As you may have heard (since I’ve been dithering on about it, non-stop dithering cause I’m so exhilarated to be learning and creating again plus dissolving/having a relationship with my fears) I’m creating a digital hope fest to bring comfort and fear together not because the economy has exploded but because I’VE DISCOVERED I’M AFRAID and have been for years.
Making it more better
I’m going to share fear / comfort stuff as I’m learning it then you can comment so I can learn what you are learning and make the whole thing more better. Useful. Comforting. Cause we’re a tribe! Like Seth’s new book. (The first page of his free e-book made me cry.)
Yesterday’s discovery:
Talking to the brilliant (am not hyper-bol-izing) Molly Gordon about the fear /anxiety loop (I called it a washing machine on the tele-comfort experience yesterday – hey, you can still get the recording and notes) that we can literally spend years in and no big news here: that’s very depleting and not fun.
It looks something like this:
You notice your body is tense
You notice you have this vague feeling something is the matter
You tell yourself–
There is no time to deal with it
It’s too scary to stop and glance at, let alone learn about it
If you did glance at it (and it’s getting scarier by the second), you’re are certain you’ll be sucked into the dank depressed have-to-eat-donuts (insert your favorite shadow comfort here) never-get-out-of-bed-again place or
If you do glance at it (but now you are just positive it’s even bigger and scarier), you’ll surely have to completely change your life, leave your partner, never eat donuts again, meditate 10 hours a day, wash leper’s feet, get up before you went to bed, and otherwise embark on a grand plan of self-improvement which
never works so
you decide to save time and eat the donuts now.
Meanwhile the hulking scary
nameless THING gets bigger and slows you down even more, scrambles your thoughts and drains your energy and you start to believe – maybe without even knowing it – that whatever is hiding back there, under there, somewhere in there, is proof that you are screw up, unlovable, and can’t ever have what you want.
Which means you are never, no way, no how, going to go in there.
Shit, I’ve scared myself.
Tomorrow, some ideas what to do!
5 responses so far ↓
1 Maryam Webster Oct 16, 2008
Jen, brava for an excellent post that highlights one of the main problems most people are facing right now: that they have been afraid for years, and this latest financial market freak-out is tweaking that deep-seated and long buried fear and adding to it, creating a Fear Monster. And you can add in there, the general survival level fear that most people have who were not born to wealth and privilege tend to have when bank balances run low and resources start drying up.
But is the depth of these fears realistic?
To get past them, I’d like to suggest a twist on how we have traditionally looked at and dealt with such issues. That is, not to go with examining every-incident-since-birth that created or reinforced the fear, but the characteristic FEELING that “all that stuff” brings up in us.
As a psychologist, I’ve gone with the “every incident” method for a good two decades. Recently however, when I’ve worked with clients on fear, we’ve been working with the general feeling the issue brings up, and clearing that with their choice of fast-acting energy therapies (ETHOS, EFT, ZPoint, NLP, hypnotherapy etc). When we’ve worked with the characteristic feeling, people have had much more comprehensive and deeper shifts that have tended to generalize outward to other areas, removing fears there, too.
I hope this is helpful for those in the depths of this kind of fear, it certainly has been in my community. And not to forget that great acronym for FEAR: “Future Events Appearing Real” or equally “False Expectations Appearing Real”.
As with struggle, most fear that is not related to hiking your bottom fast out of the way of a charging predator is generally an unnecessary mis-allocation of one’s personal energy.
Warmly,
Maryam
2 James | Dancing Geek Oct 17, 2008
Hey Jen,
It’s great to see you (indeed anyone) working on your fears. I’ve been blogging on similar stuff too thanks to Havi & Naomi’s course.
I’m looking forward to more posts (from both of us!) on this.
Cheers,
James
3 Jennifer Oct 19, 2008
@Maryam – thanks for such a detailed comment. I’m sure your work is a huge help with fears! When do i get a copy of that book of yours?
@James, headed over to read your blog right now – and to learn from you. And then to do some Shiva dancing.
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