Undoing Triggers Part 2
Now came the big test!
Many of you know that I had two bad concussions close together in 2016/2017 and had a lot of symptoms from that injury. What I haven't talked about much is that I still get a very strong fear reaction to sound. It comes and goes. It only seems to be in certain environments.
Unfortunately, one of those environments is my kitchen. It's very difficult for me to be in my house when someone else is making sound in the kitchen. I've been told it's because I lost certain cells in my inner ear that modulate hearing and that the functions those cells perform won't come back and also can't be compensated for. It's a permanent brain injury.
It was compared to an amputated limb. I wouldn’t have an arm some of the time and not at other times. If it was gone, it was gone. Didn't seem to be any reason to talk about this if it wasn't going to change.
Except, I am sensitive to sound some of the time and don't even notice it at other times. Same family, same sounds, same kitchen. Huh. Sometimes the amputated arm works and sometimes not. Curious.
What I noticed with the car accident brake lights experience was that the "brain alerting me" feeling was the exact same as when I started reacting to sounds in my kitchen. Curiouser.
What if I am "only" reacting to an instruction my brain set up because I asked it to? Like a reminder on my cell phone. What if I could undo this one too? And I say "only" in quotes because there's no only about the experience of this reaction to sound. At times it's absolute hell and terrifying.
I also became aware of a book by Sarah Polley "Run Towards the Danger". She also had a bad concussion and her specialist told her that the way to heal after any traumatic experience or injury was to charge headlong into the very things that seemed to create her symptoms. Now this approach does work and involves a period of "white knuckling" it until you prove to yourself that the danger isn't actually dangerous.
I realized that we aren't actually afraid of what we think we are afraid of. We are afraid of what we think. This, it turns out, is the secret to effortless change. No "white knuckling" required.
In thinking we are afraid of a particular experience or aspects of it, we become afraid of ever experiencing anything that feels like it. We start to feel afraid of the idea of something. In reality, there is nothing there and never was. It's all Thought and it can change in an instant.
On top of that, if we were not afraid or angry about our life experiences then our whole experience of life would change.
When we don't recognize something as Thought, we react as if it was a real danger. What was new for me is that there are two parts to recognize in a "trigger". The Thought that sets it up and then in the moment the Thought that creates the fear. We don't need to know what those specific thoughts are, as that can be maddening and without end. Just the awareness that the whole response is being generated internally. We are not the thoughts or thinking, we are the space within which they arise.
This was enough for me to start experimenting.
Have you ever started noticing something you do that you had been unaware of previously? Maybe a habit you wanted to change and in the becoming aware of it, it seemed to grow. That's exactly what happened to me. All of a sudden, I was aware of reacting with fear to so much! I had no idea! It felt constant and exhausting.
However! Don't give up just yet. My perceptions of sound started changing in the moment. The same sound would get really loud and then less loud. Very noticeably. The more I told my brain that something wasn't dangerous and that I didn't need to pay attention to it, the more variable everything became.
And then up and down. For a week or so, my perception of sound was wonky and unreliable. This was fantastic! It could change. It wasn't supposed to.
Then I had a whole day where there was lots of sound happening in the kitchen and it sounded normal and not scary at all to me! This was the first time in 8 years!
I had a few days of up and down fear reactions and sensitivity feelings and then it all vanished. Completely. Holy Crap!
The bigger picture of this experience is that once I saw what was going on as Thought, it began to shift. More and more insights followed. I realized it could all just disappear. There was nothing tangible there.
There's a poem I've always loved by French poet, Guillaume Apollinaire. It speaks of possibility and promise. It speaks of wonder. It also speaks to facing your fears.
Come To the Edge
“Come to the edge," he said.
"We can't, we're afraid!" they responded.
"Come to the edge," he said.
"We can't, we will fall!" they responded.
"Come to the edge," he said.
And so they came.
And he pushed them.
And they flew.
And so, in running to the danger as it were, we find ourselves instead.
With Love,
Sara Joy
Undoing Triggers Part 2