Split-Brain

It’s one thing to be in work mode and another thing to be on vacation. But it’s something entirely different to attempt to do both at the same time. Today, I’m calling this: ‘split-brain’. I don’t recommend it even though sometimes it can’t be avoided.

Earlier today, split-brain sent me into an interminable WTF moment, searching for a digital file on the wrong platform, driven by habit and my inability to hit the pause button and ask: is this important right now? (The answer would have been NO.)

Yet here I am: writing about something that I want to discourage you from doing while I am doing it. Sometimes it sucks being so human, so riddled with contradictions and mistakes.

I’m at a lovely hotel in the very touristy town of Lake George, NY, enjoying time with my sister and her fiancé, but since I just returned from a restorative camping vacation, I felt like I couldn’t also take time off for this too. I can work part time and play part time. Sound familiar?

While driving here, I heard a phrase on the radio that keeps cycling around my head. I think it’s related to split-brainism. In a report about a man sitting on death row for a crime he likely did not commit, the reporter used the phrase “Designed to compound error“ to describe the US court system. I thought of the book Framed — Women in the Family Court Underworld by Dr. Christine Cocchiola, who I’m pretty sure would agree with this assessment. Sadly, coercive control is alive and well in some of the systems that were created to protect those who have been harmed by it. Authoritarian and cultic systems have been refined through generations of patriarchal, dualistic, and polarized thinking and institutional abuse. Court systems at their worst and cultic environments of all kinds create a split-brain duality that thrives on the dysregulated nervous systems of the people involved.

But until I heard the phrase, “designed to compound error,” I hadn’t considered the compounding nature of error within such systems. When we try to do two things at the same time, typically we don’t do either of them well. When I was living under the grip of the Center for Transformational Learning (CTL), the cultic group I was devoted to for 18 years, I was trying to live an authentic life but dedicated to principles that compromised autonomy. Split-brain. In the pressure pot of that environment, I made mistakes. These errors were not static; they compounded because that system was designed to benefit from each mistaken step away from self-agency.

Years ago, a savvy businesswoman I met called this the ‘gotcha trap’. She described how an unethical leader, let’s call him Bob, shared wisdom that inspired a whole group of smart people to want more from him. The information he shared was truthful and sincerely helpful. The next time they gathered, Bob offered more, but he included some dubious data. However, since what he previously shared was truthful, people assumed it was imbued with integrity. The third session with Bob is where things got dicey: he still delivered some respectable information, but it was increasingly riddled with BS. By then, though, people trusted him. Since his authority had been established early on, participants bought what he was selling — unaware they were being had. Soon enough, Bob was dishing out pure BS, and the compounding error of misplaced trust had produced devoted followers.

In the entire eighteen years my husband and I were devoted to CTL (yes, a cult), we took only ONE true family vacation. Doug, our ex-teacher, scoffed at “vacating” and encouraged his students instead to only take more lofty “holi-days”. The chapter in my memoir titled “Death Valley” details this family vacation, which was the last time I saw my brother before his tragic and sudden death. It was the hardest chapter for me to write because Raymond’s death created and exposed complex and devastating rifts within our family that I continue to reckon with to this day.

Writing is my way home to myself. Picking up my pen, the parts of myself recognize each other and say hello. My nervous system is settling. My mind is clearing.

Spending time with my sister Judy and her fiancé John is precious time. As is time with my mother who we will see tomorrow. They deserve all of me. And I want and need to be fully present with them and with myself.

As I complete this essay to share it, I am ditching work mode entirely until I return to my desk in a few days. Bye-bye split-brain. May I catch you sooner next time.