Trusting
Can we talk about the practice, the art, the muscle of trusting for a moment? Trust to me is flexibility, movement and adaptation and evolvement of ourselves, others and our world. Knowing that to have the audacity to change is growth and part of our humanity and does not have to equal unsafety, dysregulation or debilitating chaos (a little mobilization and heat to start and fuel the movement, yes. A sweeping, dreadful immobilization or need to burn it all down chaos…not so much).
For most of my life I have had to scrap for everything, while it worked for what it worked for (staying safe, getting needs shouted out, moving up and up and up out of not so great situations) it also created a pretty black/white lens of myself and the world. I saw myself in two dimensions, I was this or I was that. They were this, they were that. It was like this and it was like that.
Let’s put it into your own narrative and see if any of these sound familiar (pssst, I have heard these in my own head and echoed in countless sessions, believed by sweet little peas that I am honored to sit across from):
- I am flooded or floored (what the heck is this regulated state you talk about)?
- I go 110 miles per hour or I am completely drained
- I fight hard for what I want and then I don’t trust it fully when I get what I wanted
- I’m ‘on’ or I am ‘off’
- I can be with people or I need to be completely away from people– I am full or drained.
- I say ‘I am’ for most things about myself ‘oh I am just this way,’ ‘I am just really passionate’ ‘I am a person who has to wait until the last minute to get things done’ ‘That’s just me, I am very blunt’ ‘that’s just me, I don’t trust easily.’
- ‘I am the kind of person who can’t, who should or shouldn’t or will or won’t…
We Are Worthy of Trusting
Sweetpeas, I get it, we like answers, we like to know how the story ends and, my dear, when I hear these statements I am instantly curious about the in between, for we are made up of such flavor, such dimensions, and idiosyncrasies. It is the best part of us to know and experience the feeling of both/and. For a long time I thought life happened to me, and sometimes I won life and sometimes I lost. This viewpoint though left me as a bystander, left me already in the powerless position. And us humans, us sweet little mammalians, hate being powerless. Imagine hissing and bowing back in a corner, imagine an animal with its teeth bared, or an animal so scared it collapses, playing dead, hoping the danger goes away.
The good news is we have much more power afforded to us than we can imagine, more choice in our nervous system and responses to life’s relentless ups and downs.
(Try) Putting it in Practice Love
So how the heck do we begin to experience the in between? Here are some delicious, at our fingertips right now in this moment practices:
- Try your ‘ing’ words, for example from the list above, try practicing ‘I am the kind of person who is trying to be more trusting’ instead of ‘I am a person who doesn’t trust easily.’ Seriously, it sounds small, but give it a try in your body. How does it feel to say you are try(ing), you are practic(ing), you are attempt(ing)? Seriously, pause here and say both options aloud to yourself…. it feels better, right?!? It allows us to have movement, to have options in the spectrums of who we are on the paths we are traveling.
- This can be a simple body practice–feel the sensation of hot/cold and then lukewarm, notice how your body responds to the different temperatures. How does the in-between of lukewarm feel to you?
- Here’s one more to support our body getting in touch with the reality of choice. Get into an uncomfortable position (perhaps you lean to one side, or ball your fist, or scrunch your face) now allow yourself to get 10% more comfortable. Feel into the difference, 10% is pretty significant!
- Make a list of where you want to have 10% improvement, where you want to begin try(ing) and pract(ing) or open(ing) to more choices. Share it with a loved one, share it with me, most importantly, share it with yourself!
- And last but not least. Stay curious my friends. We do not have these storylines about ourselves without reason, many are for protection, many are what we were told as children, or by a past lover, or a teacher and a coach…and, drumroll please, by our culture, by systems we have all been steeped in. As the amazing coach Victoria Albina and many other countless trauma therapists reminds us, a negative never, ever equals a positive. We can’t practice our ‘ing’ words without some love and compassion. And hell, even saying I’m practicing having curiosity and self compassion is marked improvement over saying ‘I’m not good at self compassion.’
Remember, you are not alone, your healing impacts my healing, impacts our healing, impacts the world!
All my love,
Amy
You know I gotta write about it loves, this is a poem that I wrote for my little family, in sweet transparency being a partner and a mother has been my biggest trial of using my ‘ing’ words. I’m trying to be a loving parent, I’m trying to break patterns, I’m trying to be a healthy partner.