Finding Your Soul Tribe

Humans are tribally-inclined machines. We have emotional needs which include social interaction and a community on which we can rely. Humans are social creatures, but we’re also spiritual creatures and our spirits need true connection. We need sisterhood. Brotherhood. Community. We need a Soul Tribe to feel truly fulfilled.

The Unbearable Load

Notice that I use the word community - not partner, friend, or family. A community is different. A tribe is different yet. And a Soul Tribe, well a Soul Tribe is on a different level.

Partnerships, friendships, and families are single sources of failure. In a throwback to my former life as a Project Manager, let me put this in structural terms. A point-load is the force that a single section of ground can withstand before it fails. Partners, friends, and families have a low point-load because they are already carrying their own unsupported weight, so the added pressure of another person further weakens it. It’s unsustainable for us to lean our weight on them constantly. To increase the load that a section of ground can support, one or both of the following needs to happen: either a) the weight needs to be spread out and more evenly distributed, or, b) additional load bearing supports must be introduced. The higher load-bearing capacity our foundation  has, the safer and more supported we are.

Partners, friends, and families are not load-bearing support systems; communities and tribes are exponentially safer due to their distributed load support.

The Link Between Shame and Tribalism

Why do we need a community? It comes back to shame (all roads lead back to shame). Back in the day, expulsion from our tribe meant certain death because a human couldn’t survive without the protection of its tribe. Why would someone be shunned? Because they violated some rule of the tribe - so they were shamed. Shame equaled death. Nowadays this isn’t always the case but the brain doesn’t know it. The brain still believes it’s dying when it gets rejected. (NB: I fully acknowledge that there are some communities in which sadly, shame does still equal death) 

In a Soul Tribe, there is no toxic shame. Only safe boundaries, which is healthy shame.

I’m about to say something that will ruffle some feathers: the paradigm of the nuclear family is a patriarchal construct in which shame plays a substantial role. Don’t worry, I’m not going to pontificate, I’m just pointing out that the shift from tribal societies to the nuclear family model has not done great things for mental health. This isn’t to say that the influence of care-givers can’t be healthy - it absolutely can - IF the caregivers are emotionally mature, functional, and securely attached individuals. I don’t know of many nuclear families that are led by two people who fit this description (if there were more I’d probably be out of business).

When society started to gravitate around the nuclear family, shame took on a different role. Tribal governance protected the members of the tribe by establishing boundaries around threats such as murder, rape, and theft. To violate one member of the tribe in such a way was a violation of the tribe’s sense of safety and order and the consequence was banishment (shame). Although this may not sound much different from current governments and justice systems, it is.

As power shifted to patriarchal family units, families became fiefdoms with their own values and rules when fathers gained the economic and punitive power. To this day the justice system only gets involved when a citizen’s actions spill over the family borders; when the family has lost its control and harm can no longer be hidden within the family unit. When the shame can no longer be contained.

The flaw in this system is the shame. Because each person’s own source of shame is unique to them, a family’s definition of shameful started to reflect what the patriarch viewed as shameful based upon his own conditioning. To this day, what is unacceptable or depraved in one family could very well be permitted or even encouraged in another family depending on the rules of that particular family. The driver is no longer, ‘What is best for the tribe / society?’ but is instead, ‘Might this negatively affect how outsiders perceive this family? Does the individual’s preferences, desires, or decisions bring shame onto this specific family?’

Despite its place on the moral pedestal of society, with the nuclear family unit came insularism, family dysfunction, and complex trauma (and the rise of psychotherapy!)

The Decline of the Nuclear Family

Also with the nuclear family paradigm came the inclination to prioritize romantic partnerships over platonic partnerships, a default position that has not served us well. Sadly, so many romances crash and burn because we expect them to provide what a tribe provides. Others remain stagnant and lackluster because our partners aren’t members of our Soul Tribe.

Regardless of how we feel about it, the nuclear family is on the decline, in more ways than one. It’s no secret that women and men are increasingly deciding not to have children and society is adapting. Likewise, couples choosing not to wed is, dare I say, normal, as is choosing friends over family. Additionally, the Independent Family Review by England’s Children’s Commissioner found that in 2022, 44% of children in the UK were being raised outside of a traditional nuclear family, i.e. one comprised of a married couple with the father as patriarch. The 2021 Australian census showed that 39% of couples do not have children.

The 2020 US census showed that in the United States there was a 9% decline in married couple households and a significant increase in the number of single-person households between 1990 and 2020. Between 2010 and 2020 there was a staggering 10% increase in unmarried females living alone and a 15% increase in unmarried males living alone while there was a 20% increase in unmarried females living with non-family members and a 7% increase in unmarried males living with non-family members. Regardless of whether the reasons for these social changes be economic, intellectual, or simply preferential, the undeniable fact is that the developed world is experiencing a paradigm shift that will also force us to reconsider how we value older citizens and how we regard long-term health and wellness.

What is a Soul Tribe?

A Soul Tribe is different from a family (though it may include family members later in life) and more than a community. Members of a Soul Tribe are people of all ages, nationalities, and backgrounds whom we align with on a spiritual level. That doesn’t necessarily mean that we do Kundalini yoga or sound baths together, it means we feel at home in each other’s presence. We feel safe being vulnerable, we’re totally authentic, we can sit together comfortably in periods of silence, we can challenge each other. We listen without trying to fix each other’s problems.

A Soul Tribe holds us accountable while unconditionally loving us. This doesn’t mean that members of a Soul Tribe don’t ever disagree - on the contrary! Soul Tribes have frequent discussions about topics that they may not see eye to eye on because they’re endlessly curious. It also doesn’t mean that we’re unconditionally tolerated or that we’re entitled to unload our baggage onto Soul Tribes. It means they unconditionally love and accept us which partners, friends, and families rarely do.

Who Can be in Your Soul Tribe?

Anyone! That’s the beauty of a Soul Tribe, it’s comprised of a beautiful collection of individuals we pick up on our journey. This can include friends, colleagues, relatives, mentors, therapists, teachers, and healers. They can be different ages and come from all walks of life. There’s no prescription for developing a Soul connection with someone!

Soul Tribes often have similar values and definitions of what makes a meaningful life. I’ve been building my own Soul Tribe one by one over the past few years comprised of women and men of various ages, located around the world, who want a similar lifestyle to the one I’m creating and who are also creating the family they choose and treat their Soul Tribe as a priority, not just as people to schedule in for the dreaded “coffee.”

Like everything in life, Soul Tribes aren’t necessarily permanent. The point of them is to assist us in our spiritual and personal evolution. This journey of expansion occurs in spirals - by now you know my motto, life is not linear. What’s in alignment in one season may no longer be in alignment in the next season.

The reason why not all of our relationships are Soul Tribe connections is that we stay in relationships in which we don’t evolve together instead of leaving them when they come to a natural end. There is a wistfully nostalgic value in the collective consciousness that we need to cling to relationships well past their expiration date. While the end of relationships can be laden with deep sorrow, they can also be liberating. As we’ve already established, Soul Tribes are rooted in unconditional love, so they can disband with as much love as they were conceived with.

Why Can it be Hard to Find Your Tribe?

Societies make it difficult to maintain our sisterhoods, our brotherhoods, and especially our mixed-gender communities because we are taught to give everything to the nuclear family whether this is our partner, our children, or parents. By the end of most weeks we have nothing left to offer our tribe. No energy to lend an ear, no attention span to celebrate an achievement, a jealous partner who asks us to abandon our opposite-gender friends. 

Sadly, when we’re struggling the absence of a tribe is most acutely felt. When we’re struggling, finding your tribe can be even harder. When we have medical crises, bereavements, heartache, financial difficulties - or when we wake up one day and decide that our life no longer fits us - our human brain looks for its tribe. Our Soul looks for its tribe.

When we lack this, many of us seek romantic partners as substitutes, a name we can list as an emergency contact. But it’s not the same. Romantic relationships can support our spiritual evolution, but they’re no substitute for a tribe and it would be unfair to expect that of them. The fulfilment, safety, and unconditional acceptance we experience from having a true tribe is inimitable.

Our Inner Child and the Family We Choose

As a healer, I’ve observed that the vast majority of clients have some aspect of family dysfunction. These aspects usually include guilt, abuse, emotional or financial manipulation, religious conditioning, enmeshment, codependence, and emotional immaturity. Most of us know this, in fact it’s become a bit of a joke in social discourse hasn’t it - that we go to therapy to deal with our mommy or daddy issues? And yet, when given the choice to walk away from or stay within the dysfunctional family unit, many of us choose to remain because we are still neurologically programmed to avoid expulsion from the family. 

Finding our tribe is creating the family we choose.

Anyone who’s ever done Inner Child work with me will know that eventually we get to the stage where we take custody of our Inner Child and we choose a new family for it. We introduce our Inner Child to their new sisters, brothers, aunts, and uncles who are our adult friends, teachers, or mentors that they can trust.

Ideally we get to a point where if we choose to have children, we exercise the same discernment when choosing who will become their birth family because it will form the foundation of their development. Being raised by many mitigates the likelihood of children inheriting the wounds of one or both parents. Having a community to co-regulate with increases the chances of children developing into secure humans with a healthy self-worth.

A Soul Tribe also liberates those of us who choose not to have children or nuclear families. We get to create the tribe that accepts, supports, and challenges us enough to keep us continually evolving. The best friendships are partnerships and when we treat them as such, friendships are deeply fulfilling.

Cultivating a Community

Sometimes we stumble upon our Soul Tribe members in serendipitous encounters. More often, we need to make an effort to find our tribe. The simplest way to meet aligned people is to go where they are. Attend gatherings that attract groups of people. Join clubs, courses, support groups, and teams that attract people who have similar interests or life experiences. Search for a therapist who you feel safe with. Volunteer for charities that are centered around subjects you care about. Take your headphones off on airplanes and trains, signal that you’re open to conversations. Oh, and actually BE open to having conversations! See someone reading a book you liked? Tell them!

Back when I started creating my Soul Tribe I signed up for Bumble BFF, a spin-off of the dating app by the same name, and was clear in my profile about what qualities and lifestyles I was looking for in friends. Recently I engaged with an author on social media whose books I love and we became instant friends. Turns out we have an enormous amount in common but if we hadn’t been equally open to chatting to a random person we never would have met. Introduce friends and colleagues who you think have a lot in common and be open to others doing the same for you.

Attracting our Soul Tribe requires a certain amount of authenticity, which requires a certain amount of vulnerability. If we aren’t ourselves and if we can’t speak openly about our beliefs, values, and goals, how will anyone ever know that we’re their Soul-Sibling?

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