Tag: Fear

Why we are afraid to show our true selves

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

It is striking that the first words spoken by the angels in the Christmas story are “Do not be afraid”. It is as if one of the most important messages needed to be communicated to us is for us not to be limited by our fears. Everyday we see that the mind likes to dwell in fear. In fact, it is striking to notice how much of our day-to-day life is governed by an undercurrent of fear, which lurks behind a lot of our behaviours. This is why it is so hard to just sit still or stand still and just be ourselves — not doing anything to prove ourselves — without feeling anxious or fidgety. For these reason, we frequently develop a False Self when young, a mask which we think will be more acceptable to others. This False self is in response to failures encountered when we were growing, which led us to believe that we were not  acceptable just as we are. We feel we are not “good enough” and thus have to create a persona that we believe is better, maybe a “compulsive harder working self,” or an “always trying to please self”,  or an always” taking care of others while neglecting our own needs” self.

However, the different wisdom traditions teach that our True Self is worthwhile in and of itself.  Real freedom and joy is possible,  without hiding, and our exterior self can reflect our ture interior being, provided we know where to start. We need to begin with developing a kindness and warmth towards ourselves, by cultivating the eyes of these angels towards our inner self. Maybe these divine visitors see more clearly into our true nature, and remind us to look to that, and not to the fearful thoughts that discourage us. At times we find it easier to see ourselves in a limited and impoverished way, with our repeated patterns of thinking reminding us that we are weak or struggling. These texts remind us that there is a natural courage deep inside us. They encourage us to believe, to dare, to open up to possibilities. Fully becoming who we are begins with where we are, actually, at this point in our lives. If they can see goodness and courage in us, why can’t we?

How our fears keep us predicting wrongly

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

As yesterday’s post said, one way we cope with anxiety is that we live somewhat in the future, imagining a better time which is going to happen soon. The capacity of the brain for imagining and predicting the future is an important survival tool, which evolved over billions of years to enable us remember and avoid dangerous situations. The same capacity functions in our early years when it is vital that the child receives consistent and responsive caregiving from the parents. When this is lacking in some key ways, the child forms an picture of how unreliable and unsafe the world is and how much people can be trusted. This knowledge then becomes “encoded” in the brain as a paradigm of how to feel secure. In other words, the child makes a prediction of how relationships will have to be managed from its experience of how it is in its relationships with its parents.

This prediction becomes a working model which stays with us as we navigate our way through relationships in adult life. Thus, we tend to behave in relationships based on how we predict or imagine people will treat us, in line with our early experiences. The problem with this is that, while our early model may have worked in keeping us safe as a child, it can make us be overly distrustful and hyper-vigilant as adults. Something which was adaptive when young frequently becomes maladaptive in adulthood where it is not necessary to the same degree. In this way, the predictive capacity of the brain can become a liability. The stored fears and anxieties of childhood – which are unfortunately quite resistant to change –  can exert a huge influence in adulthood, leading to an avoidance of intimacy and resulting in the person feeling as emotionally isolated as they did in childhood. The brain can continually predict danger, and takes the model it has learnt to be the only way to behave. When it meets new situations,  or new people,  it makes predictions which give preference to fear-based scenarios,  rooted in the past. It then conspires to bring about the scenario it is most familiar with.  Sadly, as psychoanalyst Regina Pally reminds us, we learn from the past what to predict for the future and then live the future we expect. In this way – in a phenomenon which Freud termed the “repetition compulsion” – we frequently end up in the situation which our defenses were set up to avoid, recreating the same dynamics and destructive scenarios that we experienced as children, despite the brain believing that we are doing differently.

Hope

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well,

but the certainty that something makes sense,

regardless of how it turns out

Vaclav Havel

When disappointment strikes

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

There are times when we are unsure of what exactly we can hold on to, when we feel on the borders of love and of meaning. The flow of life seems to pass our hearts by and we do not sense that we are where we should be. The ground is unsteady and we cannot see beyond this obstacle.

Obstacles occur at the outer and inner levels. At the outer level the sense is that something or somebody has harmed us, interfering with the harmony and peace we thought was ours. Someone has ruined it all. This particular sense of obstacle occurs in relationships and in many other situations; we feel disappointed, harmed, confused, and attacked in a variety of ways.

As for the inner level of obstacle, perhaps nothing ever really attacks us except our own confusion. Perhaps there is no solid obstacle except our own need to protect ourselves from being touched. Maybe the only enemy is that we don’t like the way reality is now and therefore wish it would go away fast. But what we find as practitioners is that nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.

Even if we run a hundred miles an hour ot the other side of the continent, we find the very same problem awaiting us when we arrive. It keeps returning with new names, forms, and manifestations until we learn whatever it has to teach us: Where are we separating ourselves from reality? How are we pulling back instead of opening up? How are we closing down instead of allowing ourselves to experience fully whatever we encounter?

Pema Chodron, Comfortable with Uncertainty.

In our darkest night

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Being Irish,  I always remember Newgrange on this day. It is an enormous burial tomb, built over 5000 years ago,  before Stonehenge and the Pyramids. It has with a small, dark inner chamber where the light penetrates just once a year at the dawn of this day,  to warm those who have died for a few moments.

The Ancient Celts knew intimately the passage of the sun and the sacredness of certain days. Today, the darkest and shortest day of the year, they ensured that the sun still touched where they were buried. For us too, no matter how dark our interior life becomes, or how deeply we feel buried,  light can still enter and illuminate. No matter how frozen we feel or how we shut ourselves off in fear of expoitation by others, we can be warmed and opened.

May hope and light,  in some way,  touch us all today.

A short practice to increase our strength

Karl Duffy2 Comments

O Adonai, and Leader of the house of Israel, You appeared to Moses in the burning bush,
and gave him the Law on Sinai: come and save us with an outstretched arm.

As Christmas draws closer,  the Christian liturgy chants the ancient “O Antiphons”  originating in the 5th Century. They testify to the desires of people down through the ages, and our ongoing human needs based on the different situations we find ourselves in. This one asks for  strength and protection, –  a strong arm to support us when we ourselves do not feel strong. It’s imagery comes from the story of the escape from slavery in Egypt and the journey across the desert.

There are so many times that we need to take in strength, to remind ourselves of our resources. One of the things which the mind does when we are stressed or depressed is to underestimate our resources and overestimate the threats which we feel. We divert our energies into the defense against threats, fearful that others may disappoint or take advantage of us.  These ancient words are a metaphor for what happens in those moments. The Hebrew word for Egypt – Mitzraim –  means “a narrow place.”  The escape from captivity in Egypt means the escape from the narrow places where we are stuck, to a wider place, a place where we can breathe freely. We can feel trapped in our lives,  in different forms of captivity. We can frequently feel as if we are travelling in unfamiliar territory, unchartered waters, and this can overwhelm us. We feel fortunate if we get through a day, or through the night when our fears come to worry us,  let alone know where we are going in our lives.

At times like this, we need to keep our focus on words and ideas that give us strength, that link us into to our fearless nature. We can try this simple exercise to increase awareness of the resources we have:

Find a quiet place and sit, gently closing your eyes. Become aware of your normal breathing and the wider sense of your body sitting here. See if you can sense the energy  in the core of your body. Notice your breathing, how it is constant and has a strength of its own. Feel the solidity in your posture, the strength in your upright back and shoulders, the dignity in the way you are sitting, the support in the contact with the chair or the floor. Become aware of the way your body functions in getting you around day after day. Consciously focus on your own strength, savouring this awareness, taking it in and drawing it out.

Now, picture in your mind something in nature that feels strong, like a mountain, noticing how massive and unmoving it is. In your mind’s eye, bring the mountain into your own body so that you become the mountain – your head the top,  your body the solid base,  rooted on the cushion or on the chair. See if you can imagine a sense of uplift, the strong quality of the mountain deep in your own spine. Invite yourself to become like a breathing mountain, unshakeable and still.

Now let that sense of strength sink into you and rest in you. Imagine it and prolong it. Breathe it into your emotions. Feel it in your spine, your head,  your chest, the muscles of your face. Let it become part of you, breathing it in deeper and deeper. Gently, let it touch the places in your life where you feel challenged or weak. Keeping the sense of the mountain in your awareness, seeing if you can place the difficulties in relation to that, almost like the clouds that pass over a mountain without affecting the mountain itself. See if you can make the awarenss of strength the present reality, even if just for a moment. If this is too difficult just do it briefly and return to the awareness of the mountain.

Rest in this awareness for five or ten minutes, if it feels right. Make conscious,  as best as possible,  the strength which is in your body and in your mind. Register it in your bones and in your muscles, your thoughts and your emotions. Continue to breathe gently as you finish the exercise and resume your daily activities.