Collective Care Without The Romance

Community is supposed to be where we feel held, but what happens when it is also where we get hurt? We sit down as two licensed mental health professionals to talk about the side of collective care that rarely gets named: the inconvenience, the exhaustion, the conflict, and the fear that showing up again will cost too much. If “find your people” has ever felt like a punchline after religious trauma, workplace exploitation, activist burnout, or painful exclusion, we want you to feel seen.

We dig into how harm plays out in identity-based groups, mission-driven communities, and close friendships where people know your tender parts. We talk about what it feels like when your values are thrown back at you, when silence turns into misunderstanding, and when “shared purpose” becomes a lever for guilt and extraction. We also explore why community wounds travel, how a rupture in one group can shape every relationship after, and why disappointment is not proof that connection is failing, it is often part of the real work.

From boundaries to “leaving slack” in relationships, we share frameworks for staying human with each other while still protecting ourselves. We reflect on a Plum Village practice sometimes called the Peace Treaty, the idea of naming hurt within 24 to 48 hours, and the complicated truth that not everyone has the skills or nervous system capacity to do that quickly. We end by returning to brave space, imagination, and the kind of future we want to embody as future ancestors.

Read more here: https://www.parallax.org/mindfulnessbell/article/the-peace-treaty/

If this conversation brings something up, listen, share it with a friend who is rebuilding trust, and then subscribe and leave a review so more people can find it. What is the hardest part of “community” for you right now?

Thanks for listening, 

Tolu & Gitika 

You can reach us at kinnected.squarespace.com

Tolu is the Founder of Re-member Counseling & Gitika is the Founder of Pranh Healing & Wellness 

Transcript

Welcome Back And Bonus Reflections

Tolu 0:21

Hello, welcome. I'm back, y'all. So welcome to Connected, the podcast that centers collective care and relationships that outlast empire. We're your host, Tolu and Gitaka, two licensed mental health professionals in the so-called United States. So, first of all, Gittica, it's been a little, I think it's been two weeks. It's been a while since we've recorded together. I wanted to tell you, I really enjoyed the bonus episode you put out before we started recording. So I'm just gonna acknowledge you on the podcast while it's recorded. But I loved, loved, loved that I was listening to it today at the gym, actually. So yeah, I love that supported, safe, brave space conversation. It's constantly something that's evolving and happening, and you don't really arrive. So thank you for that offering to us. And the most recent.

A Poem’s Power And Repair

Gitika 1:17

Oh, I'm so glad you got to listen to it because it was one of those things where you and I weren't recording together that week, and I was like, oh, Donu, I have a surprise for you. Here's an episode for you. And of course, you know, for everyone, because I was feeling quite aware of um how much we've been like enjoying recording this podcast. And of course, you know, we have our respective lives and also our trainings and things that we're always attending to. And this poem has meant so much to me. I first read it in this book called So Emergent Strategy by Adrienne Marie Brown is of course brilliant, and then an accompaniment to emergent strategy, I believe was a book of hers that had like essays by a lot of other people who were talking about ways to put emergent strategy into practice, and one of the chapters was this poem, and and Mickey Scott Bay Jones talking about this poem. So I was introduced to this poem as a Mickey Scott Bay Jones poem. And of course, you know, uh, like I mentioned briefly on that bonus episode, it eventually emerged that it was written by someone else, but it was originally uh seen as anonymous, and then it turned out that the writer was known, and then of course Mickey Scott Bay Jones and the writer Beth Strano worked together on like figuring things out. Someday, maybe on Connected, we will get to talk about how they work this out, because being accused of plagiarism keep can feel like something that you don't ever recover from. But it really speaks to the power of this poem that it now has this history and it continues to really, really, yeah, say something.

Tolu 3:11

Yeah, that would be a cool way to explore that always repair. I mean, imagine like a rupture when you see your work somewhere being quoted by someone else, right? And then you don't get the credit for the work you put out. So, yeah, that would be a great future episode to explore together. I like that. I like that.

Gitika 3:29

I'll dig it on. I'll do the research. I'll see where we can do that.

Training Seasons And Somatic Learning

Tolu 3:34

Yeah. Also, too, I was gone because I was finishing up my training to become a certified somatic experiencing practitioner. Yay. So I'm finished that program. It's been a three-year program of somatic experiencing international, and I'm just so grateful to be done with that program. Also, too, I'm just grateful for the folks who have poured into me and the relationships I made. And I'm just excited to continue to learn and practice thematically with my clients and hold that framework as well too, as an additional resource for them. So trainings have been consuming me. I also assisted right after getting out of my training with another thematic training as well, too. So I've been deep baptized in the somatic experiencing space. Wow. Yes. You had a training as well, too, that you just completed.

Gitika 4:37

It's one of those things. I'm in a revolving door, Tolo. Seriously. I'm all this year, the first half of this year, I ended up signing up for so many trainings because I was like, oh, you know, there were all these things on my bucket list, and I ended up just I think signing up for all of them all at once. So I'm perpetually either offering a training or attending a training. So I'm in and out, in and out. So at any given point in time, it's safe to say I came out of a training or I'm heading into one because I literally am heading into one this week.

Naming Community’s Exhaustion

Tolu 5:08

Gotcha. Okay. Interested, understood. Love that. So you're constantly in and out of that space. For sure. Yeah. Love that. Well, I want to transition into our topic today. And I want to just name that we've been talking a lot about community, interdependence, and the need for it and how it's a crucial skill for our survival, right? Right. Emotionally, physically, all those things. But also, too, I want us to also acknowledge the inconvenience and exhaustion of being in community and practicing community and embodying community. So I wanted to kind of look at the flip side of it too. It's not easy and it can be difficult. And maybe that's a place where your harm has happened or abuse or rupture has happened for you. So we want to name that and we want to explore that too. The not so fun side of community. So as I'm as I name that, Gitika, what's coming up for you? I'm curious.

Gitika 6:18

I see your face.

Tolu 6:23

My face.

Gitika 6:24

My face.

unknown 6:24

My face.

Gitika 6:27

Yes. Yeah, I I think it's been very intentional that we first wanted to ground into all the possibilities that community can offer. Because sure enough, like you and I, Tolu, you and I have seen the benefits of being in community with people who are values aligned. To be values aligned in our politics is one thing, but to be values aligned even in the ways in which we express care, request care, express our needs, to also find people who we could do that with has been quite a gift. But I don't think it's wrong to say that that has been a journey. It wasn't always this way. I'm sure we've we've both been in communities that didn't didn't feel nourishing, didn't feel great. And this desire to build something meaningful has come from the desire to replicate communities that can do good. There is the risk of romanticizing community if we don't recognize all the ways in which we have experienced hurt, harm, exhaustion, abuse in communities. And uh a recent conversation we were having with someone led us to really think deeply about what happens when you talk about healing in community and what happens when people who have only experienced harm in community hear that, and the risk of feeling really unseen if you're told about like the joys of healing in community when that's not what you associate community with. So yeah, so I think that's why I think I was remembering my own times, and I was also remembering all the times it can sound like we are romanticizing community when that wasn't, of course, the intention.

When Shared Values Become Weapons

Tolu 8:30

Absolutely, yeah, because community is where we get our identity from, right? And relationships and also to where we feel belonging, and when that's not the experience, right? And you don't feel like you belong, that can bring up a lot of like it can bring up a lot of feelings, right? And that's something that I've experienced, I've seen within my clients, and how big of a relational wound that can be, and how we continue to see other relationships outside of maybe a particular community in our life, right? Because if that rupture happened in community and the distrust in the walls went up, well, that's gonna be the case in like your relationships outside of community that you try to build. Right. And the thing about like repairing that wound that happens in community is that in order to feel more, I guess, to feel healed, right? Or to feel belonging, you have to put yourself out there again, right? And at the risk of being disappointed or being let down or being excluded, which makes it kind of like, you know what, I'm gonna take a break from community. Like, I don't got it in me right now, right? To be disappointed or let down. It takes a lot of um energy to show up, not only for others, but to also to show up for yourself, right? So I I I get the double bind that it can bring up for people because it can be a source of trauma for folks, especially too, I think about religious spaces, as well to affinity spaces, yeah, right, where there is this perceived or assumed culture of safety and support, and that becomes like the opposite. That's not the case. So it's like a few of the spaces in which I think about just this assumed sense of safety or marketed sense of safety, and that ends up being the total opposite of the person's experience. Like what else is coming up for you when you think I'm like I'm curious of any other types of group spaces where like harm can happen outside of maybe like affinity groups or religious spaces.

Gitika 10:55

I think like affinity groups, I'm assuming you're talking about like specific identities. And I'm also thinking about communities built around maybe like a shared purpose, like a shared mission. Sometimes it could be an activist space, right? Yeah, or it could be all of us at the same workplace who were working on this very specific issue, and then all of us were united in some ways in you know, sharing these values and this purpose, and the identity we built around our work, and then the identity we built around our relationship by being at that particular workplace, so it ends up being like, oh, you know, we all saw everything from the grassroots, and we all had a had like this vantage point, so we have this shared experience that really bonds us. I hesitate to use the word trauma bonding because that word is that phrase has been overused, but we've been bonded by a shared experience, but then that bonding also can sometimes become really problematic when your values or or whatever your purpose or your or or your labor ends up not being fully either honored or that there is room for exploitation and extraction because your passion is kind of weaponized against you. So community ends up being a place that you are being guilt-tripped for not doing enough, not being enough. And if you say you abide by these values, how are you doing XYZ thing? So whatever you say your values are again are used against you. And I think somewhere a lot of times I feel like that harm has come from people refusing to honor each other's humanity. I I say I'm values always guided by love, but there are times I get really mad. There are times that I might be guided by, you know, just my anger with someone. And in that moment, if someone, you know, instead of listening to what my needs are, turns around and says something about how can you say you're guided by love when you're so angry with me right now? I would hate that. I would hate to not be heard when I'm saying what I'm saying and to have my values kind of thrown back in my face to actually invalidate some pain I'm expressing. So I'm often struck by ways in which communities can know you, but then communities can also, there is a potential for other people to use what they know about you uh against you.

Tolu 13:47

Yeah, yeah. Community can be really vulnerable, right? And they can weaponize that vulnerability, right? As you're saying that, I was like, yeah, they can know really deep parts of you and weaponize that against you or throw that back at you. So I definitely hear that that tension, right? Yeah, yeah.

Gitika 14:11

Yeah, yeah. How have you typically navigated the tension when you have been at the receiving end of some kind of hurt or harm, or even the other ways when you've noticed that you've had to remind yourself to remember someone's humanity, honor someone's humanity? What's it been like for you?

Tolu 14:35

Yeah, yeah, that's a good question. I'm thinking about how I was part of a group of like young adults. We were like in a Bible study together, and what's probably like some of the best like group experiences I had, and just so much community and camaraderie. And then things kind of just fell apart, you know, and I think we lost vision of I guess it's values, and like as the group got bigger, things got more diluted or more gray, and like this beauty and growth, but also too when there isn't structure around growth, things can kind of fall apart, right? Kind of the group outpaces the growth, the structure or the architecture of the group, which it's built on, right? And just recognizing that some experiences with some folks are like temporary and that's okay. And some things aren't meant to last forever.

unknown 15:36

Yeah.

Tolu 15:37

And it may have been through that season, right? So when navigating like group ruptures or personal individual ruptures in between within group members, I think for me, I just always try to remember, like you said, like the humanity of folks, and we're all doing the best that we can, but also to recognizing like I have my my boundaries and my personal limitations and what I can and can't do or what I have capacity for, or vice versa, right? So there's like this both and space, like how can we have flexibility also to still maintain integrity, honesty, right? And can we leave room for disappointment? Can we leave room for like falling a little short? That's not all-encompassing of the experience of the relationship, but can we leave room for that? Because I think sometimes in groups or in really tight-knit communities, right? There can be really tight expectations or stringent expectations. There isn't any slack. Slack meaning like there isn't any maybe like flexibility or grace. That's what's kind of coming up for me. Like, can we leave a little? It doesn't need to be so tight, but can we live a little leave a little slack, if that makes sense, figuratively speaking?

Taking Space Without Cutting The Rope

Gitika 16:57

Yeah, yeah. How do we leave room for grace? And how do we also stay connected, even if let's say we are not able to speak exactly at the same time that the conflict is erupting, or some kind of pain is erupting, let's say people are not able to be there for each other as much as people want to be. And how do we leave room for those moments of disappointment and still find a way back to each other? Like a friend of mine was recently saying something that I found very insightful. She said sometimes when you think about friendships as lifelong friendships, you have to remember that for the sake of the longevity of the friendship, you might also sometimes spend some time apart. That let's say you have some conflict and you're like, I don't, I feel like I don't want to speak to you for some time. I really just need my space for a bit. But we will circle back together. This is a lifelong friendship. We will circle back together. It's just that I'm feeling really hurt right now, and I feel like in this moment I might end up saying something that actually I don't really mean to say, and I don't want it to have like this lifelong impact on us. So for genuinely keeping the health of our relationship in the long run, I just want to take some space right now. And I remember thinking, ooh, I would feel so awful if someone said that they wanted some space. And at the same time, I recognized that I was taking heart from the reality that someone is like for the longevity of our friendship. Just taking this break right now, but I'm gonna circle back to you. And I think that that is you know, like the the rope is still tied to both of us, but it has some slack. Both things are true that we are not bound together, we are connected, but we are not talking right now. We'll circle back to each other. So I sometimes think about that, and I'm like, oh wow. I wonder also about those hurt feelings that come up when our friends disappoint us, and at the heart of it, that's you know, we're calling it community, but the series of friendships, it's small chosen or you know, God-given relationships, and how do we interact with each other on that plane, you know? That person-to-person plane. How do we ask for what we need, and how do we also deal with the disappointment of not getting what we need?

Tolu 19:49

Absolutely. And like relationships will unintentionally trigger family of origin wounds, right? Yes, like stuff that is not has nothing to do with the relationship, but maybe that feeling of abandonment feels so familiar, right? That we react in a way when that maybe wasn't the other party's intention, right? But also to like, can we as a community come together and take accountability for maybe when we do unintentionally cause harm when that wasn't our intention, right?

Gitika 20:22

Right.

Tolu 20:23

When you know somebody is going through really deep depression and they, you know, they don't call you back, they don't follow up, it kind of feels like they're ghosting, but their way of dealing with depression is you know, isolating, kind of ghosting, disappearing, right? And that can bring up some feelings for folks if there isn't any conversation around that, right? Or dialogue around that, and how do we, you know, I think one of the sticky parts about community is that people will disappoint you and let you down because again, we're honoring the fruitful humanity. Yeah, and also too, the the kind of the I think the tricky part is how do we continue to show up for folks when maybe the I think I struggle to use the word capacity, but maybe the capacity isn't as much as yours, right? When it comes to okay, I feel like I'm doing 60% of the caring in the relationship, and maybe all you have capacity for is 40, maybe in the season or for a prolonged amount of time in the relationship. And does that invalidate like community? Does that you know, does that make it okay, right? I don't have an answer for that, but like let's be honest, not everybody has the same maybe energy levels or a commitment to showing up, you know, or the for that priority how they prioritize that in their life.

Ghosting, Anger, And The Peace Treaty

Gitika 21:46

Yeah. Yeah. You know, as we're talking about this, I realize that I wonder, uh correct me if I'm I'm misreading it, but I wonder if sometimes we hesitate to talk about specifics from our own experiences out of fear of either you know rupturing the privacy and confidentiality. Of the people we know, and of course, you know, we wouldn't want to talk about clients anyway. We are both therapists, and some of our experiences come from working with clients, and we would never want to talk about clients on this podcast. So we do sometimes talk in generalities, but I realize that both you and me have had experiences that have a lot of emotional charge to it. And there's a part of me that's like, oh, you know, like if I went into a specific experience, is there risk of breaking the privacy and confidentiality of people? And then, you know, there you go, the harm of community. And also I wonder about how to even get really specific sometimes about the things that we're talking about and the ways in which we've actually worked through it. It's a work in progress, not work through it. We've not come out to the other side. I think we come out to the other side, maybe when we leave this body, I don't know. But you know, like this constant, this actively navigating this piece, right? Like the moment you talked about ghosting, I was reminded of very specific experiences I've had when I've actually been like, wait, I haven't heard from this person in a long time. I just assume they were busy, but when I reconnect with them, they actually tell me they're mad at me. And I'm like, oh no, this whole time that I thought you were busy, you've been mad at me. And what do I what do I do with this? And I can't tell you you need to be dealing with this in a different way. I don't get to tell you what your healing path needs to be. I will only tell you, hey, I'm here. And I trust silence means you're taking space. And if it turns out silence means you're mad at me, we live in such a virtual world right now that I won't run into you in the marketplace and have you show me the cold shoulder, and then I realize, oh, you're mad at me. Yeah, we are in a virtual world. If I don't hear from you, I won't hear from you. That's all that'll happen. So, you know, I'm actually thinking about this one particular um practice that we have in my spiritual community. I practice in the lineage of uh Plum Village, so Zenmaster Thiknathan, and they have this practice in Plum Village called the Peace Treaty. And the peace treaty is if you're angry with someone, like within 24 to 48 hours of experiencing the anger, you are required to actually tell them that, hey, you know, something happened and it really hurt my feelings. And I was, I didn't feel very nice about this, and I wondered if we could talk about it. Like, that's the practice, like you're required to tell someone in 24 to 48 hours. And I was like, oh my god, where will I take all my passive aggression? 24-48 hours. But I remember thinking, oh wow, that's the practice. That's the practice. I'm not saying I'm crazy or anything, but right. So whenever someone ghosts me, I have that moment of like, ah, where's the practice?

Tolu 25:28

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And some people can't do that, right? Like thinking about how important it makes me wonder, like, wow, I feel like we wouldn't, if we had the relational depths to do that and to name the harm, some people can't do that like within 48 hours, right? Yeah. But can we do that without coupling with that being like a threat response? Like, if I name this and the relationship is over, I'll just swallow it and act like nothing happened. Yeah. Right. And can we help folks, like in a perfect world for me, like, can we name difficult things that happen in relationships without it being like the end-all be all or a huge thing that can actually maybe be like repaired, but maybe both parties are lacking the skills to work through that. But that's such a beautiful practice. I love that. Like in a perfect world, we'd be able to name when we harmed each other, we could like move on and it'll all be good, but it's not that easy.

Gitika 26:27

It's not that easy, and I think that'd be easy with a family of origin stuff, right?

Tolu 26:32

Yeah.

Gitika 26:33

If me as your friend, I am activating something that's it's a really old wound that's being activated. It's almost a question: how can we heal in relationship something that was harmed in a completely different location? That's that's a real question. Yeah, and how do we make room for that too? That sometimes your reaction to me will be informed by family footage and stuff, but I don't use that to minimize like you're not really mad at me, you're actually mad at your brother. Like, no, I'm also mad at you.

Tolu 27:21

Right, right.

Gitika 27:21

Both things can be true, yeah.

Tolu 27:23

Both can be true. And can we, you know, in a perfect world, like, you know, we'd be able to see the difference, but we can't. A wound is a wound. If it feels the familiar, it feels familiar and it feels the same. So that, yeah, that I'm I'm left with that curiosity too, and how to work through that. But we are getting pretty close to the end of our time together.

unknown 27:46

Yeah.

Tolu 27:46

And I'm wondering if there's any last thoughts or ponderings or maybe questions coming up for you as we get ready to wrap up the inconvenience and the exhaustion of being in community.

Gitika 27:59

Yeah, no, I wondered what it was like for you to talk about this today. And yeah, I think hold the space for this conversation.

Family Wounds And Repairing In Relationship

Tolu 28:09

Yeah, it feels necessary. I think often we can romanticize community, especially with the trend online about like, you know, community is important, like be connected in community, community is uh self. Yes, yes, yes to all of that. But also to we need to name like a lot of harm and also to a lot of resources, energy, things required for community as well, too. And everybody's starting from different starting points when it comes to community, right? And just being aware of that too. But just like naming the friction of community too. Because friction is bound to happen in community, and we need to name that so we can all just be like, you know what, disclaimer, you may have a rupture to here, and let's just name that. But we're gonna commit to working through those. So yeah, I think it's good to name that. It's really important because it, you know, it's been a source of harm, source of trauma, rupture for folks. So we need to we need to name that.

Brave Space, Vision, And Closing

Gitika 29:13

Yeah, yeah, and it does take me back to that bonus episode about brave space, right? That at the heart of it, can we imagine committing to holding space for each other's bravery? The courage that it takes to show up, despite all the ways in which we've been wounded in our various parts of our life, and we come back to each other in a new location. Can we vow to honor each other's bravery in doing that? And can we commit to being there for each other if we end up hurting each other, harming each other, and all of that? Do we find ways to create space for that too? Sometimes harm might necessitate that someone actually have to step out and can we meet that with respect as well? And sometimes it means that somebody would want like a deeper conversation and genuine repair attempts to be made. And how do we do that? So, yeah, I think I'm just feeling hopeful as we are having this conversation and we are building what we are building on the side, which of course, you know, all of you listeners, we will announce when we are when we are ready. But we are building something on the side, so these conversations are really to invite you all into the vision of what does it look like, this ideal world that we dream of.

Tolu 30:43

Yes. You know, having an imagination before we wrap up, I think it's really important to have an imagination for the future that we do want and to continue to have these conversations because it's it's vital to the future world, future of our world. Nihilism, there's a time and place for it, but also too, we have to practice and embody the future and talking about the future type of world that we want to embody and value and embody for ourselves and for those to come after us as well, too. Because we are future ancestors, right?

Gitika 31:18

Right. So awesome. Okay. Until next time. Yes, thanks, Tolu.

Tolu 31:29

This is getting guys signing off. Yes, Tolu signing off. Until next time. Bye. Bye.