What is something in your life that you really want to do?
A dream you haven’t fulfilled, a desire barely spoken even unto yourself? A bucket list item that has always stayed on the list?
When you imagine doing that thing, I imagine it feels like a BIG step. Like you’d have to change something major about your life or personality to get there. Unrealistic, in short.
But I bet you also look at people who have done that thing and feel a little smaller in yourself, thinking you will never be as brave as them.
I am writing all this not to make you feel bad, but to set the ground for something that felt perhaps too obvious to write about - but also important enough that we could use a reminder. It’s an action that we have an agreement about in Authentic Relating, explained at the start of every Games Night: Leaning into your edge.
“Leaning into your edge” means trying something a little difficult for you. In the context of an AR Games night, this often means saying a vulnerable thing or showing a less developed part of yourself.
The key words here are trying, a little, and you.
When most of us lean into an edge, we (consciously or unconsciously) do it by leaping off a cliff. For example, most of the time I was polyamorous, I thought the only way to allow my primary partner freedom was to let them go as far as they wanted with whomever they wanted, and deal with my own reactions. This involved a lot of going over my edge, and having panic attacks and mood swings as a result.
Even when I moderated this over time, I still considered “leaning into my edge” to be saying yes to things I was a no to. For example, “I’ve said no to you sleeping over with this person a few times already, so let me try being a yes to it” - rather than identifying and working with my edge, and staying within my zone of tolerance.
That might have looked like:
“My edge is being alone at night. I’d like to try you sleeping over at your partner’s house, while I stay with a friend.”
“My edge is feeling abandoned. I’d like to try you sleeping over, but texting me a few times throughout the night, and calling me before you go to bed.”
“My edge is feeling safe with partners’ boundaries. I’d like to have an agreement about how intimate y’all will get tonight without checking in with me.”
In our culture, we tend to say things like “Just go for it!” and “You never know until you try”. These things are true, but they’re usually taken as an invitation to do this:
…which can end with us smashed on the rocks below.
Sometimes that goes well. Perhaps having tried something once, regardless of how it went, opens the door for us to try again. I certainly wouldn’t have gotten anywhere with polyamory if I hadn’t allowed myself to go over my edge a few times - if nothing else, it taught me where the edge was!
Sometimes going over our edge causes trauma. We think, “Well, I’m never going to do that again” - even if it’s something we really want to do, be, or experience.
IMO, there are three mistakes we make when exploring our edges:
We don’t know what or where the edge is.
We don’t take time to explore our zone of tolerance.
We assume that we should be at the same level of edge-pushing as others are.
Are You My Edge?
In my polyamory example above, I ran into two difficulties. One, I thought I should jump over my edge instead of leaning into it. Two, I didn’t actually know what my edges were, or where my zone of tolerance was for each.
To break this down:
Anything scary usually contains multiple edges for us. For instance, I’m currently considering (read: avoiding) looking for a job. That contains edges of:
Self-worth - “Am I worthy of applying for [given job]?”
Motivation - “Can I get myself to apply?”
Capacity - “Do I have enough energy to take something else on?”
Jumping off these edges, for me, would look like saying, “I’m just going to apply to 10 jobs I want but don’t think I can get.” Maybe this would work for some people, but for me what would probably happen is that A) I would put off applying for as long as I could, B) If any of those jobs did message me back, I would bomb my application by talking about how unqualified I felt, and C) If I did get the job, I’d be exhausted all the time.
Our edges are telling us something important. That doesn’t mean we have to let them control a situation, but we shouldn’t bull past them without listening. Before we try to push an edge, we should first ask: What is my edge here, and What is it protecting?
Speaking of bulls, there’s a short rationality story about this idea, called “Chesterton’s Fence”.
Once, there was a guy named Chesterton who bought a large piece of land. He walked around the land one day, surveying his new domain. At one edge he found a large, unsightly fence. “I don’t want this on my property,” he thought. He came back the next day with tools and dismantled the fence. When it was done, he sat back, wiped his brow, and smiled at the lovely vista in front of him. Then the bull who lived over the hill, who the fence had been holding back, ran over and gored him to death.
The moral of the story is: don’t destroy things until you know why they’re there.
This, btw, is why advice rarely works - and why we often fail at talking ourselves into things. Our brains tend to refuse to destroy these fences, and they don’t trust others who say “just tear it down!”
The Safe Zone
So you’ve found an edge and explored why it’s there. How can you lean into it safe-ish-ly?
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