Of Ghost Lights and Shadow Selves; Moving Forward by Falling Back

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When we think of ourselves as one enduring character, we dismiss all the beauty of the messiness and imperfection that lives within us, in all these parts of self.

For over a decade, Valerie Livesay Ph.D. has been studying adult development and inquiring about the hitherto little explored phenomenon of human fallback. On the basis of this research, Valerie founded the website?Ghost Light Leadership. She is author of the book?Leaving The Ghost Light Burning: Illuminating Fallback in Embrace of The Fullness of You,?published in October 2022.?

Through her coaching and workshop offerings, Valerie accompanies individuals through their discovery of self and guides them to illuminate, embrace and own their parts of self that are loved less and are occasionally forgotten. She hereby uses the analogy of theater, to set the stage for the individual stories of her clients.?Read more about Valerie's personal history?here.

Before we get into what is a fallback, what's the story behind the title of your book?Leaving The Ghost Light Burning: Illuminating Fallback in Embrace of The Fullness of You?

The ghost light comes from theatre. The ghost light is a single light bulb that's left burning on the stage of theatres around the world when the theatre is dark. And the purpose of the ghost light is twofold. One is superstition, because superstition lore says that the ghosts of a theatre when it is dark assume that it's been abandoned and rush to the stage and cause all sorts of mischief. The practical reason for the ghost light is that if people were to wander on stage when the theatre was dark, they could easily take a stumble off the stage into the orchestra pit and do harm. I encountered this idea of the ghost light when I was in the process of writing my book. It just resonated so fully with me and my experience and thoughts about fallback and what happens when we try to shut out the parts of self, the mischievous spirits that try to rush our stage, and then the damage that we do to ourselves and to others when we don't leave the light on for them and welcome them in.

What is a fallback moment?

Fallback is when we unconsciously slip, fall, tumble into an earlier part of our sense making and our acting and our feeling - where we have no other options. A moment before, we had options. We had complexity, we had perspectives, but we were triggered into a smaller space. Sometimes we don't have access to those parts of self that would comprise what is known in the field of adult development as our ‘centre of gravity’, which is often thought of as the ideal place. The reality of our centre of gravity is that it's not the best, but kind of the automatic place that we go to.

Why is theatre an analogy that feels helpful for you when you explore this inner world of our selves, the big and the small and the ones that we pushed away?

I started thinking about ways to explore fallback and using theatre as an entry point into that before I discovered ghost light. So it just kind of synchronously matched up. But I must credit my friend and colleague Fred Jones. I was at a session that he was presenting about the multiplicity of characters that comprise us. And at the time I was thinking, how do we create a way in for people to access parts of self that we don't want to acknowledge, that we don't want to inhabit, to know within ourselves or make known in the world?

I thought this is a helpful way of entering an acknowledgment that we are not this one character that shows up in every scene of our lives. We are this ensemble, this full cast of characters. And the theatre analogy allows us to be playful about that. It gives us some language as we're trying to dig into these darker corners of self. And a process that allows us to of go through the steps of coming into relationship with these characters: binding their origin stories, determining what scenes they show up to, how they actually act in these scenes, how they might rehearse for a future scene and how they might review how they are showing up in the scenes of their lives. Theatre just gives us a lot of fun, not so scary language to come to know the parts of self that we often don't automatically see or acknowledge.

From a very personal perspective, what drew you to study and write about these phenomena?

I encountered this theory of adult development that we can continue to grow and change even once we've stopped growing physically throughout our lifetime. And I discovered that in my doctoral programme very early on. I was really fascinated by this, and I loved that it gave me a lens through which to see the journey of my life to a certain point and to see the possibilities that lay ahead, that could lie ahead. However, I thought, I do not always show up with my full capacities, which is what the theory, especially as a broad brush, kind of paints as this ‘stairway to heaven’, onward and upward trajectory.?

I just knew that that was not the case for me in my daily life, that I had fallen back. I fall back many times over the course of a day. And I wanted to understand, am I an anomaly? And of course, I knew I wasn't. We all experience fallback all the time. But where is this in the theory, and why isn't it present? In truth, I wanted to tidy up these sprayed edges of a theory that I thought was so beautiful, that I still think is so beautiful. I really wanted to understand, for me, what was this about? And, make the theory more real, more human and humane to really reflect the full messiness of what it is to go through this journey of being a full human.

How does knowing about fallback support me in my own personal growth and how can it affect or enrich my relationship with others?

When we think of ourselves as one enduring character, we dismiss all the beauty of the messiness and imperfection that lives within us, in all these parts of self. We have an incomplete picture of ourselves and an incomplete picture of others. I knew I had grown from my fallback quite often. Paradoxically, it is falling back that inevitably is a springing forward, at least to where we were before, if not a little bit further ahead. As I've studied growth within myself and with others and accompanied others, I've come to realise that that growth and transformation may happen, but that's not even the point. The point is to witness our own unfolding, to acknowledge the beauty in what we don't tend to think as beautiful. What we haven't been told is beautiful. What we tell others is not pretty, that needs to be hidden away. To acknowledge that, to really come into relationship with that, to befriend these parts of self and ask, what do you have to teach me??

Because they are there in protection of something that we value greatly. When we begin to form a relationship to them and ask those questions and determine what is it that they are here in protection of, then we can be more thoughtful about who we cast them with in the scenes of our lives, what other parts of self and what other characters that make up our ensemble that will help them meet their intentions. We begin to become clearer about our intention with ourselves, in relationship in this context. And we hopefully do less harm to ourselves and to others because we're able to give voice in a different way. Not a ‘burning down the set’ kind of way where my fallback characters show up on the scene, screaming and with full on wreckage, but in a way that acknowledges what they're there in protection of and doing so in a way that it can be heard, that it can be received. I think that coming into relationship with our fallback is a tremendous gift for ourselves because there is so much beauty in the integration of all of our selves.

When we see that we are not enduring and constant in this self that we want to proclaim from the rooftops, we begin to see that others aren't either. And we can offer them more compassion as they show up in different ways with different characters and the different scenes of their lives. We can connect on a more authentic and loving and accepting basis with them.

What is the risk when we reject those smaller, more constricted parts of our selves?

When I set out to do my research in this area, I really wanted to figure out how we lock certain parts backstage. How we do not let them on the scene at all. Over the course of more than a decade, it was a transformation in my thinking and knowing. Based on observing myself and others and noticing that it doesn't work that way. You don't get rid of these characters. You don't get rid of your fallback. This isn't a five-step guide to being rid of those more constricted parts of the self and showing up on the scene perfectly every time. It's not going to happen. If we try to banish them from the theatre of self, they're not going anywhere, they're waiting until the theatre is dark and they are going to storm the stage and cause all sorts of damage.

If we acknowledge them and say, what are you here to teach me? I see you have wisdom in you. Then they don't feel the need anymore, they are seen, and they are heard for the first time. And they can come in a much more peaceful and generous manner.?

Peter Koenig developed a particular way of exploring psyche through the entry point of money. He teaches is that these smaller, restricted parts of ourselves should not be exterminated. We cannot get rid of them. However, the question is, are we conscious of them or are we not? For example, let's say being manipulative is something that I've rejected in myself. Peter would say:?“Your choice is not whether to be manipulative or not. Your choice is whether you can do it being fully conscious or not.”

That's beautiful. I love that. It makes me think about what my daughter was telling me last night. She's nine, and she was saying “we were learning about emotions today”, and that fear is in protection of us. Fear is a really important emotion that we need to let on the scene that we need to let come into us because it is protecting us from something. It is giving us a natural response to something that could be dangerous. And the next step in this, beyond the nine-year-old knowing of this is - where is that in me? Where did that originate? And to your point, owning it, saying “this lives in me too”. I am beauty and light and love. And I am also anger and manipulation. Those parts live in me too. If we can own those within ourselves then we can start to explore them. And if we own them with others, we begin to open up the capacity for them to do that same exploration. So act out on those things, those darker parts of self, and acknowledge that they live within us. It's not ‘this?or?that’. It is ‘this?and?that’.

All this self-acceptance is deeply needed and wonderful. But where does that leave the need for self-improvement? How do we navigate this tension between “I'm okay, just the way I am” and “I could be better”?

The humanistic aspect of adult development theory is one of my critiques of it. I think the acceptance part is real and important. I also think it's not “here I am, so just deal with it”. It is a calling to connect to intention, around what do I want to offer the world, how do I want to show up to it? What is my intention around this relationship that I have with this other individual or in my offerings to the world more broadly? The intention is that calling beyond “this is just who I am”. It's how do I accept this part of me, acknowledge what it brings me. And to also identify for what purpose the other pieces of me need to be there so I can meet those intentions. For being better, being better for myself, for being better for my family, for being better for the people who I serve, who I speak with, who I accompany. For being better in our world.

When we are just trying to get to the top of the mountain, we stand very unsteady at that peak without having filled out the base. This exploration allows us to go and fill that base of the mountain out more, to look around and see what are the resources and tools here that I missed on my first journey up to the top and how might they serve me and others as we move towards our intentions?

How does fallback manifest in organisations, in teams? What are the repercussions of fallback moments for individuals, but also for the whole system?

One of the triggers for fallback is contextual gravitational pulls. We have a centre of gravity of capacities, developmental capacities. When we walk into any context, it has its own gravitational centre of what it holds developmentally. When we walk into a context that has an earlier, less complex centre of gravity, we can be pulled back to a smaller expression of self, to having fewer capacities. And so often on teams, when we walk into teams, into organisations that have a centre of gravity that is less complex, we are pulled back often and held in that space. And that does not allow us to bring the fullness of ourselves. It doesn't allow us to open up possibilities for creativity, for new options, for complexity, for seeing in different ways. As an individual, you might leave the organisation because it's not giving you what you need, or you might find those things elsewhere.

There are parts of what we can offer the world and in our context that are held back when we are not able to bring our fullness and when we don't invite others to that space either. You were talking before about how we constrict what we can offer to others when we don't own it. “I am manipulative” lives within us whether we say it or not. What happens if we do open that up? What happens if we begin to own that? I believe it must happen with the leaders in organisations first because they need to make it a safe space for others to bring their fullness and acknowledge “I missed the mark” but coming from a place of “I missed the mark because something felt at risk to me in this situation”. This allows us to have more authentic connection, for there to be more truth in the space of our humanity, in our teams, in our workplaces.?

I remember talking about this with Jennifer Garvey Berger, who was one of the key thinkers in my original research. She said that in organisations, we need to have conversations about what are the conditions that allow us to bring our biggest selves, that allow us to grow the centre of gravity of our teams, of our organisations, and also to make it a safe space? When we witness fallback, not saying, “well, that's just Bob, and he's always like that”. But being able to have compassion, because we see that in ourselves too, and we can own it. This way, we can actually work through that with Bob and own our parts that we had projected on to Bob.?

What can be done from a structural perspective to allow for that safe space to be opened?

Looking into the cultural context of an organisation and the team is important. Holding the space, creating an environment where those conversations can be opened up. To be able to go through the exploration of what role do I take up in this team? To really start to think about, why is that? Where does that come from within me? What character do I bring and where has that been throughout the scenes of my life, where is it helpful to me and where is it not? Where is it not welcome at all? And what is it here in protection of? To name and identify those things, the safe space is really important.

This is where HR and leaders of organisations have to be invested and willing to go first and say “this lives in me too and the name of this character is ‘Tirading Tessa’”. It's often no surprise that I might have a Tirading Tessa in me for my team members. Now that we've named it, we can begin to talk about it. And I can say, I see Tirading Tessa is creeping on our stage right now and I wonder if that's the character that's going to best meet our intention or who else might need to be there to accompany her. Or can I take some of the Tirading Tessa from you in this particular context so that you don't have to? It opens it up to be more playful and light and for us to be able to try on different roles, to not be typecast, to not have a script written for us that we have to follow but to imagine what might best suit the situation.

I'm interested in the context that can be created that allow us to be able to have these explorations that don't feel like “I'm going to say this and then I'm going to be fired, I'm going to lose my job, I will lose my livelihood, I will lose my reputation”. I often feel like I could be fired. But if I'm going to ask other people to do it, and this is where I think the leader part comes in, I'm going to have to be willing to do it myself. I remember Octavia, who is one of the characters in my book, she's supposed to lead the transformation of an organisation. And she said?“I've come to realise that I can't transform this organisation if I'm not willing to transform myself. I have to be in this, and I have to be willing to reveal these things about me, all of it, the light and the dark, in order for other people to decide that they're going to as well, in order for us, for the culture, for the centre of gravity to change here.”

What offer do you have around fallback and people who want to continue this exploration?

I have a six-week online live course by the same name as the book:?Leaving The Ghost Light Burning: Illuminating Fallback in Embrace of The Fullness of You. It's an opportunity to come into the Ghost Light Theatre and step into the light and to begin to explore these parts of self in the company of others.

Act out on those things, those darker parts of self, and acknowledge that they live within us. It's not ‘this?or?that’. It is ‘this?and?that’.

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