I think that growth and pushing our boundaries is important. I've always been one to sort of poke the things I'm afraid of, because I don't want to be trapped by fear. But I also know that there is a fine line between healthy growth and being shoved so far out of your comfort zone that it actually becomes problematic.
Fear exists to keep us safe. Fear is what prevents us from touching fire or from wandering around in the dark where we can't see danger. But in many ways our fear responses have not caught up with modern life. So we develop fears for things that aren't dangerous in the same way: fear of being rejected, fear of loss, fear of failure. Even though these things aren't deadly in the traditional sense, our fear response doesn't know this, and so we react as if it were a serious threat.
Sometimes, we can face our fears and by doing things we are uncomfortable with we stretch our boundaries and grow and our fears become diminished. This is a very healthy thing to do. It pushes us out past where we feel safe and we have to learn how to navigate in this new space. We build new boundaries, but they now include areas that were once 'unsafe' to us.
But sometimes we get forced outside our boundaries and it breaks something inside us because we weren't ready. I don't think that people can be permanently broken, but I do think that sometimes fixing the broken parts of our Self requires a ton of work...way more than it would have taken to safely expand our boundaries and work through the initial fears that were holding us back. I also think there is a very real danger that if we are too broken, we can't see that light at the end of the tunnel, all we can see is the broken pieces and this becomes a new cage that keeps us bound up tighter than we were before. We might also find that we can't bear the thought of living in this new place, and this leads to a risk of doing serious harm to ourselves before we can work our way out of the dark place we are in.
I have seen a lot of cute analogies about breaking through boundaries. One I particularly like is how a seed must break through it's shell in order to grow. And this is definitely a good analogy for healthy growth. Inside the shell, the little seedling is safe. It starts to grow and soon is pressed up against the inside of the shell. And still it grows, making the shell no longer a nice safe place, but instead a stifling restriction. So the seedling pushes even harder, cracking open the shell and opening itself to the dangers of the greater world.
The seed will never become a plant, it will never realize it's potential, if it stays safe within it's shell. It has to crack and break free and expand in order to become a plant. The same way we must sometimes push through our own boundaries in order to grow into our own potential. If we stay bound up in the safe places, we never allow ourselves to bloom.
But another analogy comes to mind that demonstrates the flip side of breaking out of boundaries. A caterpillar enters into a cocoon as part of it's transition to becoming a butterfly. Much like the seed, it will eventually need to break free from it's safe cocoon in order to fly. But the struggle of cracking the cocoon and forcing it's way out is part of what makes it ready for flight. If an outside source sees the struggle and decides to 'help' cutting away the cocoon to make the process easier, the butterfly won't be able to fly.
I think this beautifully illustrates part of why struggle is healthy for us. Sometimes, we want to fly to new heights, but if someone lifts us up, we haven't worked our way up, and the new heights can be terrifying. We can find ourselves where we thought we wanted to be, but because we didn't make our way there ourselves, we may not have the tools to be able to survive. We may cower in fear, afraid of falling, because we didn't experience the climb up to where we were.
And worse, while in the cocoon, the caterpillar isn't even a caterpillar, but it dissolves into a sort of caterpillar soup: a goo that contains all the memories of the caterpillar but can't exist on it's own. If the cocoon is opened too soon, there isn't anything inside that can come out...no butterfly, no caterpillar...just goo.
Sometimes it feels like this when we are pushed to do things we just aren't ready for. When someone else is trying to shove you outside your boundaries, you may not be able to cope. The difference between being released from your cocoon as a flightless butterfly and coming out as goo is a matter of scope. If we are close to being ready to push through, we may be crippled when we come out, but if we are no where near ready then we can be completely incapacitated.
As I said earlier, I am a big believer in the resilience of people. I think that we can recover from pretty much anything. But just because we 'can', just because it is within the realm of possibility, doesn't mean that we will. Some things scar us and we bear those scars for the rest of our life. They may be superficial scars, things that are seen but don't hold us back in any serious way. For example, if you had a bad experience after being pushed to speak in front of a group when you weren't ready, you may always remember that moment when you go to speak in front of a group in the future, but it may stay just a memory. You remember it and you move on.
On the other hand, scars can limit us as well. That same type of experience could have caused you to have a nervous reaction in the future. You may feel faint and even pass out at just the thought of getting up in front of a group of people to talk. It may take you a lifetime to work through this.
What we don't know, and I am not sure we can ever know, is what would have happened if we were allowed to grow on our own terms. The butterfly knows when it is ready to break free from it's cocoon, just as the seed knows when it's time to crack it's shell. Perhaps you would always have a fear of speaking in public. Perhaps you would never feel comfortable in front of a group. But if we are pushed before we are ready, we never have the opportunity to see what we might have accomplished.
Some amount of encouragement is a good thing. I personally know that there are many things I am uncomfortable doing, and some of them I would never attempt if someone else wasn't cheering (or pushing) me into them. But ultimately the decision to do a thing should be mine. It is one thing to encourage someone to jump into the water and learn to swim...and another thing entirely to shove them into the water when they are begging you not to.
We have to learn to gauge our own fears, to open our eyes and examine each fear. Listen to what the fear is telling us. Let yourself sit with your fear for a little while, and see how uncomfortable it makes you. Sometimes, if we let ourselves experience our fear instead of immediately running the other direction, we find that after those first few moments, things start to settle down. We start to wrap our head around the idea and no longer feel paralyzed by it.
This is how I feel when I think about teaching. A big part of me really wants to teach. I love sharing knowledge (which is one reason why I love blogging!), and I enjoy talking to people, so teaching should be something I enjoy doing. But I definitely have issues about any kind of formal teaching situation. If it is just a casual conversation and someone asks me a question, I can answer no problem. If there is a set time and an official 'I am teaching this subject in a class' situation, then I start to freeze up.
I have to really practice, go over what I may say, remind myself constantly that I will be fine, reassure myself that I have valid information to share. I will be nervous right up to the moment I start talking, and then most of my anxiety goes away. I've always been this way with any kind of performance, speech, demonstration or other situation where it's me presenting to a group.
But, sometimes, when we sit with a fear, it starts to grow. It begins to overshadow everything else, and all we can do is fall prey to the fear. These are things that we may not be ready to face right now. We may have to work long and hard to start to approach these fears. They may be things we have to break into smaller chunks in order to work with, or we may need to call upon friends and allies to face them.
For a long time I have had a pretty irrational fear of falling. Not of heights, I'm actually pretty good about heights. But the actual falling, the sensation of falling, triggers me. It doesn't matter how far the fall is, it's the feeling you get while falling that I can't handle.
Many years ago, while I was in a JROTC spring camp, we had different exercises and challenges to do. One of them was an obstacle course, and one of the obstacles was a rope that was hanging over a shallow pit, and there was a log across the path on the other side of the pit. You had to grab the rope, swing over the little pit and then get yourself over the log. The log wasn't even that tall, perhaps chest height.
But I was having trouble with it, and when I couldn't get over the log, I would swing backwards on the rope, and get the sensation of falling. It was only a couple of failed attempts before I was starting to have a serious panic attack. I was shaking and just the idea of trying again made me feel light headed.
At the time, I wasn't ready to face that particular fear. I now feel that my issues with falling stem from a greater fear about being out of control. When I am helpless, when there is nothing I can do to make a situation better, that is terrifying to me. Things that manifest this fear for me include falling, people being sick or injured, flying in a plane...pretty much any situation that I can't do anything to effect the outcome of.
It is something I have worked with quite a bit, and continue to work with. There are some facets of it I can now handle. I went to a ropes course a couple of years ago, and every time I had to walk to the edge of the platform and jump off (while fully in a harness and strapped in), I had to face that fear. There was that moment of falling each time before the harness caught and you slid along the rope. That I could manage. I did not choose to go on the 'jump off the platform and experience freefall for 20 feet' however.
The things we fear are very personal. Our fears may not even register to someone else, and yet they are very real to us. Never let someone else belittle you for the things you fear. Trust your instincts and trust how you feel. Honor your fears and work with them to understand why you feel the way you do and what you might need to do to start working through them.
We may never fully overcome our fears, but we can learn to manage them. We can learn to push through them when we need to. And I think one of the best ways to do this is to keep poking at them. Find where your line is, where your boundaries are. See where you feel safe and where you don't. And start to approach that line.
You may not be able to cross it at first. It may take everything in you to just get close to it and stand there. But, over time, you may find that you can stand there for longer and longer. Then you may take a tiny step forward. You may be able to take a little step forward every time you try, or you may not. Do what you can do! Eventually, you may find that you can cross a toe over that line. You may need to retreat from time to time, and that is okay too! Just because one day you could stand right at the line and the next day you can't even get within arm's reach doesn't mean you are failing. Sometimes we have to push ourselves harder and then take a bit of a rest and let ourselves acclimatize.
Let yourself remember the seedling, and how it grew and grew inside it's shell until it was pressed in so tight that it had to crack the shell. Grow yourself until you must push on your boundaries, because then you will be ready to be bigger than you were. Remember the caterpillar goo, and let yourself stay safe in your cocoon until you are ready to become the butterfly. Remember the butterfly who has to push and strive and force their way out of the cocoon in order to be strong enough to fly and know that all the struggles you have along the way, every time that boundary pushes back or pinches in on you, it is only preparing you for what waits on the other side. Poke your boundaries, and keep poking them until you have pushed them back to where you want to be.
No comments:
Post a Comment