Thick Skin and the Panic Room:

You don't see adverts for lotions or potions designed to give you "thick skin". Neither does it seem to be a specialisation that any dermatologists would chose to agressively pursue. "Thick skin in just weeks".. no thanks. Yet from an early age, we the people, are told that it is a desireable thing to have.

As if growing into adulthood requires a kind of fleshy armour, like my friend the Rhino, above. An epidermis wholly impermeable and totally resistant to almost anything. Yes, I know, I am being very glib here. The sense is metaphorical, as we all know. But hey... it is no less alarming. What is expected of us, is not to somehow grow the hide of a perissodactyl, but to be OK with undergoing a more subtle, emotional callousing. A slow, loss of softness. A psychic thickening, that will allow harsh words, unfounded accusations and generral unfairness, to just bounce right off our cognitive carapace, like water off the back of a duck.

Advice around the benefits of thick skin, possibly have their roots somewhere in a book on parenting written in about 1836. Designed to be kind, it would have offered some level of protection for children around a world that could be pretty unkind. It was a hand-me-down survival tool that they almost certainly had to learn themselves. The "thick skin" reference itself is much older, having literary mentions, right back to the early 17th century; but for me, it belongs in the same trunk of absurdity as Upper Class England and the Empirical benefits of putting a "brave face" on things, or having a "stiff upper lip". I won't go too hard on Victorian parents. Like most of us, they did the best they could, with what they knew. It was their first time on the planet too.

Children were being prepared for cruelty, grief and disappointment. Their parents were genuinely trying to offer them some kind of protection against an unkind world, where the average life expectancy was early 40's at best, and 30% of kids died before their 5th birthday.

It was crude but it was comprehensible shorthand for "People will be very mean and times might get hard, so this support might help you". The intention was loving, even if the advice was hopelessly shallow.

We have impressive-sounding names for everything now, so through our lovely pair of hindsighty goggles, we can pull our ancestors up for "emotional minimalisation", which makes us sound jolly clever and as woke as you can possibly wake. But... that is what it was.

It was a blunt instrument designed to beat into children that they shouldn't feel things so acutely, or have sensitivities, make trouble, or experience traumatic pain and grief.

Unsheath the double-edged sword.. on one hand we are told to prepare for serial disappointments or misfortune - and on the other, our lackluster advice, acts to reduce the pressure on an already cruel world, to even attempt to be kind. Having thick skin became a way of almost normalising harmful happenings. Bullying is inevitable, Harshness is normal and being over sensitive is the problem here...Being seen as having "thick skin" acts almost as "permission".

So maybe we should look at where we go "chemically" when we get yelled at, scorned or falsely accused.. what happens to our internal landscape?

Generally, we panic. We feel the alarm bell of worry and adrenaline and shame - all warpped up in an OMG of "what did I do"... there is a natural default to a guilty plea, becasue we simply haven't had time to analyse the matter at hand. If they are that annoyed, I must have had a part in it.. If that many kids are picking on me, there must be something wrong with the way I am.

Here, our nervous system is just doing what it was designed to do - to protect us. To alert us to a visible, social threat. We, the humans, are so wired for connection and belonging, that being spoken to with contempt or dismissal, doesn't simply sting - it tells us "You are not safe here". We enter the Panic Room and slam the door shut.

Accusation makes us instinctively search for guilt before we have even begun to look for truth. Not because we are necessarily guilty of anything, but our brains need to locate the danger. It is such an ancient reflex. Let's take 2 seconds to appreciate that, before we dismiss it... The marvel of having had that primeval DNA response, handed down so carefully over hundreds of generatrions. It grounds me to my tribe, in a weird way..

So now what? Well, when and if we realise the charges are false, and that we have been chewed out, dressed down and spat out for no reason whatsoever - we feel the slow return of self-trust, which begins to gradually permeate our frightened, fragile state of mind. Our brains begin to process. To review the facts and the timelines. The fog starts to lift. "Hang on.." we say, "this is not something I am responsible for. This is them, being totally out of line." It's a bit of a seismic shift.

The next act in this complex piece of mental cinema, is when we move from being in a state of near collapse, into a bit of spice. A bit of heat.. Anger begins to rise - And anger is not the enemy here by the way. It rises not as "I'm going round your house to smash your windows" - it appears as a boundary. The emotion that tells us things are unjust. Blame was misdirected and a line has been crossed. The boundary that tells us we do not ever have to carry what is not ours. The arrival of healthy self-respect and a restoration of reality. We breathe.

But just as we are in mid-exhale, a new set of psychological questions emerge, that all fall under the umbrella of "What do we do now?" - Do we attempt to correct things? Do we just say "eff off" and disengage? Should we ask for accountability? The task at hand is no longer self-defense through an assumption or suspicion of guilt on our part - it is now all about self-definition through a bit of clarity.

This is where the ground gets a boit shaky, and indeed brings us neatly back to the subject matter of Thick Skin. Beacuse we will be expected to just brush it off, or laugh it off or just get over it... "Oh, don't take it so personally"...To toughen up a bit. To be able to better "take a joke". In other words, to be able to quietly metabolise the disrespect. And that should never be in our job description. Not ever.

Those who have unjustly shouted "J'accuse" will now really want us to show that layer of Rhino hide. That thick skin. Not as a display of personal strentgth, but as permissioning for thier poor behaviour. It lets them off the hook withiout needing to seek accountability, or express remorse. They are really hoping we will greet the emerging truth around their own angry mis-fire with a reassuring "don't worry about it, I do it all the time".. No need to aplogise, luckily, I have thick skin.

And if we are honest, this is where the "adult work" needs to start. What is the wholehearted response? Do we shut the person out for a day? A week? Should we be "fine" by next Tuesday? It seems to me that it all depends. Sure, partly on the degree to which we feel we were harmed, which, beleive me, will lessen like pulling the plug in your bathtub, but essentially it is about what happens afterward.

Was this a rare mis-step in an otherwise very well balanced and healthy, personal relationship? Was it followed by genuine accountability or a casually dismissive "My bad" - which is most certainly not an aplogy - How much ownership does the repair require?

Sadly, I am not practised enough to suggest an answer here. I also don;t love the concept of forgiveness. I find it very "Look how gracious I am, even though you were awful to me."

That’s not healing. Spoken declarations of "forgiveness" to me, are passive-agressive, personal theatre.

Perhaps the point is not forgiveness, at least not as a performance of grace. Perhaps the point is something quieter, and a bit more real: Discernment. Clarity. The ability to stay centered without staying available. There is no universally correct response to unfairness. Certainly not a time by which you should be “over it,”. There is no gold star awarded for how quickly you can brush the dust off. There is only the response that returns you to yourself. The one that restores truth. The one that honours your nervous system, your dignity, and the maintenance of your sacred boundaries. And that response will be entiurely your call, my friends. Trust yourselves and just absolutely own it.

Thick skin is not the goal. We should never choose to ask people to "armour" themselves against potential harm, but instead, through these sacred boundaries, request and require each other to speak - even in conflict - with care.