#burnt primary

There's a reason Burnt Badger Primaries tend to look like Snake Primaries. No matter how painful it is, that instinct, to latch onto a group, no matter how small, is a part of us. A fully isolated Badger Primary is unsustainable. They either will latch onto someone, even an imagined someone, or they won't survive. It is possible to get to a place of hurt and bitterness so intense that they try pushing everyone away, but that's a Badger pushed to the brink. They'll still feel awful about that lack of connection with others, just as they'll still feel guilty when they fail to serve the larger group. This can cause a rather nasty feedback loop, since one of the other common ways to burn a Badger is exhaustion. Caring is exhausting. Caring leads to guilt, and guilt is exhausting, and exhaustion leads to trying to help fewer people, closing ranks around a select few, closing your eyes to the others you are too tired to help. But then something will open your eyes again and you see that no matter how hard you've tried to close off your heart, you still care. And caring is exhausting.

For context @wisteria-lodge asked people from the shc community to help with sorting asks!

Warning for spoilers for all 5 books.

TL;DR XL double lion, HC double snake, JW lion/badger, QR snake/lion, SQX double lion, HX snake/badger

Hi Anon! It's interesting that you're calling this a small question. ;-) When I tried to answer it, it took me back to a time during which I thought my primary had been burnt, complete with reading my journal of 2010 - it was rather illuminating.

The answer I've come to is: I'm not sure if I've ever burned my primary. I did experience a time when I felt that my inner structure, including my moral guidelines, wasn't really there anymore, and also that my intuition was biased and thus couldn't really be trusted. It led to me making some choices I might not have made had I not felt this confused about were I was in my life and what my priorities were, and, together with other factors, to an emotional crisis.

But looking back at the ways in which I fought to get myself out of that mess I was in - I don't think I ever completely lost faith in my inner compass. I struggled to recalibrate it, after having learnt about (the concept of) internalized bias and having had a few lapses in judgment, so I suppose that counts as singed primary. But I did that recalibration using exactly the processes I'd always used to solve problems: Check in with myself, how I felt about things. Write intuitively about what bothered me to get closer to the centre of it all, the place that told me: "that's it". When I read that old diary, I can see the process of me writing myself out of this state of distrust in myself towards starting to listen to my intuition and self-knowledge again. To regain a truly deep trust in my inner lion knowledge took a very, very long time - but the knowledge was still there, and whether I was able to believe in it varied greatly from day to day, hour to hour.

So... I don't think I've ever had that kind of... loss of purpose that you're describing. I struggle a lot with the fact (?) that I don't do enough to, idk, help save the world, but that's my burnt secondary getting attacked by my Badger secondary model, I think. I second-guess myself a lot, but I think that's my Bird primary model making sure my Lion doesn't run away with its wild ideas. Under all of that, my primary is fine. When I lose contact to it for a short while (which does happen), I can always work my way back to it through art, writing and being in nature.

Which means that I'm immensely lucky and privileged. And sadly unable to properly answer your actual question, I guess?

Let's ask some other Lion primaries! Hey, fellow Lion primaries! Have you had the experience Anon is describing? If so, how did you deal with it? Or have you had an entirely different burning experience? I'd love to hear about that very much.

It's always possible to unBurn. Most of the people I interact with here have done it, or are in the process of doing it. I actually think this system self-selects for Burnt people, because no other personality system has vocabulary to talk about that exact phenomenon.

From your last sentence, I'm going to assume you're talking about a Badger primary, not a secondary, and that you're talking specifically about people-oriented Badgers, not tradition-oriented Badgers. I'm also guessing that you're talking about yourself, and that you burned because you think caring for all people is simply impossible and irrational.

And I get it. I understand exactly what you mean by "dangerous and silly" because I've nearly burned myself. The pandemic hurt me in a way I didn't anticipate. I would watch the news and be in tears. Everyone was suffering, and I felt powerless to help anyone. It took sending in this ask (back in my lurker days) and a lot of subsequent self-reflection before I realized I was no longer empathizing, but sympathizing. (To be perfectly clear here, I'm using the Merriam-Webster dictionary's definition of the two.) It's a common struggle for Badger primaries, walking the line between the two, and the quarantine had sent me spinning off course. I usually save my sympathy for my friends and loved ones, but suddenly not seeing them caused me to start sympathizing with random people on the news, the people with the most heart-wrenching stories. Once I realized what I was doing, my course correction was clear: stop watching the news, reach out to my friends more, and forgive myself for my limitations.

Now, I have no clue if any of my story resonates with you or not. But my point is this: Badgers are rooted in empathy, not sympathy. You don't need to try fitting everyone into your heart to be a healthy Badger primary. You don't have to bleed for everyone you meet. Being a healthy Badger doesn't have to be as dangerous or silly as you're thinking. It's not about sharing in everyone's pain; it's about seeing them as human and recognizing that gives them worth.

But maybe sympathy wasn't your struggle. Maybe what made you burn was not being able to help everyone you think you should. If that's the case, I ask that you turn your Badger instincts on yourself. You're human too, aren't you? That means you have limits, and that's okay. You forgive others for being only human, right? You deserve no different. Get rid of the notion that you could've done better. You did your best. And before you object to that, get rid of the idea that our best is a constant. Some days your best means you can do a lot, some days your best means you have nothing to give. That's okay. You have wisdom you lacked yesterday, but maybe you don't have the same energy you did then. That's okay. You did the best you were capable of in that moment.

The only thing that can keep us from our best, the only way you truly lose at this thing called life, is to stop moving forward. There is no going back in time; there is only getting stuck. Fear and guilt are common prisons of the past, and if you've fallen into one of them, well, that's about as human as you can get. Blame evolution. Back in the day, bad experiences meant life-or-death experiences, so our brains evolved to latch onto these memories in an attempt to keep us from repeating our mistakes. Unfortunately, that means it can be incredibly easy to fixate on the past and assume that the future will be just as disastrous. That means missing out on all the potential for change and good in the future. Fear and guilt are insidious. Even if you push it from your mind, they can grow until they consume you, driving your choices, deciding your life for you. That is what it is to be burned, and that will always be more dangerous than the alternative.

So, what can you do about it? I've given a few ways to re-frame your thinking, but I realize it's easy for me to write about how great being healthy is while it may feel like an elusive, impossible state of being to you. Know that you've already taken the first step by asking someone about it. Keep talking to people you trust. There is some really good advice scattered around the SHC community. If you think you're up for it, I recommend joining the SHC discord. It's full of incredibly supportive people, and if you don't feel ready to put yourself out there, you can just listen in on their conversations and see you're not alone in this struggle. You don't even need to search out other Burnt Badgers specifically either. It doesn't matter your sorting or whether it's your primary or your secondary, unburning is a process of learning to trust in yourself again. That may sound odd to Burnt Loyalist primaries if they've begun to think of other people as the problem, and yes, a majority of burnings are first triggered by other people. But unburning is all about you and learning to trust your instincts, your capability, your judgement, your decisions, yourself.

I'm not about to sit here and pretend I have the answers to such a personal process, but I'll give you two pieces of advice. First, set boundaries in your relationships. Right now, fear, guilt, or both are setting your boundaries for you. If you're not sure where to begin, I suggest self-reflection with the goal of determining your limits. Try keeping a journal or sitting with your thoughts, even for only a few minutes a day and ask yourself how much (time, physical effort, emotional energy, etc.) you are willing to give to others? How much, in reality, are you able to give? A Badger primary needs to know the difference and, ideally, how to balance the two. Once you have an idea of your limits, set your boundaries, and keep them. These can be emotional boundaries, like limiting your sympathy for a smaller group, or they can be boundaries on how much help you give to others, like setting a limit on how much time or money you'll give someone. The goal here is to learn to say no without guilt. You can readjust your boundaries as your situation changes, but what is important right now is that you feel safe in your relationships. You deserve that safety as much as anyone else, and setting boundaries is the best way to ensure that.