Embody Mental Health

Posts Tagged ‘fear’

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all. Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature. 
 

Helen Keller

Having just returned from my viewing of “Whip It” with the amazingly endearing and engrossing Ellen Page as well as “riot grrl” inspiring portrayals of chicks that rock by powerhouse women in Hollywood like Drew Barrymore, Juliette Lewis, Eve and Kristin Wiig  I am feeling appropriately riotous.  I left wanting to do something bold and don some skates.  While the latter is unwise given bad ankles, bad balance, and all around equalibrium issues with as of yet undetermined origin the former feels like a healthy ambition.

I think we all should be inspired, on occassion, to do something bold, to be someone bold, and really shout to the world some truth of ourselves.  “Whip It” was an elbows out, skates on, face-your-fears-till-you’re-fearless depiction of someone forging their own path, finding their own truth, and doing it all to a rockin’ soundtrack.  How often I have thought how much easier it would be to be bold or empowered with a really amazing soundtrack blaring in the background.

It was the greatest infusion of filmic empowerment I had felt in a while.  I love that feeling of leaving a theatre feeling imbued with a sense of something palpable and translatable from the screen into my rapidly thumping heart and contemplating mind.  Perhaps it was a tinge of nostalgia for my alterna-punkish youth but I think it was also a sprinkling of something much more present tense.  The film was an all out, bruising to the bone reminder that you can be pushed down, punched out, and dropped on our face by life but our strengths are in bouncing back up, maybe throwing in an elbow of our own, and pushing forward to be the best of ourselves–courage despite fear.   And there is nothing like watching a woman literally throwing an elbow on screen, at least for me, to pump up the empowerment adrenaline. 

I was not quite sure what to do with this visceral motivation–somewhat torn between wanting to become a roller derby maven and create my own nonprofit I think I will settle somewhere in the middle for the moment, transcribing my internal invigoration via post as my own personal translation of empowerment.  As my method of “throwing elbows” (given aforementioned issues of balance and lack of phsyical skill) has always been literary in nature. 

And since I missed out on my Weekly List due to some technical difficulties by way of a busted computer adapter I think I will list about it with a bit of “Whip It” enthusiasm and some of my viewpoints on empowerment:

1) Be Bold.  Be Honest.  Be You.  These may seem like simple premises but I think, day-to-day, they can be the hardest to follow through on.  Being true to ourselves and honest about who we are both externally and internally is a life long journey but in that journey we should be able to find ways to be bold about who we are in any given moment.  Whether it be seeing “Whip It” by yourself on a Sunday just because you want to, writing into cyber oblivion because it feels necessary, or just saying how we really feel when our urge is to keep silent.  Being you in any given moment can be the boldest and most courageous thing anyone can do.

2)  Face Your Fears.  Whatever gives you chills or makes your stomach drop– stare it down.  Don’t let what frightens you rule you.  Now while I have not managed to do that in the arena of, say, cocroaches (yet) I actively try to push the limits of what I feel comfortable with and stretch for what might be possible right beyond my reach.  Stretch your reach.  Stop stagnation by grasping at something a little further than you think you can achieve–you might be surprised at just how far you are capable of going.  I have been, maybe more recently than ever before.  I hope I don’t stop living on the edge of the next seemingly unattainable dream–grasping at the air just a little bit further than I can see.

3)  Pull Yourself Up When You Fall.  So much of life is dealing with the unexpected and often unexpected blows.  Like Hellen Keller said above “Security is superstition.”  We can count on change and low points and failures but those things can be the foundation for something unexpectedly good.  The falls may change who we are and where we are headed but to be able to find the good, get back up, and throw elbows to make something out of what we have been given is real courage.  Being able to not just survive life but thrive and create something new and good. 

4)  (Once You’ve done #4) Help Someone Else Pull Themselves Up.  A crutial part of healing from our falls, recovering our souls and healing our aches from pain and trauma in our lives, is being able to hand some of that courage, skill, and the honesty of our own powerful story, to someone else who is struggling in their own ache.  I was discussing this very thing with the lovely and passionate Michele Rosenthal over at “Heal My PTSD” this weekend when (after finding out we live in close proximity to one another) we were able to meet up at a local Domestic Violence event.  Being able to give somebody hope and strength to pull themselves back up is just as important as being able to attain it for yourself–in my opinion–not just for the other person but for yourself. 

5)  Speak Out.  Speak Loud.  Be The Voice For SomeOne Who Can’t Speak For Themselves.  In an expanded follow through of #4 I think this step can be powerful for each of us and be a metamorphasis of all the prior steps into a holistic conclusion.  To be able not just to be our own journey to our own end, but to be able to move beyond ourselves to work for a greater good and a larger whole is something that is both personally fullfilling and an important contribution.  Not everyone can be their own voice, they may just not have the strength.  This could be advocating for a cause or population that brings passion to your heart or speaking against injustices in your midst or taking your own painful traumatic experiences and giving it up as representation for others that even pain can have a voice and falling is not the end of the story–teaching people that they can stand again, by example. 

In this last step I am only, thus far, a partial representative.  I am a huge advocate for PTSD treatment and am constantly trying to be a voice for those who are struggling in their own pain, but I have never yet used my story as the tool.

I believe in the importance (another issue I was discussing with Michele this weekend) of those who have survived and thrived in pain and trauma to come forth and stand strong for those who cannot yet do so, but at the same time I have never publically shared my story. 

Perhaps this is the next step of my journey and maybe in some strange confluence of events my wonderful discussion with a fellow survivor followed by a raucious “riot grrl” type movie helped to remind me that while the trauma therapist professional in me has important things to say about healing–the trauma survivor in me also has a voice that must be heard.

I do not believe in using women in combat, because females are too fierce.

Margaret Mead (a famous anthropologists and one of my first heroines as a child)

                  Yoga is difficult for the one whose mind is not subdued.

                                                  Bhagavad Gita

Since moving to Florida I have been feeling like a bit of a faux-gini.  Literally translated this would be a Faux Yogini.  I have been so scattered, life has been so chaotic and bipolar with moments of high stress followed by solitary lulls and isolation that I have been feeling off my game in, well, life.  I haven’t managed to cultivate any sort of a routine or rhythm for my life down here barring the waking, work, home, dogs, blog, sleep.  This seems like a short-sighted and short shelf life kind of life plan. 

Part of this is due to the fact that I feel like life is sort of in a state of limbo; partially on pause.  With my husband not down here right now I feel like our Florida life is just maintaining on life support until full measures of resuscitation are activated.  But, in truth, I am the only force that can activate these measures and I can’t wait around indefinitely to do so. 

I can only spend so long staring at the walls of our new house, writing and researching all night with a background of Law & Order, NCIS, or Bones humming in my ear, and finding peaks of adrenaline with the moments I have to kill, shoo, or bury one manner of critter or another.  Last night it was a dragonfly.  I don’t even want to talk about the scene that was my livingroom during that five minute drama–dogs, wings, and a yellow broom.

In this life-support limbo I have been living in I have neglected all manner of healthy eating habits that I had cultivated, choosing instead to the easier route of whatever take out is most accessible and quickly edible.  I have abandoned all and any yogic routine that I might have cultivated using excuses (some real, others weak) including physical pain, exhaustion, and disorientation to the local yoga studios and classes. 

Well this is the week of life resuscitation–begun yesterday with my assertion to create healthy sleeping habits.  It is time to form this Florida life beyond insect slaughters and amphibian burials. 

As of this upcoming weekend I will have been in Florida for a month.  This is my deadline.  I am on the brink of making a life of my own in a house, while not literally my own, rented for a year to be my own–I have to Virginia Woolf this sucker and find a metaphorical room of “one’s”/my own. 

 Sometimes the hardest, the scariest thing is moving forward and effecting change in our own lives.  Consistency becomes comforting.  Stagnation starts to feel cozy.  The idea of thrusting ourselves out of the norm and what we know–intentional inertia–seems like unnecessary extra trouble and work.  Sometimes, however, doing that work is what is necessary for real growth; to create a challenge we may need in our life and then force ourselves to rise up and meet it. 

Some might look at my life and say I did the hard part–change states, change jobs, change out homes and climates but in truth I have yet to make the real stretch or do anything much that requires a real shift.  I have yet to shift the practices and core focuses of my life.  A job goes from 9-5 or 8-4:30 in my case and so my routine, although locationally different, remains in the same sequence.  The scenery of my home and state may have exchanged palms for firs but I still drive down highways, sit at desks, eat at restaurants, and shop at stores that are similar. 

The changes we make that are really core shaking are, well, in the core.  That is the scary stuff: Soul shifting, heart opening, emotionally rattling core changes.  I know, in some fearfully intuitive way, that my yoga training will be such a shift.  And like an athlete preparing for a triathlon I know I have to prepare myself: mind, body, and soul.  I have to eat better, move more intentionally, sit more calmly, and be working towards the shift I am about to make. 

With a vegan, yogic, monastic lifestyle ahead on my horizon I have to start living intentionally and finding the yoga in every moment. 

How would you create a more intentional life with just one shift in your daily living?  That is a very weighty question but one I have been trying to sort for myself.  I believe I am going to start with mindful eating–eating more consciously, healthfully, and with more the pace of a gazelle rather than a sloppy, ravenous vulture (this would be my old method).  While this may be a small piece I have a tendency for impulsive craving satiation so this is probably one of my biggest hurdles of all. 

Starting with Saturday’s yoga at the beach class, which was postponed last time due to weather and abdominal pain, I will try to incorporate intentional movement into the mix.  Piece by piece, bit by bit…I am working my way to a shift in my core.

Yoga heals, nourishes, and challenges us.  The practice infiltrates every corner of our lives.

Valerie Jeremijenko