Witnessing is a Spiritual Power
The latest chapter of violence in Israel and Gaza has had profound ripple effects for many of my friends here in the U.S. I have no special insight or wisdom to share on what has happened or continues to happen on the ground in the region. All I can do is bear compassionate witness to what my friends are enduring (and in the process, extend the circle of those I call friends).
It’s only in the past several years that I’ve begun to understand the power of true witnessing. Witnessing is, above all, a relational act where one person brings their open, non-judgmental and non-analytical attention toward another without trying to fix anything. Such witnessing requires that the other person knows they are being witnessed.
This relational act of witnessing is most powerful in the context of grief. Grief cannot be judged, analyzed or solved. It must be expressed and most importantly, it must be witnessed.
I grew up in white Southern Baptist and non-denominational evangelical churches. So, I only recall the question-statement “Can I get a witness?” from hip-hop and Marvin Gaye. But the concept of “witnessing” and being a “witness” was very much present.
Witnessing in evangelical Christianity is not so much about seeing and experiencing as it is in testifying to what one has seen or experienced. Witnessing takes on a quite instrumental role: the aim is not to simply bear witness (to Christ, to the empty tomb, to one’s born again experience, and so on), but to use one’s role as a witness to to tell others “the good news.” Evangelicals get their name from the Greek evangelium, which literally means “the good news.” Witnessing then is just the first step to the ultimate goal of testifying to the good news.
This made it really hard for me to understand how the actual act of witnessing, in and of itself, had any power. Isn’t the real power in the telling of what one has witnessed?
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I learned something new about witnessing several years ago from Internal Family Systems (which, admittedly, I can be quite evangelical about). There is something almost magical about witnessing in IFS practices. You’re led into your own inner world by a therapist or practitioner, and in the process your inner parts begin to relax and the real YOU (the True Self) emerges.
This real YOU is, well, you except that you feel more spacious, non-judgmental, non-analytical, and without a desire to fix your parts. Instead you feel compassionately curious, and the IFS practitioner helps you relate more deeply with your inner parts. This relationship is fundamentally built on witnessing.
The most transformational moments in IFS practice are when you get to go to your young, vulnerable exile parts and––you guessed it––witness them without judgment, analysis, or fixing. Just compassionate, loving awareness. These wounded parts want you to see all that they’ve endured, suffered, and had to carry. And they want this not because they want you to fix them, but because they need to be seen, felt, and understood. They need to be witnessed.* And once they’re fully witnessed, they’re ready to let go of the burdens they’ve had to hold for all these years.
I’ve seen this countless times as an IFS practitioner and personally with my own parts and Self through the help of other IFS therapists and coaches. The power of the compassionate witness is a profound, healing, spiritual one. It has taken me years to appreciate how powerful this act of witnessing is, but it’s now obvious and undeniable to me.
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In an age of social media, it’s easy for our brains to be tricked into feeling as if we have witnessed others’ pain and suffering. But watching is not the same as witnessing. Watching is observing without a relationship. We watch the news and we watch social media, but we can only witness when we are in relationship with someone and they feel our witnessing.
Watching is not bad, of course. We need to watch in order to learn and make decisions. But we must remember that no matter how many hours of doom scrolling we do, it will never amount to witnessing.
Witnessing is the gift we can give the actual people in our lives in these violent, tragic times. Yes, there are moments when decisions and action are required, but for so many of us, thousands of miles away from Ukraine, Israel/Gaza, Armenia, or any of the other zones of violence in the world today, our calling is to turn toward our friends who are grieving, frightened, and angry, and simply bear witness.
* I really want to write about why we and our parts need to be witnessed. I believe it’s related to the fundamental structure of existence, but that’s a way longer post!