PROTECTED FROM YOUR OWN HEART
The body’s defense against feeling
Our neurological defense mechanisms are very sophisticated. Their job after all is to keep our body alive, breathing and functioning. They also protect us from the intensity of physical, emotional and social pain that we experience at times along our human journey. For this reason are defenses not easily penetrated. They are strong, persistent and resistant because without them the pain we feel might be too great for us to bear. We can think of our defenses as our survival allies, keeping us surviving in survival mode. From the perspective of our defenses survival is preferable to death, because what our defenses are so voraciously defending and protecting is life itself. Life which is openness, vulnerability, innocence, sweetness, kind and loving. All of the qualities of our natural state of being. Underneath all of our defenses lives our heart, the core essence of who and what we are. Our defenses protect us and in doing so “we” get covered up, hidden underneath, and with that we forget and disconnect from our true selves.
Let’s talk about survival mode from both the neurological and somatic perspectives. Survival mode equates to shallow breathing, muscle guarding or tension, conservation of energy, increased heart rate, hypersensitivity to our environment, memory difficulties and shutdown of parts of the brain responsible for conscious awareness. What is the experience of this? You aren’t able to get a full breath, your body is tight, some of your organ system don’t work as well because they don’t have the energy they need, and your digest and sleep are often disrupted. You also intensely scan your environment, are often fatigued, feel overwhelmed, can’t remember details and your ability to think rationally is compromised. Over time you become exhausted, significant health issues can arise and you lose your ability to return to deep rest, resulting in general shutdown and numbness.
There are many nuances to our defense mechanisms which manifest in slightly different ways for everyone. The big picture of them operating as the prime orchestrator of our body and life is that they compromise the fullness of life that we experience. This limits access to what information and energy we can perceive and receive, and experientially looks and feels like varying degrees of limitation in our life. I often think of our defenses on a spectrum. At one end being full engagement of them, then in the middle ranges there are gradations of engagement, and at the other end of the spectrum complete rest of their activation. We never “get rid” of our defenses, but we can learn to quiet, soften, calm, reorient and reorganize them so that they don’t direct our life.
THE FUNCTIONAL FOG
Confusion, denial & finding your way home
As a recap, our defenses keep us from feeling too much intensity, which is often perceived as threat to our survival. By means of their protection they shutdown or shut out various parts of the body, limit access to energy & information, and veil us from being in connection and knowing our heart or true selves. This survival mode creates what I would call a functional fog. The functional fog can manifest in a couple of different ways, of which there are 2 that I will discuss here. One way the functional fog manifests is as an experience of confusion. There is a haziness, lack of clarity, the feeling of being lost and not having direction or purpose. Basic tasks can be completed, but there isn’t a fire or driving force underneath them. It is purely functional. If content arises which touches our defenses, the mind will create more confusion and a sense of feeling scattered. Often there is a need to figure out something out, which never results in resolution, and thus there is a looping in mental patterns. Receiving energy or information from the environment is challenging as there is not openness. While they may at times emote, it is difficult to make contact with authentic feeling.
The second primary way the functional fog shows up is as numbness. Within this pattern there is frequently a high capacity to function in day to day life, but feeling connected within life is absent. Sometimes people are analytical here, focused on accomplishing things or getting things done, and often aren’t feeling much but aren’t aware that they aren’t feeling. In the background of their awareness there is a general sense of incompletion, lack, or that there is something more, but in the foreground there is just the activity of keeping one’s self busy. People here don’t generally seek help or support because they don’t really think they need it. Support is introduced when something big happens, like an illness, car accident, death, divorce, or when some way that they want to use their body becomes compromised. When their defenses get touch the tendency is towards denial rather than confusion like the first pattern. This denial is thoroughly believed as fact, therefore finding feeling is challenging because they insist they aren’t feeling anything. When big life events occur it becomes harder to deny feeling, so feelings seep through and can often unleash and unlock many other feelings that have been there all along.
To find our way back into reconnection with our heart we first need to be able to identify our survival patterns. By becoming aware of these patterns space gets created between our self and the patterns we run. Prior to this awareness we just are the pattern, there is no distinction. The space allows opportunity for contact. For many connecting to the body helps to drop our awareness from these survival patterns, which are more mentally focused, into our felt sense. You can think of the body as a portal into felt sense. Felt sense is key because in order to heal we need to feel. Feeling penetrates our defenses. It softens the rigidities and lets us see through the fog. Why do we resist feeling so much? Mostly because many of the things we need to feel don’t feel good. They hurt, but the cost of not feeling hurts more. That cost being that we don’t fully live. We must go through the portals, which often hold pain, in order to free ourselves from the chains and limitations that our defenses put on us. It is important to remember that we are not at war with our defenses, but rather in relationship with them. In times of true emergency and life threatening situations we need them. The rest of the time, which is most of the time if not all of the time, they can rest. We need to reclaim ourselves, reconnect to ourselves and remember ourselves in order to live the life that is ours to live. It starts with awareness, moves into feeling and then into massive action as you reorganize your entire existence to sit in the driver’s seat of your vehicle, which is your body in this life.
Dr. Amanda Lalita Love, Subtle Energetic Chiropractor practicing Network Spinal & Integrative Somatic Healing, Boulder, Colorado
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