There is a story about an old world electrician who for years has used his fingers instead of a digital multimeter to test whether an electric current is live or not. When questioned about how he could tolerate the electricity surging into him, he replied that he did "not let the current dominate" him. Since the man is in his 60's and appears healthy and able to make complete sentences, he seems to be unharmed by his testing methods.

While I would not recommend his practice with electricity, I find this approach and perspective intriguing for other applications. What if we cultivate the mindset of allowing ourselves to interact with the physical world and not give our power away to the experiences?  A currently popular example of this is the firewalk, the act of walking barefoot over a bed of hot embers and coals. Long used as a test of faith in many cultures, there are others who believe it is explainable in the basic physics of thermal effusivity. Regardless of which interpretation you give credence to, fear cannot be allowed to fully dominate the experience if we are going to be willing to step onto the coals. 

Courage has sometimes been defined as having fear but taking the necessary action anyway. It is not about being fearless, but rather not giving fear the controls. Fear is one of our guiding emotions, certainly not something we would want to be totally without. It tells us to pay attention, take care, be alert. Problems result when fear dominates behavior and then the behavior itself becomes a destructive pattern in our lives. In my therapy practice I saw many people who developed habits of overeating or lying or smoking or gaming or shopping that initially began in an attempt to suppress fear based emotions of anger, sadness, or anxiety. Perhaps the lesson of the electrician is to surrender to the flows of emotional energy and allow them to swirl through us without harm, without attachment, without resistance, like mist in the wind. 


Add Comment
 
 
When I was in college, a Viet Nam vet who stayed in the apartment below would sometimes be triggered by the sound of a helicopter, and, believing himself to be back in the war, would climb up on the roof with his loaded shotgun and watch for bombers. This re-experiencing of old trauma happens pretty frequently, but thankfully not usually to this degree of emotional and behavioral overwhelm. Most of the time it shows up as an overreaction to an event, an emotional flood that echoes an old story of assault, abandonment, fear, victimhood, or other disturbing event that has not been resolved. Memories live in our cellular structure as well as in our minds, and a smell, a sound, a situation can open up pockets of stored emotion that interfere with our present functioning. A person who has been mugged in an elevator may have disturbing sensations and emotions when they enter a small space even if the attack happened decades ago. There is a survival mechanism in the reptilian part of our brains  that floods our system with biochemicals when triggered. Connective tissue stiffens, the adrenals release. The body prepares for survival in one or more of three ways. We prepare to flee, to run, move away, get out of town, quit our job, pack our bags,  leave now. Or perhaps we get bigger, puff ourselves up like many animals in nature when threatened, and assume an aggressive pose to fight. Or sometimes we get small, withdraw, try to hide, pull the covers over our heads, be quiet and invisible, freeze in the headlights. These reactions are not conscious; they are automatic and biochemically initiated, and sometimes they escalate into feeling as if we are in a life or death situation when is not true, as with my friend on the roof. The lingering effects of old trauma enactment interfere with our relationships, sabotage our goals, and inhibit our happiness; frequently we are not even aware of what we are doing that creates our own discomfort, and emotional blackouts are not uncommon. 

So if we are powerless over the onset of these reactions, what can we do? One way is to inhibit the cycle completion and redirect our energies to a new desired experience. The first step to doing this is to recognize what is happening and take responsibility for it without judging it. Observe it with interest; notice what happens in your mind and body. It is helpful to talk with someone you know and trust about what you experience.  Does your jaw get tight, your breath get shallow, your shoulders hunch, your hands clench, your neck turtle down into your shoulders? Does your mind race, do you think about a past event, relive it in your mind, get stuck on one thought in a looping pattern, want to run or fight, project the past onto the present, feel emotions that are too big or not appropriate to the current situation? Recognize that these and other symptoms are the result of a bio-chemical cascade that was very effective back in the days when our crisises involved escaping from saber toothed tigers. Know that you are just responding to a trigger that your system has identified as dangerous, and it is trying to protect you with a program that has not been adequately updated in centuries. 

The second step is to become willing to change, willing to step outside your comfort zone to interrupt the pattern re-enactment. We need to update the program by finding a way to inhibit the old configuration and re-direct to a more helpful new response pattern. It is possible to do this at the time of the trigger or anytime afterwards, and you don't have to fully understand the process. Action follows thought, so if you allow yourself to really think about or visualize being in the traumatic situation, your body will respond, as it will respond to your instructions. This can feel a little scary if we are in emotional overwhelm, so ask for help if you need it; it is always good to have someone you trust hold the space for you. You can begin by changing thoughts that lead to actions, and your emotions will also change. Start small; choose one of your symptoms and simply tell yourself what you want to do instead. If you find that you hold or shorten your breath, tell yourself to exhale completely and breathe in slowly and deeply. If your shoulders are up against your ears, tell your body to let them relax, to widen and lengthen your shoulders and allow your neck to be forward and free. If you are looping in frantic thought, give your mind the direction to slow down and think about your breath. If your attention wanders, lovingly direct it back. If you find yourself closing down to try to protect yourself, inhibit the shut down mode and direct your heart to stay open, allowing the fear to blow past you without harm like mist in the wind. Find language, images, sounds, and sensations that invite you to a calmer place and use them as tools for re-direction and re-creation. We often 'leave our body' when we are triggered, so working with body responses is a great way to bring us back. 

At times fear based emotional blockages, perhaps exacerbated with continual adrenal release, settle into chronic pain in the body rather than as reactive responses or behavioral symptoms. The back or neck pain that does not respond to treatment, fibromyalgia, severe headaches, and autoimmune disorders are believed by many to be related to unresolved trauma and fear held in the body. As we become adept at the techniques of inhibition and redirection we can find freedom from the burden of old trauma re-enactment and often release energy blockages that cause chronic pain. When we reroute the flow of energy into a different script, we create the opportunity for an alternative response. When that alternative response become familiar, it becomes a new habit. Other ways of working toward this freedom include the energy psychologies and trauma theory approaches. Using these methods we can learn to release that which no longer serves us and use that freed energy to create more of what we want in our lives.





Add Comment
 
 
A young couple won a contest and were awarded an all expense paid vacation to a resort on an island in the Caribbean. They were very excited and happy until a friend told them that this particular island was known for having a lot of snakes. Not being fond of snakes, they had some emotional pause, and being brave, they decide to go anyway. But on the flight to the island their concern about running into snakes grew into fear. So they did not sleep very well that first night, fearful that they would see snakes. The next afternoon, as they were coming back from the beach, they came upon a snake. Seeing the snake, their fear abruptly changed from fear of meeting a snake to an even bigger fear of being bitten by a snake. And the snake picked up on the fear vibe and got scared that he might be in danger himself, so he bit Sally. (Yes, fear is contagious.)  So their fear once again moved forward in time. No longer is it about seeing a snake, or getting bit by one, but the fear now is that Sally might die.

This is a made up story; nobody really got snake-bit. But it illustrates how fear manifests with the negative anticipation of something bad happening, not in the present moment, but in the future. One acronym of FEAR is Future Evidence Appearing Real. We deal with fear all the time; "what does being an adult teach you, daily, if not how to function in the face of fear?" (Everything Matters by Ron Currie, Jr.) I believe that we were given all of our emotions for a reason. Our evolutionary choice with fear is whether we feed it with more scary thoughts or just notice it as 'the call to attention' that it is and take a  next step to address what is calling to you. 

Paying attention and taking action in the here and now is therefore an antidote to fear; it is the giving of loving energy either to yourself and/or another. The Laws of Attraction state that we attract what we give attention to, so if we live with a lot of negative anticipation, we are likely to draw that which we fear most. 
 And there are always snakes in paradise. Yes, we do need to pay attention to avoid stepping on them, but if we feed the fear with our thoughts we are inviting them to a starring role in our reality. As Abraham / Hicks says, "Worrying is using your imagination to create something you don't want". Fear gives us another opportunity to observe, inhibit, and redirect, to choose how we create our lives. 

Add Comment
 
 


A spiritual teacher once told me "when you get to the place where you really like who you are and where you're at, you'll get grateful for all the s#!t that got you there". She was this little old gray haired lady in running shoes who was my boss when I worked for county alcoholism services back in the 80's. I didn't know then that she was my spiritual teacher and what she said often didn't sound spiritual or make complete sense to me but I knew it was important. She ran the residential program and was always bringing in new ideas, like the concept that we teach best what we most need to learn.  "We could use an Assertion Training Program for the clients. Charly, go put one together and teach it. " She had my number..... and I learned how to be assertive. 

An "angel mother", according to Clarissa Pinkola Estes, is a woman who appears in your life to give you something that you needed and didn't get in your childhood. Ruth was my angel mother for four years and I am, a quarter of a century later, still in awe of the tools she gave. Even my name came about in one of her fortuitous spelling accidents, teaching even without intention that anything, even accidents, can be gifts.

I pass on Ruth's wisdom to my clients and use it to shine light in my own dark places.  I came to understand that everything I experienced, especially the hard stuff, had good for me. Physical injuries helped me to know my unconscious mind, taught me to ask for help, brought me to the Alexander Technique, and provided tools for me to use and teach.  Relationship betrayals taught me lessons in acceptance, forgiveness, and compassion, to take risks and to keep my heart open because I learned that my heart is unbreakable when it is open. Catastrophes revealed hidden strengths and stimulated new brain pathways in the process of seeking solutions. Of course, I didn't usually see all the benefit while I was in the experience, but I learned to trust the process and seek guidance and support. Mostly it was in hindsight that I recognized that all the storms and upheavals  contributed to my knowing myself and growing myself and led me to other wonderful teachers who furthered my education. 

Today I get grateful that I can recognize my fear as it shows itself in new ways before it does much damage. It is illusive and I know it is my unconscious mind trying to prevent additional hurt, struggling to maintain the status quo because that is what the unconscious mind does best. It knows how to handle the status quo and change is scary. Old emotional memories spring to the surface in a misbegotten attempt to protect me. So I befriend my fear, sit quietly with it, observe it, see how it operates and how I can transform that fearful energy into love and gratitude, like my angel mother taught me. Thank you, Ruth, for your grace in my life, for playing it forward before we ever called it that.

Everything that happened in my life got me to where I am today, and I like where I am today. Every single troublesome thing, person and event helped me know myself. So I bless them and thank them and wish them love, happiness, and peace because that is what they have taught me to create. 

Namaste,
Charly

1 Comment