living in fear = not save

thanks to discussions with my friend lizzie, I have had some new realizations.

i had known of my dad’s anger and displeasure toward me and my siblings actions. i wanted to avoid those at any cost. i came to know that as flying under the radar. if i could fly under the radar, i could avoid the wrath of dad. this was a continuous and exhausting struggle. those times i would do something wrong, no matter how small, I’d pop up on the radar and be in fear of what ever retribution would come my way. It was never a lesson except through retribution.

how is this fear any different than the fear the wild rabbit feels, afraid of the next time they are to be chased by a wolf or coyote, with in inches of their life? in both instances, there is this living in fear of something that may or may not happen. with this constant fear, the adrenal gland constantly works over time. that’s hard on the body.

all of this came into focus from a simple and obvious statement; living in fear = not safe. it is so obvious, i had never realized it before.

the above and more comes cascading out of that statement. i had this vision of a somewhat idyllic childhood. Sure, i had my struggles, among them my dysfunctional family and the gifts that came from that, but leaving childhood i felt somewhat well adjusted. Also, so does the rabbit but still, when they hear a branch break at 50 feet, their hair trigger response tells them to run.

on this statement alone, living in fear = not safe, causes the crystalline structure of my supposed idyllic childhood to come crashing down. i now sit in the broken shards, in full recognition of my early childhood along with some of the outcomes because of it. i, like the rabbit developed to hair trigger response to run. why run? because i like the bunny, don’t feel save.

sitting in the shards, an answer to a long standing question comes into focus, “how with this supposed idyllic childhood, do i face such emotional and depressive struggles?” the answer comes clear; there was no idyllic childhood. i now have a better understanding of the reasons for the lack of foundation that i hoped would serve as a basis of handling life’s struggles.

will i ever feel safe again? likely not. the early childhood’s experience are pretty difficult to overcome. even if i could, there still exists this safety robbing fear is part of just about any higher life form. even with that, thanks to you and my friends around me, i can learn ways to handle it and hopefully make for a better life. is failure inevitable? sometimes. i will close with a self authored meme, “failure doesn’t make me less of a human…it only makes me human.”

roaring one little roar at a time

last week, i developed the idea of roaring or standing up for one selves. people who didn’t learn to roar, like me, sometimes run into troubles standing up for themselves in adulthood. after these discoveries, i decided i was going to locate my roar, to stand up for myself. here’s a couple of my roars.

my therapist broke up with me

that’s right, i read the e-mail thread to a friend and that is how she summarized it. let me start from the beginning, more or less.

tolerating our dark emotions

i continue to sing the praises of the pixar movie, inside out. i have made so many fruitful discoveries since i saw the movie. it has been a powerful and learning process for me since seeing the movie.

for those of you who don’t know, inside out is about the emotions living inside the head of an eleven year old and how those responses color her world. i still shake my head in amazement that a supposed “kids” movie could do such and excellent treatment of emotions and emotional responses.

get along littl’ doggie

i am fascinated with the research of kelly mcgonical, that people who use stress as an indicator live longer and I can only assume better lives. heck, who wouldn’t mind if stress had a slightly looser grasp on their life? You can put me in that category.

since i’ve heard about her work, i have been trying to use the stress as an indicator model. my first attempt worked swimmingly and since then, i have met with a more limited success.

soap box

when’s the last time, someone has try to talk you out of a pick-me-up emotion? you know, “oh, you’re happy. what can i do to help?”, your excited? we can’t have that.”, “you’re upbeat. how can I fix that?” but that’s what happens to bring-me-down emotions. something not only seems incongruous, it also seems wrong.

no wonder so many people choose to run from their bring-me-down emotions. actions condition us that they are bad or wrong, that they need to be fixed.

newsflash! bring-me-down emotions don’t need to be fixed any more than pick-me-up emotions.

tying together some seemingly random strings

a little while ago, i did a poll about if people feel emotions deeply. 6 answer definitely doesn’t qualify as statistically significant, but the results did not surprise me. 1 person experienced both pick-me-up emotions and bring-me-down emotions deeply, the other 5 people only experienced bring-me-down emotions deeply.

asking for help to find my blue sky-replies

 in my previous post, asking for help to find my blue sky, i asked one of my sister to practice acknowledgments with me. i explained what they were, gave her some examples and share the benefits with her .i got two replies from her. i  found them to be disappointing. her replies will be indented; my thought will be out-dented. her two replies came within an hour of each other.

messing up pizza or how i feel emotions deeply and what that means

i took charge of pizzas at a friends house this weekend. we had three pizzas and i figured i’d save a little time by cooking them at the same time and just add a few minutes. final score, 1 pizza burnt, 2 quasi-raw. who knew where the night would go from there.

poll-how do you process feelings?

i’m wonder how people process and feel emotions and how that may or may not contribute to depression. help me with this poll. i have my theory and will share those iin a week or so.