A New Alternative to Fear

You’ve all heard, no doubt, what happens to us humans when our survival response is triggered. Yes? The most-often-repeated version is “fight or flight.” Psychologists like me, along with many others outside that field, know there is a third instinct in the face of fear:  freeze. Fight the perceived attacker, run away, or become immobile, incapable of response, shut down. (See the lizard named Beans in the movie Rango for a classic example.) Those are the three options available when, in the face of perceived threat, the most primitive, reactive part of the brain takes the steering wheel on this ride we call life. Some of us have a strong "preference" for one; others of us make use of any of the three, depending on the situation.

I’ve become convinced that there is another alternative, one that blends the 7 Childhood Treasures of Trust and Independence. But before I tell you what it is, a word about the perceived threat or attacker. Before I can climb up from the depths of my reptile brain’s forced three-way choice, first I have to adjust to accept one hard fact. That is:  whatever drives me out of my huge and hugely logical neo-cortex, and into the gut-instinct to become invisible, flee, or defend…well, it may not be an actual threat or an actual attacker at all.

I’ve written of this uncomfortable truth before…that your reality is unique to you. Your belief that some person or situation is a threat to your safety is just that—a belief. It often derives, not from an actual circumstance of danger in front of you, but from a subconscious tour taken by your experience of that circumstance. Your incoming sensory perceptions—sights, sounds, smells, tastes, textures—register a little snapshot of events in front of you. That multi-sensory image then takes a little stroll through a few filters in your neural network, created by early childhood experiences

The Truth about Bullying

The truth about bullying is that every child who bullies has been taught to do so, by parents or other close adult caregivers, in lessons later reinforced by other children and other adults.

There. I said it.

I recognize that this point of view is <wry smile> potentially controversial.

If you are a parent, grandparent, early childhood teacher, or other adult with significant influence on the lives of one or more children, you may not like reading these words. Does it help to know that I don’t count myself out of that group of adult caregivers who has taught children to be bullies? Does it help if I say that I am in recovery from bullying children? 

You also may not like my explanation of how we teach children to bully,
 should you choose to read on. Consider yourself forewarned! I hope you do read on, and also decide to transform some of your interactions with the children in your life, through mining your own 7 Childhood Treasures. Since I saw how I was perpetuating this generational and culturally-supported teaching of “Bullying 101” lessons, I have strived for that transformation in my own interactions—not only with children, but with adults, too. I set about the work of mining my Treasures at the age of 30, though I didn't have this language for sharing my success with others until about 12 years ago. Every day, I recover by digging and digging, collecting clunky chunks of rough stone, cutting away the matrix and breaking them in just the right way to show their crystalline structure of facets, and polishing to a sparkling gleam my 7 Childhood Treasures.

 

I’m a work in progress. Waking up to my own behavior also birthed my understanding of my life mission to change how we treat children in America.

You should know that I start from this premise:  Children are born innocent and pure. No typical child—leaving aside those born with specific neuro-chemical malfunctions—comes into this world with hate in her heart, with racism in his mind, with her core motivation a desire to hurt others. Newborns do not open their eyes and take their first look at this bright, shiny world through a lens of judgment. And yet these children sometimes—more often than we’d like—grow up to be full of hatred, judgment, racism and other isms. Too many seem to act as if hurting others is a core motivation. Why? How are innocents so transformed, within just a handful of the years allotted for their lives?

The Greater Good

A central plank in my spiritual philosophy platform is that everything is always unfolding for my greater good. I recognize that this must be so, because the Divine Being of my understanding operates solely as a positive Creator. For me, God is an evolver of potential that always offers me—and everyone—the next step to achieve a life that is positive and creative. As the omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient creative power in the universe, how could it be anything else?

This morning I realized that this core belief is strengthening my Childhood Treasure of Trust. As the very first of the 7 Childhood Treasures, Trust is designed to be unearthed from our internal mine of potential before we are one year of age. Before we can talk, or walk, or understand more than a few words of our native tongue, we begin to acquire the asset of Trust…or we don’t. If we didn’t, then it behooves us to give our adult-selves a second chance to dig for, extract, and polish this gem of human understanding so crucial to healthy relationships.

The connection between belief in a supportive, positive, Universal Power that is always moving me toward my greater good, and the Treasure of Trust…well, it is so obvious, I’m surprised for a moment that I haven’t seen it until now. The infant’s first Treasure is mined and polished in a world in which her basic needs are met. Period. It’s that simple. When he expresses his hunger and nourishment arrives, this little baby miner’s pickaxe strikes the seam of Trust. Physical discomfort is met with comfort—maybe the easing of distress from a dirty diaper or a pokey-sharp label inside the neck of a sleep sack—and Trust is chipped away from the base rock. Her eye contact and gurgling coo is followed by responsive, playful interaction from a caregiver and the raw ore of Trust begins to show its facets. When he is over-stimulated and tired, he is allowed to rest in quiet and peace, and the gem of Trust begins to sparkle.

Last Straw, First Hope

Life has lately offered me some amazing lessons in gratitude and forgiveness. Ever since I studied the book, 5 GIFTS for an Abundant Life, I have expanded my gratitude (the G of the 5 GIFTS) and extended my willingness to forgive (the F). You'll have to get the book if you want to know what the I, T, and S stand for and the rest of the message.... This blog post is about something else:  my epiphany that gratitude and forgiveness are new tools to strengthen my Childhood Treasures of Trust and Independence.

AYFKM????

So, Gratitude.... I'm not much for things like gratitude journals but I gamely started one, as guided by the book. I made dutiful daily records for about 4 days before petering out...but only on the journaling. The gratitude just kept expanding, exponentially!

I started out just being grateful for stuff -- a house, a TV, a savings account, and so on. Then, gratitude morphed into an "attitude antidote" to almost any feeling that impeded smooth and joyous living.

You'll have to reflect on your own, uniquely un-helpful feelings. My ego's go-to list of ugly includes a few of the less-familiar dwarves:  Judgey, Impatient, Irritable, and Are You Freakin' Kidding Me??? (also known as AYFKM). These emotional airs arise when I forget that, dang it all, I am NOT the most important being on the planet (Whaaaat?? Are you sure?).

Here's how the gratitude antidote works for me:

Safety is a Lie

You may have read my recent blog about letting go of my canine BFF, Shannon. She was in the category Big Black Barky Dog and she was fierce in her protection of me. Anyone outside my door was intimidated by what they thought they heard on the other side...sort of 1/2 guard dog and 1/2 ravening beast. Now that she's gone, I sometimes feel just a bit more vulnerable to the random crazy that lives in the world.

Last night I found myself sharing with a dear friend about another kind of safety:  the safety to be myself in relationships. I heard myself say that feeling safe to be myself is all about whether I can Trust others' authenticity and humanity. As we talked, I recognized that I invest you--every one of you--with the powerful role of Editor of my Expression. In response to your actual or perceived capacity and openness, I limit how much I let you in, but also how much of myself I let "out."

Of course, I do the actual editing. Nobody can stop my self-expression without my permission and acquiescence. No, I edit myself down for you--without you even asking--and my first lie is that I do it to protect you. It hasn't been a conscious lie; it seems reasonable enough, given my history. I learned early in life that I can't trust others to "stand up" in the face of my power; I have been told I am "too much" for people:  too loud, too fast, too intense, too smart...just entirely too much to take! Right behind this lie that I edit myself to protect others, came the truth. I heard myself speaking these words to my friend, "And...if I live full-hearted and fully-open, expressing my completely amazing self, others will take advantage of me; I will be hurt."

Wow. Now there is a limiting belief of heroic proportions! I don't need to have any other beliefs that limit my life choices; this one covers the territory. "If I am truly and fully me, I get hurt." This single arrow in my quiver of self-deception impales me through my heart, lodging solidly in the mass of the past, and pins me there. Silenced. And Safe.

Listening...without judgment

What do you do when hurt manifests in your life? Maybe someone is currently and actively hating on you. Or maybe your thoughts are of past or recent slights, deep wounds, and traumas. Maybe your hurt arises from your feelings of fear, anger, or hate. However hurt manifests in your life, what do you do?

Do you depress the feelings; anesthetize your mind? Maybe your anesthetic is drugs or alcohol, ice cream, shopping, gambling, exercise or…just name your addictive behavior of choice.

Do you let your feelings capture the real estate of your mind, while you run over and over your strategies for how to manage the hurt, get revenge for it, stop it? Do you lose sleep while your thoughts circle and circle the drain of your pain?

Do you act out your feelings on innocent bystanders in your family or workplace? Yell at your partner or kids or co-workers? Take out your hurt on the grocery story clerk?

Do you turn your anger upon yourself, mentally berating yourself; or maltreating your body by over-feeding or starving it, or with self-injury (sometimes also known as having “an accident”)? 

Or do you become still and listen to the wisdom from within that tells you how to heal the pain? 

Many of you—friends and those who have attended my workshops—already know that, as a child, I was a victim of incest, sexual assaults by my father. Well, now you all know. I will not write about what happened; rest assured you can safely read on without finding any details of what that experience was like for the child I once was. 

Instead, I want to write about healing from the effects of that experience, which has included development of the 7 Childhood Treasures framework and deepening my understanding of their influence in my own life. I started my healing journey just over 30 years ago and recently entered a new phase of it.

Rescue Me

My best friend has been by my side--or, at least, at my feet--for just a little less than a decade. Shannon, a beautiful Black Labrador-mix, adopted me in the summer of 2006 at a dog rescue where I volunteered. Terrified of literally everything new she encountered, Shannon had what is known as fear aggression. After virtually no human interaction for the first 18 months of her life, tied up in some Ozark backyard, she was almost wild. She bit the dog trainer. She bit me. No trust; no sense of relationship bond between dog and human; no faith in love, certainly, nor even in compassion or pity.

We were a perfect match because I suffer from the human form of fear

Shannon, Whitefish Bay, WI,
September 2014

aggression. Shannon's deep-chested bark, snarling and snapping snout, and deadly-silent run at a daily world of terrifying monsters (e.g., a scrawny, gentle granny-cat) were echoed in my defensive snap, scowling brow, and quietly narrowed eyes whenever I felt in danger from a world that still, too often, seems full of the monsters of my childhood.

The modern objects of our respective fears carry no real threat, 90% of the time, but that didn't stop either of us from the very real emotion of terror...or the swift reflex of defensive aggression. As I have worked to continue mining, refining, and polishing my Childhood Treasures of Trust, Independence, and Faith, Shannon has worked right along with me. Each of us has benefited from the growth and progress of her best friend. Each of us has been the other's teacher.

From a near-wild dog who could not be touched, she became a dog who loved to be stroked and could, with enough patience in the human hand, relax with her belly open to the sky. From being terrorized by my tired, 19-year-old cat, and by the swoosh of a propane ring's lighting, she became a dog who could walk down city streets on a leash, past bikers and skaters and joggers, sprinklers wacka-wack-ing, and children squealing. We traveled together; she walked in the Smoky Mountains and on the beaches of Door County. Sometimes she stayed home when I traveled, and learned to trust pet-sitters. She bit no one else ever again.