A few weeks ago a friend was being scared witless by a cascade of medical issues her husband was exhibiting, from cancer to heart issues to shingles aftermaths to God knows what else. In one of those automatic but surprisingly useful comments, I told her not to give in to the fear. She said later that that was exactly what she needed to hear; I took credit for it though I'm not sure "I" was the one that came up with it.
Lately I've been tempted to "give in" but even in the middle of the stomach-drop, I can "hear" myself (or somebody) telling me not to give in to the grief, either. When a person in mourning says that she's afraid to start crying for fear she'll never stop, I know exactly what she means. When someone gets crazy with panic -- hysterical, unhearing, unseeing -- I know exactly what's happened: he's given in to the fear. Likewise, someone becoming enraged has just offered up his own psyche to it, and it's pure surrender of self. In the last case, that of anger out of control, everybody else in the room is busy getting the hell out of the way of it, but if one of them felt physically safe enough, he could understand what was going on and perhaps help the one slamming around get back to himself. Or not, but at least there would be a sober witness to it. In turn, fear and grief can be contagious and our emotional antibodies need to be invoked or all the world would run mad.
My teacher once told me that the three Great Disconnectors are fear, grief and anger. If it is true that connection begins with self, then certainly we disconnect from ourselves when giving over to one of them. Common terms for this surrender are "unhinged", "unspooled", "deranged", "losing it" and we know it when we see it. I'm not sure we know it when we are ourselves coming unspooled; we usually know it in retrospect, and heap embarrassment and shame upon our own heads for having "lost it." It would be helpful if we could spot it either before the episode or in the early stages of it; that way maybe we could get on top of it before it gets on top of us.
On the other hand, there's quite a rush with any of these conditions, and the rush is very seductive. Sometimes we think that the antidote to incipient depression is violent feeling -- wailing and gnashing of teeth -- but in fact it's only the flip side of depression, and it's every bit as destructive as the original depression. Raging is particularly attractive because when we're in full-on rage, people tend to scatter (and rightfully so), which makes us feel powerful, tough, in charge. We're not any of those things, of course; when goddamning around, all we are is somebody throwing a tantrum, and most parents know that a child in tantrum mode has become a suicide bomber because he has no other weapons left to him; he's entirely WITHOUT power, and so he sacrifices himself just to get a little taste of it.
Losing it through fear or grief can be attractive as well; it puts us squarely in the position of Victim, and often there's a professional Rescuer around who can rush in and make himself feel powerful by trying to reassure or comfort us. Of course, we're getting off on this whole thing by massive infusions of self-pity, and by the frantic attentions of the Rescuer(s), and so we resist getting better. Thus the Rescuer can't do his job and is spurred on to ever greater efforts, and so it goes. It seems to be great fun, and satisfying to all involved, as long as everybody in the play remembers his lines and his blocking (ha). We're not connecting with the other actors, we're only pretending to so we can keep things going. In the end, nobody really gets better, nobody really feels better, the real issues have not been addressed and we keep racing around the maze, smacking into walls and wearing ourselves out with frustration and soul-searing loneliness.
The only way out is Love, the active verb, not the (direct or indirect) object. I was given a discipline; I haven't tried it yet because it's early in the day and I seem only to be subject to the blues in the late afternoon/evening, but I'm hoping (a) that today I won't GET the blues, but (b) if I do get blue that invoking the discpline will ease it, and/or (c) if I can even remember the damned discipline in the first place I will have struck a blow toward self-connection, that is to say my brain will have been fruitfully engaged and that always makes me feel better.
Anyway, here's the discipline: first I say, "I am doing the very best I can;" then I am to name every single thing that I love, starting with myself; I name all the big and small things, no matter how trivial, including even the things I don't like. It would go something like this: "I love myself, I love my dogs, I love my house, my friends, my tomato plants; I love to write; I love to swim; I love my children; I love the sunset; I love my fake fingernails, the dust on the bookcase...," you get the point. Then all that is loved becomes one, and the act of loving has transformed the grief, the fear, the anger; all that energy gets channeled in a positive direction and I'm back inside my Self, my home, my heart, and I feel better.
I am doing the best I can, and I love practical suggestions.
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