Tag: fear

This Way or That

I watched an encaenia address online by actor/comedian Jim Carrey in which he told the graduating class they would consistently have two choices moving forward in their lives: love or fear. It made me deeply uncomfortable.

Fear is my old buddy. My go-to companion when I face something new and scary. In the old days, it was before a date maybe. Or before starting a new job. Or traveling somewhere I’d never been before to do something I’d never tried.

I know fear intimately and had spent years building that relationship. It is comfortable like wearing a broken in pair of slippers is comfortable or slipping into a well-worn bathrobe.

Fear has not served me particularly well, however. It often scuppered new opportunities before they had a chance to develop. Bear in mind that younger me was pretty much an emotional basket case, somewhat beyond a normal young person’s insecurities.

I had a tiny, little suitcase full of tricks I pulled out regularly to get me through daily life. An innate intelligence. A strong survival instinct. A pleasing and mostly acquiescent personality.

What I tried to hide – unsuccessfully – was the trunk of insecurities that suitcase sat on top of. I could suss out negative perspectives and opinions people were going to have of me before I even met them. I was my own self-contained judge, jury and executioner in social and work situations before I even showed up.

For the most part, my little bag of tricks worked sufficiently to allow me to “get by” in life. My father explicitly expressed that as a reasonable expectation for me. For my Dad, “getting by” was sufficient. Happiness and success were unrealistic, and mostly unattainable, life goals.

I was one of those kids who was held in sway by parental neuroses and limitations for far longer than I am comfortable admitting. In retrospect, it is clear from their own failures that they had no authority to advise anyone on the ingredients for making a happy life.

At a point, I honestly believed taking advice from anyone other than them would have, in some weird way, meant disrespecting them. After all, they knew me best, I believed. Didn’t they? Over time, I came to realize that wasn’t true. How could they? I didn’t even know myself.

So choosing love as a starting point is something of a weird choice for me. My old buddy fear largely dictates the script. “They’ll hate me.” “They are out to get me.” “I won’t measure up.” And because I leaned into that mantra in the past, fear turned out to be most often correct.

What shook me out of it? Seeing my parents as they were and not as I conceived them to be was the starting point. Learning that love is an action and not just words was another. They loved me and said it often – in their own way and within their own limited view of what love was.

That turning point also came – a little later than I care to admit – when I realized my children did not need to hear me natter on or share my wisdom about avoiding life mistakes. All they needed from me was love and support.

Instead of absorbing my well-meaning but misplaced advice, they were and are completely capable of figuring out the rest for themselves. I’ve got two smart kids.

So the internal struggle between choosing love over fear is still at play within me. I have recently been choosing fear and revenge fantasies over acceptance and opening my heart to the consequences of a crushing disappointment.

All my spiritual readings tell me there is learning to be had here. To face disappointment as if you had actually chosen it. That the Universe is folding as it should.

Fear takes all together too much pleasure in the petty and picayune scenarios it is able to devise that are – I realize – completely and utterly within my own head. I am at a learning crossroads. And I hate it.

I appreciate the comfort and utility of my old bathrobe and slippers. Even though they embarrass me, I am loathe to cast them aside to see what better offerings might be out there for me.

I may be talking in circles because I am in the middle of one. Unsure of what to do next or what the best course of action is. The only comfort I take from this rumination is that at least I am still thinking about.

I have not acted on my petty revenge fantasies or anything similarly boneheaded. I believe I am being encouraged to let go, shed my fear, work through my disappointment and see what might be on the other side of this emotional mountain.

I will either sit at this dreary way station and fester in a misery I am electing to hang on to. Or I can put on my hiking boots and start walking. The choice is – I realize -entirely up to me.

Fear or love. What’s it going to be?

A Friend Indeed

Thank you, Gary Stairs.

“Piglet?” said Pooh.

“Yes?” said Piglet.

“I’m scared,” said Pooh.

For a moment, there was silence.

“Would you like to talk about it?” asked Piglet, when Pooh didn’t appear to be saying anything further.

“I’m just so scared,” blurted out Pooh.

“So anxious. Because I don’t feel like things are getting any better. If anything, I feel like they might be getting worse.

People are angry, because they’re so scared, and they’re turning on one another, and there seems to be no clear plan out of here, and I worry about my friends and the people I love, and I wish SO much that I could give them all a hug, and oh, Piglet! I am so scared, and I cannot tell you how much I wish it wasn’t so.”

Piglet was thoughtful, as he looked out at the blue of the skies, peeping between the branches of the trees in the Hundred Acre Wood, and listened to his friend.

“I’m here,” he said, simply. “I hear you, Pooh. And I’m here.”

For a moment, Pooh was perplexed.

“But… aren’t you going to tell me not to be so silly? That I should stop getting myself into a state and pull myself together? That it’s hard for everyone right now?”

“No,” said Piglet, quite decisively. “No, I am very much not going to do any of those things.”

“But – ” said Pooh.

“I can’t change the world right now,” continued Piglet. “And I am not going to patronise you with platitudes about how everything will be okay, because I don’t know that.

“What I can do, though, Pooh, is that I can make sure that you know that I am here. And that I will always be here, to listen; and to support you; and for you to know that you are heard.

“I can’t make those Anxious Feelings go away, not really.

“But I can promise you that, all the time I have breath left in my body…you won’t ever need to feel those Anxious Feelings alone.”

And it was a strange thing, because even as Piglet said that, Pooh could feel some of those Anxious Feelings start to loosen their grip on him and could feel one or two of them start to slither away into the forest, cowed by his friend, who sat there stolidly next to him.

Pooh thought he had never been more grateful to have Piglet in his life.

Oliviral.com

Fuck Fear

Fear swims into my chest unbidden and swirls around my solar plexus in aching, incessant revolutions. Dead center in my body. Unbidden and heavy … triggered by what I assume will be bad news.

It is said that while we cannot control what others do or think or what happens around us, we can control our reactions. When fear hits, I immediately think all of that is pure malarkey.

My solar plexus fills up with fear without any conscious thought on my part. It is downright creepy.

I do not invite fear to fill up inside me overwhelming my senses and my reason. But fill up inside me it does. As surely as gas goes straight into a tank when the nozzle is depressed.

Unlike pumping gas, however, the fear doesn’t stop once the nozzle is released. It feels like a more automatic process.

I have learned some remedies for managing uncomfortable feelings of fear. Intellectually, I realize the highest and best road to take in the face of fear is simply facing it.

But that is usually my strategy of last resort. I play games in my head. I avoid picking up the phone or confronting the perpetrator. I avoid whatever will connect me to the bad news I fear. My stomach churns incessantly and the fear dances and coagulates in my body’s middle region.

As a stopgap measure, avoidance is actually not so bad a choice. It gives me time to collect myself. It gives me time to steel myself for the words I emphatically do not want to hear. In the poem Desiderata, there is a line I often refer back to: “Nurture strength of spirit to shield yourself in times of sudden misfortune.”

For me, getting to that end state is unreliable. When I am already feeling run down, maybe a little vulnerable, hungry, angry, lonely or tired … the well-known HALT acronym, I tend to be even more avoidant.

I have my fair share of memories where fear and terror swooped in when my defenses were at their very lowest ebb. I had no emotional or psychological defenses as no small child does. Yet my childhood world was full of fearful happenings and sudden wrenching losses.

Dad would frequently come home drunk and beat up my mother. I could do nothing but sit on the top step of the staircase outside my bedroom and shake from a combination of fear and cold in my thin cotton nightdress. Mom told me I once put myself between the two of them and pushed them apart when they were fighting. That was a pretty ballsy move for a four year old.

My beloved golden cocker spaniel Gus and my best buddy as a toddler was killed by a car when he bolted across the road in front of our house. He had been after a quicksilver squirrel. The squirrel got away.

Noone talked to me about how Gus died. As I recall, they didn’t even actually tell me he was dead. Probably one of those incipient “white lies” parents make up, presumably to “protect” their children. Maybe at the tender age of two or three years old, they saw no need to “traumatize” me with details I could not understand. Or so they thought.

I knew something must be wrong because Gus was nowhere to be found and didn’t come to my call. I also knew when I came upon a large red pool of liquid left in the front porch after Gus’s lifeless body had been taken away.

The sadness of that loss was compounded by the secrecy and hushed voices of adults around me who talk in that sotto voce way when something terrible has happened.

I know when I make that call today, I am going to hear: “Nothing more can be done. The builder can proceed and there is no legal impediment to prevent him from doing so.” I am steeling myself for the bad news.

By contrast, yesterday, my heart filled up with joy and hope for a few hours. An investigator came from the local authorities yesterday. I was temporarily cheered and encouraged by his very presence.

In the back of my mind, however, I knew my elation and optimism was sitting on flimsy evidence. Still, hope is a powerful analgesic.

An analgesic which is about to wear off.

Fuck.

The Halfway Mark & I Am Broken

Now that’s a confession.

Because I write about healing and how to do it and all the ways we can “get back on the horse” after unfathomable losses over many years, it is a shocking confession to me.

Today is significant to me not only for this revelation but because I started this blog on March 14, 2023. I have committed to writing a post a day every day for a whole year. This is the half way mark. High marks for stick-to-it-ism.

I have devised a clever strategy. So I will not feel the true depths and agony hiding in the pain abyss I am carrying. I play an artful game of “feint and parry,” “na-na-na-boo-boo” and the biggie, “You can’t hurt me!”

Lately, however, I am edging toward the rim of the abyss. The pain looks up at me slyly from the measureless depths. It chuckles softly. “I’m gonna getcha. You know that, don’t you?” And the minute I hear that whisper of a threat, I rev up in to high gear. “The hell you are!”

My voice raises and thins and speeds up. My fingers fly faster over the keyboard much more driven than they need to be. I realize there is no need for this manic typing. The words will come out eventually no matter how slow or fast I type. But in an attempt to evade the mocking incessant whispers of pain, the typing seems possessed by an Olympian drive.

I cannot even conceptualize what “surrender” or “letting go” means. I imagine it means death. Psychological and literal. I have entertained the conceit that I have actually been letting go in recent years. I realize I have been tested lately. External forces have triggered and exposed what hasn’t fully healed.

Then the dominoes fall. Just like the 100 foot oak trees behind our new house. I am emotionally bereft. I have tried to live above it all. Real losses and the threat of loss have been swimming in and out of my life for decades. “I laugh in the face of fear and danger!! Ha-ha.” Not.

Occasionally I acknowledge pain’s presence, then let it move along. Lately, the hateful thing seems poised to throw itself onto my emotional beach, loll about sunning itself and indicates its intent to stick around for awhile.

They say that the way to conquer the thing you fear and loathe is to get up close to it, make yourself vulnerable and befriend the creature. Talk about easier said than done. What I know today at exactly the halfway point in my daily blog writing exercise, I have never been so awash in pain and uncertainty.

If I were you reading this, what would I tell you by way of hope and comfort? The platitude scarves would come out. “This too shall pass.” “You are stronger than you imagine and braver than you think.” “What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.“ Etc.

That last quote is by Thoreau. It has always struck a resonant chord in me even though it seems to expect an enormous amount of us. It expects we will have sufficient time, wisdom and inclination to fully explore and find that which lives deep inside us. I feel I have never had an adequate amount of any of those three things to find out who and what I really am.

Once in another place of transition in my life, I was lost and confused. My direction in life, how I wanted to live, where I wanted to live. The counsellor I was talking with simply said: “That’s perfectly okay. Confusion is a legitimate place.”

In my mind, I have committed to writing daily about what I observe, what I’ve learned and whatever else came up. To honor that process, I tap into it all – good, bad and ugly. Even the uncomfortable bits. Only time will tell if this confession is a catharsis and sparks another deep healing phase. I have fear and I have hope.

Again it was my old friend Thoreau who said: “Not until we are lost do we discover who we are.”

That being the case, and if Henry is right, I should be on track to solidify a pretty tight sense of self at the end of this waterpark ride.

Here’s hoping.

In the meantime, I’ve got work to do. As I have always done, I will put one metaphorical foot in front of the other. And I’ll keep writing. That is something concrete I can do to contain and examine the pain. Most days, it helps.

ED. NOTE: The Universe often does show up with guidance and comfort. This morning’s message from a spiritual newsletter I read is: The beauty of being lost is the same thing that makes it scary — we must look within ourselves to find the way.

On it. 🙂

Yay Me, Yay You

“As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.” – Henry David Thoreau

Here is what I am learning these days about a theme I have explored before. I write for myself and only myself. If it hits a chord out there in the world, that’s good. Not essential but good. Welcome aboard.

I believe in the sanctity of the individual and exploring inside ourselves to find out who we really are. What we think, believe, care about, fear, love. Not because we are all that on our own, but because we as individuals are all there really is.

What is in your brain is your life. Full stop. Not a bit more complicated than that. Don’t believe me? Remove your brain from your body. See how that goes.

I hate to go all Henry David Thoreau on you, but I am going to. Collectively, we like to step-to and mind our ps and q’s to fit in and enjoy our perception of being “normal.” Being “seen” as normal in whatever society we are in is an important prerequisite for living a “normal” life. In other words, in larger society, to feel like a person “just like everyone else” and in smaller groups fitting in with people “just like us.”

We gauge our social success by the degree to which we have engendered the regard of our fellows. We spend a great deal of time in our youth preparing ourselves to become our version of what we believe a normal person is and should be.

There was such a brouhaha around Thoreau’s seminal book Walden, Or, Life in the Woods when it was published in 1854. He wrote a lot about being self-sufficient and celebrating himself. He was accused of all kinds of unseemly personal characteristics and hypocrisy and humorlessness. Mostly he was regarded by many as selfish for stepping outside the normal bounds of society. Even for a short two years.

For some reason this scared the living bejeezus out of good folk. Many branded him a narcissist and ne’er do well. But I see Thoreau’s attempt to elevate himself as an individual as a call to all of us to respect and nurture our unique individuality. He urges each of us to respect the dictates of our individuality for indeed, without that, we ain’t got much.

It is funny, in retrospect, that Thoreau contributed so many great one-liners and dorm room poster fodder to our culture. March to the beat of your own drummer, for example. Celebrating myself, another. Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you’ve imagined.

What I like most in reading about Thoreau is that he didn’t seem to give a fiddler’s fig about what others thought of him or his odd lifestyle choice. He hied himself off to a cabin in the woods where he lived a sparse life for a time devoid of most creature comforts back in the days of mid-1800’s sensibilities. This bothered some people and marked him as distinctly odd.

But I liked that Thoreau subverted the expectations of people around him. He essentially said with his choices and musings: “Let others think what they will. This is what I am doing and how I choose to live my life. Deliberately. There is a price to pay for marching to the beat of a different drummer and I am paying it.” (He didn’t say any of that. I am writing what I think he might have said and thought. How presumptuous is that.)

However, it was Thoreau who said: What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.

It is a reminder and an invocation to explore our own inner dreams and pay attention to the directives of our “small, still voice.” It is a tall order. Swishing around in society’s daily routines and taking care of a hundred chores and necessaries every day, that voice is often hard to hear. Dead silent for many people. But it is always there. Small and still though that voice may be.

As fragile human beings who choose to act on the prescriptions inside each of us for each one of us, in the face of overwhelming odds by society to push down and push back our individuality, it is really all we have.

We don’t really need a cabin to figure that out and pay attention. Modern life is full of homilies and advice about getting in touch with that directive through meditation and mindfulness. But it is a wonderful occurrence when you and the voice connect occasionally and for the more attuned, regularly.

For that voice is ours and ours alone. Rare. Unique. Original. Just like we are. I feel it best to constantly listen for that voice and to remind myself that it is always available to us whether we can hear it at the minute or not. I celebrate myself. You celebrate you, too. The voice inside you will get louder.

Lighten Your Load

I have found yet another “fellow traveler” whose message I want to share. I backpacked a lot in various places around the world.

What Dennis Welton says could not be more true. We often overpack when we head out on a journey. And our reasons are often fear-based. Fear of want. Fear of cold. Fear of thirst. Or a myriad of other undefined dangers that “may” be out there. I well understand the inclination.

The worst is, I do it in day-to-day life, too. Making sure I have enough was/is a survival strategy. It was a strong trauma response and no longer serves me.

So I am trying to let go. Slow and steady, of course, so as not to retraumatize myself. And just in case I really need those dozen boxes of waterproof matches to build a fire in the middle of the desert … ya just never know.

Dennis Welton

“I wrote this in my journal 5 years ago today while hiking across Spain on the old pilgrim trail called the Camino de Santiago. – DW –

Camino Lesson of the Day

The one thing that everyone that hikes the Camino de Santiago does is to start out carrying too much stuff with us in our packs. There is nothing like walking miles and miles with a loaded backpack to help you figure out what is really important enough to carry on your back day after day, mile after mile.

Something I heard along the way has really stuck with me and I was thinking about it today. They say that “We carry our fears in our backpacks”. In other words, if you are afraid that you will run out of food and go hungry then you carry too much food. If you are afraid of freezing then you carry too many clothes. If you fear not being able to find a place to sleep then you load yourself down with a tent and camping equipment. Of course, all this extra stuff is heavy, which makes us tired and sore and often causes injuries. The soreness and pain make us irritable and cranky and often that is what our fellow hikers see. They don’t see the real us! They are seeing the result of the pain caused by carrying our fears and too much junk in our backpacks.

I was thinking today about how a lot of the excess baggage that we carry around with us in life is the result of our fears. Also how all of us have had things that have happened in our past that has impacted us in a negative way. These fears and bad experiences often cause us to behave and react to life and the people in it the way we do.

Just like a backpacker that is carrying stuff that is not needed or serves no real purpose, we keep lugging around things that we should have dumped long ago. The result is that the people in our lives do not get to see the real us. They don’t get the best of us. Many times they are on the receiving end of the pain caused by the useless junk we are carrying around with us. Often, we have been hauling it around for so long that we have started to believe that it is part of who we are.

Maybe it is time to do what all of us backpackers end up doing along the way on a long walk. Unpack our overloaded personal backpacks and what we are carrying around every day with us. Examine each item honestly, determine if we actually need it or not and if it is really serving a purpose. If not then leave it behind and move on.

Turning loose of something is hard, even if it is of no value because we have been carrying it for so long and we have convinced ourselves that we are not whole without it. Once we have the courage to make the decision to dump whatever is hindering us in our life, walk away from it and start moving forward, we end up wondering why we were carrying it to begin with.

Lighten your load, get rid of the fears and useless junk from the past, and let the real you walk free!”

~ Dennis Welton ~