Jack’s boss criticized him in front of his entire team. By the time he got home, he was not only fuming, he was tight and agitated, planning how he’d show her that he was on top of his game, and on top of the project. The problem was, for the next week, he tried so hard that his tension undermined his performance.
Many of us have spent too much of our lives feeling threatened, so we unknowingly take criticisms, or difficult interactions as more danger than they may actually be. It’s human nature to clench and scrabble, trying to find some hold on events. It can be as if we are trying to hold onto our sense of our lives, and of ourselves as stable. But the clenching takes our attention away from dealing with the situation, so we are less effective. While it is an automatic reaction, it doesn’t help our cause.
What needs to come in, at those moments when our fretting is keeping us up at night, is trust in our experience and our practice of new ways of being. Paradoxically, what keeps us safe and makes us effective is to let go, to allow our survival to be a matter of faith, something that we take for granted (not easy to do for those with trauma in their background), to float on the surge and swell of the event, rather than trying to make the water be still, or to grab onto something for dear life. All that gets us is a fight with the water and more tendency to sink.
Here is where the value of learning to ground and center comes in. When you can identify that reaction of trying to get a grip, developing an internal, kinesthetic sense of your self and your energy body allows you to let go and trust that you will continue to exist. Then you can focus on seeing the event clearly, assessing best action, and doing it. You have more time to notice that it is not life-threatening, that it may be obnoxious or inconvenient, but you can feel good about being able to swim through it.
When Jack became aware of his trying to feel in control again by clenching, he realized that his boss’s criticism had triggered memories of feeling humiliated by his father, who had laughed at him in front of his drinking buddies. Reminding himself that his boss was not his father, Jack was able to turn his efforts to breathing, reconnecting with his felt sense of his body, and be aware of his feet contacting the earth, even in meetings. Rather than resent his boss, he tried assuming that his job was safe. As he felt lighter, he suddenly saw his project from a new angle and got an idea that improved it and open up new options.
If the situation really is threatening, you will have more chance to survive if you can see best options by letting go of the grip that constricts your energy. No matter what, if you ride the wave, you still have your self, and a firmer sense of your being, as you move through the crisis and come out the other side. And it won’t turn into one of those events that adds to old trauma or old beliefs that you can’t survive. Rather it will build on the truth that you are good at body-surfing.
