Deinstitutionalizing is not an act of disloyalty
You don’t have to leave your job to deinstitutionalize (unless you want to).
Relief came across so many people’s faces as I shared that in our first Grove workshop on Naming the Spell of Institutions.
When new clients show up asking me if they should stay or go, my go-to question is: What could open up if you change your relationship to your career first or simultaneously?
If you deinstitutionalize while you’re in your current job, you can decide to stay, go or ___ from a place of clarity rather than panic. Your current work also has the benefit of being familiar; you know the players and patterns. And you know YOUR patterns in that context. We can work to expose those roots and then strategize how to grow newer, healthier roots.
One of the most persistent myths is that if you start questioning institutions, it requires an exit, like quitting your job, burning things down, or silent quitting. There seems to be an internal struggle of: if you see the cracks clearly and stay anyway, you’re somehow betraying yourself. Or if you leave, you’re somehow betraying others.
In that conversation on deinstitutionalizing, what surfaced again and again was fear that loosening your grip feels like betrayal…of something you love(d)? Of what others think of you? (Guess what? Under that is the bigger question: what do I think of me?)
Loosening that grip naturally sparks fear and guilt. In last winter’s Creativity Lab, we talked about how our big, fabulous brains evolved to keep us surviving, and they do that by maintaining the status quo around us. That is one reason we have to intentionally work our imaginations - to grow them beyond the past memories and deep neural ruts.
With that in mind, of course, deinstitutionalizing gets misunderstood and feels threatening. The pull or pressure to stay in those patterns is embodied.
Can you name moments when:
You felt like you couldn’t or shouldn’t get up from that meeting you’re sitting in, but you really have to pee? That’s deeply ingrained training in loyalty that betrays your body.
Or you didn’t attend the family event because you felt you weren’t allowed to cancel class or meetings? Loyalty to the work ‘family’ comes with persuasive conditioning, including org polos, nametags, and ‘required’ after-hours socializing.
Those are just a couple of examples I regularly see when the illusion of loyalty holds the fear of betrayal as its roots. It’s loyalty that is expressed through overing - in the over-availability type. Betraying your own body and non-work relationships in order to express loyalty to job, colleagues, career, and, ultimately, the organization.
Many of us were taught, explicitly or implicitly, that being loyal means staying fully identified, fully available, and fully committed, even when it costs us our energy, health, or sense of self. When we begin to question that arrangement, fear often follows. As does guilt. It can feel like betrayal to imagine giving less, loosening our grip, or caring with boundaries.
All that educational and professional socialization trains you to believe that you’re gaining admission to a family, to belonging as one of the chosen few, to a club that you’ve yearned for, sacrificed for, and worked hard for.
And yet, the loyalty illusion builds on training in disconnection that has a voracious appetite. One that grows and grows because the institution needs you not to feel the real pain of all those hours sitting.
If loosening loyalty brings fear, that doesn’t mean you’re wrong. It means you’re touching something that was trained into you, and that’s where the curiosity and choice begin.
Here’s the reframe that sits at the heart of deinstitutionalizing: Authentic loyalty requires connection and embodiment (to self, community, and Earth), not self-erasure and abandonment.
I’m curious to hear from you about this, though: How does this sit with you? What comes up for you? Or what version of this do you notice for yourself?