A lot of practical things went wrong for me today – computers, recordings, simple practical details around courses. This added extra work onto the calendar and in speeding up things gets lost and mislaid. Have you ever noticed that sometimes  when things like this go wrong and disturb us, we have a tendency to think that something is wrong with us or the overall direction of our lives.  We may simply think we are doing too much. Sometimes it can go deeper and we think our whole life is out of sync. We seem to have a deep-down tendency to identify with a difficulty and let that affect how we see ourselves or how our life is going. This can also lead us to split the world into “good” and “bad” – or them and us-  seeing the situation or a person as all bad, and thinking that the best way of dealing with difficulties is to move them completely out of our life. Sadly, this maximizing of distance in order to increase a sense of personal safety often just solidifies our fearful or defensive sense of self.

Splitting is one of the primitive defense mechanisms described from Freud onwards, and is found particularly in Melanie Klein’s work. It is one of the more simplistic ways of dealing with life’s problems, rooted in the baby’s tendency of associating good experiences with a  “good” person and bad experiences with a “bad” person.  It is generally replaced as the child gets older by an understanding that good and bad occasions can reside in the one person and that does not make them “bad”. It is,  nonetheless  a common  way of behaving even in adults.  It is often activated when we are threatened, and means that we are unable to see complexity in a situation or a person, preferring rather seeing it or them as all bad.  It tells us that there is no grey area, and as a result people are frozen into a certain moment or fault and we let that moment define them. We can do it to ourselves also and solidify the most negative core beliefs about ourselves, letting them define our life, seeing it as threatened or frightened.

Mindfulness practice can help us be aware of this and other defense mechanisms arising, – to see fear forming – and help us notice the desire to withdraw –  normally accompanied by a kind of defensive story-line- as it appears.  If we can spot this happening we may have enough of a gap to see the whole drama . If so, we can question what is feeling threatened, whether it is really actually me, or some story which I have about myself and my life. If we can resist the tendency to split we can come to see that everything is actually workable. We can then experience for ourselves that it is ultimately possible to be open to everything, and to keep a compassionate heart available for others and for all that occurs in our lives.