Purple or Green?

Here’s a photo of a purple sofa. (Not mine, just a photo off the web)

We can see it’s purple, but depending on what monitor we have at home, depending on what device we might be using to view it, the quality of our individual graphics card, the shade of purple will vary, sometimes quite a lot. So, if we were to discuss what shade of purple, there’d be some debate, some conjecture, but when we hold it up to the light, when we examine it carefully, we are in agreement that it’s purple.

The human brain is tricky, though. It can be persuaded to believe, or it can, under certain circumstances, persuade itself to believe that this is not a purple sofa. Our environment, our upbringing, our personal experiences, including traumas, including things we’ve been taught by our caregivers to be wary of, can change what we see when we look at this sofa. The reason for that is that our amygdala, the area of our brains that processes our emotions and our memories, our social cues, and our fears conditioning, can convince us, that this sofa is, say, green. And once we are convinced it’s a green sofa, no solid evidence presented to us to the contrary, no amount of arguing, no amount of badgering by another human who sees that this as the purple sofa it is, “not a green one, you idiot,” can change our perception.

I learned that when I was well over forty, when a psychologist told me this: If it is vital to someone to see this sofa as green, if they believe, even subconsciously, that their survival depends on seeing this sofa as green, nothing anyone else shows them, no “proof” that it’s purple will sway them.It is only when, (and this next part is crucial to understand) they recognize that it is dangerous to them to continue to believe the sofa is green, not purple, in other words, it is only when their brain deems it better, safer to agree that the sofa is purple, that they will start to see it as purple. Because it was for survival and safety that they were persuaded by something outside of themselves, to see it as green in the first place.

I came from a “this sofa is green” environment. Like those around me, I believed, or wanted to believe, that the people around me were correct when they said, “It’s clearly a green sofa.” I needed to believe it, in order to feel safe there, in order to feel welcomed there, in order to feel a part of the community I grew up in and wanted to be embraced by. But eventually, for me, the sofa started looking purple.

How did that happen? To start, my subconscious mind already suspected, in a big way, that the sofa was not green. That suspicion could not work its way up into my conscious mind; I purposely pushed it away, believing it was better to accept that it was green. But my subconscious mind, having its suspicions that I was in more danger staying where I was, as opposed to moving on, started sending me clues that I needed to look at the sofa in a clearer way.

What clues? I was eating too much, due to anxiety, I had a skin rash that would not go away, I had more trouble than I should have had with my teeth. And most obvious, I felt more and more uncomfortable with the people I was surrounding myself by; I left those encounters feeling unhappy and stressed. And when I entered into a romantic relationship that was a lie; a marriage and divorce thirteen months later, at the age of twenty-one, I started shifting my perception.

The sofa was still green, but something about it—it no longer made me feel safe, it made me feel scared. My paradigm shift was beginning, and it was terrifying, because I knew, deep down, that once I acknowledged the actual color of the sofa, I had no idea what I was going to gain by that knowledge, but I knew what I was going to lose: My family, my so-called friends, my belief in the world.

I remember that time in my life vividly, the terror, the loss of people who only loved me if I remained a member of the green sofa brigade. I remember the heartbreak, the strength it took to accept that, to move to a plane where I was autonomous. And I tell you, all of you, the people who mock those who see this sofa as green, unless you have had this experience, you cannot know the force of will it takes to walk away, to start over, to examine who you are and what your place is in the world.

But worse than that? You will not be welcomed with opened arms by the people who have always known the sofa is purple. Sure, some will embrace you, but many others will look down on you for ever believing in that green sofa. They will tell how “stupid” you were, how many people you hurt by being part of the green sofa clan, they will not let you explain your experience, they will continue, as they always have, to let you know how superior to you they are. That group of purple sofa people see quite the smug, self-righteous shade of purple. To them, who were raised so differently, in such different households, by such different caregivers, who had such different life-experiences, a different education, it is simple: the sofa is purple, and you are beneath them for ever falling for the myth that the sofa was any other color.

They don’t know or care about the trauma you have been through, the courage it took to walk away from everything and everyone you held dear from birth; they don’t know or care the courage it will take to continue to be “othered” by not only the green sofa clan, but now even the purple sofa clan, for not joining them earlier.