I listen
calmly
to what
you say.
Then
thank you
kindly
and send
you on
your way.
Ahhh what a dance I can do to avoid this little word FEAR. Today I am away with the family for their ski time. We are staying in a nice hotel room where I have easy access to everything I need (food and drinkies). It is blizzard like outside so I have no desire to go out and there are zero distractions around me. Just me, my keyboard and a piece of paper that has the word FEAR in foreboding capitals. Today is the last day before I am to post this piece, and the resistance is crazy. Never have I left a post until this late in the day, but always have I denied, ignored or run away from FEAR. Before I could possibly sit to write this I have done the dishes, drunk 4 cups of coffee, eaten 8 pieces of chocolate and wondered aloud how early too early is for wine...oh hang on let’s do a Facebook post. Does any of this sound familiar?
Me leaving this post to the last day is completely understandable because, let’s face it, FEAR is sucky. FEAR is a little monster inside me that grows and grows until it sends me to my bed, hiding under the covers. I get so tired from avoiding it, denying it or semi feeling it and shutting it down before it can derail me. FEAR is the monotonous durge of worries and anxieties throughout my daily doings. It is the background murmurs of “are you sure?” and the “what if something terrible happens?” FEAR is sudden tensing as my shoulders meet my ears, yet my brain hasn’t even processed why. FEAR is the small drains and the 3am tsunami that turn into Netflix binges as I drown out the biggies of “you will be alone, you do not matter, you are a sucky person.” Phew ...I know right!
Ignored FEARS get very demanding you know! My escaping and denial coping mechanisms over the years have never worked and the older I get the more energy they take. Then one day, I hit my mid forties and suddenly heard this exasperated voice cry out “seriously Caz..this again? This again??.”
Who the hell was this person...(spoiler alert it was me) ...and doesn’t she make a good point! I am getting too old to let life slip by in a constant tremor. I have too much good stuff going on around me to be distracted all the time by these intense, and icky feelings. ”No!” Wise, weird woman I say “NOT this again, not this again!”
I would now like to introduce you to my word for the year, RESILIENCY. Wrestling with my “what the hell am I going to do with this?” I spied a 4 session class at a local yoga studio called Building Resiliency. Here we adopt a simple yoga and mindful practise of listening to our bodies, our breath and simply “noticing”...not reacting...noticing. Resiliency suddenly became a word of calm strength that helped me to understand fear in a different way.
Resiliency is the friend to fear. Fear is fear not FEAR ..if that makes sense? I was first going to say that resiliency is the armour for fear, but that isn’t right. Fear and resiliency are in a working relationship, not a war with each other. They work together in friendship and support, we need both to be whole. It isn’t so much that fear is my problem, it is that I need to exercise my resiliency to go hand in hand. Then fear won’t freak out so much. Instead of nurturing my fear with quiet and calm attention, I was avoiding and ignoring it, leaving it to grow wild. The moment I can turn this around, my fears should be able to regulate themselves better in the knowledge that l’ve got this.
In it’s own nutty way, my fear is trying to protect me. It is my handy check list, my ”are you sure?” reminder and when it hears me reply “yep, i’ve got this” then it can rest and let the day unfold. My work this month is to build my resiliency, my ‘i’ve got this”, rather than focusing on the fear side. By building on resiliency with a calm, connected strength, I can let these fears rest.
No more can I talk about fear without talking about resiliency.
Thank you for taking the time to read this...I know it is a big one this month and it was a lot to grapple with for me. I wonder what building resiliency looks like for you? What steps could you take to find peace with your fears? We aren’t building walls against our fear anymore...we are reaching out, telling it we understand and “we’ve got this.”