Fear Series – BirthEssence

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posts connected with dealing with fear

Stop worrying and start breathing. A simple hack to help you and your loved ones to move through panic and fear.

One of the questions I commonly get asked is, "What do I do when things aren’t going to plan? Is there anything I can do really?"

It’s a challenging question right?

Usually well meaning people try to reassure us with instructions to relax and stop worrying, like it is that easy. "Don’t worry," say our worried partners, in an attempt to console both of us. "Just relax, you are doing great."

Does this work? Do we instantly relax and stop worrying in the face of problems just because someone who cares about us tells us to?

Of course not. Certainly not when that person is worried too. Sometimes we even erupt in anger right back at them, our fear and frustration spilling over in desperation.

Sometimes, if the person reassuring us is truly embodying a truth that all is well, then that will be transmitted to you and you will feel calmer. More often it is the fear that is catching.

In this post I would like to share with you two positive stories that illustrate this and point to a better way of initiating that relaxation and letting go than the direct instruction to do what you really would already be doing if you could!

Story Number 1: Sitting With My Grandfather.

“Don’t worry,” my grandad said to me with his slow gentle energy. He sighed and paused. “You will worry of course, but you don’t need to.”

I continued sitting with my grandad in silence, just breathing. Feeling emotions run through me. I had chosen to be the one to tell him of our bad news, the serious illness in another family member. I hadn’t expected him to be so calm. He was like a strong tree in a storm.

Oh the wisdom of our elders, so often overlooked. Having lived through way more than I, including a World War, he was more comfortable with shock news. He knew he couldn’t take my worry away. He didn’t even try. Yet I could feel his love and caring in the silence. I was reassured by his calm presence as I am when I sit under a tree in the woods and the energy under his words pierced through my bubble of worry. His honest assessment that neither he nor I could prevent me worrying gave me permission to be where I was and let the feelings flow.

We sat in silence a little while more just breathing together. His slower pace influenced me and I slowed and softened myself.

There was something timeless and healing in just breathing. Taking space together. Letting the space heal. So powerful. So useful. So often neglected in the rush and panic of the pain.

Story 2. Jason Chan speaking at The Tree of Life

“Just breathe,” the words echo through my mind again and I move now to a recent time listening to Jason Chan, a Spiritual Master and Healer talk at a Tree of Life Event.

“Just breathe,” he smiled to an appreciate audience who let out a wave of laughter in recognition. I could feel the whole room relax as they followed his instructions. In seconds the energy of the room had shifted from a higher, nervous energy to a softer more expansive feel. And he invited us to feel the changes quite literally by waving our hands in the air in front of us to sense the environment. Before we applied focus to our breath we had all been unconsciously held in the sway of our thoughts, and the habitual busy energy we often reside in. He didn’t change our state by teaching us some complicated breathing process that would take years to master. He led me swiftly to a peaceful place quite simply with a little focus, an engaging down to earth manner and plenty of humour.

What really hit home was his demonstration of the difference we all felt in being told ‘Don’t worry’ when worried in comparison to the effect of being asked to ‘Just breathe.’

The first is a negative instruction and the brain will happily imagine the worry, then work out how to cancel it. Too late! Your super-fast nervous system and subconscious has already responded to the first part and you are having to work harder to get back to relaxation. It also just tells you to stop something but doesn’t give a clear instruction of what else to do instead. When we are fearful and panicked we don’t have full access to time and reasoned thought. We need simple clear instructions we can get behind that will lead us through to a better space. Just breathe fits that bill.

Of course breathing is something that gets talked about a lot when you are preparing to give birth. Lots of different breathing exercises are taught, all with the aim of supporting you to relax. (Re)learning to relax is an invaluable tool to enjoy your pregnancy, support the optimal development of your baby and help you labour with ease. In my next post I will go into more detail as to why breathing is so effective and share some suggestions of techniques you can use.

Today I wish to keep it simple and leave you with three points I learnt from my grandfather and Jason Chan.

The power of the breath to shift us through difficult emotions in an emergency.
The speed at which a shift is possible. Think of how fast fear hits as you see a bus bearing down on you unexpectedly and imagine this in reverse.
We can be reassured to remember we have all we need at our fingertips. Breathing is accessible and we all know how to do it.

This last one is key. Learning and practicing techniques is empowering and useful. If in the moment you can’t remember a thing and your mind is blank with panic, just come back to your breath and start there. Focus on your breath and then make the out breath longer. Nothing fancy, just bring yourself back to your body and your breath and keep breathing. Let the breath do the work.

I invite you to try this now. Imagine a scenario in which you are usually worried. Perhaps you usually tell yourself not to worry? Instead invite yourself to breathe. Spend a few moments breathing and reflecting on how you are today. Then take a moment to let me know how you found it. I would love to hear.

P.S. If you enjoyed this then try it out with your loved ones too. Next time someone close to you comes to you with a problem, replace 'don't worry' with 'just breathe' and spend some time sitting and breathing together and see what happens.

Are your emotions charged with excess baggage? Try this.

Sometimes when I name my emotions I feel like the wheelbarrow in the picture above. Loaded down with the years, lifetimes perhaps of what that feeling means to me and has meant in the past. This post shares a simple exercise you can try to get under the accumulated weight of meaning attached to your words.

Words have power.

The way we use these words makes a difference to our experience. We can make positive affirmations to support our intentions. We can explore and name our emotions and journal our thoughts to help ourselves move through challenging situations. Or we can use them to metaphorically beat ourselves up with a stick.

Even the very words themselves have a strong energetic field. Some words can feel uplifting and strengthening, others may feel heavy and pull us down. Some words may feel heavier than lugging excess luggage around an airport on a trolley with a dodgy wheel.

When the gargantuan reality of the luggage is totally belied by the innocently light label it is attached to, I have often wished I could wave a magic wand and magic away the luggage entirely.

Whilst I am thinking figuratively this also brings to mind our family holidays to my husband’s native home, The Gambia...

...I brace myself, bend my knees keep my back straight and pull swiftly upwards swinging yet another bag onto the conveyor belt to be weighed. I am nervous. Will we be over the limit? We are getting some curious stares. Most people on this flight to The Gambia are English tourists. They have the lightest of bags suitable for a winter sun destination. Some look like they only have hand luggage.

We on the other hand have not one but two trolleys piled high with bags of every size that have been carefully weighed at home to get as close to the maximum limit as possible. We have something like 85 kilos of luggage wobbling around on the overloaded trolleys. I am also carrying a toddler in my arms and a baby in my belly. I can barely be seen beneath all this stuff.

Fast forward thousands of miles and a couple of days later the hot and dusty baggage makes it to its destination having survived the aeroplane, taxi, boat, bus roof and even wheel barrow rides. A knife rather than a magic wand cuts loose the tattered luggage labels but it nevertheless magically seems to release more than the kilos and kilometres our aching muscles have endured. Minus the extra luggage we had brought for the local school and for my husband’s extended family I feel free and light as a bird.

Whereas on holiday we had to physically carry heavy bags attached to our luggage labels, in life we are not beholden to the past history of the words we use to describe our emotional state. As we journey through life our brains attempt to make sense and categorise our varied experiences. When we encounter new situations it tries to work out if we are safe or not based on previous experience. Sometimes that’s ok. Sometimes it’s a bind.

Sometimes our words can be concealing heavy excess baggage that we may have been lugging around for years. The weight of the word may be like trying to lift a Mary Poppins bag of just in case items.

When we say we feel fear, do we mean the kind of fear that we get when we are nearly run over by a bus? Do we mean the kind of fear we feel when under pressure in an exam? Do we mean the kind of fear we feel when we are about to jump from an aeroplane for our first parachute jump? Are we responding to the current fear or to all the times we ever felt fear, particularly if we squashed it down and forced it to be stored in our cells?

Whenever the emotion is out of proportion to the situation in hand there is an invitation to do some inner healing work.

Here is a simple exercise* that is useful if you sense that the label you have assigned to your emotion is part of the problem; If you feel that underbelly of consciousness that has got tangled up in the word is getting in your way and muddying the waters, it will open you freshly in the experience and offer you a new perspective.
(* Special Thanks to Joel Young the founder and custodian who first introduced me to this idea)

It’s called “Take the label off.” It’s kind of self-explanatory and it goes like this.

1. Name your experience or emotion and notice how you feel as you do.

2. Take the label for your experience right off and throw it away. It may help to imagine getting a big pair of scissors and to cut the cord that attaches the label to the body of energy consciousness.

3. Tune in again and notice how your experience differs when you are simply experiencing what is arising without and reference points. It may help you to make sure your feet are firmly planted on the floor and you are breathing deeply and steadily into your body as you do. Have an intention to allow whatever arises and stay still in the centre of that. Be open and curious.

Without the label I experience a pure connection with the energy of the situation, a little like the connection I can feel to a stranger when participating in silent meditation together.

This exercise works well on emotions such as fear and it also works very well with concepts like Pain. Pain is one of the most quoted worries of labour- Will I be able to cope with the pain? I feel like I am splitting in two? I am not good with pain… are common refrains.

Pain in labour is not the same as pain from an injury but we use the same word to describe very different experiences and we may trigger our body into reacting as if we were in danger rather than in labour.

What happens when you take the label off and just feel what is actually happening? For me that was totally freeing. I could feel each muscle in my body working, I questioned what each sensation meant to me now I was not using the word pain. I got very interested in what I was actually experiencing in the here and now. My body felt heard and appreciated. I felt freedom even as I was feeling what in ordinary direct language pain is still the closest adjective I can find to communicate. The full story of how I was able to cope with intense pain and move smoothly through transition is the subject of a whole other post.

For now I will leave you with a quote from Ina May Gaskin that illustrates this exercise very well. In response to a woman’s question about labour she replies;

“Don’t think of it as pain, think of it as an interesting sensation that requires all your attention.” *

This quote could also expand into a whole post on the nature of life and the freedom of focusing on present moment awareness but I think you probably get it so I’d rather leave you to go off and play with the idea.

Let me know in the comments how you get on and I will be back soon with some more discussion about how to manage fear and other tricky emotions..

* From the book Spiritual Midwifery, by Ina May Gaskin, page 43.

Fear: Friend or foe? Shift your perspective with a helpful acronym.

Photo by Alekon pictures on Unsplash

How do you respond when fear grabs you suddenly?

Fear can be tricky and confusing. It’s hard to maintain perspective when you are in the throes of a strong emotion like fear. It can Impair your intuition and cloud your usually good judgment. Is it a genuine warning signal of danger to act on now or is it overblown panic triggered by old memories stored in your cells or negative thought projections? Sometimes a little bit of time breathing into the emotion in a space of stillness is enough to bring you back to the ground and allow some inner wisdom to penetrate. Sometimes it takes a little more and over the years I have found lots of helpful little tips to support me to reframe my experience.

At first I used to panic and shutdown when I felt the stirrings of fear in my belly. When fear ran riot I would feel the urge to run, to shut it down, to do anything other than sit in stillness and let it run through until I could feel a more solid base through the emotion.

I thought of fear more as an enemy and obstacle to overcome than a friendly messenger. I saw her as something to push away or push through and had no idea of the possibilities that would open up if I welcomed her and experienced her with as much willingness as I would joy or happiness.

This pattern was particularly acute in pregnancy. I was vulnerable and open like many pregnant women. Birth is not an activity you can repeat until you get it right, nor is it entirely predictable and I felt the pressure which fuelled my fear.

I persevered with the innerwork and nowadays I see her as a useful friend who serves to keep me on track and motivates me to dig deeper for freedom and peace. Not necessarily a comfortable friend mind. The physical sensations that alert me to fear are the same, quickening of the pulse, shakiness in my belly for example.

I can still get scared when I’m feeling fear. But I have a number of tools and tips that help me out. One of the earliest breakthroughs came from playing with the letters of the word itself. I created an acronym that totally freed up my way of experiencing fear. This ability to let the scaredness run through without letting it run me into hasty fear based decisions took some practice. I had deep grooves and was used to freezing up in the face of fear.

However, with a new perspective I suddenly found fear much easier to handle and without squashing it down was able to work with it and still keep going towards my goals. I remember the first time very clearly and use it as a reminder whenever I forget. The overwhelmingly frightening experience of fear as stronger than me dropped away and I moved from powerlessness to an exciting sense of possibility.

Ok so enough explanation. Here are my two perspectives on fear: The first is the way I used to experience and see fear and the second is my experience using my acronym.

F.E.A.R. Frightening Energy Always Returns.

Looming blackness hovering round the edges of my vision, dread, like a dead weight pulling down at my stomach, pulling my leaden feet down into the earth so I can no longer move, crushing my chest so I can no longer catch my breath. Panic, swirling round me so fast I can’t keep up or make sense of the sensations. I can’t think straight. It’s stronger than me. I don’t know what to do. I can’t do it anyway. I just want to get out of here. Now.

F.E.A.R. Fresh Energy Appearing Rapidly.

I notice the quickening, in my breath, in my being and all around me and I stay still. I know it is just energy. I feel it moving fast towards me and through me and I keep breathing. Even though my breath catches at first, I stay with it. I send myself love and compassion and I wait. I breathe more deeply and I find I can appreciate this strong energy as it moves and I stay still in it. I notice the speed of the energy. I feel its vibrations. It buzzes. I keep breathing and I am still alive. I calm and I begin to see. I am still here. The whole world has not ended. All will be well. I am brave and I open fully into the energy and I move through it. I remember that I can do this. The message becomes clear and I can move beyond, richer for the experience, stronger for the journey.

How differently did you feel as you read each description?

If you read quickly skimming through then have another go.

You may like to take a pen and paper or journal to note down any insights.

Shake yourself into a neutral place before starting then go back and read each one again slowly. Feel your way into each statement and notice how you are sitting, how you are breathing and how your body responds to the words. After the first statement bring yourself back to neutral then read the second one through in a similar way.

How did you experience it this time?

For me contemplating Fear as fresh energy appearing rapidly feels like freedom. I am much more able to cope with fear when it is just energy and it helps me to meet that particular fear freshly each time. Somehow it loses its charge. Its power to cripple me and leave me enslaved to its demands is gone

Of course the trick with any tool is to remember to use it especially in the beginning.

If you like this idea write it out and pin it up somewhere prominent and try reading it out when you next feel fearful. Take a few minutes just to feel the energy moving whilst you stay still and see where your stillness leads you.

No matter how much emotional preparation we do during our pregnancy (and I do highly recommend innerwork and emotional preparation) we cannot be sure we will not meet our old friend FEAR just around the corner at an unexpected and possibly vulnerable moment. Shifting my perspective and transforming my relationship with fear has been fantastically freeing for me and I hope you will also benefit.

Do let me know in the comments how you find it.