19 Sep Using the BSE skills with experiences of fear
Yesterday on the introductory call I did for the Becoming Safely Embodied Skills Course someone asked me a question about how I would use one of the skills with fear.
After the call I reflected a lot about the question and my response, realizing I really didn’t answer the person adequately during the call. Anything in abstract is difficult to completely pin down. This morning though I wrote down some thoughts, sent an email to the person with the comments below.
Perhaps they will be helpful to you as well. Let me know —
Reflecting on using the BSE skills with fear
As I thought about the question of fear – which is a huge topic – I had some thoughts that might be clearer than I was on the call.
With fear, the biggest hardship is that the present moment gets compromised. Fear creates an affectively loaded veil loaded on the present moment.
Using the BSE skills we look deeply at what might be there. When we’re afraid we usually have a tremendous amount of physical dysregulation. So much is happening at one time we tend to have a hard time slowing it down – and there are often protector parts of us that aren’t wanting us to slow down, fearing the danger our bodies are sensing.
If we practice separating the facts from the feelings/interpretations we might get some sense of what is happening now and what we are loading into the moment from our physical distress.
When someone is afraid, dysregulated, what is happening right now? What are the facts of this moment? Using bare noticing we might look around the room – is there something our eyes see that is scary? Do we hear something threatening? Etc.
What is that sound? Or the vision? Perhaps it’s someone’s face that looks scary. If we use the fact/feeling skills we explore: I see someone there. I see a face. The face has wrinkles. The fact is this person is there and their face is wrinkled/contorted.
The word “scary” is loaded with many, many memories and associations. If we practice separating out the affective loading intrinsic in the word “scary” we have a bit more room to breathe and land in our bodies. We have a bit more room to feel safe.
The same thing could be true with sound – like when someone raises their voice, or uses sarcasm, or has a tone that is triggering to us. Using the skill of separating facts from feelings/interpretations: the fact is someone is speaking loudly. The fact is that person has a loud tone. Repeating that over and over again allows us to separate from all the memories of that “loud tone” and our bodies will begin to slow down.
There’s a more we could explore with this skill – or with fear. My basic premise is that if we can live as close to the present moment as possible we will find our bodies slowing down and living with the primary experience instead of being caught in the tumult of the interpretations and associations we layer on top of that moment.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on the post.