The unknowing can sound dreamy and romantic when we’re reading about someone else’s experience, particularly after they’ve come to some sort of understanding of it, but in the midst of our own it can feel more like being in the goo in the early stages of a butterfly’s chrysalis. No sight, unable to move because we haven’t been reorganized into a new self yet, and waiting for the right time. This is an ordinary experience that we all go through—sometimes to our delight, sometimes to our chagrin. Eventually, we do reorganize into a new self and, feeling the instinctual need to move out from where we’ve been, begin to open our chrysalis from the inside out and emerge into the wider world. We come to a new understanding of ourselves and our environment, removing the covering from our eyes and, once in this revelation, pump our wings taking flight when the time is right, thus completing a cycle we may not even remember having started.
This assumes that nature has taken its course and we are able to begin and complete various cycles throughout our lives. But this isn’t always the case, sometimes we are halted in the midst of a cycle and we internalize this sense of interruption. Most modern cultures do not prioritize developing the skills to help individuals recognize these cycles much less complete them and so we may find ourselves repeatedly acting out of habitual responses.
In the example of the butterfly, the wings are a metaphor for our emotional and sensory lives. If they are damaged or interrupted, we will adjust in whatever way we can. When we have useful tools, we can move in ways that are life-affirming. When we don’t, we will often act out of fear and create strategies intended to protect our damaged wings and under-developed emotional range and sensory range.
This becomes the way things are; however we were met in this interruption is often how we relate to ourselves, life, and others. It may not even occur to us that anything is amiss and we may not think of ourselves as carrying trauma in our bodies. It can be useful for the purposes of this essay, to understand that trauma is how events are received by the body and whether or not they get stored in it, usually cycles of sensation and feeling that are interrupted, preventing us from feeling and releasing fully in response to external events. The external event can range from mundane to shocking, what’s important to recognize is that what constitutes trauma is not the event but how the body registers it.
Trauma responses are involuntary reactions to a perceived threat that causes physiological changes in the moment and can also cause psychological changes over time. They’re often referred to as triggers, though I’ve found that thinking in terms of precipitating events is a useful way to stay present to the cycle as a whole and bring awareness back to the self.
It’s common to ask “Why?” “Why am I having this response?” This can help us recognize precipitating events and the unfolding of trauma responses within our individual experiences. However, revisiting the past through the mind and attempting to reconcile our experiences this way without including the body has the potential to keep us stuck in the past, forever looping between what happened and what we would like to happen without an adequate bridge in the material realm (body) to get us from one state to the other. By including the body and following its lead, we have the potential to complete cycles and find a holistic resolution that allows us to bridge these gaps within our experience. This reflects in our lives as increased emotional range and greater choice, allowing us to act in our own best interests and respond to the needs of the moment.
Once we’ve come to terms with the possibility that we have experienced trauma in our past and as such have experienced trauma responses, and may experience them again, it’s common to ask “How can I control it?” If we trace this question to its origins we will often find it is rooted in fear and keeps us oriented toward the future to the exclusion of the present.
I prefer to ask “How can we relate to this response and ourselves in it?” This can take some time to get used to, but in the present, we often find we have all the time we need.
Coming home to ourselves, learning to simultaneously take off the masks that keep us separate while putting the metaphoric oxygen mask on ourselves first, can feel foreign and perhaps even threatening to our personal homeostasis. It may not make sense to our minds unless we understand that trauma responses are our body’s means of protecting ourselves. Attempting to change can feel activating and the charge that moves through our bodies can put us outside our window of tolerance. Yet if we can stay present to ourselves and not move too far outside our current window at any given time, we can consciously widen this window and grow our tolerance for more of life’s experiences and our own growth.
The tools of grounding and regulating our nervous systems are immensely helpful here. Grounding here does not equate to being stuck, instead, it’s finding safety in the ground of our being that we can come back to whenever we need to. Likewise, regulating our nervous system is not about managing our emotions away, and instead is bringing ourselves present to them in a way that we can sustain.
I offer a growing library of Presence Practices on this site and will undoubtedly write about helpful tools moving forward, however, what I’d like to suggest here is more of an orientation to tools. Whatever tool you’re contemplating using, try a small dose and check in with your body. How does it feel? Where does this activity or practice leave you on the following continuum?
Overwhelmed >> Tense >> Overstimulated >> Stimulated >> Enlivened >>
>> Neutral • Feel Open and Curious • Able to think and feel at the same time • Present <<
Calmed << Numbed << Dampened << Disconnected << Stuck << Depressed
This approach allows us to create a living, breathing, personal repertoire of self-care tools and the wisdom to discern and use whatever is most helpful at that moment. With this orientation, we can stay better regulated, present, and responsive having entered into the unknowing of life and emerging with greater trust into the Unfolding of Life.
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