The gaze of another person upon us is a powerful thing.
Exposed to this scrutiny, unable to control what the other sees nor how they make sense of how they see us, the strange and delicate dance of seeking and averting, pulling and pushing, displaying and hiding begins.
When the other’s gaze is loving, caring, accepting, understanding, its powers are healing. When we are able to receive this gaze as it is offered, we feel validated, we feel truly seen, we feel worthy. We feel good without needing to be any more or any less. We can trace back this feeling to the loving gaze of the (archetypal and actual) mother, father or caretaker watching the child we were. That early experience of a loving gaze holds many cues to the way we approach other people’s gaze in our older years.
If we were lucky enough to receive that loving gaze in a consistent and sustained manner as a child, our ability to express self-love and to uphold lovable parts of ourselves when we are faced with criticisms or wounding comments remains strong. We bounce back, without too much harm to our sense of self-worth. Maybe a bruise or two, but nothing that leaves a trace beyond the surface of the skin. Of course, early exposure to a loving gaze is not quite enough for the deeply social beings we are: any reinforcement of our inalienable worthiness helps. The lovingly uplifting gaze of the lover, the warm or admiring gaze of a friend, the welcoming gaze of a stranger – each are fleeting yet meaningful reminders that our uniqueness is lovable and worthy.
If, however, something went awry in the early experience of the loving gaze, our vulnerability to the scrutiny of others – real-life others or our own ‘internal others’ which Jung referred to as complexes – is heightened and can become a real hindrance on the path to self-acceptance or self-confidence. What could go awry? Maybe the gaze was loving alright but not sustained for long enough. Maybe the gaze was loving but not communicated in a way that was understood as such. Maybe the gaze was inconsistently or inadequately loving. Maybe we hardly ever met a loving gaze in our early infancy. The point is that the crucial foundations of our experience of being seen by the other are then incomplete, weakened. And so remains a significant gap in our self-love capacity. We learn to grow up on unstable grounds, and we can do a pretty good job at handling it all well in appearance. We learn to hide the gap, rationalizing that it was not even a gap at all, probably. Yet its effects still show. They may show through a search for perfection, for excellence, for more of […something, anything…]; they may hide underneath an assertive persona that compensates for a fragile or wounded core self; they may trigger a painful cycle of co-dependencies that reinforce rather than appease the need for loving (self-)acceptance. The story does not have to end there, but it is important to acknowledge the shaky foundations which need and deserve attention before tackling more mundane issues of just “loving yourself” in an Instagram way.
When the other’s gaze is judging, spiteful, angry, hateful, shaming, its powers are destructive. We crumble, we shrink, we scream, we flee – leaving part of our skin behind, raw and in pain. The destructive gaze pierces through our neatly stacked self-care defenses to blaze our core sense of Self. It can leave the strongest of us shattered for a while. It can leave us deeply lonely, deeply empty.
What happens next clearly showcases the importance of our early encounters with a loving gaze that has been sufficiently consistent so that we could internalize and integrate some of its healing powers. The destructive gaze of the other forces us – or invites us? – to look at ourselves afresh, anew. Only within can we find the resources necessary to stand assertively and calmly as a soulful Self, uncompromising and untouched by the other’s gaze. If our internal gaze has anchored enough care, acceptance, understanding and love from our early experiences, then we stand a fair chance at finding the resources needed to respond to the destructive gaze: we shrug, we question it with curiosity, we nod as we try to understand it, we may even offer it a smile as a peace offering. This encounter becomes an opportunity to understand another experience – an other’s experience.
If, however, we have not anchored enough resources to nourish our internal gaze, the other’s gaze can haunt us for days, weeks and months. The judgmental or sentencing gaze can feel so believable that we start doubting our own worth, and we are at pain to find ways to not believe it. We frantically seek reassurance in the gaze of other others, but these feel more often than not like temporary band aids rather than sustainable validation. This is because, as painful as it may be, the only gaze powerful enough to respond constructively to the other’s destructive gaze is our own. The task, then, is to strengthen our internal gaze by adding bit by bit the loving, caring, accepting components that are not yet there and that have left a gap.
Alone with my Self, how do I scrutinize me? What do I see, without compromises? What do I know is fundamentally lovable and loving? What do I know is subject to tougher scrutiny than other aspects of my Self? It does not matter whether our mind or our emotional self struggle to accept the validity of that gaze – and they very well could, especially at the start of the process. If so, persist. There is always a lovable and loving ground upon which more bits can be laid out, with time. Ultimately, our honest, Self-guided internal gaze contains all the resources we need to engage with the other’s gaze, and for the other to receive, in turn, the experience of our gaze upon them.
Notice how you receive and respond to the other’s gaze as you walk in a street or a park. What do you sense and what do you feel? What do you notice in terms of thoughts or feelings when you receive the other’s gaze? How do you make sense of the other’s gaze? When does your internal gaze intervene in that process – if you notice it at all? What is your spontaneous response? What is the response you actually give to the other?
Repeat the exercise as you walk in Nature. Notice the full experience of walking without a human being’s gaze upon you. What is your experience of Nature’s gaze? What about the gaze of any wildlife you cross path with?
From these experiences, what can nourish and strengthen your internal gaze?