The Counterbalance of Choice and Surrender

     When I landed in recovery in my early twenties my life was an unfolding train wreck. Things happened. I reacted. My reaction spawned more events that I reacted to and on and on and on.  Recovery introduced me to the concept of surrender and to a higher power as tangible presence in my life, rather than abstract idea. Although I didn’t like the idea of surrender, I couldn’t deny that my addiction had kicked my butt.

     Integrating and getting my head around the concept of surrender involved a lot of playing with it. What did the Universe want from me? How far did this surrender thing go? One morning I dumped all my socks on my bed and decided to sit there until the Universe told me which pair to put on. I don’t remember how long I waited to put on my socks. I felt both disappointed and relieved when a sticky note didn’t appear on my bed telling me what to wear.

     The relief came from learning that surrender didn’t mean letting something else take me over and force me to do something. That was the beginning of my stepping away from a typical Western concept of surrender into something that looks more like a partnership.

     In our go-getter, make it happen society surrender often has a decidedly negative connotation. Many of us associate surrender with waving the proverbial white flag. We see surrender as giving up, giving in, giving over or some other form of relinquishing our autonomy.

    Surrendering and being conquered are not the same thing. Surrender is about inviting the Universe to be a partner in the life I’m creating and taking more responsibility for my choices, not less.

     As with any other collaboration, the partnership works best when I’m clear on what is and isn’t my part. That’s where choice as the counterbalance to surrender comes in. My part consists of whatever’s happening right now. All the power I have is in the present moment. I can meet what’s in front of me, make choices and the rest is up to the Universe. Simple but far from easy.

     Being able to do that means letting go of whatever isn’t happening right now.  That’s a skill that takes practice. I first became aware of how much I wasn’t letting go when it came to future plans. I’d make a decision about doing something next week or next month. Because I was no longer actively in the decision process, I thought I’d let go. I hadn’t.

     If the decision involved something I felt excited or anxious about, my head leapt in to create scenarios. If the scenarios centered on something that might be difficult I’d spend hours going over what I’d say or do if this or that happened. If I liked the scenarios I’d forget they were just possibilities. I’d feed them with my attention until some part of me was convinced that what I imagined might happen was going to happen.

    When the event I’d spent so much time ruminating over arrived, it rarely looked like my projections. That usually left me scrambling around in my head about why this didn’t look like I thought it would….which made it really difficult to stay present with what was happening.

    It took me a few years to see that all my monkey mind after making the choice was a warped attempt at controlling or influencing future events. I forgot and still often do that all the power I have to change or affect future events lies in this moment. When I get ahead of myself, I rob myself of my own power by trying to do the Universe’s job.

    While the idea staying present and making plans seems contradictory, it isn’t. For most of us, making future plans is a necessity. My calendar between now and the end of 2015 has a lot of plans in it. I can pretty much guarantee that most of it won’t look like it does in my calendar. The timing will change. Some of what I’ve planned won’t happen at all.  Some will show up looking entirely different than what I can see right now.

    A lot of that rearrangement will come from surrendering to the Universe and what’s bigger. My part in that is paying attention. Ever hear that saying about “If you want to make the Universe laugh, make plans”? My version is “If you want to make the Universe laugh, get attached to your plans.”

    When I get attached to what I’ve projected, I give myself tunnel vision. The Universe rarely leaves a sticky note on my bed letting me know this fork in the road will lead to something much better than what I have planned. The Universe speaks through other people, unexpected opportunities, gifts and little nudges. If I’m too focused on what I think should be happening, I not only miss the magic by cutting off the ways the Universe can surprise me. Bottom line - collaboration doesn’t work if I invite the Universe in and then decide to ignore it.

     And it doesn’t work if I expect the Universe to do all the work by doing it for me. I am responsible for meeting this moment, making choices and letting go into what comes in the next moment. That letting go is opening to the magic of bigger. The most profound and amazing experiences in my life come from following nudges..not from what I had planned.

Uh-oh, avalanche

    This week’s topic comes from a question from a reader in response to my Befriending wild cats and other disowned things. KM wrote “My question is what do you do if that disowned part decides to rush you instead of shrinking back?” Thanx for asking KM.

     The simple answer is grab your sled or snow board, hang on and ride the avalanche…or not.  Like so many things, this is much easier to talk about or think about than it is to do. Whether you’re talking about a wall of snow or a ferocious cascade of emotions, avalanches are overwhelming. An avalanche of feeling has just as much power to sweep us away or bury us as a snowslide does. Emotional avalanches can feel just as life threatening.

     Often our initial reaction is to try and stop the avalanche or get out of the way. Some of that is basic biology. Humans are wired to leap into that fight, flight or freeze reaction when we’re threatened or anticipate being threatened. We can’t change that wiring. We can choose to recognize when we’re in that fight, flight or freeze place and respond rather than react.

    Some of our mad scrambling to hold everything in place when the avalanche starts is a result of socialization. Most of us live in societies where our mental and emotional health is measured by how well we can keep it all together. But does that really make sense? Growth and change are messy. Growth involves reexamining beliefs, moving through emotions and doing things differently, which are all forms of falling apart.

    So deciding to grow, change and keep it all together puts me in an impossible position. I can only poke at the edges of what’s happening and have to back off when my ability to keep it all together is threatened. The other option is to stay so focused on keeping the “I have my shit together” mask in place that I expend all my energy on managing who I look rather than moving with the avalanche. I believe a truer measure of our health is how fast we can let it all fall apart.

    The choice to ride the avalanche begins with acceptance. I’m overwhelmed. I’m not sure what’s happening. This is messy. I’m messy.

     Another vital piece is recognizing the opportunity in what I’m experiencing. Avalanches are powerful. In riding them I have the chance to plow through a whole bunch of beliefs, wounding, past experiences and emotional ick that no longer serves me. Within the avalanches destructive force is the possibility of greater freedom and being more comfortable in my own skin. That’s something I want.

     Recognizing the opportunity is not about liking the avalanche or being happy about it. It’s simply acknowledging all of what is. This is an opportunity and it sucks.

     Staying aware of the opportunity and the gifts it offers also helps me both stay out of self-pity and victim and step away when I fall in those holes. We’re human. Very few of us can ride an avalanche without sliding into self-pity and feeling like a victim.

     When I find myself in the middle of an avalanche, I know I’m going to throw myself a couple pity parties along the way. My self-pity is just as worthy of expression as anything else I’m feeling. Resisting the self-pity just feeds it. If I give myself permission to go ahead and throw the pity party, I can move through it.

     Pity parties can be fun if I let myself follow the emotion through all its exaggerations’. I start with the first thing that comes up, often “why me?” and go from there. Why me? Why does this always happen to me? Why is it always something with me while everyone else goes skating along? Why am I alone in the sea of humanity singled out to have to deal with her shit over and over? If I let myself keep going, the whole thing gets absurd. Then I can laugh at myself and let it go.

    This brings up another sticking point, judgment. When I’m riding an avalanche you’re going to crash into feelings, beliefs, wounding, memories and probably behavior that I don’t like. Platitudes like “don’t’ judge yourself” are pointless. I’m going to judge myself at least a little. My judgments are often fueled by the distorted belief that judgment is a way to control or change whatever I’m judging. That doesn’t work.

    Staying mindful of what I’m judging myself about and how attached I am to those judgments gives me the chance to move through them rather than being held hostage.

     Judgment is often a distraction tactic that can become of form of self-sabotage. When I  focus on judging what I’m feeling or how I’m handling something I’ve shifted my attention away from effectively meeting the avalanche.

    Another big one is feel first, analyze later. Avalanches move according to emotional logic not brain logic. But my brain wants to know what’s going on. It wants to take apart my experience so it can be defined and categorized. I do need my brains ability to see patterns and make links between present and past experience to understand what the avalanche is about. But that comes later when I’m not so consumed by feeling.

    Emotions are sources of information. They’re one of the strongest ways we communicate with ourselves. Emotions are also energy. That energy needs to be moved and expressed before I can sit quietly and look at what’s happening.  Sometimes my emotions need a more physical expression than crying, yelling or talking to someone. My current favorite tool for that is dancing. When I dance I can both expend and express that emotional energy.

     This brings up another important bit. In an avalanche, nothing is going to feel good. So riding the avalanche means shifting into choosing my actions based on what I know, not what I think will feel good.

     Just as a physical avalanche isn’t a single snowball rolling down hill, emotional avalanches aren’t just about whatever set them off. By the time the snow hits my head, the initial trigger has gathered up a bunch of other experiences where I felt the same way and all of that is falling on me.

    When the avalanche first hits I often jump to wondering how I’m going to take care of other life stuff while this is happening.  Although I haven’t found a way to suspend an avalanche so it goes away when I need to work with a client, I can negotiate with it. The more willing I am to make time to give the avalanche my full attention; the more willing it is to take a back seat when I need to do something else.

   

Befriending fear: what am I really afraid of?

     

      As I mentioned last week, fear is part of the human experience. It’s an emotion. Emotions aren’t something we can control. When we aren’t willing to own what we’re feeling, the feelings control us. We’ve all met people who are both disconnected from their emotions and controlled by what they feel.

    We may not have choice about feeling afraid, but we can chose how we relate to our own fear. The most secure prison is constructed not of metal bars, but of fear. When we chose not to acknowledge our fear or find out what we’re really afraid of, we let ourselves be taken hostage.

     We make ourselves not be afraid. We can shift our relationship our fears and deflate them a bit by looking at what we’re afraid of. So once we’ve acknowledged that our anxiety or need to make excuses is fear wearing a different face, how do we find out what the fear is really about?

     Fear can be tricky because it comes with sense of urgency and is often tangled up in secondary emotions. When we feel afraid the fear seems immediate. It comes with a sense of urgency, often adrenaline based, that pushes us to do something right now. If what we’re afraid of is the wooly mammoth that’s about to run us over, the urgency helps us get out of the way.

     When it comes to fears not attached to a physical threat, that same urgency can push us into reacting in ways that create a bigger mess we have to clean up later. Breathing into the urgency and letting it move through us or engaging in some physical activity that expends the urgency is step toward responding rather than reacting.

     Primary emotions are the spontaneous feelings that arise in response to a person, thing or experience. These primary emotions are direct result of internal or external stimuli. So when we’re afraid, even if the fear shows up as anxiety or anger, fear is the primary emotion.

     Secondary emotions are what we feel in response to the primary emotions. They often come from our judgments and beliefs around experiencing the primary emotion. If we’re harboring a belief that feeling afraid is a sign of weakness we may choose to feel angry instead. This isn’t a choice we make consciously but looking at what we’re really afraid of means being mindful of the interplay between our primary and secondary emotions.

    Often secondary emotions have little to do with what’s actually happening right now. They are tied to past experiences, wounding, the assumptions we make about the world and who we believe we are. Secondary emotions often last longer than primary ones. (Here’s a great article, Primary and Secondary Emotions, with some tips for differentiating between the two.)

     Uncovering what we’re really afraid of allows us to move into right relation to our fears. Most of us spend a lot of time being afraid of things that don’t actually happen. Ultimately what we’re really afraid of is some aspect of the unknown. Recognizing and owning the specific fear that’s being triggered is the key to deflating the fear.

    So how do we get there? We start by sitting with the fear. That means literally sitting still. It means being with the fear and feeling it rather than analyzing or intellectualizing it.

    Our fears are information. They have a message for us if we’re willing to hear it. The memories and images that arise when we sit with the fear or whatever mask the fear is wearing are good clues to what the fear is really about. The voices that emerge in our internal dialogue in response to the fear are also important clues.

    Sometimes I start by asking myself, “What am I really afraid of?” Often the first answer that pops up is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. When we touch a deep fear we risk paralyzing ourselves. So as a self-protective mechanism to avoid the paralysis we unconsciously bury the deep under layers of other fears that are easier to deal with. This is part of the interplay between primary and secondary emotions.

     We all have different deep fears. One that I’ve worked with for years is my “kicked out of the tribe” thing. I have a fear that I either am something or will do or say something that results in being ostracized or isolated. This usually comes up when I feel nudged to be direct about something that’s uncomfortable. Simultaneously I feel the need to be direct and my mind begins to scramble about why being direct isn’t a good idea. This isn’t a good time. It’s not socially appropriate to be direct right now, etc., etc.

     The first things my mental scrambling throws up could be valid. In that moment being direct might be socially inappropriate and mistimed. Ultimately my reasons for siding with the fear are pretty irrelevant. This isn’t about finding a good justification for surrendering to my fear. It’s about deflating the fear rather than feeding it by making myself smaller.

      So if in the moment my brain is telling me being direct isn’t appropriate but the images that arise are all related to saying something that triggered another person to get angry and walk away, I know what I’m really dealing with is the “kicked out of tribe” thing. That awareness allows me to meet the fear directly. I give myself the opportunity to be brave; to make a powerful choice in full awareness of what I’m risking.

     We can’t simply make our fears go away. They are as much a part of who we are as our eye color. We can choose to disconnect and not feel them. But that choice is really a decision to let our fears hold us hostage and make our lives smaller. Each time we choose to meet our fear and do it anyway we take some of the power away from the fear. Our fears shrink when we allow ourselves to have a new experience. That experience can be one of having our fears not materialize or having the fear come true and realizing we’re still okay.

Befriending fear: recognition and saying “hi”

     Monday I mailed my registration for a 5Rhythms workshop in Santa Fe. I heard about the workshop a month ago. I was immediately both drawn to it and searching for an excuse not to go. Hah! Reading the workshop description set off all kinds of introvert alarms…unknown teacher and almost 90 people attended the last time he taught in New Mexico. Yikes!

     Yep, I scared myself and mailed my registration anyway. After mailing it I realized I’ve been scaring myself regularly since January of last year. And that’s a good thing. Sometimes when I scare myself, I don’t feel afraid.    

        Fear is part of the human experience. It’s our response to a threat or the possibility of a threat. We’ll felt that heart banging, sweaty, fumbling, hands shaking fear that kicks in our flight, fight or freeze instinct. But most of the time fear wears a different face.

      We’ve all heard that thing about how human emotions, at their core, all stem from either fear or love. I’m not sure about that one as it seems too dualistic. I’d say fear, love or a combination of both. Grief is a confluence of love and fear.

     Over the past year when I’ve scared myself I’ve felt anxious, restless, angry, doubtful, small, confused, worried, judgmental and impatient…all different faces of fear. So why didn’t I simply feel afraid? When we’re afraid we also feel open, exposed and vulnerable. If the fear is strong enough we may even feel helpless or powerless.

     None of us want to feel that way so unconsciously we may jump to an alternate manifestation of fear because it’s easier to deal with. Anger is a big one here because it gives us the illusion of being powerful rather than feeling vulnerable. I’ve often wondered if there isn’t some mental mechanism that kicks in when we’re afraid and redirects us to feeling anxious, worried, etc. as a way to avoid getting locked into the physical fight, flight or freeze reaction.

     But that fight, flight or freeze reaction still comes up in response to alternate manifestations of fear; it just looks different. In reaction to a physical threat, the difference between fight, flight and freeze is obvious. When it comes to other threats the categories begin to overlap and blur a bit.

     Fight

           This reaction is all about making the threat go away either by destroying it or pushing it away. So fight can show up as blame, excuses, justifications, rationalizations, attacking who or whatever triggered the fear, getting angry and continuing to feed that anger or mental scrambling.

    Flight

            Flight is about getting away from the threat. It all comes down to some form of physically, mentally or emotionally running away. So flight can show up as walking away, making excuses, justifying, rationalizing, over thinking, looking for a distraction and shutting down.

    Freeze

            When we freeze, we’re immobile. Although this reaction may seem more likely to get us killed than contribute to our surviving the threat, freezing is about hiding in hopes that the threat will pass us by. Like the flight reaction, freeze can be physical, emotional or mental. Freeze shows up as disconnecting from ourselves and our emotions, avoidance, procrastination or simply pretending the scary thing didn’t happen.

     So what’s the point of all this? Why pay attention to the way fear shows up in our lives? It comes down to a question of who we want to be in relation to what scares us. Fear is a contraction. It makes our lives smaller under the guise of keeping us safe. Staying safe means staying in our comfort zones and as the saying goes, nothing grows there.

     This is another example of how what we resist persists. All of our emotions, including fear, are vital sources of information. Feelings are one of the ways we talk to ourselves. When we react by jumping into fight, flight or freeze we’re making a choice akin to running through a dark house, yelling and bumping into the furniture, instead of stopping to turn on the light.  

   Fear is warning that we’re stepping into the risky territory of the unknown. It’s a normal response to pushing the edges of our comfort zones and growing. Each time we surrender to fear by retreating into that fight, flight or freeze response we give the fear more authority over us.  We surrender to making our lives smaller. We confine ourselves to whatever space we can carve out in the prison of what we fear.

    The first step in deconstructing the prison rather than making it stronger is recognizing when we’re afraid and owning the fear.