IS: I'm right here, I'm not lost
Upcoming open events:
- Saturday November 2 - Practice Dojo: Being With It All #2
- Friday November 8 - Office Hours
Calls start at 1pm Pacific Time (4pm Eastern, 8pm UTC). Community calls for Season 16 run every Sunday through December 22.
When we say "being with it all", what kinds of things are intense or difficult to be with? Here's what we came up with last Saturday:
Notice that there are both "negative" and "positive" items in this word cloud! More on the negative side, to be sure, but even happy-sounding prospects like being praised or loved can bring up overwhelm for us when we're not able to accept them.
Acceptance is the middle word in the IS growth mantra "awareness, acceptance, integrity" and right at the heart of "being with" hard things. Looking deeper, it's not about the things themselves, but our reactions to them: the things themselves are "out there" in the world, and it's our reactions and emotions that we're challenged to make space for.
In order to hold onto the integrity (of being who/how we want to be) that we value, we need to be able to accept or welcome all of the feelings arising in ourselves. The word "capacity" points at that ability with a spatial metaphor, and "spaciousness" somatically represents the sensation of being "big enough" to hold onto ourselves and the feelings simultaneously.
How do we actually do the move (the mental move, the shift, the action) of making space for something that we feel aversive to? We can't get there by beating ourselves up or by trying to clamp/control our feelings — it's more of a non-doing and "letting" motion to zoom out and take a bigger perspective. On Saturday we also made ourselves a list, a list of mantra-like advice to ourselves. Here are some:
- I'm right here, I'm not lost
- it's okay to not like this! / I am still okay
- there is space to be / what do you need to be with it?
- go where it’s warm / going home
- just start. the rest might be easy
- the choice to find joy is inside of me.
- we are all humans
- I don't have to do anything right this second / rest for as long as you need
- keep going
In discussion, we particularly appreciated the soft groundedness of "I'm right here, I'm not lost". In the face of feeling potential overwhelm, reminding ourselves of our here-ness and subtle security contrasts with feeling lost inside the swirl of reactions. It helps to differentiate our "self" (which is here) from our feelings (which are with us), and our feelings from "the thing", and remember that our sense of okay-ness comes from something rooted deep in ourselves that doesn't depend on external circumstances.
Other advice might be more context-specific: Sometimes "(it's okay to) keep going" could be what we need to hear, but sometimes the complementary "rest for as long as you need (before you keep going)" is the right fit.
Nervous system regulation is ultimately pretty non-verbal, though beautifully it is something that we can practice together in our shared presence. We're going to do this, for four more sessions! Every other Saturday, November 2nd, 16th, 30th, and December 14th, we'll be opening up to different types of intensities and making grounded, supportive space for each other to practice being with it all. This helps us when we face future intensity, but also helps us become people that can help others be with stuff they don't know how to handle! The topic foci for the rest of the series might look something like this:
- injustice in the world
- bad things happen to us or those we love personally
- accepting the good
- supporting others
You are of course still invited to register and join us for any or all of these.
Cheers,
James