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.