PERSONAL NOTE

Wow it has been a roller coaster of a week! Getting reacclimated to my KY home and catching up on much needed sleep. Learning new technology, btw my brain still hurts. Dealing with my own emotions and self coaching myself into uncomfortable action. Slowly putting myself 'out there'. To ending the week with some family drama that was painful but was also a gift inviting me to look at why it was so painful. What stories and beliefs was I holding onto, why was so much resistance coming up and the desire to defend myself and not just letting others think, do and say things without taking it personally. That is hard to do with family, we are keeping score in families, am I right?!?

Anyway, I got several workouts in this week mentally and emotionally that have left me feeling like I have had several hard physical workouts! That is a good sign though, just like it is after a real physical workout!! It means that I was able to grow, process and hopefully even let go of some long stored energy that I was apparently using to suppress some stuff! So if you are feeling the same way or ever have and you used this feeling to further 'shame' yourself for not having it more together or not being strong enough.. then my friend I hope you go back and give yourself the appreciation, celebration and compassion that you deserve!!  

Freaking Out in the Love Zone

Dr. Caroline Leaf is one of my favorite people in the world of psychology and neuroscience, who is also a woman of faith and deep spirituality. She is doing amazing work in the world to help people clean up their mental mess, in fact she wrote a book by the same title. I was once listening to her be interviewed a couple of years ago in the context of faith, how to live out the concept of living from love only and not from a place of fear. It can be a tricky thing. How do we actually do this?

In the Bible and many other sacred texts and philosophies we are told things like 'perfect love casts out fear', we are to have faith over fear, trust in God and to not be afraid etc... I heard her say something that stopped me in my tracks and it is a saying and a concept I have been using ever since. "Freaking Out In The Love Zone", this is a place where that you can give to yourself and others to be fully human. As physical beings there is no getting away from fear. Sometimes fear is even a healthy thing. 

From an evolutionary and primal standpoint we are wired to always be on the lookout for danger. The problem is that in our modern world much of what we perceive as threats now are thoughts. We aren't being hunted by large tigers anymore. But in our high stress world many of us live in constant stress. Our nervous systems, gut and brain all working together in concert as the activity of mind to protect and defend the physical beings that we are. Layer on top of that we are pack animals, wired to find safety in belonging to groups. This from an evolutionary stand point separates us from our ape cousins, we share with each other and create interdependent groups and societies. So to be out of the group is a very fearful thing.

Enter in even more complicated modern world of being interconnected visually and in new networks, social media and societies online, 24/7 'news' cycle that is fear based, and with our phones in our hands nearly every waking minute ... it is no wonder most of us walk around in a state of anxiety and fear most of the time. The threats of not being 'in' the group and therefore being safe is in our faces all the time. So what are we supposed to do? How we do discern real imminent danger that we need to be aware of vs. our own thought life imagining constantly that we might not be doing enough, saying enough, being 'liked' enough, saying or doing the right things in the right places in the right way... I am stressed just typing this... 

As people trying to be faithful and spiritual we can do what is called spiritual bypassing. We can suppress our feelings or turn to judgement as a way to justify our behavior. Depending on which end of the spectrum you are. As a people pleaser I tend to suppress and white wash or sugar coat things to create a version of reality that seems more loving and tell myself I am not feeling fear or anxiety. Some of us on the other end, might turn more to judgement and protection and have sharper edges and convince ourselves that this is righteous and therefore loving behavior, we are here to correct and shine I light onto others wrongness. This we can convince ourselves that is acting from love vs fear.  I am over simplifying here, there is a whole spectrum of this, so how are we supposed to actually live this complicated idea out?? 

This is why I loved Caroline's idea of 'freaking out in the love zone'. We can fully be in a place of trust and faith in the divine and love and fear simultaneously, it isn't an either or. It is recognizing and allowing yourself to feel what you feel. Give yourself the permission to feel it, get it out, so that you can move on. Don't overly identify with it. Use it as valuable information that your mind is trying use to communicate to you.  You can ask it, you can allow it to have space to freak out so then you can calm down. If you are parent this is similar to how we might handle our children. If you are not think back to a time when you might have had a parent or an authority figure that you could trust and ran to them in this way. 

So this is a way to be your own safe and loving parent in the moment. Allow the freaking out, allow the fearful thoughts to have a place to be vented, without attacking or becoming toxic to yourself or others. This is freaking out in the fear zone. When you allow yourself to freakout in the love zone you are allowing yourself to freakout but also accept that reality is unfolding in this unexpected way. From this place,  calmness and clarity  and problem solving then have a place to enter.

In the fear zone, we double down on tactics like blame, attacking and defending and holding onto the feelings of anger, frustration, resentment, taking things personally and justifying possibly our personal attacks on others.  BTW when you hear people talk about ego, this is the ego at work. One of my favorite acronyms for ego is 'edging God out', which also edges love out..

There are so many useful techniques and ideas to help out in these moments. This is a powerful one that I turn to often, and definitely did several times this past week.  I hope you will give it a try. Also, if you have safe people in your life, you can create this space and use this phrase to help you communicate when you just need to get it out, so that you can then begin to sort it out. Suppressing, denying and rationalizing or even spiritualizing it away is not helpful or healthy in the long run. 

Check it out for Yourself

Spotify -Episode "Freaking Out In The Love Zone"

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If you have stuck with me this far, then you are not reading this by accident, I believe God has a plan for you and is calling you forward!😉🤩

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