What a monumental task, to do something when I’m practically doing it blind. It fills me with a terror that seems utterly disproportionate to the task – in this case, building a website that’s alive.
Fear is nailing me these days. It smashes me up at the least provocation. I sang this morning, and then accompanied myself on the piano (very crappily). Why would that scare me? I haven’t got a clue, but fear came over me like a dark cloak and my body went into this high-alert neuron-firing state. Revolting. I didn’t know what I was scared of, it didn’t make sense. The world just suddenly looked so inhospitable and alien. I visualised myself as a small child – it felt as if I had rubber-banded back to a pre-verbal age. I couldn’t articulate what the fear was about. Can’t do it now, either. The feeling was very strong, and I recognised it well, Couldn’t put it into words.
It’s so strange when that happens: there’s a part of me having the experience, and another part observing. I can feel the terrified child still alive in me. The good news is that I’ve developed a good parent ego-state, so now there’s another part of me which can listen to the terrified child part.
Does that sound lunatic to you? I don’t think I’m lunatic… I’m reminded of images of American Indians going through re-birthing.
I tried to hold onto a part of me that knew I was just experiencing an old emotion, that nothing had changed in my world.
I stopped singing, and started playing classical piano, and gradually the fear dissipated.
It’s a good thing these aren’t medieval times or even 100 years ago – I’d have either been tied up at the stake or stuck in a madhouse.
My fear is like Harry Potter’s Dementors. It grabbed me yesterday also; I was trying to build a website with webbuilder and not understanding FTP or how to even start. I went into panic mode, but then remembered that if I don’t understand something all I have to do for the answer to make its way towards me is to say I need the answer.
Does that sound like magical thinking? It does, kind of, but it isn’t. I think there’s a real reason for why it happens like that: when you’re in panic mode, you’re creativity and resourcefulness is totally shut down. When you can relax and tell yourself there’s a bigger controlling force than you at work – and life has no investment in depriving you of solution – you relax, you start nosing around and you find your way to the answer.
Sometimes I go and do something completely different and the solution pops up into my life. Hm. If I go to the beach now, do you think Jack will be here when I get back? Or maybe Robert de Niro… Somehow, I doubt it. Well maybe that’s why it won’t happen, because I don’t really believe it!
Well, yesterday I remembered I’m allowed to have solution and it will come if I relax. And it did. I’ve almost got my website up and running. I’m not doing it blind any more.
A simple 5-page website I’ve put together! Hah! Feel terribly proud of myself. Proud that I didn’t walk away or shut down and end up self-sabotaging. Because this is a real opportunity to make some regular money and create a more secure world for myself. I can see how, I can see why it works, and I know what I have to do. On safe ground again.
Relief. I go through these times in my life when I feel like I’m climbing up an almost vertical cliff-face thousands of meters high – and I’m terrified of heights! Just holding myself as intact as I can from one moment to the next, not daring to look either up or down, until I get to the top and can flop down on my back on flat ground. Safe.
I know that if anybody looked at my life from the outside they might say “but you have nothing to be afraid of”. Like today, just singing and playing the piano.
It’s old stuff. It’s history. It’s coming up so it can pass. I believe we only really get to feel the truth of that history when we’re strong enough to deal with it. So it’s a good sign. All is good. I hate that phrase, it’s become such a cliché, but it is true, I have to admit. I can admit.
I look forward to the day when I don’t get ambushed like this so often. I know that day will come because every time it comes up – even though it’s happening so often these days – there’s more of me that’s available to see it for what it is. I’m not paralyzed by it the way I used to be.
Stepping out of history, one step at a time. Sometimes it’s giant leaps, sometimes just inching forward.
Stepping out of History 