Dancing with Fear
…and not letting it lead
Welcome back, friends.
For those new to my blogs, I share stories from my life as seen through the lens of one who survived adversity as a young person and adult. I grew up in an environment ripe with physical violence, emotional neglect and abuse, sexual abuse, addiction, and caregivers with untreated mental health disorders. I share these stories to open wide the door of silence and shame; and, hopefully reach someone who needs to be seen, heard, and held. Is that you?
What is the lens that I see the world through; and how do I respond to events whether benign or challenging?
According to Speaker, Author and Trauma-Informed specialist, Shenandoah Chefalo with Chefalo Consulting:
“A trauma response is defined by the intensity and duration of a stressful event, the overwhelm of emotions, and a person’s capacity to cope. Trauma responses can arise when a distressing event happens too early in life, too often, for too long, or – perhaps most important – if no one intervenes with guidance and care.
Stressful events can then overwhelm our ability to cope, resulting in long-lasting, self-reinforcing, maladaptive behaviors. Our bodies continue to respond as if the event is still occurring, even when it is not. Our nervous systems remain activated and we interpret trivial challenges as catastrophe.”
In a matter of hours, I will be leaving the comfort of my home, my routine, those things that currently define who I am, and putting my life in the hands of a surgeon who will open my neck, move my esophagus and trachea to repair damaged discs and nerves in my spinal column.
As an eight out of ten on the national ACEs questionnaire scale, I am now the little girl who would hide in her closet under a large pile of clothes praying no one would find me, grab me by my waist, take me to their room, and do unspeakable things to me. I am the three-year-old me who climbed out the window hoping to run away and disappear forever. I am the six-year-old who is being dragged by her hair down the long red carpeted hallway to be beaten with rods and brushes and sticks and belts. I am the adult lost in the future of death and dying, writing her obituary and wanting to say the things left unsaid to her children. And that banshee, filled with despair, screaming at the top of her lungs jumping up and down on the bed while lost in another night terror.
Shame researcher and storyteller, Dr. Brene Brown, wrote in a recent blog: “Despair is a claustrophobic feeling. It is the emotion that says, “Nothing will ever change.” It is different than anger or sadness or grief. Despair is twinged with hopelessness.”
I, however, do want things to change. I do not want to compete in what has been coined “The Pain Olympics.” I do not want trauma to be my primary identity, as these trauma responses have a way of keeping us stuck in an ideology, in negative thought patterns, or in a pace of life that does not serve us. I want these night terrors to end. I want to learn to take the uncomfortable under the weighted blanket with me, hold the wound, breathe into it, and get comfortable with it, instead of allowing it to own me.
Spiritual thought leader and author, Eckhart Tolle, teaches us about the “pain body.” In his bestselling book A New Earth he introduced the concept of the pain-body to describe the “energy field of old but still very-much-alive emotion that lives in almost every human being.”
This pain-body is what challenges us in our ability to live more conscious and awakened lives. It is seen as an obstacle that we must all face as we try to become more present in the moment versus lost in the past or the future moments that are gone or that we have no control over.
Although Eckhart describes the pain-body frequently as a kind of energy field, it has a very real and tangible explanation when looked at from a somatic or biological perspective. What he is describing is chronic trauma (pain) and nervous system dysregulation (pain-body or trapped emotion).
Esteemed American psychologist Dr Stephen Porges developed The Polyvagal Theory which explains the autonomic nervous system and our stress responses in a very practical way. I found it so helpful to understand that many of my feelings are simply a response to stress and do not reflect my personality or reality.
So how does the pain-body relate to our nervous system? The somatic or biological explanation for what Eckhart Tolle describes is what happens when our nervous system become stuck in survival mode. When we are stuck in fight/flight or freeze-state, which can happen because of chronic trauma, the mind is biased towards negative thinking and will ruminate over things in proportion to the degree of stress. This has a very real survival function; it is how our bodies protect us in the face of threat. The body wants to eliminate any possibility of danger before determining we are safe and can relax. So, it will assume the worst until it can know for sure we are safe.
In my head I’ve been hearing…
Will I die on the operating table?
Will I ever be able to coach or swim again?
Will I be able to embrace what is ahead of me without fear or judgement?
Should I just drive this car off the road now and get it over with?
To heal the pain-body we need to heal the body, not the mind. Ultimately, the only way to do this is to heal and regulate the nervous system. Pent-up energy and pain that obstructs our ability to be present in the moment prevents us from finding ways to move forward with our lives, keeping us stuck in a cycle of competing for first place in the Pain Olympics:
My life was worse than yours.
I cannot do that; I am not good enough.
I will never get better.
I will never be as good as I once was.
And on and on…
This attention-seeking behavior can negatively damage your relationships, especially if your relationships are with people also dealing with their pain-body. However, by learning to become more embodied and more present, we can finally come into alignment with other things, including our inner stillness and intuition; and release our pain-body. Hopefully…
Embodiment teacher and therapist, Prentis Hemphill names courage as an essential element for positive change:
“Courage changes things and courage changes us. It is how we become. I have found that there is a ‘right-sized’ fear inside any vision for change, and in taking courageous action we develop a part of ourselves that can talk back to and hold the fear without letting it lead. Guided—and inspired—by what we care about, we become able to express our courage and act.
The courage we need is the courage to fail and stay. The courage to relinquish grasping what was and build piece by piece a new structure for how and what we produce. The courage to exit the safety of our dying delusions. The courage to reach for one another. The courage to be honest. The courage to ask questions. The courage to listen. The courage to feel uncomfortable. The courage to be a part of the circle, to be fed by and to feed. The courage to surrender. The courage to know when our time is over and our roles have shifted. The courage to love and be loved….
When we are courageous, we can do the unexpected and start to mold the world around a vision bigger than one produced by fear. Every inch of progress, every ounce of love, every truly meaningful action from here on out will happen through courage, not comfort.”
May I learn to be comfortable with the uncomfortable. Hold it gently with me under my pink weighted blanket. Ask it to tell me its story, and then listen. Dare to not be afraid of this story. Accept the breeze of pain being released in each breath as I squirm to learn the steps of the dance without letting fear lead. Here is to my courageous surrender and the emerging trust that all will be well.
Until next time, friends.
Bess Hilpert, Author finding I, A Journey of Repair
bess@findingi.org
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