08 Dec [Article] How do you nourish your heart?
In the middle of this wonderful peer consultation group I belong to I got triggered.
Even as the trigger ignited embers blowing sparks through my system I was also conscious that this other person [the one who stepped on my figurative toes] didn’t mean any harm, didn’t mean to activate me. In fact, this lovely other person actually was trying to say something good.
[Ugh. I hate when this happens.]
Part of my mind registers all of this even as I feel, sense, “see” the reactions coursing through my nervous system, activating old beliefs, threatening to plunge me into good, ole “ka-ka-land.” On the edges of my inner world I can sense the bright red shame clouds gurgling, pressing in, longing to spill over, to take over.
I’m aware at the same time that a part of me wants to sink into this state of “someone has wronged me.”
A manipulative part of me can see that I can turn this to my advantage, I can look like the victim here, I can, consciously and appropriately, point the finger at the other and be right. That would get me some space from this gory horribleness rattling on the edges of my being.
While all this is happening I’m also aware of this other person, who is dear to my heart, trying to reassure me, explain to me, let me know that they were actually trying to say something positive. They (really and truly – and I believe this person) meant it as a compliment. Yet all this talk was barely denting the plume of shame and distress preparing to course through my body.
We never get rid of the joys of being triggered.
Yet what we can cultivate is the capacity to notice, witness, observe without getting reactive. Every time these moments happen I am grateful to the years of practice that have given me inner ground, allowing me to move through these moments with more grace and open heartedness.
Sitting with this “gooblash” one thing became strikingly clear. When we have an early, non-narrative template embedded in our nervous systems we are prone to encountering it. Triggers send an urgent invitation to these deeply held patterns, demanding that the patterns come into consciousness.
This is what happened to me in that group of loving, kind people I was with. Since I have a particular configuration embedded in my system whenever anything looks like, smells like, tastes like, whenever anything comes close to that configuration – well, then, poof! That corresponding pattern of shame or distress fires off, working overtime, trying to protect me, cushion me from the burn.
After a lifetime of this I can catch the mechanism in action, harness its throbbing insistent tendency to plunge me down the shame rabbit hole.
What helps are safe, kind relationships, like the one I happened to be in when this unexpected opportunity to practice arose.
I’m aware of a three things as I write this:
- Those relationships of safety take time to build – take time to nurture, to build trust, to test the edges and make sure it’s possible to enter and be held with love.
- At the same time I – we – have to take the time to nurture and care for our heart. We need to deliberately and consistently build the inner templates of love and kindness.
- We need to challenge the thoughts, the fears, the worries that we have and that the world has that people are not safe, the life is not good, that we will be hurt and not be able to recover.
This #3 is where we need to be staunch, firm in our body/heart knowing that love is the true vibration of life. Why else would you object when something isn’t good, or someone behaves a certain way? You know it “should” be a certain way because that knowing is loaded deep into our existential DNA.
During this season take time to help re-wire your heart.
Look for pockets of people were kindness is the currency of interaction, deliberately ferret out people who are dedicated to finding ways to join together and bring love and peace and harmony, or some variation of that.
To support you I created a short 12 minute audio on Nourishing the Heart. It’s about remembering your connection to the source of your being and taking a few minutes to drink from that source, and replenish.
How are you replenishing yourself as you go through this busy and sometimes lonely season? Bring community alive by posting your comment below.