Archive for emotions

The Gifts of Fear: Making Friends with the Enemy

Fear is one of the most primal emotions but it can get a bad rap. Intrinsic to the drive for survival, it propels the fight/ flight/ freeze response of the nervous system. The physical sensations (increased heart rate, muscular tension, shortness of breath) that many people attribute to anxiety are actually the body readying itself to flee from an attack. Similarly, feeling numb or emotionally shut down can be linked with the freeze response that causes predators to overlook potential prey. Unfortunately, these impulses for self-preservation are often seen as problematic symptoms and are not recognized for their biological origins.

While fear is a natural emotion in an uncertain world, people can sometimes view it as a weakness or a lack of emotion. In many ways, we are a culture that is phobic of fear. There are familial, societal, and spiritual messages that advocate controlling it, choosing love over fear, or “the only thing to fear is fear itself.” While there can be value in these messages, they also push this emotion further into the shadows, making it something to be condemned rather than honored for the important role it plays.

Mindfulness and Shadow Work® both offer a different perspective, one in which fear is a valid emotion that deserves to be honored and respected. Fear shows up when there is a lack of safety and as such, it is an important warning sign. Most of us have core parts of ourselves that originated in childhood as patterns of thought and behavior to try to keep ourselves safe in the world. As we mature and seek to grow and expand in our lives and relationships, these patterns of fear can seem like obstacles that keep getting in our way. The wisdom of Shadow Work® offers a way of honoring and dialoguing with these protective parts of ourselves so that they can learn to care for us in new and more effective ways. Mindfulness offers practices for finding more acceptance of the physical experience of fear without getting caught up in fearful thoughts and beliefs.

The next time you feel frustrated with a way that fear is showing up in your life, take time to reflect on where it came from and the protective role that it may have been playing in your life for a long time. Next take time to honor this part of you for the ways it has been caring for you. Finally, update this part of you about how it could adapt its’ strategy to better care for you at this current stage of your life. If the experience of fear feels overwhelming to you, try focusing your attention on your breath and your physical environment as a way to disengage from the fearful thoughts occupying your mind. Set the intention to be open and curious about the sensations you are experiencing while staying connected to your breath. If you’d like to learn more about Shadow Work® or mindfulness I recommend shadowwork.com or the books and teachings of Pema Chodron or Tara Brach.

Radical Acceptance: Who, What, When, Where, and especially Why?

WHO? Starting with yourself, and then expanding to loved ones, acquaintances, strangers, and ultimately to those with whom you have difficulty. Please note that this doesn’t mean tolerating abuse or mistreatment.

WHAT? Meditation teacher and psychologist Tara Brach, PhD defines Radical Acceptance as the “willingness to experience ourselves and our lives as it is.” Radical Acceptance is a frame of mind as well as an embodied mindfulness practice. Jon Kabat-Zinn defines mindfulness as “paying attention in a particular way; On purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally.” This means cultivating the willingness and capacity to experience your thoughts, emotions, and bodily sensations just as they are, without needing to avoid or distract from them. Instead of getting lost in never-ending trains of thought that perpetuate emotional distress, mindfulness offers a way of recognizing inner experience with more spacious awareness. While it may seem that just giving attention to your inner experience isn’t doing anything, more and more research studies are validating the power of this approach to create greater emotional well-being, resilience, physical health, more fulfilling relationships, and much more.
WHEN? As often as possible! You can practice when feeling sad, numb, anxious, angry, stressed, melancholy, or ashamed, or any time at all. Radical acceptance can be especially powerful when given to the parts of yourself that you most struggle against. It can also be a wonderful practice when feeling joy, peace, and relaxation as it serves to enhance these experiences and helps the brain to integrate them.
WHERE? You can practice radical acceptance anywhere you go. In the body, you will often find sensations and emotional energies in the belly, solar plexus, chest, throat, head, shoulders, arms, and hands. However anywhere in the body will do!

WHY? “What we resist persists.” ~Carl Jung

“The most powerful relationship you will ever have is the relationship with yourself.” ~Steve Maraboli

Why so much focus on bodily sensations?

  • Physical sensations offer a way to focus awareness on our inner experience. They also provide a way to redirect attention from negative mind-loops to our actual felt experience. Emotions and thoughts often occur as reactions to physical sensations (though vice-versa can also be true). By becoming more comfortable with the diverse landscape of bodily experience, we can teach our minds that staying with our present moment experience can create more well-being than trying to think our way out of it.

Resisting inner experience is like adding fuel to the fire.

  • When we react to how we are feeling with thoughts that it is wrong or bad, this sends a signal to the nervous system that there is a threat. This sense of threat can then lead the mind into ruminative cycles that only create more focus on a sense of inner deficiency. Thus, reacting negatively to our own experience can further exacerbate whatever sense of discomfort was there to start with.

Sensations in the body just want to be felt.

  • I like to think of bodily sensations as aspects of ourselves from earlier times in our lives… this sense of fear… that fury in the belly… an ache in the heart. They are like children just wanting to be accepted and cared for. When we respond to them with care, curiosity, and acceptance, they often dissolve. It is important to note that this works best when there is true acceptance for the experience to be there as long as it wants or needs to be.
  • Turning towards your inner experience with openness, awareness, and acceptance helps cultivate a strong and compassionate relationship with yourself.

You are the one that you will be with through your entire life. Given this, wouldn’t you want to have a close and caring relationship with yourself?

  • Attending to how you feel and responding to your body and emotions with compassion and acceptance is what one would often want from a friend. By learning how to give that to yourself, you become one of the closest people in your own life. This can be very healing for people who struggle with a sense of loneliness or isolation.
  • So often we seek validation and acceptance from others while being very hard on ourselves . Dependence on external validation can create codependent relationships. Having those same qualities of care towards yourself can create both a more fulfilling life, and healthier relationships.

I hope you have found this article helpful and inspiring. I always enjoy hearing responses to my writing. If you have something you would like to ask or share, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment.

Warmly,
Asha

“Clearly recognizing what is happening inside us, and regarding what we see with an open, kind and loving heart, is what I call Radical Acceptance. If we are holding back from any part of our experience, if our heart shuts out any part of who we are and what we feel, we are fueling the fears and feelings of separation that sustain the trance of unworthiness. Radical Acceptance directly dismantles the very foundations of this trance.” ― Tara Brach