaoke is no longer offensive when I have the thought that "They're most alive and passionate while they are singing!". However, I have found that such perception-shifting feat is the easiest when I feel safe, content, cared for. When I demand another person to be responsible for their interior conditions, without supporting them in doing such perception-shifting feat, I am usually met with more disconnection, anger and sadness.
While reading Bob Wentworth's article, I realized that I often evaded "responsibility" because I very much wanted autonomy, or the certainty that I chose my action out of my own volition. In our everyday Jackal language, taking responsibility is largely about "accepting obligation, credit, and blame". When I take life-alienating (Jackal) responsibility, I act out of an idea, a story, and I am disconnected to the moment-by-moment shifts of my interior life. This disconnection is the source of missing autonomy, because I believe our only true choice is in the moment.
Bob Wentworth further distinguished life-alienating responsibility and life-serving (Giraffe) responsibility by pointing out how I'm the only one with access to my internal interpretations and autonomy. I have a unique role in shaping my perception. In my interaction with others, I'm also the one who did or said something in that context. I have a unique role in giving attention to and caring for that context. There is no obligation for me to accept that I have these unique roles, but if I acknowledge these roles, I feel so much more alive. I feel connected to myself in that moment. I feel connected to the context I am in, instead of being stuck in abstractions and thoughts. And I believe that if I let myself experience this connection, I will naturally be motivated to give and to care.
Other reflections
At the start, for me, Giraffe Honesty is being clear about my thoughts, my feelings, my needs, and saying these things. Jackal Honesty is saying judgments, but the judgments are honest thoughts, too. Do Giraffes lie, i.e. deliberately say something that is different from the internal experience, for example, downplaying the impact on oneself, saying that one need is satisfied even though it isn't? If so, Giraffe is aware that it is deliberately doing so to take care of a need for safety, harmony, etc. I think it is impossible to call a Jackal a dishonest or manipulative person, when they are unaware of what we assume to be their intentions.
This is where I believe honesty (or its cousin sincerity) is tied in with self-responsibility. When we talk about an objective fact (e.g. Someone said "I didn't steal money" and the camera showed otherwise.), we're talking about honesty. When we talk about interior experiences (e.g. "I believe that money is mine anyway; the world takes so much from me already."), we're talking about sincerity. We are not good judges of another person's sincerity, because we don't have access to their internal awareness. Therefore, we have a higher chance for inner peace if we focus our energy on what we're responsible for: our moment-to-moment choices.
"I'll never put these crap chemicals in my body." = judgment, jackal honesty (also discernment)
Criticism, judgment, blame, label, diagnosis = jackal honesty.
State fact and emotion + deepest longings = giraffe honesty
Though, even this may have pitfalls. For example, I don’t want to be told that I AM responsible for my inner experience, or it IS my job to attend to this — that smacks of a “should” or moralistic thinking or “have to,” which I find painful and disempowering. Rather, I’d prefer to think that I’m uniquely positioned to be able to do this job (nobody else has nearly as much access to knowing my inner experience) and I am uniquely likely to benefit from having this job be done, and done well. So, it may be wise for me to choose to take on this job, choose to take responsibility for my inner experience and my actions, as a way of empowering myself and benefiting myself and others. Taking responsibility is not so much an obligation as a choice I find it beneficial to make. - Self-Responsibility
As I understand it:
- Taking life-alienating (Jackal) responsibility is largely about accepting obligation, credit, and blame.
- If I take life-serving (Giraffe) responsibility for something, this means:
- I accept having a unique role in giving attention to and caring for that something.
- I am connected to the life within me that calls me to take on that role. - Bob Wentworth
Some interpretations will lend themselves to more or less pain for me. It is not my needs as abstract entities that affect my experience, it is my needs as a dynamic, lived in the moment, continually re-interpreted, source of meaning in my life, coupled with my interpretation of the other person and their motivation. - Miki Kashtan
See tragedy instead of evil.
I have come to believe that any time we ask people from marginalized groups to focus on self-responsibility at the very time when they are taking the enormous risk of speaking truthfully of their experience rather than hiding it, we are reinforcing the very power differences that they are inviting us to look at.
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