Women and Pack Thinking
I’ve taken up watching Cesar Millan, The Dog Whisperer - not because I have a dog but because I am intrigued by his awareness of and linkages between energy, the impact of internal states on external outcomes and the notion of ’the pack’.
As much as Cesar is able to work with a difficult dog to create what he calls a calm and submissive’ state, he often chooses to allow his calm and submissive pack do the work. With that intention in mind, he’ll introduce the “unstable” (e.g. outlaw/renegade/fearful/nervous/insecure) dog to his pack and let the pack influence the new dog. All of the dogs in his pack were at one time “unstable”; all of the dogs in the pack have become ‘balanced’. Without exception, as the outstanding pack leader that he is, Cesar achieves the outcome of ‘calm and submissive’ – and a dog that becomes more balanced.
When I watch Cesar (and I encourage all of you to watch one of his shows, paying close attention to the parallels between how he speaks of energy and the power that it has in our lives), I can’t help but be reminded of all the years that I’ve worked with people and have noticed the same things. For purposes of this note, what catches my attention is how the balanced pack influences and shapes the behaviour of the new/problem dog much faster and easier than a one-to-one engagement. The pack (a gathering in a small group) quickly allows the individual (the unstable dog) to find balance.
We do that with our children all the time. Where you and I first learn how to be a good little girl (and, subsequently an appropriate, well-behaved, acceptable woman) is by being exposed to other women who determine praise/punishment relative to how we ‘fit’ into the pack.
In Cesar’s world, pack thinking creates calm and submissive dogs. In my world, pack thinking creates mindless habituation and the capacity to abandon ourselves to thoughts, intentions and behaviours that do not serve us. Oh, right! That’s because we’re people and not dogs!
Each of us is a unique expression of the godforce in a physical universe. We’re not supposed to be homogenized into ‘group think’ and go along to get along. We’re supposed to dance to the unique song we are in the world – and we do that until we’re about 2. And then, ‘pack thinking’ kicks in and we learn to abandon ourselves to the larger collective and become ‘calm and submissive’ to the larger whole (i.e. family, Brownie pack, team, etc.). And, we’re all living proof that it works.
Young girls are desperate to look like/sound like/act like/dress like and do as they are taught (marketing, media, hype, modelled behaviour, etc) to believe they should. With each passing year, young girls learn to abandon themselves to the pack in order to feel safe, to feel valued and wanted, and to feel that they are ‘ok’. Eating disorders, teen pregnancies, so-called recreational drug use, gangs and cliques are the end result, whether they’re the cheerleading squad or the geeks; the saints or the sinners, it’s still a pack thinking thing.
And it all starts with how we circle around Mom. We look at Mom. We watch and listen. We look to Mom to be our guide on how to be ourselves in this world: how to solve our problems, manage our experiences and manouver through our environments. We take our cues on what’s safe and what’s not to say and do, and then we replicate. As females, our first pack experience is to look to Mom to deterime what our outcomes should be.
Add one or two or more sisters to this mix. Older ones to model; younger ones to shape and control. Our first experience of women gathering in small groups, talking… is with our family. Keeping in mind all the info above (and there is so much more!) re: how we’re molded and shaped for group-think, this might be a good time to let yourself consider a few things about growing up:
- How much of who you have become as an adult woman is like Mom or the flip-side (“I’ll NEVER be like HER!) of Mom? (Either of these two extremes will ensure you never get to discover your unique self!)
- How often do you still hear your mother’s voice inside you, telling you what you can or can’t do; what you’re capable of… or not; what you can become or what you’ll never be able to be; how you measure up or don’t? (If you’re still hearing it, you can be sure it’s still shaping your life in some way.)
- How much of how your mother moved through her world was a model for you for distorting the truth, self-silencing, blaming others for your life, making do and getting by, surrendering yourself to the needs of others, etc?
This isn’t about your mother or mine – it’s about a culture that still teaches the group-think of ‘men are responsible for the tasks and women are responsible for relatonships’. When relationships equal survival in some way (since we are taught that we have no capacity to be adept at the tasks), we learn well how to manipulate relationships – with ourselves and others – to produce the outcomes that are usually attached to being effective at managing tasks!
When women gather in small groups, talking… we either seek to use the ‘pack’ influence to chastise and control the other women or (because we are not dogs , we’re people) we can engage the ‘pack’ influence with each other to explore that which is unique to each of us and encourage expression, sustainability and further discovery of that unique essence of being. Women gathering in small groups, talking… can be a ‘pack’ influence that calls to and awakens the unique presence that each of us is and encourages its expression. It’s a choice that we make, mindfully or otherwise – and it’s still a choice.
Women gathering in small groups, talking… is highly contagious. To this day, much of how we move through the world is pure habit, without the kind of scrutiny or mindful consideration that would make it possible for us to awaken from the deep sleep of ‘pack thinking’ and culturally-induced coma. No matter how much we were told that it was for our own good, it wasn’t – and it still isn’t.
It’s no secret that I believe that the future of the world is in the hands of women. We are the crucible for conception and gestation; and we are the most powerful influence in the lives of our children. – for better or for worse. We live in a world where so much of one day to the next is on automatic… is fueled by mindless repetition of what we did yesterday that we might do it again today and sustain it for tomorrow. As we live like this, we teach our children to be like us – to think like us and to move through the world like us and, perhaps more important, to create the world as we’ve created it. It’s not working anymore.
Women gathering in small groups, talking… can make or break this cycle. But we must first WAKE UP to discover how much of who we are is habit and how much is who we really believe ourselves to be. Gathering with other women who are Self aware is important to a balanced pack. It’s a choice – and it starts with the unique ‘me’ that each of us is. The rest comes together all by itself and shapes our lives – and our world.
The next time you gather with other women and talk, start listening to yourself that you might discover:
- Does the conversation going on inside of me match the one that’s going on outside of me?
- Am I shaping what I say to suit what I think others want to hear?
- Does my own resentment and resignation cause me to silence another woman’s search ‘more’ in her life?
Each of us is at the core of our own future. Who we gather to us and how we engage will determine how that future unfolds.
