I Cannot Lose Myself

Anxiety and The Fear of Losing Yourself

I used to be afraid of my feelings. I would be caught up in fearful anxiousness to the point of severe panic attacks. I was also afraid of going into an attack. What if I didn't come out? What if I never feel good again? I thought that I was somehow broken and wrong.

I have found in practice that this is a fairly common misunderstanding of how feelings and thoughts work in our body-mind. Many people experience this. I can tell you it's no fun.

I came across this piece of writing by Jeff Foster recently and found that it encapsulated this phenomenon better than I've heard before and gives lovely direction as to the question everyone asks which is "What do I do about it?".

"I Cannot Lose Myself" by Jeff Foster, author and poet

I used to be terrified of feelings, my own feelings and the feelings of others.

I believed that if I went too deeply into feelings, if I let them exist for too long in me, if I allowed them to live in my body, I would go mad, or I would be destroyed by them somehow. Or they would never leave, and I would get “stuck” in them forever, sucked into their dark heart, no way out.

I feared “losing myself” in feelings.

I feared my own fear. I had anxiety about having anxiety. I was angry with my own anger. Like many, I believed that I had dark, sinful, dangerous energies inside of me, and that I had to avoid these ‘demons’ at all costs. This was all a child’s superstition, of course, totally reasonable conclusions for an innocent child to make.

But as I stepped into presence, into my adult and out of my trauma, I came to realise that ALL feelings are safe, even the super intense ones. They come and go in the body. They are not permanent, and they just want to be felt, blessed, loved, offered safe passage, and move on.

I did not have to fear or resist my feelings any longer, even the intense and uncomfortable ones. I could just relax, breathe, open, surrender, trust, and let them pass through.

I cannot lose myself for I am present even at the heart of loss.

With Love

Dr. Sara

Experiencing Our Experience

"If the only thing people learned, was not to be afraid of their experience, that alone would change the world." - Sydney Banks

Many teachers talk about the need to be present with our experience of the world or our experience of our body.

The way you think of your body has a big effect on the actual health of your body. An uncomfortable sensation can turn into lasting chronic pain if you add a lot of negative emotion to it or continuously tell yourself that it shouldn't feel that way.

More than half of the experience of pain is from heightened emotions. If you can be present with your experience of your painful body part without any emotion or story about how it ought to be different or what it means, the actual sensation is much different and lessened in severity.

The same is true of how we talk about our bodies. One often hears people talking about their bad back or "oh, that's just my bum knee". It seems mild however we are dismissing our own bodies as bad and ignoring the message for change within the actual pain or sensation. Practice listening to your own language to see if you have body parts you don't value.

But what message is there in the pain or dysfunction? It just hurts and I don't like it.

When we can be fully present in a state of no thought with our body the sensation or pain transmutes. It can move to another spot. It can reduce or go away. It can change into pure emotion that you weren't allowing space for. It can intensify and then turn into joy or certainty. It can be the messenger for an insight about something in your life.

The wisdom of an insight can be literally anything. For example, it might be as simple as "oh wow, I need to stretch my arm" "Strengthening my body might help this, I wonder if there are any videos on YouTube" or so-called bigger things like "I need to quit my job". One of the most common things I hear from people is "well I know I should do..." We often know.

We suffer when we’re feeling powerless or helpless. Not from pain itself.

What do we do when we feel helpless or powerless? We may freeze up, withdraw or roll up into a ball. We may try to self-talk our way through it: “it’s gonna be alright, you’re going to get through this”. We may get angry or upset and lash out. We may develop a neurotic habit like an obsessive compulsion. This list is not exhaustive by any means.

When we suffer, we may actively deny/ignore/disconnect from the feeling of helplessness. Over time, this can become an unconscious habit or M.O. Which can further evolve into a part of our personality. This in turn can create more pain. So, while we suffer, we try to avoid feeling helpless.

The remedy for suffering is to acknowledge and accept in the moment that we are feeling helpless and that nothing is working. The more fully we can accept this, feeling it with our bodies, a transformation occurs. It’s as if a vortex opens up, our defences soften, energy can flow once again which leads us to our inner resourcefulness.

The antidote to feeling helpless is to reconnect to our inner resources such as peace, strength, patience, love and flow.

Lie Back

I recently was on a group Masterclass session with Dr. Dicken Bettinger, clinical psychologist and founder of 3 principles mentoring.

He read the most beautiful poem to us in his most relaxing beautiful voice. The poem is First Lesson by Philip Booth.

The author is teaching his little daughter to swim in the ocean and it’s a beautiful metaphor for learning to swim in the flow of life.

Here is the poem for your inspiration:

First Lesson

Lie back daughter, let your head
be tipped back in the cup of my hand.
Gently, and I will hold you. Spread
your arms wide, lie out on the stream
and look high at the gulls. A dead-
man's float is face down. You will dive
and swim soon enough where this tidewater
ebbs to the sea. Daughter, believe
me, when you tire on the long thrash
to your island, lie up, and survive.
As you float now, where I held you
and let go, remember when fear
cramps your heart what I told you:
lie gently and wide to the light-year
stars, lie back, and the sea will hold you.

~Philip Booth

Listening to Our Deeper Self

There are many ways or pathways to listening to ourselves

People talk about their own sense of themselves quite differently. Different types of spiritual teachers or mental health practitioners have different words and definitions for following your own wisdom.

I hear about listening to your heart, not your head. Listen to your gut. Sometimes these 3 different intelligences we have within us may be telling us 3 different things. Head, heart or gut? Who to listen to? What do I do? What choice do I make?

Our thoughts are very powerful in that they can take control of our neurology. Our brain and nervous system can’t tell the difference between the thought of a future negative event or the actual event itself. Both create stress. We are wired up to create emotions based on our thoughts. Your feelings in any given moment are a clue to your predominant thoughts. If you are scared; you are thinking scary thoughts. If you are angry; you are thinking angry thoughts.

Being aware of how thoughts and feelings or emotions work in our body is one step towards one type of listening. Practice this without judgement. Ok, I feel frustrated. I’m thinking frustrated thoughts. We then see pretty quick that we then have a choice. Do you want to feel frustrated? The answer might be yes. Maybe no. The one answering this is the deeper part of ourselves that is always at peace.

Then people often want to control their thoughts “Well I will only think joyful thoughts because I want to feel joyful.” Ok. This will work for a while. Then life happens and we might feel sad or angry or happy or whatever.

When we realize that we live in the feeling of our thoughts a magical space can open up. Things don’t look quite so solid anymore. It’s just a thought and I can turn around and think again, and again, and again as many times as I want. It’s like having a bright orange crayon and a blank sheet of paper to create over and over and over again.

And underneath it all, is who we really are, peaceful, loving, at rest. This is the part of you to listen to. It speaks most often when we feel good. You know it’s the ruth you are hearing when there is a beautiful feeling alongside. Some describe this as just knowing, feeling spaciousness, expansiveness, joy, calmness, or clarity. It might be an uncomfortable knowing but you are calm and you know what to do or what you want.

Entrainments help to clear your nervous system of built-up stress and the effects of our thinking so you can connect more easily with your own clarity and knowing. With who you really are.

Do you ever just listen?

Do you ever just listen?

To others

To yourself, your own wisdom.

Truly listening with nothing on your mind. Seeing the all of someone. Feeling them as they speak and listening without agenda.

Just listening or easy listening is a way of being with someone else or yourself that allows them to truly hear themselves and to be fully seen and heard.

It is in a way the opposite of active or reflective listening as you aren’t thinking about what to reflect back or what to say next but you are truly present with the other person in a way that is deeply honouring of who they are.

It’s not distracted listening or not paying attention. It’s being fully present and just listening.

I’ve heard it described as listening like a rock with ears or listening like the camera. Without trying to be helpful, judgement, or opinion. The other person will feel the difference and blossom.

It is also a profound way of being with yourself and hearing yourself. Most people either don’t hear their own knowing or they hear it and dismiss it. “I’m making that up”. To deeply listen to yourself without censoring yourself, fully accepting all aspects of yourself is extremely freeing. And healing.

Homework: For just today really deeply listen to yourself without judgement. Whatever comes up is okay. Listen to yourself like a rock with ears. You might be surprised.

With love,

Dr. Sara

Stress In A Wheelbarrow

Stress isn’t actually a thing. Wait! What? Everyone says “Stress – It’s a thing!” Dr. Sara, you’ve been telling us for years that stress is a thing and it’s a bad thing. Yes. I know.

I was wrong.

Stress is something called a nominalization. It’s a non-tangible process that we shorthand into a “thing” to talk about it more easily. But it’s not a “thing”. You can’t put stress into a wheelbarrow. That’s a handy test for “Is it a thing?”. If you can put it in a wheelbarrow then it’s a thing. If not, then it’s a process our minds are creating. And good news, if you can’t put it in a wheelbarrow then it’s up for grabs to change or shift as it wasn’t “real” to start with anyway.

Ok but I still feel really tired and anxious, and you told me my low back pain had a lot to do with stress. You told me, Dr. Sara!

So what now?

Understanding how your brain creates stress can help us do something different. In chiropractic, we talk about 3 main stressors or sources of stress. These are physical, chemical and mental-emotional. The first two tend to be well understood by most people and the last one is rarely understood or even looked at.

Physical stress is things like a car accident, a broken arm or even soreness from exercising. The effect of the stress can be negative (e.g. car accident), creating a breakdown or positive (exercise soreness) creating growth.

Chemical stress is things like eating McDonald’s every day, alcohol, or an industrial chemical burn. Being exposed to these things requires your body to use more energy to clear them from your system just as physical stress requires more energy from your body to heal. This requiring energy is an extra load on your body or “stress”. Again, this can create growth or breakdown.

Mental-Emotional stress is the things we tell ourselves. It can be habitual thought patterns or just random thoughts. Our thought patterns are powerful as they dictate our posture, our energy levels, and the possibilities we allow ourselves in life. Like the previous two types of stressors, Mental-Emotional stress can be a trigger for growth or breakdown. We can tell ourselves wonderful joyful thoughts or terrible scary thoughts.

The awesome thing is that our bodies and minds are designed to return to a calm expansive, relaxed state once the stress is done. Once the broken arm is set and healing, once the chemical is cleared from our system, and once we allow the scary thoughts to settle we can return to factory settings ready for anything.

Mental-Emotional thought patterns are the day-to-day main reason why we don’t return to “factory settings”. They are so habitual and run beneath the surface of our awareness creating tension and tightness throughout your body and spine. Our brains can’t tell the difference between a thought in our head and a tiger on our doorstep. We create states of worry, fatigue and anxiety by replaying all the scary thoughts over and over.

The first step to changing this situation is to just notice that we are doing it. Notice that your thoughts are having an effect on your body. It could be a good effect or a bad effect. Decide if you like the way you are feeling. If yes, carry on. If no, then notice “Oh look! I thought about a tiger (or scary thing) and I contracted in, my breathing got shallow, I tightened up my jaw.” Noticing allows your brain to become aware and do something different.

The second step to changing is to become aware that we can choose our thoughts internally separate from external events. An outside circumstance happens and we are the ones who put meaning on it and create a thought with that meaning. Our body then reacts to that thought/meaning as “real”. Noticing that we have a choice is huge in itself. It opens up a path to freedom.

Noticing that you are the wizard behind the curtain is the most important part of opening up to more possibilities and eventually resting in a deeper space of aliveness for longer and longer.

With love,
Dr. Sara