Confessions of a Fixaholic

I am taking a class at the moment (courtesy of my employee tuition benefit) called Somatic Awareness. Maybe it should be called “Rocketship of Awarness,” at least for me. Last week we did a simple exercise that was amazingly powerful, and I want to share it with you now. What I am going to suggest is that you do the exercise (it is very easy) and write down your reactions at each step. There are only 5 steps. At each step. you will be given a simple scenario to imagine, and your job is to tune into your reactions, mental, emotional, physical and sensory. Tune in as much as you can, write it down and then go to the next one. Then when you are done, I will share what I learned from it and I hope you will share what you learn too.

*First imagine that is it your birthday. Take your time and tune into how that is.

*Then imagine that you realize that you have lost your purse (or wallet if you are a man). Take your time and again tune into how that would be.

*Now imagine that the phone rings. You look at caller ID and it is your friend. She tells you that she has your purse at her house, but that you need to come over immediately, because she is leaving soon. Again, tune into how that would be for you.

*Next imagine that you get to her house and ring the bell and there is no answer. You ring again. No answer. You knock. No answer. How would that be for you?

*Finally, because you are close friends, you try the door. It opens and you walk in and suddenly there is a loud chorus of “Surprise! Happy Birthday!” How would that feel in your body? Interesting, no?

*Here is what I experienced. When I imagined it was my birthday, I saw a cartoon image of rockets and fireworks and had a feeling of celebration in my body. My inner child was really happy, although here was also some sadness about all of the birthdays where I was not able to feel celebrated. Basically, I felt proud of myself for how far I have come. But then … when I imagined the lost purse and really let myself really feel it, I felt frantic, panicked. I told myself I HAD to look for it. I HAD to do something. In my mind I started looking and I realized that I was totally checking out, going into the numb, pseudo calm problem-solving place that I know so well. When I checked back in I could feel that my abandoned little girl felt lonely and burdened down by the imperative to solve this problem. The physical sensation of the crushing burden, of curling up with pain, was really intense!

Then the phone rang, and it was a great relief to focus on something else! When I realized it was my friend, I felt ecstatic, until she told me I needed to come right way. Immediately, I felt trapped and forced to do something I did not want to do, again crushed and in pain. I again went to checking out. Not allowed to feel how much I do not want to do this. Have to solve the problem of the lost purse and solving this problem was more important than attending to my little girl.

When I got to my friend’s house and no one answered the door, I felt frustrated and confused. Another problem to solve! I struggled to find an explanation, as I continued to ring the bell. I felt scared that something had happened to my friend as well. Maybe if I opened the door I could solve the problem and the discomfort would go away!

When I walked in to the “surprise,” it did not feel good at all! I was spinning and confused. Everything was out of control, and I felt a huge pressure to act happy which made it worse. In that moment there was no solution to the problem and I hated that feeling.

When I went back thru it, I saw the places where I had failed to connect with my inner child and stand up for her, but what jumped out for me more than that was the way, in this imaginary exercise, I jumped into framing each scenario, except the first one, as a problem and trying to solve it from my head, rather than embracing the remarkably intense feelings that were being triggered. Framing things as problems that I can or cannot solve is a way to not feel helpless. Indeed most of my dreams have been about solving problems and so is my day job. I am good at it. I have to say that thanks to Inner Bonding, when I find a problem I cannot solve, I can easily let go of it, but this kept me from seeing the other side of this issue for me. Interestingly, since this exercise, I noticed that my dreams have changed. I guess I got some of the message.

Everyone in the class had different reactions to each step. There is no right reaction. In fact, you might find that your first reaction could be to freeze inside, or to laugh or to get mad or feel hot or cold. It does not matter. What matters is that this is a great exercise for simply tuning in to your body and learning about yourself.

There is an ironic part to this, maybe the universe’s sense of humor. I said in class that I do not lose my purse, which is true. Today, I was getting ready to go to Thanksgiving dinner and, guess what, I could not find my purse! True to form, I did not ask my inner child if she wanted to look for it, I just did, circling over and over to the few places it could be. I knew it was in the house somewhere. Finally, I asked for an image of where it could be, and I clearly remembered the last place it was, on my desk. But I had already looked there! Still I was sure. I went back and saw that somehow, my purse had fallen off the desk into the trash can right next to it. I smiled and God did too! I decided that he wanted me to write this column and I did.

There is another P.S. I post my columns on the Inner Bonding website and then, in a slightly modified form because of the way that writing evolves, here. My little girl LOVES this column! I think it is because she feels really, really IMPORTANT here!

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Overcoming the Intellectual Bypass by Getting Out of Your Head

The phenomenon of “spiritual bypass,” refers to using the connection with spirit additively to avoid dealing with the deep loneliness of the inner child. In this column, I want to address another, much more common addiction, the “intellectual bypass.” In the case of the spiritual bypass, the false belief is that with sufficient experiences of blissful connection with God, all woundedness and loneliness will automatically disappear. In the case of the “intellectual bypass,” the false belief is that with sufficient understand of the principles of Inner Bonding or other psychological healing modalities and sufficient understanding of the actions of the wounded ego self, healing will automatically occur. In both cases, there is a corollary. “If it is not working, do it more.”

Like all addictions, both of these are self-reinforcing. Connecting with spirit is blissful and finally understanding “why” is a huge relief. The problem is that both are dead ends. There is nothing wrong with trying to understand and there is certainly nothing wrong with connecting with spirit. What I had to learn is that the issue was “why” I was doing it. I had no idea that I was doing it to drown out my little girl. It took me a very, very long time to get this and I am writing this column in the hope of speeding this process up for someone.

The first time I was ever told that I was “in my head” was at my first Inner Bonding intensive. I remember clearly trying to have control over not being in my head (since people seemed to disapprove of it). I consciously tried to move my voice down into my body and keep it there. People seemed to like that better, but looking back, I was completely lost. Re-reading my journal, written at the time of my second intensive, was painful. I thought that I was doing Inner Bonding, learning to connect with my Inner Child, but I was completely in my head, using the protection that I had learned so well.

I was told that I was “in my head” in each of the many Inner Bonding intensives I attended in succeeding years. I kept trying not to be, but how can you get out of your head FROM your head? After awhile, every time I said that I “understood”something, Margaret Paul, who was leading the intensive,would wince because she knew that it was understanding it from my head only. People tried to make helpful suggestions but I could not get it from my head.

I don’t know how the shift finally occurred, but by the last intensive, I knew that it had. Suddenly, when someone was in their head, I knew it because I could fell the pain of their lonely child, as others had mine for so long.

So let me try to explain this. Being in your head is like having your left brain make a huge amount of noise. You are busy thinking away, making sense, explaining, cogitating. But, just like with a spiritual bypass, this intellectual bypass drowns out the other sounds inside you. It drowns out and disconnects you from the quieter sounds of your right brain, your feeling self, your inner child. Even though I had become quite capable of taking good care of my little girl when I could hear her, when she was triggered, when her cries were louder than my thoughts, without turning down the volume of my thoughts, without really listening, I was completely unable to hear her when I abandoned her by being in my head. I was also completely unable to hear her loneliness when someone else was doing the same thing.

What I want you to know is that when you are busy trying to solve everything by thinking about it, you are automatically tuning out your child. You might feel sort of good but your inner child is in agony. You cannot figure out how to “not” do this. You have to experience it. But I hope that if you know that there is something inside you that you need to listen for, something that is not a thought, something that you cannot hear by figuring it out, that maybe you can turn down the volume enough that maybe, just maybe, you can get out of your head and reconnect with your lonely inner child.

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