When Institutions Can’t Mourn, They Replace.
When organisations are under stress, they sometimes find their own truth sayers.
Beware if you have an aspiration in that direction.
If you carry emotional truth, like grief, dissent or care, you may become unbearable.
Not because you are wrong.
But because you make visible what is denied to be experienced.
You will be welcomed at first. Even setup seductively to take out what previously the institution couldn’t bear itself. The old version of what you will soon be replaced by. A loop in making.
“We need you to become a counter to this other thing”
“We need you to create a healthy internal competition”
“We need you to save us from our own pain of depending on others”
You will feel very loved. Very welcomed.
Even admired.
But if there’s even an ounce of competence in you… you will name the loss. Challenge the denial. And remind of dependency.
Then the mood shifts again. What was seductive suddenly becomes distancing. Then silence. Then exile. All without a second thought but perhaps a decade in making.
If you study myths and narratives, this aint’ a surprise. It’s just history asking to be made sense of in small containers one loop at a time.
But life is real. And it hurts. You soon hear a message. First through others if you lucky and powerful to have others to act as containers. It is rarely that explicit. It arrives like a comet in a comment IF you are lucky to be ready to see. A narrowing of space. Basically it whispers:
“Fill the gap of the mourning we cannot face”
“Whatever it takes, do not name the wound”
And in the turbulent times like today, there’s many who are caught in moments like these now.
Being invited, seduced even, to take a role that’s tempting but one that no-one (really) wants. Not to be a leader, but to be a substitute. Not to transform, but to soothe on behalf. And yet be seemed to be loved. Used like a leader.
If you are here, the choice is:
dissociate and play the game, protecting yourself through numbed detachment or blind devotion
or stay with what needs to be held. usually your own grief, your care, tour refusal to give in.
in those moment i know many who turn to cynicism. i came from a ground zero of making cynical romantics. I am Polish, and we just had an election. But this isn’t about that.
what i want to say, is what served my people - and that’s the most radical thing sometimes - and it is to stay human.
To mourn. To bear witness to your own irrelevance without turning it into a performance. And to stubbornly and quietly remind others that real human transformation doesn’t come from replacements. It comes from dealing with what we’d rather cast out.
Not all narcissists are monsters. Not all institutions are cruel. But under stress, the need to disown pain is strong. And someone always pays the price.
Let it not be the ones who care most.
#Leadership #SystemsPsychodynamics #OrganizationalLife #Containment #Exile #InstitutionalDynamics #EmotionalTruth #GriefAndPower