survival strategies

ACCEPTING SUFFERING

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ACCEPTING SUFFERING

Moving towards connection

One of things we least desire to do is look at or be with suffering, both our own and others.  We often do our best to avoid, not feel, stop, alleviate or eradicate it.  Understandably so.  The large majority of people do not enjoy suffering.  It does not come with pleasurable sensations, feelings and experiences.  Rather it comes with a sense of disconnection, separation, aloneness, uncomfortableness, angst, fear, restlessness, powerlessness, helplessness, terror and more.  There really is no way to make suffering rosy, soft or nice.  It’s not.  Our minds nearly automatically want to fix it, change it or make it go away because it is such an unpleasant experience.  We do our best to push away suffering because the intensity of it is so uncomfortable.  Yet despite our attempts to somehow control or manage our experience of suffering, it remains and visits our experience time and time again.

At the core of suffering is a sense or feeling of disconnection.  We develop strategies to survive and cope with disconnection and the conglomerate array of other feelings that come with it.  These strategies are called protective mechanisms.  These mechanisms allow us to not feel the full intensity of suffering that we might otherwise feel.  These strategies are smart, intelligent and well intended.  Without them we might very well not be able to function in the world.  They work by cutting us off from fully feeling or processing experiences of suffering, which then gives us the ability to participate with the other happenings of life to some degree.  Yet the effects, or perhaps downside of these mechanisms is that while we can function we often don’t feel fully alive, integrated, joyous or connected.  Protective mechanisms compartmentalize our experiences and/or completely disconnect us from certain aspects of experiencing on purpose, that is their job so to speak.  They are a good short-term survival strategy, however they don’t allow for the fullness of life to be experienced or expressed through us.

When people seek for healing it is often because they know that there is more to life than what they are experiencing.  To even begin the healing journey one’s protective mechanisms have to soften slightly in order for them to recognize that there is more going on than meets the eye.  This allows them to embark on the path.  Healing isn’t necessarily about feeling great all of time and only experiencing pleasurable sensations.  It’s about feeling whatever is present.  Sometimes that means learning how to be with uncomfortableness, aloneness, separation, terror, powerlessness, angst and the like, because this is what your protective mechanisms have been keeping at bay so that you could function.  The paradox of sorts is that as you allow those feelings to be felt it feels good in a way.  Good to no longer be keeping them outside of your experience, and no longer utilizing energy and inner resources to avoid suffering.  Though you may not feel pleasure or joy in the moment, you do feel more connected. 

SPACE OF THE HEART 

Walking towards

The more willing and able we become to feel suffering, and as we have the inner resourcefulness to do so, the less defended and more open we become.  Protective mechanisms only engage when they perceive that there is something to protect, but if you walk towards that which you’ve avoided, protection is no longer needed.  As we open to disconnection and all of the things that come with that, we open into the heart.  The heart is the natural space that always is and when we stop separating and pushing away certain parts of our experience, we naturally experience the heart.  The reason that suffering is so intense is because it is the experience of disconnection from love.  Even though disconnection from love is not possible, the experience of it is.  It’s what we call suffering.

Accepting suffering as an experience, of which we have all experienced, is fundamental to transforming your experience of it.  As long as we remain separate from suffering, we will continue to experience it.  Only once we look at it, acknowledge it, feel it and let it move us, will we be able to change our relationship with it.  Only then will we be able to feel our heart open without needing to try to make it open.  Accepting suffering is pretty much the last thing that all of your protective mechanisms want to do, yet without your protective mechanisms up and running to show of your life all you experience is love.  It’s confusing to the mind to accept that which doesn’t feel good or desirable inside of its experience, yet in the arena of healing that’s where your freedom lives.  

When we are in nonacceptance of suffering we often feel internally cold, withdrawn, frantic, disassociated, overwhelmed, distraught, heavy, stressed, alone, restricted, not belonging and wanting out even if we are living a good life.  We can be experiencing the appearance of all the good things of life, yet internally we are disconnection from the source of life itself, which is our heart.  Even though your mind will look for a million ways out of your inner experience of suffering, you won’t come up with any that can get you out despite your endless attempts.  The only direction is in.  To be impacted, to feel, to fall apart, to let your heart be broken and then to be moved.  Moved to integrate all of the pieces that fell apart into a new configuration.  That new configuration is a new relationship with your life experiences, which offers different perspectives and ways of being that can only be known through impact and acceptance of suffering.

If you’re still reading this article then kudos to you.  Suffering is the absolute hardest thing to be with and accepting it takes everything you’ve got.  Yet the gift is opening into your own heart.  That is the healing journey, back home to where you began, before you knew anything of separation or disconnection.  To be open in your heart is to be fearless and to know the power of love is stronger than anything else.

Dr. Amanda Love, Chiropractor, Network Spinal Analysis & Somato-Respiratory Integration

DARE TO RELAX

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DARE TO RELAX 

Move beyond threat

It’s quire ironic that what we tend to want the most we literally have to dare ourselves to try.  Something that is as natural and ordinary as relaxation is often perceived as a threat by our own psyche.  If we let our guard down, rest and simply be then we often feel exposed, vulnerable and like nothing will get done or accomplished.  So rather than choose what we desire, which is a state of rested, relaxed openness, we choose tension and vigilance.  For most people this is their near constant state of being.  Even if they are “non-doing”, meditating or engaged in relaxing pursuits, most are not really relaxed inside of those activities.  In essence most people are super skill deficient at truly relaxing even if they give the appearance that they are.

If you relaxed, or said another way, were just being yourself, people would view you differently.  This is one of the top reasons why we don’t relax.  People, like our partners, kids, bosses, co-workers, friends, and family members develop expectations of us based on what they are used to experiencing with us.  When we change our ways, even if they are more natural ways to us, others may respond curiously or even negatively to you.  They might feel more distant from you or like they aren’t getting their needs met that they are used to getting met by you.  This tends to rock the boat, and because most people want to please or accommodate to other’s perceptions of them for their own safety and security needs, we don’t like to rock our boats.  We’d rather feel a low level of underlying internal tension and discomfort than threaten our relationships with others by being ourselves.  

If this all sounds a bit crazy, it’s because it is.  There isn’t a ton of rationality when it comes to human behavior despite the fact we like to think of ourselves as very rational beings.  We really aren’t.  We are highly emotional regardless of the overlay of functional, competent human.  We also tend to fear that if we relax we won’t get, create, or accomplish all of the things that we desire too.  If we relax then certain things might not happen; things we want to happen real, real badly.  We tend to believe that it’s all up to us and therefore we have to keep going, going, going on and we can’t relax for a moment less everything we want falls apart or doesn’t come into fruition.  We tend to think that how things turn out is up to us, when really the only thing that is up to us is how we show up to whatever it is we are excited to create.  If we really got that than we would never show up tense again.   

SURVIVAL TO SAFETY SENSATIONS 

You’re in the driver’s seat

Tension is a survival sensation while relaxation is a safety sensation.  Due to the fact that is doesn’t feel safe for us to relax because people might view us different, react differently to us, or we because we might not get, create or accomplish everything that we think we need or want to, we tend to have the experience of feeling a lot of survival sensations.  Survival sensations are tightness, constriction, heaviness, pressure, irritability, anxiousness, held or shallow breathing and general bodily uncomfortableness.  Often it’s hard to sleep, there is difficulty with digestion, and we feel tiredness or fatigue.  In contrast safety sensations occur when we are relaxed, or again said another way, just being ourselves.  Safety sensations are lightness, levity, flow, clear, awake, alert (but not vigilant), bright, ease, allowing, and rested.  We tend to sleep well, digest well and feel restfully energized throughout the day.  

We all know that we prefer to feel safety sensations over survival sensations, yet the pre-dominance for most remains in feeling survival sensations.  What does it take for us to make the shift?  First is the realization or recognition that survival and safety aren’t something that is outside of us.  What I mean is that it’s the inner information that determines what sensations we will experience, not the outer information.  This does take some level of reorganizing the inner information, but the good news is that you are the source of that information.  Through self-awareness and some inner investigation you can fairly easily uncover what information you are creating and informing yourself with, which is thus creating the sensations that you experience.  Through developing mastery in this way, of being fully responsible or in charge of your state of being, you take the reigns back on how you experience life.  Rather than life experience informing you, you inform life experience.

In order to make the survival to safety shift we also need to be fed up with being the victim of anything.  We can no longer believe that life happens to us, but rather must see that life happens through us, for us and for all.  This is a big leap yet it is the leap required in order to generate safety sensations and a sustainable state of rested, relaxed, present beingness of self.  If we choose to keep the perspective that something is wrong, that we were wronged, or that something might go wrong, then we will continue to generate survival sensations.  Not everyone is ready for this type of radical “re-perspectiving”, yet it will create inner, and I believe, eventual outer peace.  

It’s important here to remember to not make the victim perspective in you wrong or bad, but simply see it as it is, accept it, love it and develop/choose beyond it.  It is in the development beyond it that the rested-ness and safety sensations you desire live.  This is not out of reach for anyone.  It is the developmental progression.   In a way it is destined as the natural and organic advancement, and yet the choice is yours.  Your free will in the perspective you choose is yours, at least for now.  At some point all will merge into a larger collective consciousness until your state of being reaches full unification.  For now choose how you want to see and notice the power you have to effect your experience and the world.  

Dr. Amanda Love, Chiropractor, Network Spinal Analysis & Somato-Respiratory Integration, Boulder, Colorado