“You stupid idiot. You are such a loser. You are totally irresponsible. Why can’t you ever keep anything in your head?”
How does reading that make you feel? Well imagine if somebody said that to you. How would you feel about that person? And what if that person was you?
This used to be what my self-talk sounded like when I made a mistake, no matter how small. My heart would race, my chest would get tight, my palms would get sweaty, and then the vitriol would start in my head.
Insert big time intervention here. Now when I say big time intervention I am talking years of therapy, somatic healing, inner child work, meditation, yoga, and some serious all-out Ultimate Fighting-type bouts with the skeletons in my closet. Side note – I came out of those badly bruised but still standing.
Then a couple of days ago I was at work and I realized I had completely missed my daughter’s orthodontist appointment. I didn’t forget it. I didn’t even see it in the calendar. She really needed to go as she has some wires that have shifted that are bothering her and she also has a loose tooth that is painful but can’t come out because of all the hardware in there. And I missed it.
My heart started to race. My chest got tight. My palms started to get sweaty. I started to freak out. And then a magical thing happened. I was able to separate my emotions from my feelings.
What is the difference between the two you ask? Emotions are just chemical reactions in the body. They dissipate in about 90 seconds if we can just let them run their course. Feelings are what happens when our busy little minds get hijacked by those chemicals. This leads to those nasty things called thoughts and that’s where the mind is now off down the rabbit hole. These thoughts often start with “what if….” Once our thoughts take over then we get those big reactive feelings.
What we need to do is explore the space between the emotions and the feelings. There is a brief space in there where we have the power to change the trajectory. The issue is most of us don’t know that and also we don’t know what to do in that space.
There are a couple of tricks here. One is to expand the space through mindfulness. I guess this is where my three years of daily meditation finally are starting to pay off in a practical manner. Through my practice I am not only able to identify the space, but to manage to jam the smallest wedge in there to expand it infinitesimally. Believe me, when you are dealing with extreme reactivity (which is a trauma response) every little bit helps.
The next trick is to know what the heck to do in the space. Enter Dr. Nicole Lepera, also known as The Holistic Psychologist. I am working through her new book How to Meet Yourself, which is a companion workbook to How to Do the Work. This book gives practical strategies of what to do in that gap in order to put the brakes on the cascade.
So when the chemical cascade started in my body, producing the racing heart, tight chest, and sweaty palms, I jammed that wedge in the tiny little opening like nobody’s business. I used Nicole’s strategies to be present in my body, feel the sensations, but not allow my mind to take off to the races.
And guess what? The vitriol NEVER CAME. The body response I had did in fact dissipate within a couple of minutes. I was then able to calmly respond to the situation by picking up the phone and calling the orthodontist to apologize and reschedule. And then miraculously I went on with my day. There was no beating myself up and calling myself nasty names for hours afterwards as I would have done before. I just moved on.
For those of you who are reading this who are like, um what’s the big deal? Doesn’t everyone do that? The answer is a resounding no. Especially if you have experienced trauma that is unresolved. For me this is a MAJOR victory. Like I mean on the scale of winning the Olympics of life. As in truly life-altering.
Hey, it only took me 50-odd years to get here but it feels so damn amazing! If you experience the same issue, I don’t tell you this to toot my own horn. I tell this to convince you that change is possible. No matter what has happened to you. No matter how old you are. You can forgive yourself when you make a mistake and move on with your day peacefully and mindfully. Who knew?