Month: March 2010

Not letting our fears control us 3: Stop running

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We are often – even sometimes without being aware of it – driven by fear. I do not mean the nervousness that comes if we have to go to a difficult meeting or give a presentation, or the useful type of stress which allows us perform better. What I mean is a deeper, more fundamental type of fear, a more deep-seated anxiety, which appears and reappears or can keep us awake at night. This type of fear is only intensified by our normal strategies to push it away, or to distract ourselves from noticing it. All that does is play with the fear, like the cat with the mouse, pushing it away briefly so as to allow it return even more nervous.

All fear is really related to our desire for safety, to feel secure in this world, a world which is by its nature insecure and unreliable. This is deeply ingrained in our make-up after centuries of evolution. However, the deeper roots of this anxiety comes from the fear to be with ourselves. We can see this most clearly when we sit down to practice. Our minds will do anything to avoid just being in the simple present with ourselves, and will run to thinking and planning and dreaming. We can notice that a lot of this thinking revolves around fixing ourselves, our lives and others.

And why are we afraid to be with ourselves? Because if we are forced to be just with ourselves we might feel that we are not good enough, that we may not measure up to the standards which we or others have set for us and which we have internalized. It is hard to be just with oneself, and not discuss with, or ask permission from, the presences in our heads, with whom we unconsciously and continually dialogue. To defend ourselves, we construct stories and fantasies, perfect futures which we use to distract from a not-so-perfect present. Fear is what happens when these stories run up against the reality of daily life and our deep inner selves. Other common strategies we use to avoid facing ourselves is that we keep extra busy, or throw ourselves into work, hobbies, a relationship or something else outside ourselves.

However, what we gradually see is that the whole purpose of practice is to work with our heart in the presence of our fears. Not in the way that many who start meditation think, namely, that it will make all fears go away. On the contrary, people often lament that they notice much more fears and anxiety after they started practicing and things were calmer before. What practice gradually does is stop us running. It gives us the courage to stay. That is why I love the simplest of all meditation instructions, the simple “Take your seat”. If we can do that consistently, and gently stay with ourselves, we go against the natural instinct of the fear and the slow healing can begin.

Ups and downs

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Today it has gotten really cold again with a sharp north wind. The poor crocus who bloomed in last week’s mild weather is closed and bent over and the olive tree is back under its covers.

A lot has changed over the last few weeks, and not just in terms of the weather. We feel growth in life is best supported when the outside conditions are constant, when we have support and warmth. Sometimes, instead, we find inconsistency and even hard winds, those whom we rely on are not there, things do not go as we wished and we falter.

However, even if at times it is difficult, this type of change is good because we learn that we are not in charge of what happens over a period of weeks, even over a period of hours. Often we cannot choose what happens, just as we cannot choose the weather when we step out of work in the evening. However, what we can choose is how we respond. We naturally have a preference for the pleasant over the unpleasant, but the practice is to come back to what is happening now and to keep cultivating a mind that is not fighting with it.

Not letting our fears control us 2: Open to disappointment

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One of the more important things for our psychological health is how we have to cope with disappointment. Losses are present in our lives from infancy onwards. Indeed, as Winnicott reminds us, a certain amount of disappointment is necessary as infants in order to allow a secure sense of self to develop. The parent has to gently “disappoint” the child in order to allow the child develop the independence to take on certain tasks for itself, to face the world without relying totally on the parent. This allows the infant have the resilience for facing the ups and downs of this world, as well as understanding that there is nuance in every person, and that we cannot expect anyone to perfectly satisfy all our needs.

If established well, the person can be comfortable on their own and have the space in later life to deal with the inevitable ways in which others let them down. If not, then one can struggle when a partner changes, a parent disillusions, a relationship goes sour or a job turns out to be unfulfilling, because one has looked to them to give life meaning. Another negative aspect could be that the child feels responsible for the loss and may pick up the mistaken idea that negative emotions are wrong, and to admit them is to show weakness or a lack of self-control.

Over the years all these losses add up. Some we have time to acknowledge, some not. Stephen Levine reminds us that grieving that has to go on for all the little losses and disappointments that happen throughout our days. He calls this “our ordinary, everyday grief” which builds up following the “disappointments and disillusionment, the loss of trust and confidence that follows the increasingly less satisfactory arch of our lives”.

One thing we can do in response is try to avoid feeling this grief, by hardening our hearts or denying to ourselves that the loss had any real meaning. However, although this provides a momentary feeling of safety, it can either lead to a gradual deadening of our experience of the world or reappear in our unconscious as anxiety or repeating behaviours. A better option is to stay open to life and acknowledge its inevitable losses, even the little ones. Ultimately, being open to feel the fear of loss is the only way to integrate it. It’s also the only way to a genuine relationship with others, because closeness to others cannot be founded on neediness or on the fear of being alone. Before we can be in relationship with others, we need to be able to accept a certain type of aloneness in ourselves. If we do not see that we will always be disappointed in the things that we think will fill it.

Types of insecurity in relationships

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In our early years we lay down a pattern for later relationships. We construct our inner psyche out of the materials that are at our disposal in those first experiences. If some of those experiences are less than optimal, and the person’s early life is lacking in adequate consistent responses, the person’s relating style in later years can reflect that. From my work I am always interested to see how adults have taken into their own inner selves characteristics of their caregivers – which may have been exaggerated or inadequate – and then defend these defective structures as their own self.

For example, a parent can use the child for its own emotional needs by holding on to the child to compensate for lacks in the relationship with the partner. This can produce in the child – and later in the adult – a reduced capacity for real relationships. We might see this as a need to contol in relationships, in an attempt to gain back the security of that first closeness. On the other hand, a parent who is inconsistent in their affection can give rise to an insecurity in the child who draws conlusions about future relationships based on what they see in the parent.

Dan Siegel, in his book The Developing Brain writes about the desired “attunement” between the caregiver and child, which allows the child to “feel felt.” This attuned state shapes the young brain. It builds neuronal patterns that underpin the child’s resilience and grounds the ability to connect in meaningful relationships later in life.

However, all is not lost. What science is discovering recently is that the brain can be re-shaped later in life. So, even if we grew up with an insecure attachment pattern, we can grow in our security later in life, reducing our need for control or withdrawal. In other words, we can retrain the brain, which shapes our emotional security or felt sense in relationships. One way to do this is through sitting meditation which seems to work on the same part of the brain that is shaped in those early months. We rest in silence and that calms gradually the anxious messages remembered deep in our unconscious.

The Rose

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How did the Rose
ever open its heart
and give the world
all of its beauty?
It felt the encouragement
of light against its being,
otherwise we all remain
too frightened.

Hafiz

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Fragment by fragment, moment by moment

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There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination.
Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious mosaic.

Anaïs Nin