Dumb Thoughts on Nature and Endings

Human intervention is not divine intervention or unnatural intervention, we are not higher than any other natural phenomena, and in fact are merely a part of nature itself. Which all seems easier said than practiced, right? I think sometimes we forget we are the same as any other natural being. We are a portion of the universe, as equal as any other thing, we just give ourselves more weight to that portion. Some would call that humanity’s ego. But say if the world is a mirror of freedom, perhaps we are its mirror as well. There is no meaning, but there are the relationships between people and things and creatures which entangle us, therefore the freedom we perceive or the freedom we present in the world affects those around us as well. It is circuitous. A feedback loop. We see ourselves as free beings, we make the world malleable to our needs, freedom becomes more accessible in the world, which makes us view ourselves as free beings. But perhaps the same in any form of oppression, we view ourselves as oppressed, the world around us oppresses us, and engenders oppression, which allows us to view ourselves as oppressed. To change this meaning of our world is to change perception. Because the actual reality of any situation is rooted in our perception of that situation. Two individuals dealing with the same catastrophe in the same exact position, may deal with that adversity in very different ways based on how they view that catastrophe in the first place. Yes, the world is a mirror of freedom, but it is a mirror among many in a house of mirrors. It will always be distorted in some way, but perhaps there way we affect this relationship. And the thing is you can never truly understand what what world someone is looking through, because you can stand in front of their metaphorical mirror, but that won’t give you the same view as if you were them standing in front of their mirror. And these perceptions are passed down, they’re learned, they’re not inherent. So, how can one escape their own mirror of perception? Well, sometimes you can’t. Sometimes you don’t realize you’re experiencing the world as through a mirror. No one says what’s the point in drinking water if in an hour or so we’re just going to piss it all out. Well the same is with perception, most of the time we don’t question what we accept to be right or wrong or true or false, because it is natural. We will always to some extent be trapped in these perceptions which are transferred to us socially, culturally, or through our own biological limitations. But no one forces you to actually act upon those intentions. No one forces the individual to take a drink. Death is the outcome of dehydration, but death itself is neither inherently good or bad, it just is. Our intimidation by our prediction of certain outcomes is why we don’t place ourselves in uncomfortable situations, or at least uncomfortable from our point of view. But really by coming up with notions of outcomes that are good or outcomes that are bad, or even trying to understand an outcome at all, prevents us from letting our resilience grow. For example, the other day I caught a robin with a broken wing outside my home and brought it to help her. My brother contacted his professors and friends in biology about what the best thing to do was, which ended up being to kill the thing. Simply, place it back in the woods to die naturally or be eaten by some creature, or dislocate the skull from the spine. My brother quietly did the latter for practice. A skill he would most likely use in the field. It was better to kill her quickly than to suffer. And somehow this bothered me. I was reminded of a tale in the book Zorba the Greek where a man looks at a butterfly struggling to escape its cocoon. He takes the thing in his palms and warms it with his breath, and soon the confused butterfly mistaking the hot air for the beginnings of spring broke free. Its unformed wings caused it to die as soon as it escaped the cocoon, and was left a withered, dead thing in the palm of his hand. At first there’s the guilt of interfering with the nature world. maybe this guilt stems from some aversion to man’s propensity to replicate god. A warning tale told time and time again in the likes of Frankenstein or The Island of Doctor Moreau. But if you think about that guilt, well where does it stem from? Because humans are still a part of that natural world. Sure I may in my mind feel more relieved if the robin died under the trees in the woods rather than in a dark room scared and confused, but at the end of the day the outcome remains the same. There’s no way to make it more romantic. The end is the same for everything. Yet it continues to make us uncomfortable, not because its right or wrong, but because it is societally wrong. Everyday new species are discovered, every day they disappear. Thatcher park was under water once, and will be once more. Why should we keep it as a mountain and not let it return to the sea floor. Why do we feel bad for the dying beech trees and not the poor fossils under our feet? They’ve been through it all, can’t that be the proof in the pudding that no matter what, things will be ok? I see the black bags on the mountain top which say “do not disturb, killing invasive plants” and the only thing that comes to mind is how odd it must be. To have any desire to preserve it at all is related to the preservation of our ego. Or rather, it’s selfish if we do, selfish if we don’t, but regardless, the outcome is cyclical. Whether the next extinction happens because of humans, there always will be a next extinction. And as resilient as the human species is, we are not immortal. As I always say, we have the history but we will never learn from it. For it is easier to live with guilt, to perceive our actions as guilty of some wrong, that we could be doing more, than to live with love for oneself, for the inevitable changes in our own nature and those in the world around us. The predictable unpredictability. Perhaps the scariest and most delightful thing of all.  

It’s difficult to explain to a neurotypical why I’m Otherkin. I mean, I get it. It’s not something they could easily wrap their head around because it’s a very experiential thing.

If you grew up in a decent household and you were surrounded by supportive people, you may be inclined to stick you head in the sand whenever the evils of humanity rear their ugly head. If those evils feel particularly alien to a person—as they do to me, as autism has given me an overwhelming sense of empathy so strong that I could never wilfully hurt anyone—then it can create this sense of distancing, of exclusion. You feel like you’re on the outside and you’re not even certain if you want to be on the inside of that whole hate-riddled mess.

What does it feel like to be human? is a question many autistic people have asked. It’s not just Otherkin like myself. You’ll find that the heightened empathy of autism has left many feeling cold to humanity, humanity itself is unusually unkind and we don’t fetishise familiarity so we can’t overlook these factors just because something happens to look like us.

This creates a dissonance. In essence, we look like the average neurotypical but we don’t feel like them. This can be expressed in alienation to gender, body, or even species.

I wasn’t raised in a good home. I was raised in a very broken home. The only companions I had were dogs, many of whom died because they didn’t get their shots. The ones who lived had such a positive impact upon me that I imprinted upon them, I enjoyed their selfless kindness. The only time the humans of my youth spotted me was to abuse me in one way or another.

I’ve been abused in every way you can imagine. Yes, that includes the r-word that I won’t mention here. It’s only recently that I’ve managed to pick up the myriad pieces and get my life together. I did so through sheer force of will and through coping mechanisms and therapy that I devised for myself. I ended up with a genuinely caring partner who’s had more in-the-field experience with therapy than I have and they’ve contributed to my mental health.

I still feel alienated to humanity though, that won’t ever go away. I feel more comfortable and happy if I have animals around, I feel anxious and ill at ease if I’m trapped in a place that contains a lot of humans. It can trigger fight or flight if those humans happen to be very neurotypical and lacking in empathy for those who’re unlike them. I find that neurotypicals place familiarity first, well above empathy.

So it’s this feedback loop. I mean, neurotypicals are more than happy to make me feel like the odd one out, they’re happy to exclude me because I don’t meet their quotients for comfortable familiarity. It’s okay. It’s what I’ve learned to expect. Just... don’t expect me to not feel alienated?

It gives you this outside perspective.

I’ve used this thought experiment before, many times, as it really does help to illustrate how the fixation upon familiarity neurotypicals have tends to colour their perceptions. If I were to show you a painting of old ruins in a cave, where a great red dragon is lurking within and threatening to breathe fire at a group of humans standing atop those ruins... What would you say is going on?

The answer I would expect from a neurotypical is that they’re heroes slaying a dragon. The more familiar to the neurotypical the humans sound like, the more certain the neurotypical is that they’re heroes slaying an evil beast. I feel that contemporary awareness is slowly bringing people around so that they’re learning the toxicity of this fixation upon familiarity but it’s a slow process and I’ve lived through the worst era of this familiarity fixation. I’m not straight.

You can guess what I lived through.

The thing is? I’d look at the same picture and I’d see something different. The lurking dragon, to me, would look like they’re cowering and taking up a defensive position. It’s highly likely that they’re a mother protecting their eggs. And what of the humans? They’re looters, freebooters, and there to steal whatever worldly possessions the dragon has. It’s “okay” to kill a dragon and take what belonged to them, right? I mean, they’re just a dragon. A monster. A beast. A thing.

This is why I tire of dragons being depicted as evil. Every time we see dragons depicted as something other than evil I feel it’s a triumphant thing because yet another mind has realised that not everything is so cut and dry, so black and white, so one and zero.

I will drop in a note about dualistic thinking here, it’s worth looking into.

For me, then, Otherkin is a coping mechanism. I feel excluded by neurotypicals because I’m autistic and I’ve been tortured and abused. They don’t like that I’m not like them. I can’t help that, more than that though? I don’t want to change to suit them. I see so many people in the field of psychology talking about “cures” for autism without ever really asking us autistic people whether we want to be “cured.” What they’re really saying is that they want to make autistic people more neurotypical, like they are, for their comfort, not ours.

That’s a very neurotypical perspective, it’s a depressing one and it’s the root cause behind so many prejudices, hatreds, and wars. I’d like to think that as a species we’re just beginning to move past that, we’re picking up enough awareness to understand why this is problematic and why we need to evolve beyond it. I can see progress. I can. I see hints of it all over the place. It is, however, a slow process.

I’m not fully healed, not by a long shot. I mean, I’m well. I’m mentally healthy for the most part. On most days, I’m actually happy and I spend time laughing with my partner and enjoying life. I’m very slowly beginning to accept the presence of humans who aren’t my partner in my presence. It’s difficult but I’m getting there. I’ll admit that it helps if they’re autistic or at least introverted, though.

Being an Otherkin is a safe space. It means that I don’t have to be human and I don’t have to worry about that. It makes it okay to not be human. If your mind can accept that, it opens up a whole lot of possibilities.

Why be human when you can be any number of things? Why be human when you can be something that hasn’t had a history of familiarity fixation resulting in so much hatred, torture, pain, suffering, war, prejudice, and death? You can be a creature that has no such history tied to it. For me, that’s a werewolf. I mean, yes, I was raised by dogs to such an extent that I imprinted on them.

So it’s hardly surprising that my safe space is thinking of myself as a sapient dog. I mean, I do like aspects of sapience. It’s just specifically human I’m a little leery of. Others are less specifically leery of being quite so human and they can deal with just being a little bit inhuman, so they choose elves or whatnot and that’s fine too.

You may come to the conclusion here that I don’t like humans and... well, that’s silly. I like people. I just have difficulty dealing with the physical presence of a human, especially if they remind me of my captors and torturers. I’d rather be in the physical presence of a werewolf or a dragon. I’m more comfortable in the physical presence of a human who identifies as such.

Does that make any kind of sense to you?

See, I’m not fond of humans because they’re so good at hurting one another and hurting me. They excel at that and revel in it. I’m not a fan. I’m a bloody tree-hugging hippie werewolf that wants to redeem everyone and make everything okay because that’s my jam. I’m also a technology nerd so probably a bit of a Glass Walker then. That’s a reference very few people are going to get.

Anyway, just as I’m not fond of how humans are so good at hurting one another? I could never hurt a human no matter how much they’ve hurt me. I’d cry. I just don’t have it in me. I mean, I can be intimidating for my own safety... but I couldn’t realy ever hurt anyone. It’d kill me.

I’ll wrap this up, then. I think this is why I relate to some charr in Guild Wars 2. I feel that most of them just want to protect what they love, they want to be big and intimidating as possible so that potential foes choose not to fight them because those charr would rather avoid a fight wherever they can. I’ve noticed that about certain charr, not all charr are warlike. Indeed, most of them aren’t. They’re just... scared. That’s relateable.

New Post has been published on https://lovehaswonangelnumbers.org/full-moon-in-23rd-degree-of-aquarius-the-magic-is-us/

Full Moon in 23rd Degree of Aquarius - The Magic Is Us

Full Moon in 23rd Degree of Aquarius – The Magic Is Us

By Sarah Varcas

The moon is full at 12:30 pm UT on 15th August 2019

This Full Moon in Aquarius is poised to blow some old beliefs out of the water. With its ruler, Uranus, having turned retrograde on 11th August and now squaring Mercury, it illuminates how our mind works and the power it holds. This moon reminds us we don’t have to believe a single thought or subscribe to any belief unless we choose to. And we must choose with great care, for what occupies our mind also shapes our life. If we can simply sit in silent witness of all our mental meanderings at this moon, we can create the space around our thoughts which allows us to just be: watching them without believing them. Assessing their value before committing to them.

It’s often said that ‘where attention goes, energy flows’. This moon refines that statement. It’s not the fact of placing attention that holds the power, but the quality of the attention applied. If we attend to painful feelings with a mind that feeds off the drama and identifies with the pain then yes, our attention is problematic. If, however, we bring to difficult issues a softened heart, a compassionate perspective, patience, insight and a desire to know our true nature, we don’t have to look away from what challenges us. Instead we can observe it, feel it, surround it with compassionate awareness and, ultimately, change our relationship with it by doing so.

Creating this space in our own mind – which is simply a tiny cell in the vast collective consciousness – is akin to introducing fresh air into a closed room or sunlight into a darkened space. We all too easily believe our mind’s every movement, allowing it to dictate our life not in the interest of truth but of those energies on which it feeds: fear, separation, anxiety, power, superiority. Mind is the ego’s domain and if we want to balance ego with spirit, we must get to know it intimately, not simply surrender to its might.

If we’ve been wondering why we can’t get it together and make some long overdue change, this moon reveals how we keep ourselves in chains, blinkered to truths on the edge of awareness and mired in self-sabotage. It may be a rude awakening, especially if the stark lunar light reveals not external circumstances but our very selves as the obstacle at hand. Whilst such insights are a bitter pill to swallow, this is just the first stage: a nudge from the universe to recognise our role, not beat ourselves up over it. Self-blame gets us nowhere, so whatever comes to light at this moon, meet it with a gentle and loving heart, not a hardened, self-critical one.

We may, however, be too distracted to take ourselves in hand. An accumulation of stress and anxiety, despair or depression – even the tedious boredom of a life lived in black and white – can prevent us recognising the power of the present moment and the alchemical force unleashed when we live it fully, without guile. If we’ve invested too much energy in anticipation of an ideal future where everything magically falls into place, we need to realise the magic is us, living on purpose, with clear intent and for the greater good right now.

Opposing Venus in Leo, this moon may trigger loneliness or a sense of being misunderstood. If we can resist taking things too personally it will go a long way to not letting these feelings rule the day and create mountains out of molehills! There’s a fair bit of tension around, so cutting each other (and ourselves) some serious slack is good advice. If possible, avoid heated topics of debate and focus on things that unite rather than divide, otherwise it may be all too easy to slip into overzealous championing of our own perspective with no consideration of someone else’s view.

If we find ourselves resistant now, wrestling with external pressures that threaten to change our course, discernment is key. We cannot and do not live apart from the world and must attend always to the constant feedback loop which occurs between us and our environment. Sometimes we must stand firm in the face of external pressures. At other times those very pressures are the touch of the divine reminding us we may be losing our way, drifting off track or blind to something we can’t afford to ignore. If resistance energises and clarifies intent, it’s probably keeping us on track. If it drains us and destroys our peace, distracting from positive action which could blow cobwebs away, we may well be resisting the very thing that will set us free.

Beware, also, the seduction of certainty in the face of current confusion. It can only ever be a thin veneer atop an infinitely complex existence beyond anyone’s power to fully understand. Knowing it’s okay not to know, being at peace with paradox, embracing with an open heart all insights gleaned (even that we’ve been wrong all along!)…. these are important elements of this time. Avoid the tendency to act out rather than turn within. It may be easier to take our stress out on the people around us, but every time we soften around the tension, turn toward another not away from them, seek common ground not battleground, we plant the seeds of a quieter mind that can clear the wheat from the chaff and know instinctively what’s needed in times of challenge to come.

Uranus, the Great Awakener and ruler of Aquarius, uses sudden twists of fate to rouse us from the deceptive slumbers of assuming we know who we are. But what we call ‘fate’ is often our own nature reflected back to us, and what we find ‘out there’ has its deeper roots within. Now retrograde, it’s rearranging our inner world to illuminate those roots – stories we tell ourselves; beliefs that shape our perceptions; dogma absorbed from others; mental constructs perceived as truth. These beliefs, thoughts, feelings, behaviour patterns and perspectives are traps we unwittingly set on our own path of awakening.

In the coming five months Uranus retrograde will reveal the inner roots of our ‘fated’ lives, in which we’re mysteriously confronted by the very circumstances that force us to draw upon ever deeper levels of the Self. While this Full Moon reminds us that overcoming external limitations is one thing, but only by removing inner barriers are we truly free.

Sarah Varcas

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As much as I would like to believe in a doting dad King Endymion, isn't that contradicted in the anime when Chibiusa is whole-heartedly convinced that her parents don't care about her? That Pluto is the only one who even likes her? And in the new Sera Myu, if I remember correctly, she feels that she's rejected by everyone, not just some dumb kids. That doesn't sound like a child who grew up with loving parents by her side. She just sounds so lonely.

That is Chibi Usa’s perception, and I think it’s pretty clear in both the anime and manga (especially the anime, honestly) that Chibi Usa is a flawed narrator on that front.

For example, look at the memories we’re shown in the anime to illustrate the idea that Chibi Usa was lonely. There is the one where everyone mysteriously was too busy to celebrate her birthday. Then it turns out they were planning to surprise her with her parents returning from their trip early to celebrate it. Then there’s the one when she falls down in the rain and her parents did not immediately pick her up. In her mind, they were coldly refusing to help her. In reality, it turns out they were encouraging her to pick herself up (and I’m no parent, but it seems like pretty good parenting to me, not to race to pick up your toddler every single time she falls).

I think there’s a lot of factors in Chibi Usa’s loneliness growing up.

Her parents are busy all the time. They’re king and queen of the world, after all. There’s a reason most politicians and monarchs employ full-time nannies. The most loving parent can seem distant and cold if their attention is divided because of their job.

She’s an only child.

She’s the one and only child of the king and queen of the world. Think how much scrutiny she must have been under from the moment she was born. Imagine being a little kid seeing your own face on the tabloids all the time, for absolutely no reason other than who your parents are. Imagine how impossible it would be to feel normal.

Kids were mean to her, probably because of that aforementioned scrutiny.

She felt like she could never live up to her mother’s legacy, and clearly did not know how to communicate her fears to her parents.

Her fears turned into suppression of her own growth and magical powers, keeping her a child forever.

It turned into this negative feedback loop where her own fears of failure stunted her growth, but the lack of growth made her feel like a bigger failure and made people scrutinize her even more, so she became trapped in a cycle she couldn’t escape.

The first point is one that I relate to a lot. I have a really loving mother, someone who a lot of my friends and cousins have said they love and wish they had as a mom, but there was a point in my life when I was still desperately lonely. Because she was working long hours at the same time that kids at school were being bullies. Feeling alone at school and then coming home to an empty house really did make me feel rejected by everyone, even though that was objectively not true. That fact that she cared for me and supported me just… wasn’t enough to fix the situation. It was too big for her.

But leaving aside her parents for a moment, even if they were actually cold and distant, what about everyone else? What about the other senshi? What about Diana, who was already there in the manga?

Somehow Chibi Usa managed to be sad even with Diana in her life. You can make me believe that somehow every one of the senshi, including Usagi Biggest-Heart-in-the-Universe Tsukino, became cold and seemingly heartless, but you cannot tell me that Diana rejected Chibi Usa a single time in her entire kitten life.

So what made Pluto special, in a way that her parents and the other senshi and Diana could not be? Other than the fact that Pluto is wonderful and perfect and also incredibly lonely, Pluto has nothing to do with the world that Chibi Usa feels pressured by. Where Chibi Usa’s parents and even the other senshi must represent the world she feels inadequate at accessing, Pluto is literally outside of it all. Being with Pluto was an escape from a reality in which she is a princess living in the shadow of an immortal queen.

But let’s go back to the real issue Chibi Usa had: feeling overshadowed by Neo Queen Serenity, and the need to live up to her legacy. I feel like this is the main isolating force for her. And it is largely internal. Because look at what happens when Venus questions how Chibi Usa can take over as queen if she doesn’t have any powers.

King Endymion is not here for that kind of talk. He shuts that line of questioning down hard. It doesn’t matter that his daughter has been a powerless child for 900 years now, he still believes in her.

And look at how Neo Queen Serenity reacts to the same issue.

Chibi Usa thought she was not good enough, but her parents have never thought that. It was entirely her own insecurities, which she kept too bottled up for anybody to help her deal with them.

And we know that that must be the source of her problems, because from this point on, Chibi Usa is so much happier. She never indicates that Crystal Tokyo is a sad place for her to be anymore. The only time those same insecurities flare up again? Is when she feels overshadowed by Sailor Moon in the present. But she works through it and becomes both a happier person and a better soldier for it.

Long story short, knowing who Usagi and Mamoru are, knowing who Chibi Usa becomes after that first arc, knowing how easily childhood memories can be clouded, I see no reason to believe that Neo Queen Serenity and King Endymion are bad parents. If they were, then there was no resolution when Chibi Usa became Sailor Chibi Moon, and all that character development should have been directed towards resolution with them instead of her own personal growth.

Calming Your Brain During Conflict

Conflict wreaks havoc on our brains. We are groomed by evolution to protect ourselves whenever we sense a threat. In our modern context, we don’t fight like a badger with a coyote, or run away like a rabbit from a fox. But our basic impulse to protect ourselves is automatic and unconscious.

We have two amygdala, one on each side of the brain, behind the eyes and the optical nerves. Dr. Bessel Van Der Kolk, in his book The Body Keeps the Score, calls this the brain’s “smoke detector.” It’s responsible for detecting fear and preparing our body for an emergency response.

When we perceive a threat, the amygdala sounds an alarm, releasing a cascade of chemicals in the body. Stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol flood our system, immediately preparing us for fight or flight. When this deeply instinctive function takes over, we call it what Daniel Goleman coined in Emotional Intelligence as “amygdala hijack.” In common psychological parlance we say, “We’ve been triggered.” We notice immediate changes like an increased heart rate or sweaty palms. Our breathing becomes more shallow and rapid as we take in more oxygen, preparing to bolt if we have to.

The flood of stress hormones create other sensations like a quivering in our solar plexus, limbs, or our voice. We may notice heat flush our face, our throat constrict, or the back of our neck tighten and jaw set. We are in the grip of a highly efficient, but prehistoric set of physiological responses. These sensations are not exactly pleasant — they’re not meant for relaxation. They’re designed to move us to action.

The active amygdala also immediately shuts down the neural pathway to our prefrontal cortex so we can become disoriented in a heated conversation. Complex decision-making disappears, as does our access to multiple perspectives. As our attention narrows, we find ourselves trapped in the one perspective that makes us feel the most safe: “I’m right and you’re wrong,” even though we ordinarily see more perspectives.

And if that wasn’t enough, our memory becomes untrustworthy. Have you ever been in a fight with your partner or friend, and you literally can’t remember a positive thing about them? It’s as though the brain drops the memory function altogether in an effort to survive the threat. When our memory is compromised like this, we can’t recall something from the past that might help us calm down. In fact, we can’t remember much of anything. Instead, we’re simply filled with the flashing red light of the amygdala indicating “Danger, react. Danger, protect. Danger, attack.”

In the throes of amygdala hijack, we can’t choose how we want to react because the old protective mechanism in the nervous system does it for us — even before we glimpse that there could be a choice.  It is ridiculous.

Practicing Mindfulness in Conflict

Mindfulness is the perfect awareness technique to employ when a conflict arises — whether it’s at work or home. It allows us to override the conditioned nervous system with conscious awareness. Instead of attacking or recoiling, and later justifying our reactions, we can learn to stay present, participate in regulating our own nervous system, and eventually, develop new, more free and helpful ways of interacting.

Practicing mindfulness in the middle of a conflict demands a willingness to stay present, to feel intensely, to override our negative thoughts, and to engage our breath to maintain presence with the body. Like any skill, it takes practice.

There are different approaches to working with a provoked nervous system and intense emotions, but they all have some elements in common. Here are four simple steps that I try to use when I find myself with an overloaded nervous system and a body racing with a fight or flight impulse.

Step 1: Stay present.

The first step in practicing mindfulness when triggered is to notice we are provoked. We may notice a change in our tone of voice, gripping sensations in the belly, or a sudden desire to withdraw. Each of us has particular bodily and behavioral cues that alert us to the reality that we feel threatened, and are therefore running on automatic pilot.

We have to decide to stay put and present, to be curious and explore our experience. For me, it helps to remind myself to relax. I have a visual cue that I use that involves my son. When I’m worked up, he has the habit of looking at me, raising and lowering his hands in a calming fashion, and saying “Easy Windmill.”  I try to reflect on this and it helps me calm down because he’s so charming when he does it.

Step 2: Let go of the story.

This might be the most difficult part of the practice. We need to completely let go of the thinking and judging mind. This is a very challenging step because when we feel threatened, the mind immediately fills with all kinds of difficult thoughts and stories about what’s happening. But we must be willing to forget the story, just for a minute, because there is a feedback loop between our thoughts and our body. If the negative thoughts persist, so do the stressful hormones. It isn’t that we’re wrong, but we will be more far more clear in our perceptions when the nervous system has relaxed.

Step 3: Focus on the body.

Now simply focus on feeling and exploring whatever sensations arise in the body. We feel them naturally, just as they are, not trying to control or change them. We allow the mind to be as open as possible, noticing the different places in the body where sensations occur, what is tight, shaky, rushing, or hurts. We pay attention to the different qualities and textures of the sensations, and the way things change and shift. We can also notice how biased we are against unpleasant or more intense sensations.

Step 4: Finally, breathe.

Everybody knows that it helps to breathe. There are many different qualities of the breath, but we only need to learn about two: Rhythm and smoothness. As Alan Watkins explains in his book Coherence: The Secret Science of Brilliant Leadership, if we focus on these two dimensions, even for a few short minutes, the production of the cortisol and adrenaline will stop.

To breath rhythmically means that the in-breath and out-breath occur repeatedly at the same intervals. So if we inhale, counting 1, 2, 3, and 4, and then exhale, counting 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, then inhale again, counting 1, 2, 3, and 4, and then exhale again, counting 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6; this establishes rhythm.

At the same time, we should invite the breath to be even or smooth, meaning that the volume of the breath stays consistent as it moves in and out, like sipping liquid through a narrow straw. If we manage those two qualities for just a few minutes, the breath assists us in remaining present, making it possible to stay with intense sensation in the body.

Paying attention to our body re-establishes equilibrium faster, restoring our ability to think, to listen, and relate. This takes practice, but eventually, we retrain ourselves to respond rather than to react. Anger becomes clarity and resolve, sadness leads to compassion, jealousy becomes fuel for change.

There will also be certain moments when we fail. Becoming more intimate with our body’s response to a hijacked nervous system is challenging, to say the least. This is because the sensations are very uncomfortable, our emotions are volatile, and our mind is usually filling with unsupportive thoughts like “Get me outta here,” or “How can they be saying that?” or “This is a waste of my time.”

Each time we succeed in being mindful of our body in moments of distress, we develop our capacity. Even more, we may observe something new when it occurs. A moment of pause, an unexpected question when it appears or a laugh that erupts. When anything new happens, taking note of it helps to free us of the pattern to our old way of doing things. Before we know it, our old habit of fight or flight is changing, and the world is a safer place.

Building Strength and Resilience through Facing and Dealing with Life’s Problems

Resilient qualities are not only what we’re born with but also the strengths that we build through encountering life’s challenges and developing the personal and interpersonal skills to meet them. It is one of life’s paradoxes that the worst circumstances can bring the best out of us. According to the Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) studies performed by Robert Anda (2006) and his team at Kaiser Permanente’s Health Appraisal Clinic in San Diego, we will all experience four or more serious life stressors that may be traumatizing, and according to positive psychology research, most of us will grow from them.

What Do We Mean by Resilience?

Research on resilience used to view resilient qualities as residing exclusively within an individual. Today this research takes the more dynamic view of seeing resilience as an individual’s ability to mobilize supports within a social context. Wong and Wong (2012) write that “In the early days of resilience research, the focus was on ‘the invulnerable child,’ who did better than expected despite adversities and disadvantages . . . [D]evelopmental psychologists were interested in individual differences and the protective factors that contributed to the development of the invulnerable child”. Rutter, however, argues that “resilience may reside in the social context as much as within the individual” (Wong & Wong). “His concept of the ‘steeling’ effect highlights the essence of resilience — the more experience you have in overcoming adversities, the more resilient you will become” (Wong & Wong, 2012).

Wong and Wong propose that certain qualities of behavioral resilience can only be developed from the actual experience of having overcome adversities (Wong & Wong, 2012).

Additionally, they identify at least three prototypical patterns that resilient people appear to display, which may occur in different contexts for different individuals. These are developed as individuals meet life challenges; they are dynamic, constantly evolving qualities rather than qualities residing only within the individual.

Recovery: bouncing back and returning to normal functioning Invulnerability: remaining relatively unscathed by the adversity or trauma Posttraumatic growth: bouncing back and becoming stronger (Wong & Wong, 2012, p. 588). Our Deep Need to Connect: How Early Attachment Can Be Life Enhancing or Traumatizing Our highest and most evolved system, our social engagement system, is activated through our deep urge to communicate and cooperate. From the moment of birth, our mind-body reaches out toward our primary attachment figures to establish the kind of connection that will allow us to survive and find our footing in the world. We fall back on our more primitive systems of defense — such as fight, flight, or freeze — only when we fail to find a sense of resonance and safety in this connection (Porges, 2004).

The body of work that researchers Dan Siegel and Allan Schore have developed, which underlies interpersonal neurobiology, postulates that our skin does not define the boundaries of our beingness; from conception, we resonate in tune or out of tune with those around us (Schore, 1999). Through relational experiences that form and inform our sense of self and through our ability to be cared for and care about others, our capacity for empathy is formed and strengthened (Schore, 1999).

Neuroception, a term coined by Stephen Porges (2004), former Director of the Brain-Body Center at the University of Illinois at Chicago, describes our innate ability to use intricate, meaning-laden, barely perceptible mind-body signals to establish bonds and communicate our needs and intentions. While many of these communications are conscious, still more occur beneath the level of our awareness in that animal-like part of us(Porges, 2004).

Neuroception is a system that has evolved over time to enable humans and mammals to establish the mutually nourishing bonds that we need to survive and thrive. It is also our personal security system that assesses, in the blink of an eye, whether or not the situations that we’re encountering are safe or in some way threatening (Porges, 2004). According to Porges (2004), our neuroception tells us if we can relax and be ourselves or if and when we need to self-protect. If the signals that we’re picking up from others are cold, dismissive, or threatening, that system sets off an inner alarm that is followed by a cascade of mind-body responses honed by eons of evolution to keep us from being harmed. That mind-body system sets off equivalent alerts if we’re facing the proverbial saber-toothed tiger or saber-toothed parent, older sibling, a school bully, or spouse. We brace for harm to our person on the inside as well as on the outside.

When Parents Turn Away

Trauma in the home has a lasting impact. When those we rely on for our basic needs of trust, empathy, and dependency become abusive or neglectful, it constitutes a double whammy. Not only are we being hurt and confused but the very people we’d go to for solace and explanation of what’s going on are the ones causing us pain. We stand scared and braced for danger in those moments, prepared by eons of evolution, ready to flee for safety or stand and fight. If we can do neither, if escape seems impossible because we are children growing up trapped by our own size and dependency within pain engendering families, then something inside of us freezes. Just getting through, just surviving the experience becomes paramount.

Relational trauma impacts all facets of the mind-body social engagement system including limbic resonance, touch, expression, gesture, sign language, and finally words. Consequently, ferreting out just what has hurt us can be a very layered process. A parent who wears a scowl all of the time, for example, and who we couldn’t reach with our attempts at connection or who begrudgingly reached for our hands and dragged us across a street or humiliated us for our small efforts share our feelings to take care of ourselves, can leave a legacy of hurt behind them.

In trauma engendering interactions, “people are not able to use their interactions to regulate their physiological states in relationship . . . they are not getting anything back from the other person that can help them to remain calm and regulated. Quite the opposite. The other person’s behavior is making them go into a scared, braced-for-danger state. Their physiology is being up regulated into a fight/flight mode,” says Porges A failure to successfully engage and create a sense of safety and cooperation or to communicate needs and desires to those people we depend upon for our very survival can be experienced as traumatic. This can set the groundwork for a life long problem with self-regulation.

When Children Withdraw Into Themselves

For small developing children, this refusal of connection can be traumatic if it occurs consistently over time. The child can feel that their needs are somehow incompressible if the parent does not tune into him or her. Small children have little recourse when they are young and dependent. If a parent does not support a comfortable connection, if the parent or caretaker is not available for a caring co-state in which communications on both sides are met with reciprocal attempts to understand and continue to participate in a mutually satisfying feedback loop, the child may feel very alone. They may retreat into their own little world or even dissociate. After all, why continue to try when you are getting nothing back? What about the child who is disciplined not according to their own behavior but by their parent’s mood and left unable to figure out how to act to stay out of trouble? Or how about the kid in a rage-filled home who is told to sit still and listen as the parent dumps a load of pain all over them? What recourse does this child have but to flee internally? When we dissociate, we do not process experiences normally. We do not feel it, think about it, or draw meaning from it.

How Early Relational Trauma Affects Our Relationships

People who have been traumatized in their intimate relationships can find it difficult simply to be in comfortable connection with others. The dependency and vulnerability that is so much a part of intimacy can trigger a person who has been traumatized in their early, intimate relationships into the defensive behaviors that they relied on as children to stay safe and to feel whole rather than splintered. To heal this form of relational trauma, we need to understand what defensive strategies we used to stay safe and then shift these behaviors to be more engaged and nourishing both within our relationships and ourselves. After all, if we constantly brace for danger and rejection, then we are likely to create it. It can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The Long-Term Impact of Parental Addiction

Experiences like growing up with parental addiction and the chaos and stress that surround it pop up over and over again as primary causes of toxic stress. Anda and his team were not looking for the effects of addiction in their research however it consistently emerged as an underlying factor in ACE’s. Not only are the effects of parental addiction devastating for children, but addiction is rarely a factor by itself, it is often surrounded by a cluster of other problems such as abuse and neglect. Alcohol and drugs are often used to mask depression and anxiety in the addict but rather than make depression or anxiety better; addiction makes them worse because the depression and anxiety remain undealt with and the addiction becomes a whole, new problem of its own. And being married to an addict creates pain in the partner which undermines their ability to be a present parent, so kids lose two parents. ACEs or adverse childhood experiences tend to cluster; once a home environment is disordered, the risk of witnessing or experiencing emotional, physical, or sexual abuse actually rises dramatically (Anda, et al., 2006).

During one of his lectures, Dr. Anda described why ongoing traumatic experiences such as growing up with addiction, abuse, or neglect in the home can have such tenacious effects: “For an epidemic of influenza, a hurricane, earthquake, or tornado, the worst is quickly over; treatment and recovery efforts can begin. In contrast, the chronic disaster that results from ACEs is insidious and constantly rolling out from generation to generation” (personal communication). If the effects of toxic stress are not understood so that children can receive some sort of understanding and support from home, school, and community, these children simply “vanish from view . . . and randomly reappear — as if they are new entities — in all of your service systems later in childhood, adolescence, and adulthood as clients with behavioral, learning, social, criminal, and chronic health problems” (Anda, et al., 2010).

Growing up is painful; families are only human after all. We will inevitably get hurt. But we need to repair that hurt in some way, and if repair doesn’t happen at or near to the moment of the pain, it will need to happen later. When emotional pain remains split off, it becomes somehow invisible to the naked eye, and it emerges as if it a whole new problem with whole new people. But we need to embrace the challenge as adults of understanding our own childhood ACE-related pain and cleaning up its effects so that it doesn’t become the pain pump for today’s problems.

The idea of growth through suffering or pain is not a new one. The systematic study of it is. Post-traumatic growth (PTG), a phrase coined by Drs. Richard Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun — editors of The Handbook of Post Traumatic Growth — describes the positive self-transformation that people undergo through meeting challenges head-on. It refers to a profound, life-altering response to adversity that changes us on the inside as we actively summon the kinds of qualities like fortitude, forgiveness, gratitude, and strength that enable us to not only survive tough circumstances but also thrive. Facing childhood pain and dealing with it rather than acting it out or medicating is part of post-traumatic growth and part of how we create resilience today.

REFERENCES

Anda, R. F., V. J. Felitti, D. W. Brown, D. Chapman, M. Dong, S. R.Schore, A.N. (1999). Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self. Dan Siegel: The Neurological Basis of Behavior, the Mind, the Brain and Human Relationships Part 1 At the Garrison Institute’s 2011 Climate, Mind and Behavior Symposium, Dr. Dan Siegel of the …

NEUROCEPTION: A Subconscious System for Detecting Threats and Safety STEPHEN W. PORGES University of Illinois at Chicago Copyright 2004 ZERO TO THREE. Reproduced with permission of the copyright holder.

Schore, A.N. (1991), Early superego development: The emergence of shame and narcissistic affect regulation in the practicing period. Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Thought, 14: 187–250.

— — — — — — — (1994), Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self: The Neurobiology of Emotional Development. Mahwah

Dan Siegel: The Neurological Basis of Behavior, the Mind, the Brain and Human Relationships Part 1 At the Garrison Institute’s 2011 Climate, Mind and Behavior Symposium, Dr. Dan Siegel of the …, M. (2004). Nurturing hidden resilience in troubled youth. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press.

Wong, P. T. P. & Wong, L. C. J. (2012). A meaning-centered approach to building youth resilience. In P. T. P. Wong (Ed.), The human quest for meaning: Theories, research, and applications (2nd ed., pp. 585–617). New York, NY: Routledge.

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