You just got scared. It happens.
Last fall I was in a weeklong class working on my energetic skillset: somatic tools like holding ground, staying centered and aligned, filtering out what isn’t mine, that sort of thing.
At one point a partner exercise found me sans partner, so I was in that position everyone loves so much: I got to work with the teacher. And as these things usually go, it was intimidating at first but ultimately awesome.
The exercise was to practice holding steady space for your partner to help their nervous system regulate. Since I was in the presence of arguably the most energetically skilled human there is, when it was my turn to talk and hers to hold, I decided to go for it and had myself a right little vent.
The stick of dynamite
I told her how I’d been feeling so steady over the past few days thanks to the workshop, but then that morning I checked my email, and there was a utility bill that was showing past due, and it was like a little stick of dynamite went off in my system, upending everything I’d just arranged so nicely.
I hated (I went on) that I wasn’t yet proficient enough with my tools to have either prevented the blast, or not recovered more easily from it. And yes (she didn’t ask) I am back in balance now, but feels and stories and critic and blahblahblahblahBLAHblahblah.
She sat serenely for our allotted time, letting me drone on, her steady field slowly coaxing mine back into balance. When at last I trailed off, though words weren’t needed, she said some really good ones:
“You just got scared. It happens.”
We get scared! It happens!
Even as I type this I’m again feeling the truth of that in my heart… it’s literally showing up as a kind of light in my chest, something insistently spreading outward, filling my body and the space around me.
I just got scared. Of course I did. The bill wasn’t just a bill. It was tied to finances (a huge trigger for me), my home, my safety and that of my family. It was a basic need being jeopardized, ostensibly due to my negligence (ineptitude—another trigger). Plus, I had paid the bill. I knew I’d paid the bill. So now there was a whole project of tracking where the breakdown was (i.e. what I’d presumably done wrong), and a sense of urgency to resolve it before there were consequences.
So yeah. I got scared.
Self-forgetting, self-remembering
I get scared sometimes. We all do. We’re little fuzzy earth bunnies with well honed startle responses.
And when we get scared, we forget ourselves. We just do. We have been well programmed, since birth and even before, to respond in ‘protective’ ways that don’t actually help. And so, when alarmed, we fall back on our old patterns, our character armor, our unhelpful habits (control, addiction, dissociation and all that cool stuff), all of which developed in response to stress on our teeny little nervous systems.
Meanwhile the bigger, truer, more essential part of us—the one that’s loving, calm and resourceful—gets drowned out by the noise of our threat responses. Even if we are awake to what our triggers are and how to diffuse them, it doesn’t mean an explosion won’t still happen from time to time. No matter who we are, no matter how wise, practiced, seemingly enlightened, it happens.
And, if we have enough practice returning to that essential place, we do find our way back. There are tons of ways to do that. In fact, you probably already have several—more on that in a sec.
Can we unpack this together?
It’s a scary time. We’re forgetting ourselves all over the place. But if we can surface this stuff—if we can name it, work with it—it loosens its hold. Watching how the alarm plays out in our systems can helpfully divorce it from the stories that latch onto it: stories about how we’re horrible people, or what so-and-so did to us, or how the world is unfair. Plus we become more resourced (and resourceful) when our wee bunny nervous systems spend less time in fight or flight.
To this end, I want to invite a writing exercise that might help us explore this together.
Writing exercise
Write for as long as you’d like in response to the questions below. You can write about how it generally goes for you if you have a sense of that, tell a story of a specific time it happened… or anything else that comes up for you.
What scares you? NOT existentially, but more like alarms, stresses, triggers in a given moment. What is your version of the stick of dynamite?
In the example I shared above, I get scared when my basic safety is threatened—usually connected with money—or when I perceive that I’ve done something wrong.
What happens when you get scared? In what ways do you forget yourself?
When I’m scared, I immediately jump in in an attempt to fix, figure things out, explain. I do too much too quickly, draining my resources and further complicating the matter.
How do you remember, come back to yourself?
I come back by contacting my physical presence, usually by moving, walking, breathing, physical touch. My martial arts training usually (eventually!) kicks in. Also, I pray—by which I mean lobbing a big ol’ shameless SOS into the universe.
The big ask: will you share your findings with us?
Getting scared can shrink us, isolate us, pull us away from each other, make us believe we’re alone. So maybe we can pool our resources.
Hearing other’s experiences often helps normalize, illuminate, and chill out what is happening in a lot of us right now. It could also serve to show us some of what we’re not seeing. Like, “Oh yeah, I totally get scared when someone doesn’t show up when they said they would.” “Right, I also lash out and blame when I’m scared, yes.” “Oh yeah, digging in my garden helps me remember I’m OK too.”
So, once you write your piece, if you’re willing to share it in the comments, we’ll soon have a whole cauldron of resources and support—stuff we cannot have enough of these days.
It’s OK to get scared. Everyone does. And there’s always a way back to solid ground. I look forward to hearing your experience with this.
Here are a few ways to keep exploring, if you’d like…
You can always dive deep and come up with gold—and show everyone!—at a Mini-Retreat.
Support your friends by creating your own Soul Writing Group.
For more personalized support with your growth and expression, there’s also 1:1 coaching.
