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Hello, I'm Henry Emmons, and welcome to Joy
Welcome to Joy Lab!: lab.
Aimee (2): And I'm Aimee Prasek. Here at Joy Lab, we infuse science with soul to help you build your resilience and uncover your joy. And today we are talking about a little or big phenomenon called Obliger Rebellion. I just really liked the term.
Henry: Yeah, it is a very cool term. I'm interested to find out what the heck it means.
Aimee: Yeah, let's dig into it. It's just, it's, it drew me in. So it comes from something journalist [00:01:00] Gretchen Rubin introduced in her book, The Four Tendencies. So she suggests that when it comes to our relationship with our inner and outer expectations, us humans fall into four tendencies. These are upholders, questioners, obligers, and rebels. So I'll link to her website for more on these. I'll brush them over before we get into the Obliger Rebellion piece so we have some context. But first, I do want to say that I don't see any of these as bad or one is better than the other. It's probably more about, you know, when we sway out of balance that we can get ourselves and others into trouble with these.
and we have a bit of each in us as well, I think. So here they are. Try to listen to see where you fit. The upholders are the disciplined folks. They'll meet inner and [00:02:00] outer expectations like a boss. These folks follow the rules, they enforce the rules, they set resolutions, they complete them, check, check, check, they have inbox zero, they're on it. Okay. The questioners are more apt to do something if they can understand why it matters. And they also tend to make those outer expectations personal. So they really, keyword here, question things and make sure that they understand the pieces before they dive in. Rebels push back on outer and inner expectations. Rubin says, and I love this. These are the folks who would say, you can't make me and neither can I. I like the "neither can I". You're just rebelling around everything. It's not that these folks don't do anything, right? Isn't that good? Neither can I. it's not that they don't do anything, they're just less likely to do something that they don't [00:03:00] align with, that they feel friction with. And the obligers, Rubin notes that these, the obligers are the majority of us, and that obligers really work to meet outer expectations, but might struggle more with the inner ones. So obligers might do more things for some perceived outer goals, than they might do for their inner life. So Henry, do you see yourself in one of these tendencies or a few?
Henry: Yes, I would say that at this point in my life, I am with the majority. I'd be an obliger, based on what what she used for those descriptions. But, as you were going through those, I was thinking that at different points in my life, I might have been very different in these categories. There was definitely a time when I was I would say I was an upholder.
I was, really disciplined and kind [00:04:00] of,set a goal and I'd finish it. And there were other times where I was much more of a, a rebel, maybe not as much of a questioner, although I think at times that comes in too. So, you know, it's, I like that you said that, we each have probably each of these in us, but also looking over one's life, it seems like these things might cycle a little bit.
Aimee: Was just even thinking about sometimes who I'm with.
And I can fall right into the rebel or the questioner, depending on who I'm standing across from, right? Which is not great. That's not a testament to my composed character.So it's fun to think about these and how they might shake out in your life.
And yeah, we are dynamic beings. We are many things.I see myself, I think, mostly in the questioner tendency, with a sprinkle of obliger. But something I definitely resonate with is [00:05:00] this phenomenon of Obliger Rebellion that Rubin talks about. So let's get into that. The definition here that she offers is Obliger Rebellion happens when we hit a threshold of expectations. When we have tried to oblige to so many external expectations that we exhaust ourselves. I think what's interesting about Obliger Rebellion is that also it might not look like exhaustion as the end product either. And that's true for exhaustion, period, I guess, right? So the rebellious act may not be just refusing to do something as exhaustion might suggest. It can be much more dramatic than that. When that last straw breaks our back and we snap at somebody, it can be the what the hell effect that we talked about a while ago. If we subscribe to some diet and then we eat the whole house in a metaphorical middle finger to the diet [00:06:00] gurus, I'll link to our episode on that. So exhaustion can come out in a lot of different ways and it feels like rebellion because you're saying, Nope, not going to do it. I have definitely quit a job in that state, didn't handle it well, and burned some bridges. So we have something to learn from this as well, right?
Henry: one question I have is whether she wrote this before or after that quiet quitting
Aimee: Oh,
Henry: that
Aimee: I was thinking about that. The great resignation.
Henry: yeah,
yeah,
Aimee: Quiet quitting,
Henry: yeah,
Aimee: yeah,
I think it was before.
I have to find her book. Yeah, that's Obliger Rebellion.
Henry: Yeah. Well, I can definitely see people, and see it in myself, getting to this point where, yeah, you know, you're either exhausted or you're so frustrated you just say, I, I can't take it anymore. I'm gonna [00:07:00] do something different, which I don't actually think is necessarily a bad thing.
I mentioned, you know, my, my own life cycle kind of showing up in different ways and I think something like that happened to me early in my life and it really helped propel me to take a very different career course. I think I rebelled against the narrow role that the healthcare system had defined for me as a psychiatrist. So my rebellion, if you will, took several years to, to finally reach its breaking point. But, but when it, I did reach that threshold, I quit my job and immediately started in earnest to try to find a different way to practice psychiatry. So for me, this rebellion was like a, a rocket thruster.
It, it mobilized me just enough to break that gravitational pull, you know, [00:08:00] secure income, I had a young family, all the societal expectations, it was a lot for me at least to overcome at that point in my life.
And in that sense, I can see this as something that really might help us move along. it gives us the energy to break out of some entrenched pattern that we all have in one way or another.
Aimee: I love that perspective, Henry. So, let's go with that. Let's, let's see Obliger Rebellion as not a bad thing. It's not a failure on our character, but there's certainly some things we can learn about it. And then how can we take skillful action would be that next piece. So, I'll give an example more of how I think it can be helpful as you've inspired me here, Henry, to think about. And how it can be helpful to check in with our external and inner expectations as obligers when we maybe hit this space. So my husband [00:09:00] and I have been married for almost 20 years now. We got married very young. Not a great idea in most cases. But it has worked out quite well for us.Anyway, we didn't have a kid for nearly 15 of those first years. And for that period of time before we had our daughter, we were constantly asked, "When are you going to have kids? When are you going to have kids? When? When? When?" And when we responded that we didn't want a kid at the time, folks would say, "Oh, you'll never feel ready to have a kid. You just have to do it and you'll never regret it." First, that's a fallacy. I just want to note. You have a kid. You don't know what your life would be like without one.
Might've been great, right? So you can't make that comparison. Second, I've known folks who absolutely regret having children. Let's be honest about that. It's not like buying a Honda and then not liking it, so you trade it in for a Ford, right? You're [00:10:00] stuck with those suckers. You cannot trade a kid in. Clearly, I still haven't shaken some of the fuel that these conversations put in me. So yeah, I think you should absolutely feel pretty ready and really want to have a kid and not just obliged to societal expectations or traditions about having children. And then what I found was so funny when we finally, quote, finally, felt ready to have a kid, once that being existed in the world, people continued to ask, "When are you going to have your next kid?" I was, I was actually surprised because I thought those conversations were done. We had one conversation ended. But no, it became now, when are you going to have your next kid? And then we would say, well, we only want one of these things. Wonderful little creatures, but just one. I had so many folks say, "Oh, that's too bad. It's not [00:11:00] fair to just have one kid and leave them without any siblings." And I remember the first time somebody said that to me. I was fuming. I don't want another one. Who is this fair to? Right? So, Obliger Rebellion.Thinking about who is this fair to? If we have another kid that we don't want because of perspectives on family, size, or what have you, who benefits from that? I think it, for me, it was really about noticing what I would have been obliging to, and then making some skillful choices regarding the stuff that wouldn't have served me or our family. And so for us, it was very, I'm so grateful that we were able to not step into actually that obligement of, oh, I guess we should have a kid.
Cause it definitely wouldn't have been a great thing for us at the time. so I'll try to make sense of this. For me, this experience of having one kid, again, as I said, did help me to also shake off other [00:12:00] obligations as well, I think, which is interesting. So stuff I was doing to meet societal expectations that helped nobody, including myself. It helped me to see the obligations I might also be unfairly putting on others and how another person even may not be able to rebel as easily as I can rebel in certain contexts.
Do you have some thoughts here, Henry? Some ways that we might be able to tune into our Obliger Rebellion when it surges and move with it more skillfully.
Henry: I think it'd be helpful paying attention before it reaches the threshold before you let's say burn bridges, or I don't know, trade your kid in, or do something like that. You, you know, if you're paying attention and you can sense that something is really starting to feel constricted, or constraining, or maybe, I don't [00:13:00] know, you're starting to feel anger bubble up, or something like that. You can notice that and make some decisions way before it reaches the boiling point that might, might make your life a little bit easier down the road.
And it really goes back to tuning in to the body, which is where this all gets manifest. So it's, it's having that capacity through just a little bit of practice to be able to tune in to your inner experience, if the inner physical sensory experience, in a way that informs you about what's going on in your body and mind.
Aimee: I'm feeling that, in the show notes here, some of our conversations about, getting grounded.
I'm going to put in the link to weathering these emotional storms. I think that would be wonderful too. It gives some great insights of kind of what you're saying, tuning into the body, [00:14:00] checking in with ourselves. So check the show notes. We've got lots of resources to use before youtake your rebelliousness maybe in a place where it's not going to serve you.
So, to close, I want to, share a quote from Albert Camus. I think this is the middle road of Obliger Rebellion, maybe what we're getting into here.
"The artist forges themselves to the others, midway between the beauty they cannot do without and the community they cannot tear themselves away from. That is why true artists scorn nothing. They are obliged to understand rather than to judge."
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