fear

Choose Love.

Eyes

This pandemic is changing our world. It is making us question what is important, what is essential. It is bringing to light inequities that have long been hiding in the shadows. It is triggering our fear and our compassion. It is isolating us from our comforting behaviours and from each other and forcing us to look at ourselves. It is hard. It is harder than most things many of us of have done in our lives. It is hard because the regular stresses of our lives are hard for most of us and adding on the extra stresses that living in a pandemic creates makes it even harder. Every person has been impacts by this experience. Every person has a choice in how they respond to this impact and I implore everyone to choose love.

There is so much anger out there being projected at our political leaders, our health leaders, our neighbors, our employers, our families, ourselves. We are all of us doing the best we can in the situation we find ourselves in. Now is the time to look at that anger that may arise within us, to question it, to understand it, to take responsibility for it. It is ours. It may be triggered by other people’s actions, but how we choose to respond to it is our responsibility, choose love. Feeling and then projecting anger, judgement, annoyance, rage is an unloving act to everyone involved. It is unloving to yourself because it helps you avoid the fears and sorrows that lay under the anger. It stops you from being able to reach deeper, past the habitual response to the truth, to the place where healing lives, to the place where those stuck emotions can be free, felt and move on. Choosing anger prevents your own growth, your own ability to love, to feel loved and to act lovingly. Choose love.

Sometimes choosing love doesn’t feel as wonderful as we would expect, at least not at first, because often choosing love means opening up to truth and feeling the errors and the effects of acting on those errors has had on our lives, but if we truly do choose love, we will choose to feel those emotions and move through them. This is when you’d be surprised to find that choosing love feels even more wonderfully than you’d expect. Now is the time to choose love. We all have more time at home, more time to feel and not just react, more time to question ponder, and explore, take it, choose love.

There is so much fear out there right now. Fear for our health and the health of our loved ones. Fear for our welfare and our economy. Fear for our standard of living. So much fear. Choose love. Fear is only an emotion that is meant to be felt. It can move through us to completion. It is not about denying your fear, it is about acting in spite of your fear, of showing the courage that we can all possess, of loving ourselves enough and trusting ourselves enough to know we can move through this. Most of us need help is navigating our emotions at first, help is out there, find a therapist, a YouTube guru, a good journal, whatever you need. Choose love.

Choosing love does not mean denying all of the other emotions, the opposite is true in fact. Choosing love means being aware and allowing all of our emotions to flow, just not allowing them to lead to unloving acts. So if you’re angry, feel angry, hit a pillow, scream and shout, get it out. If you’re scared, be scared. Feel those terrifying feelings, allow yourself to go there, trust that you were built to feel and you can feel this too. Feel it through. Observe yourself, observe what choices you make, question your motivation, give yourself space to feel. Choose love.

We need to choose love for ourselves and how we treat ourselves so we can choose love for others and how we treat others. We are all doing the best we can right now. Is every decision going to be the ‘right’ one? The perfect one for everyone? No, but a decision had to be made and whomever made it did the best they could with what they had at that moment. We need to act ethically, to treat others as we would like to be treated. To remember compassion, even if our fear or anger is triggered. To do our best to be part of the solution which is easier than one might think. Choosing love makes you a part of the solution. It might be through little ways like withholding your anger projected at someone enforcing the new safety laws that may allow them to focus on other work and spread the goodness instead of making them deal with more stresses brought on by the projection of anger. Or it might be through larger ways of taking compassionate action or something else entirely, and it doesn’t really matter because every loving act supports everyone, yourself included. Choose love.

How often in one’s lifetime do they get the opportunity to hermit like we are now being asked to do? Where our distractions are farther away from our fingertips and our travels are limited? We have the opportunity now to use this time to help us figure out why we don’t always choose love. Why we feel as we do, what we truly want, what is important to us, how we can get there and so on and so on and so on. Take the opportunity, choose love.

COVID-19 Reflections on FEAR

Eyes, Spiritual Journey

I used to let fear run my life.  I walked around terrified all of the time and the times I wasn’t terrified, I was pretending or so deep in addiction I did not realize the fear I was in.  I didn’t even realize most of the time, that it was actually fear that I was feeling. It was such a familiar sensation, it was my ‘normal’.  I was too scared in fact to even start on my healing journey as I’ve written about in other posts, but with the help of my loved ones I started to learn that I didn’t have to live in that state. I was not aware it was fear, I thought it was just depression, but the truth was I had suppressed so many of my feelings that I was depressed, but the fear is what lead me to suppress them and kept me working tirelessly to avoid feeling. As I walked down the healing path I began to release emotions and open to how I was really feeling, I began to see what a massive role fear played in my life.  It guided every one of my decisions and I didn’t want to honor fear as my god anymore so I began to learn how to confront that fear.

What a journey!  Confronting fear is scary, go figure, fear feels scary, that is the emotion, but it is just an emotion and we were designed to feel it like any other emotion. I started by taking baby steps, for each of us what we fear will be different and how we confront it will be our own.  For me, I started to confront my terror of being seen.  In order to do this, I had to be seen which meant I had to speak up.  So, I started speaking up in different situations, feeling my face flush, my heart pound, my mouth go dry, just feeling and accepting the way my body was processing that emotion and continuing to speak.  I tried not to judge it or myself.  I learned that I could speak up, even if what I was saying was not accepted.  I learned I could confront that fear and the next time it would be easier. Now, as I write about this, I realize how completely that fear is gone in the situations that I had confronted my fear.  I am able to speak the truth with love and not with fear, but there are still situations where I had not confronted that fear that I am working on.

Most of the fears I am dealing with lately are related to my fear of feeling those old stuck emotions and some of those old emotions are old stuck fears, so there seems to be layers of fears.  The largest one I keep plugging away with is my fear of being overwhelmed by the emotion, my fears that I can’t handle them, that I will be destroyed by ‘going there’ which usually results in my refusal to open up to them and my choice to honor the fear.  I am slowly working through that.  I find that it is not a linear process where I just work on one thing and follow that line through to the core to release, it seems more like a tangle of strings that lead me from one set of emotions to others, one set of false beliefs to others. When I think of my fear of being seen, one aspect of that was my fear of speaking the truth, or speaking up at all, and within that aspect there were many different flavors: speaking up to women, speaking up at work, speaking up to men and so on.  I know that I am progressing in the untangling as my life is changing, my reactions, my emotions, my desires, and my motivations are changing, and I still have not untangled it all.  I have untangled my fears of speaking up at work, I have untangled much of my fears of speaking up with women, but some still remain and I am working on untangling my fears of speaking up with men.

Many of my fears are wrapped around the false beliefs that I am unlovable and unworthy. If we look at FEAR as False Expectations Appearing Real, then I had the false expectation that no one could love me and I lived in the reality of that belief, it appeared real to me.  I have worked through many layers of these, related to women and how they perceive me, related to work and being able to share what I have to offer, but I had not yet worked on those related to men and how they perceive me.  So, as we entered into our COVID isolation I happened to have a male friend staying at my place.  Usually I am a hermit, living alone in the middle of nowhere, but as the laws of attraction would have it, during the longest isolation, I have a man in my space, what a perfect time to face some of those old fears.

I have been quite dedicated to healing my emotional injuries and errors for quite some time now.  I have been practicing many of the actions I suggested in the last post on “dealing with fear” for all of my emotions, not just fear and I have been feeling the freedom of release.  This process is amazing and almost self sustaining as it creates such joy and peace and builds so much faith in our own abilities to heal.  So when offered the opportunity to face and work through old emotions that arose I took it.  It has been hard, a lot of work and ridiculously rewarding.

I know that when my anger starts to rise that I have to really stop and be honest with myself.  I know that there are emotions within me that I am not wanting to see or feel and so I act out defensively.  This happened A LOT at the beginning of our isolation.  It took me a long while to build enough desire to see the truth behind the anger.  I don’t deal with anger well, it is not something that I learned how to express either positively or negatively, it is something that I learned how to suppress, stew and allow to come out in passive aggressive ways, so it took some time to even recognize that I had this anger and then it took time to realize that it was really covering up old hurts and false beliefs.  Whenever I felt rejected anger would rise, I would start beating myself up internally, calling myself names, judging myself, and generally stewing in self loathing. This would also bubble up and out as passive aggression where I would notice everything that he wasn’t doing ‘right’ and stew on that, not say anything or addressing it, but stewing on it.  I felt confused and trapped as I knew projecting anger at others was not loving and even though some of the things I was stewing about were valid, I knew I could not address them without anger so I had to deal with that first and I didn’t know how.

In the beginning I was terrified of speaking up to a man, of sharing what was going on honestly and vulnerably without the shield of anger to protect me, without the comfortable tactics of hiding away keeping me safe, but I did it.  I’d fumble through the truth of what I was feeling (sort of, still so scared to speak the truth I couldn’t even think it through the fear at times), I’d share my process, my thoughts and what I was learning. I’d feel the fear coursing though me, my mouth going dry, my thoughts drifting away, my heart pounding, I’d acknowledge the fear and continue as much as I could.  Speaking up was only one step in the process, once I did, I often had to retreat to my room and let go of all the emotion that was trapped by that fear as well as the fear itself and I’d cry it out. It felt like a relief and often there was great joy and pride that I did it. It was usually then that I’d get some insight into why I was angry or I’d be able to access the hurt that the anger was covering up and I’d sit with the emotion until it ceased to flow.

I spent a lot of time each day out on the land talking out what I was feeling, being angry with the process or the situation or with God for making it that way. I’d talk to nature and rant and release, access my emotions and let them flow.  I’d journal each morning with the intention of opening to the truth and connecting with those stuck emotions, and I’d cry a lot as I released the layers.  The cycle repeated itself again and again.  Feeling rejected, anger, lashing out and/or in, retreat, feel, journal feel, walk, express, feel, share, confront fear, feel, retreat, feel, retreat, feel, retreat, feel. I didn’t want to feel those old feelings of rejection, the pain of not being wanted, the beliefs that took root of not being good enough, but my desire to do so kept growing and so every time the opportunity arose, I took it (eventually) and shaved off another layer.  It took a lot of courage and dedication and still does.  I am not through it, but it is not as scary any more and I have worked through a lot of the fear surrounding feeling these particular emotions.

One of my emotional addictions that I’ve clung to my entire life is self punishment.  When things were going wrong, say I was feeling rejected, instead of just feeling rejected I would resort to punishing myself, pointing out every physical thing that was bad about me, reaffirming my false beliefs that no one could love me anyways, and so on in the same vein. I would do this so I didn’t have to feel the feelings of being rejected, I preferred to feel angry at myself and so, I could not heal. As I increased my desire to just soften to the feeling of rejection (which was an old feeling that was triggered) I would be mean to myself less and less.  It sucked to feel those old hurts, it sucks to feel rejected to feel worthless and unwanted, but those emotions were in me and it sucked more to hold onto them, act out of them and let them guide my life.  I have a growing faith that surrendering to the feeling of those old hurts releases them once and for all and at the end, peace exists, real peace, not a contrived peace, but real peace and that is so amazing.

I am thankful daily for this forced isolation time. I have the time to dedicate to thinking, journaling, feeling, practicing, pushing, feeling. I have the continued opportunity to become aware of my triggers, to react, to observe, to heal and to repeat as needed.  I have the fortune to have someone here who is accepting of me going through this cycle who continues to be himself, triggering me and not just trying to placate me or to make us both more ‘comfortable’. I am grateful for all the gifts that have been given during these crazy times even though some of them are really hard to accept.

This feels like boot camp in a way. In my normal life I might have an interaction once a month that triggers me and I go through the process over the month to work it out.  Now, it is almost daily.  It is hard, but it is worth it! I feel changes within these past 6 weeks that may have taken months or years for me to confront.  I’ve noticed changes in my thought patterns, in my self punishment (which is next to nothing now), in my acceptance of myself, and in my willingness to speak the truth as I see it whether or not it is easy. I had to confront my fear to get here.  Fear is a capping emotion that has to be felt to be released, that can be felt and released.  It opens up the flow of other emotions that once felt can be released for good and allow for real change to settle in.

There is no quick fix, it is messy and not always easy, but it is worth it and there are so many wonderful people out there who can help you on your way. At first we often need help to build our commitment to ourselves and our dedication to feeling those things we have been avoiding all of our lives.  I know I spent decades working with a variety of different healers and therapists to help me on my journey.  I am fortunate enough to come from a family of healers who offer a variety of supports. Feel free to check them out at tozeland.com.

Take care of yourself and each other, be kind and gentle with yourselves and each other, be honest and loving with yourselves and each other.  Thanks so much for engaging.
Sage

COVID-19 Dealing with FEAR

Spiritual Journey

It has been over 6 weeks of social isolation, change in work life, change in everything normal and learning how to live in this changing world.  I am continually feeling blessed by the whole experience.  I feel as if we are being given a giant opportunity to retreat to ‘the cave’, to self reflect, to look in the mirror and to grow personally, emotionally and spiritually.  I know that I have been seizing the opportunity and it has felt extremely hard but rewarding.  I am not sure that there has been another time in history where the world has slowed down as much, our common distractions have been removed or at least lessened and we’ve been united in such a profound way.  This also leads to many different ways of dealing with ourselves and what is arising in these uncertain times.  The overarching emotion at the beginning of this pandemic was fear, I believe that this is a global lesson in fear and I hope that we learn it is an emotion like any other that we can feel and release.

Truth: Fear is just an emotion like any other, we are designed to feel and release it.

I saw this diagram on my dad’s Facebook page and I think it speaks so clearly to the choices we have right now.

covid 19 fear

 

I think this diagram so beautifully shows our options, what it doesn’t address is the way to move from fear to growth.  I believe most of us want to be in the growth sphere but our hearts are in the fear sphere and we only know how to use our will power to pretend to be living in the growth sphere.  I am sure we can recognize how nice it would be to feel hopeful, to help others, to feel joy and spread happiness, but in our hearts we still hold fear.  Most of us walk around in vast amounts of fear on a regular day, fear of being judged, of doing the ‘wrong’ thing, of being hurt, of being exposed, of hurting others, of feeling the pain inside of ourselves, and so much more. And now, we have this added layer of fear, fear for our lives, our livelihoods, of our safety and the safety of those we love, of other’s actions during this time, of conspiracy, of passing on the virus, of getting the virus, of breaking the new laws, and so on. Denying these fears will not help us grow through them and stops our ability to grow in most ways.  We need to learn how to open to our fears, to feel them and to release them.

Truth: Love cannot exist in the same space inside of us that fear does.  We must remove the fear to open space for Love to enter.

It is easy to say ‘feel your fear’ it is much more difficult to do it.  We are taught to live in our fears, to feel that we are scared and then make almost any choice possible to avoid that feeling, from stuffing our face, indulging in drugs or alcohol, seeking feelings of protection and safety from others, controlling our worlds, over working, distracting ourselves with the myriad of things available to us today, going as far as murder, just so that we can avoid feeling the fear and the underlying emotions.  We are allowed to do this, we have free will and we can exercise it in this way, however, it leads to more pain and suffering in our lives.  We have a choice, and right now, it seems that the whole world has conspired to create space in our lives to make a different choice.

Opening up to feeling fear is a process, one that takes an extreme exercise of our Will.  We currently operate without thinking most of the time, from our current Will, we sometimes have new desires that we nourish and grow which eventually lead to a change in our Will, but we don’t often recognize the process nor believe that we can initiate, maintain and complete it, but WE CAN!

We can start by:

  • Increasing our desire to feel the fear – this may not be easy so there may be several steps we have to take before we can sincerely do this
    • Discover what our resistance is to opening up to feeling the fear – these are usually many sets of fears within us, fears and false beliefs that we have been taught and have accepted as true.  These fears and false beliefs will be unique to each of us and many will have similar flavors such as: false beliefs about our worth, about what love is, both giving and receiving love, about our strength or vulnerability, about the world and how it operates, and so on.
      • Once we discover our resistance intellectually we have to open to it emotionally for change to happen, this again requires an exercise of our Will, we need to learn how to open to emotion when most of us have been taught how to suppress it, not feel it.
        • It is a learning curve and it takes time to learn how to feel again, how to feel the true emotions that are inside and that are coming up, not the preferred ones, the ones that we have been taught are ok to feel or result in people doing or giving us what we want, but the true emotions tied to the resistance we have to opening to the fear.
          • This takes HUMILITY (the ability to feel whatever emotions is present whether it is pleasurable or painful)
          • It take HONESTY (the ability to allow the emotion without trying to fit it into the narrative we’ve written for our lives and being open to discovering something different)
          • It takes LOVE (the compassion and acceptance for ourselves and others)
          • It takes FAITH (the growing belief that it is possible to connect with and feel our emotions and the result will be positive)
          • It takes ACTION and REPEATED ACTION (we have to do it again and again, softening, discovering and exploring each time as we allow ourselves to learn)
            • Some actions we can take to help us are:
              • Create time and space in your life to allow for the feeling of current emotions, the intellectual processing of our past and the opening to discovery
              • Journaling our feelings – being honest about our frustrations, our anger, our blocks, our fears, our feelings and thoughts about them
              • Speaking our thoughts and feelings out loud to nature or some space where other people won’t hear
              • Asking ourselves what am I feeling? What am I really feeling? on a continual basis
              • Sitting in stillness and being aware of what we are thinking and feeling – what impulses come up? what discomfort comes up? why is it so hard or easy to sit here?
              • Asking for help from whatever you call our Creator, sending out sincere feelings (not contrived ones that we wish we felt, but the real ones no matter how angry, sad, aggressive, pathetic, etc. we deem them)
              • Challenge yourself in the world, for example, speak up in situations where you would not usually, practice saying and doing things that push you a little and feel your response to doing that
    • Read the following post (COVID 19 Reflections on Fear) if you want to read my reflections while going through this process
  • Feel the fear as it arises – often it is a physical sensation that accompanies the emotional ones, we all know that feeling in our gut, the feeling of something wrong, the feeling of terror that we are in danger.  We were designed to feel this, to release it and to grow from the process.  Emotions are supposed to be Energy in Motion, we just need to learn how to allow that again.

I am positive you will discover, as I have, that once we go through this process it starts to get easier and easier to do it.  It also gets easier and easier to do everything else in life because our fear is lessening inside of us, our resistance to feeling is lessening, our suppression of emotions is lessening and all that energy that went into maintaining that is now freed up.  I also know that it will begin to shake up your world, as it did mine.  I had quite a safe little castle built around me, it felt sad and pathetic, but it felt safe.  I liked that more than anything and I was able to pretend that it was perfect for me.  Once I started to break it down it was very uncomfortable for a time, the safety was removed, the fear increased, the anger increased, my doubts increased, but surprisingly my joy increased, my sincere joy and I felt the increase in connection to my world as well.  It was hard and uncomfortable and messy but SO WORTHWHILE.  I cannot stress that enough.  As with most things the more you work for it the better it feels.

So, it is a choice right now to be conscious of what is happening, to take advantage of the home time, to take advantage of all the triggers in our lives triggering our emotions, to make the choice to open to the emotions and to feel them to heal ourselves.