Gather around as I share a story of fear and anxiety and how it showed up in my body and how I met the moment through a mindbody lens. I can be an anxious bunny, with big feelings but I don’t normally have fear like this. Soooooooo not fun but I got to see the opportunity in it to practice self compassion, self connection and collaborating with self through the fear. In the world in which we cannot and do not control everything, collaboration, connection and trust are essential skills to develop and we all have our own experiences both personally, generationally and historically with these ideas. Learning how to increase your somatic curiosity can help you walk back from panic into security, from fear and flares into self trust and nervous system settling. The mind and the body are gateways into your whole being and opportunities for healing are ever present. And we never stop being human. So please enjoy a peek into a part of my life in which I again am my own client, soothing my own fears and witnessing with so much love my own 💩. If you know that you want judgement free support for your own exploration, please book a call and let’s talk about how this work can help you.
Gather around as I share a story of fear and anxiety and how it showed up in my body and how I met the moment through a mindbody lens.
I can be an anxious bunny, with big feelings but I don’t normally have fear like this. Soooooooo not fun but I got to see the opportunity in it to practice self compassion, self connection and collaborating with self through the fear.
In the world in which we cannot and do not control everything, collaboration, connection and trust are essential skills to develop and we all have our own experiences both personally, generationally and historically with these ideas. Learning how to increase your somatic curiosity can help you walk back from panic into security, from fear and flares into self trust and nervous system settling.
The mind and the body are gateways into your whole being and opportunities for healing are ever present. And we never stop being human. So please enjoy a peek into a part of my life in which I again am my own client, soothing my own fears and witnessing with so much love my own 💩.
If you know that you want judgement free support for your own exploration, please book a call and let’s talk about how this work can help you
TCCEP53
===
[00:00:00] Welcome to the Curiosity Cure podcast. I'm your host, Deb Malkin, master certified life coach, body worker hypnotist, trained in pain reprocessing by the pain psychology center, queer elder. Fat human on planet Earth. Here to help you evoke the power of simple neuroplasticity techniques rooted in shame free curiosity, so you can feel more, better, more of the time in the body you have today, and build the rich full life that you want to live.
[00:00:39] A quick disclaimer, this podcast is not a replacement for medical care. I am here to provide insights and techniques that can compliment your healthcare journey. But always consult with your healthcare provider for personalized advice.
[00:00:57] Hello, my feelers and healers. This is Deb of the Curiosity Cure Podcast. Gather around. I want to tell you a story, the story is about worry. So I had an experience, at my home, I had to redo the sidewalk in front of my house. My house is very old. It's over a hundred years old. And there were a lot of things about setting this up that were stressful.
[00:01:27] So there was scheduling and weather. I had some time constraints. There was some communication with the company who was doing the work that was like, we're gonna be next week, and then that next week would come around and then they were like, no, we're gonna be the next week. And I understand things happen and i'm fine being annoyed. And also the important thing was that this job got done and it got done in this timeframe that I needed it to get done in and there was lots of weather. I was on weather underground, like clicking through every day, like how far in advance can we predict the weather?
[00:02:07] Which of course. Not that far in advance. Can we predict the weather? But boy did I just want to know everything. My need to control and to know and to do everything perfectly and for everything to go exactly the way I wanted it to go. That was dialed up to a thousand. And there's this part of me that could witness what was happening. And that is my somatic self, right? That's the part of me that has grown, that has emerged by doing this mind body work. Now there is this being inside of me that is me that has my highest wellbeing in mind, that is able to sit outside of myself and witness in a loving way whatever is arising for me, and it's often urgency, control, fear, panic, despair and the physiology that goes with all of those experiences. As it got closer and they came and put the barricades up to block off the space in front of the house so that they can bring the truck.
[00:03:22] And then I started having nightmares. And I am not a person who usually has nightmares, I don't often remember my dreams. And I started both having lucid nightmares, like waking nightmares, in which my brain kept offering me this image of them jack hammering the old sidewalk up, and then my house falling into a hole.
[00:03:49] So basically this idea was they would remove away the old sidewalk, which I knew was going to happen. I knew that was the loudest, most intense day. I was like, okay, this is gonna be the loudest day. Obviously I can can't do silent jackhammering. That's just not a thing that exists. There was this willingness to be with what is, except there was this part of my brain that almost was like, because I had never been through this experience before, it had no ability to conceptualize what's underneath the sidewalk.
[00:04:28] And my brain really was like, there's nothing underneath the, like they're gonna drill through the sidewalk and everything is just gonna fold in, it's just collapse like a house of cards. They're just gonna like hit one spot and everything's just gonna crumble and you are gonna be responsible and it's gonna be your fault.
[00:04:47] And you should have done something different. Like I could just hear all of these narratives, these like illogical, right? Because even as my brain was offering me the worst case scenario, and then my brain would then make more worst case scenarios of, well, what would happen if that happened?
[00:05:05] And then what would happen if that happened, and then what would happen if that happened. Right. And the imagination is, is quite robust. But I could tell what was happening as it was happening. I'd go to sleep in my, so there'd be like the pre sleep time. So maybe these weren't actually nightmares.
[00:05:25] 'cause maybe I didn't wake up being like having had that nightmare. But it was more like rumination. Rumination happens in these quiet spaces, which is sometimes why people have difficulty meditating or they have difficulty going to bed. Because it's quiet and we're asking our brain to start to wind down or shift modes, and then there's this space, the space for the scariest thoughts ever to be thought can show up and do a little tap dance on your brain.
[00:05:59] That's kinda what it felt like. I was like, I'm being tortured by my own thinking, by my own catastrophic thinking. As much as I tried to logic my way through it, there was always this, what if, well, anything is possible, right? What if this happened and there's a quality of trying to prepare for a what if scenario, and then sometimes that's like really useful.
[00:06:28] And in this case it was so unhelpful because I could not prepare for this feared scenario of my house basically falling into the void that is underneath the sidewalk. Um I don't think there is a void that's underneath the sidewalk or in some places there might be. And because I had never been through this before and I didn't have a kind of a foundation of reality to go off of it, I.
[00:06:59] My brain just wanted to torture me with the not knowing and the intensity of it. And you know, I had hired a company that this is what they do all the time. So they were very relaxed and calm and confident about their part of the job. So I'm not, I was like, there's no clause in the contract in which they say, well, you know, due to the void underneath your sidewalk and the possibility of your house completely falling in, uh, we need these extra precautions.
[00:07:32] So there was that part of my brain that, that somatic self. That's really like the logic self, the logic self could witness and notice hey, these things pretty much won't come true. But it didn't make me feel better, like it didn't shut off the thinking. And it was only until I went through it, like I went through imagining the worst case scenario.
[00:08:02] So I gave myself some time and I said, we, we are going to imagine this worst case scenario and just let it play out. And you know, it wasn't my favorite moment. There was a way in which trying to hold it back or suppress it, like holding the beach ball under the water, made the beach ball feel like it had so much force to just like pop up.
[00:08:31] But by going through it, it almost disintegrated itself. What I arrived at at the end of going through it was whatever happens. I'll figure it out. Whatever happens, I'll deal with it then. And then that feeling, like that deep knowledge, that belief that, you know, I shared my worries and my fears kind of with, with some people who I knew were able to hold it, who weren't feeding my fear, but they also weren't like, uh, being like, oh, don't worry about it. Right? They could hear that. I was like, okay. I just needed to express this fear and be met and held as somebody who was experiencing fear. And that was very helpful, that kind of acknowledgement that yes, this is what is happening inside my brain, therefore being felt inside my body at this time and still I am safe, but it is okay to be afraid.
[00:09:34] That was the other takeaway, was me letting go of trying to feel positive about it and just giving myself that affirmation of it is okay to feel afraid about this. You've never experienced this before. It is okay to be nervous. It is okay to worry about the worst case scenario, but am I letting it take over my life?
[00:09:58] Is it taking over my cognitive abilities, my emotions, my actions? This somatic self that I have, who's this kind of loving self witness and the part of me that is on my side, on team Deb, that somatic self is able to look back through my life and say, you have risen to the occasion so many times.
[00:10:28] You have so much ability and capacity to handle whatever arises, even the worst case scenario, and you don't necessarily get to control everything. So, you know, it reminded me of trust it reminded me that I worked with a company that is well regarded. I got a lot of referrals. And also holding this you can't know everything.
[00:10:57] There is a quality of unknown to everything that just rides along with life. And maybe that is this existential unknown. That really allowed me to loosen my hold. And I also realized like, oh, I'm not actually envisioning the best case scenario where everything goes well and nothing is a problem. They do their jobs, the job gets done, the sidewalk gets built and happy ending, which is pretty much what happened. Today they finished cutting in the lines and they took all of the street blocking off stuff away. And they like cleaned everything up and they put everything back.
[00:11:38] They like put things back better than was there before they even, propped up this little. Wimpy tree, this very like Charlie Brown Christmas tree thing that I've got in this giant planter, and they propped up the tree. They left it in a better state than it even was when they got there.
[00:11:59] And I had no vision for that. That never entered my imagination. And there's a lot of parallels for me in mind body healing, pain and symptom recovery with this experience. I remember as they were doing the jackhammering. I was on a coaching call and I was expressing, like in a lot of animation and energy, like what was happening and I was like, I really hope my house doesn't fall into the ground, fall into the abyss. And there was something that was lovely about expressing this to a group who really knew me, who really loved me, who enjoy my theatricality, who were not going to be in the pool with me on my worry but also who were not people that I felt like I had to pretend like nothing was happening, right?
[00:12:56] I actually could just be like, Hey, this thing is happening and boy wow, it's really kicking up some worry. I was able to express to the group like, Hey, I'm distracted and these workers might need things from me. And so I might have to like hop on and off the call or part of my attention is being held in this way. It was really nice to share that with them and to be seen and to be witnessed and not have to hide or pretend but also not have to amplify it. And I didn't need them to affirm my fear. And I didn't need them to tell me that there wasn't anything to worry about either.
[00:13:35] So it was a very interesting position for my relationship with these people to be in. Which was, I didn't really need anything much other than kind witnessing. And that was so helpful and I received it and I was able to express that's what I needed, which was just to like, let me tell this story, just like get it out.
[00:13:56] Just let me just like get it out and give you a little bit of insight into what's happening for me in this day. And then everything calmed down and I have a great capacity now to have this somatic awareness and to notice my state to notice how is my breathing? How am I moving? Is there urgency?
[00:14:21] Am I turning the volume dial up, or am I doing things that help actually bring the volume dial of fear down and having that ability to influence our somatic state, therefore the stories and the narratives that our brain brings to our state were really helpful. And the best case scenario did happen and what I noticed for myself was after that first day when the jackhammering was finished basically, and I was able to pop my head outside and see that the house is fine.
[00:15:02] There's ground underneath the sidewalk, and I watched them do their work and the way that they did their work also really showed me their expertise, and there was this relaxation, this sinking into a sense of calm and spaciousness in my breathing that came about and I guess that's trust. I was able to let go and shift into trust, and then the rest of everything was just a lot easier.
[00:15:35] So I was just more of a witness and the big thing happened and the biggest scariest thing did not happen. And the other thing I did do was I didn't make myself wrong for having had that really big catastrophizing worry. I didn't then go and shame myself or call myself stupid for worrying about it.
[00:15:59] I was like, no, let's just give your brain a round of applause for being really amazing at being like, this is what I am afraid of, and give your brain some love. And I gave my brain some love. And what really, really helped was not trying to not think something, but bringing that somatic self to the forefront, that loving, compassionate witness to whatever it is that I'm experiencing. Bringing that self and putting it in the center almost as if I were doing parts work that self is able to hold and support this younger self, the worried self, the, child in me, the part that wants to crawl into a lap and be comforted because the fears were scary. And I was able to do that. And then I thinking about, I have a trip coming up and I've been having some knee pain. No surprise. I feel like these things now go together for me. And I have a lot of worry and I have a lot of control impulses coming up because I just want it to go well, and I can start to see this kind of panic and catastrophizing and worry coming up, and I'm now trying to imagine how do I take what I did over here with the sidewalk? How do I sense into that trust? How do I bring that somatic self with the self-compassion into this experience? And so I've been practicing even just letting myself run through worst case scenarios and recognizing whatever arises, I will deal with it.
[00:17:46] That I have a lot of support and a lot of love and a lot of care and a lot of people I can reach out to. And I have a lot of resources, like emotional and otherwise, and I'm like, whatever arises, I will deal with it. And yeah, maybe that means certain parts of my trip look a little bit different than others do, but I actually don't know.
[00:18:11] It's important to not preset so many things and try to control things because that's when we get the predictive brain kind of going off of the presupposition of what we believe will be happening. When we leave room for what is happening to emerge, then that's when we get prediction errors.
[00:18:33] That's when we notice that we actually can do a bunch of activities that we thought we couldn't do. When we get to quiet the fear response and break the pain, fear, pain cycle, or the fear, pain, fear cycle, whichever way that cycle goes for you and holding it loosely. Like this trip again. How many times I'm always gonna come back to this story of Alan Gordon telling me I'm very high stakes, and I'm like, right.
[00:19:06] My tendency to be high stakes is an amplification for pain. And so the antidote is to hold it loosely. It's almost not even being lower stakes, it's more of holding it loosely. There's nothing that can happen on this trip that is going to mean that I can't meet myself with self regard and self-compassion.
[00:19:35] That at any moment I can slow down, that I can reach out for help, that I can use my somatic tracking tools, use my nervous system tools and skills, use my anti-anxiety pattern interrupt skills, that there are so many different ways that I have to meet myself in the moment and gently.
[00:19:59] Gently is the key phrase. Gently shift my state, change the lens right? Go from being super close, focused in to zooming out. Giving myself a wider definition of having a good time, giving myself a wider definition of what it means for this trip to be successful. And lowering the stakes.
[00:20:24] Lowering the stakes on what it would mean to have a good trip. Because when I have a rotten equation, a rotten equation is, this trip is only good. If I don't feel any pain, then that creates a double bind. And in that conversation I had last week with Rachel, we talked about the double bind being like, oh, you are being diagnosed with something that you can't get a definitive test for.
[00:20:51] So there's no way to prove that you have or don't have this diagnosis. So yeah, when I set myself up with this trip is only going to be successful or only going to be good. If I don't have any symptoms, well then you're outta luck, right? Like, I've got a human body and human bodies do things and you know, I'm gonna be walking a lot and taking the train and moving around, and I'm like, I'm gonna feel stuff.
[00:21:19] So feeling like I can expand my capacity. My emotional capacity as well as my physical capacity, and letting myself rest in the, I don't know, but I'm gonna figure it out or I don't know but whatever arises, I'll be okay. Letting that message be reinforced, that belief in myself, that belief in this letting go of control for my highest benefit, those qualities, those practices, those beliefs leaning into somatic self and into my capacity to practice imagining the best possible outcome is the way that I'm going to meet myself on this trip. Because I do not know how I'm going to feel at any one of these various points, but what I have been doing is when I've been walking and moving, I don't always have pain. I don't always have pain all the time or in the same place.
[00:22:34] Like I am really able to notice how it comes and goes and the more I'm focused on it and fixated on it, the more I feel it in a lot of ways. And so this is gonna be an interesting experience of playing with my attention. And letting go of that all or nothing. Um good, bad setup.
[00:22:58] And I'm gonna remember that I let myself move through the fear of the worst thing happening, and what I really got was the best thing happening, and I also got a lot of love and compassion for myself, the self that believes that if I control everything, then nothing bad will happen. I love that part of me, but it's a really young part, it's a part that believes in fairytales.
[00:23:27] It's a part that is not maybe ever going to grow up. And it's, I don't wanna say it's a lie because it feels really true. There's something that's like true and essential for that part of me and that control element. I think it's the part that also keeps me moving forward and helps me hire a good company, right?
[00:23:51] I don't just hire anybody, there are qualifications that I need for this job. So I'm gonna try to hire the best people that I can. I ask people for referrals and I look at reviews and that's the due diligence side of control. There's that part of me that's like what can I control? What do I have influence over? How can my actions shape this outcome? And that I believe in? I believe in influence, but it influence is not the same thing as control. So I think the maturing part of me is being able to shift out of all or nothing, black or white thinking into this more gray area.
[00:24:36] Some of it is stepping into me being powerful and having influence, and that's an emerging and growing part of me, which is like, oh no, I do have some influence over the outcome of things. It's not just all in somebody else's hands. It's a co-creation, a collaboration that we are doing together.
[00:25:00] Yet trust, it's difficult to trust because control is an illusion that we think guarantees us our desired outcome, but in a lot of ways, trust, communication, and connection are the things that help us get our desired outcome because any creation is dynamic. Just like our bodies.
[00:25:24] Our bodies are dynamic. They're not just inert things that we control. They're relationships. We are in a relational model with our bodies, and we are in a relational model with the world. So yeah, I walked away from this renovation project with a lot more insight into myself, can see with love my absolute desire to wanna control everything and how it showed up in different times, and getting to look at all the freedom that comes with moving through fear, resting in trust. And letting go.
[00:26:06] Letting go of knowing how every moment is going to be. And instead of feeling like a free fall or like the house that falls into the void that's underneath the sidewalk, really recognizing there's no void. There's always something there. That something might just be community.
[00:26:28] Or a good friend that you can call or a coach that's helping you hold the unknown until it becomes known. And now I know what it's like to look underneath the sidewalk, to look underneath the concrete and see that there is something there. And it's like looking underneath our conditioned responses to see that there is still something there and that something there can be emergent and can change that predictive code that keeps our chronic pain and our chronic symptoms alive and going.
[00:27:08] And once we relax into that trust and rest in not knowing everything. That is when our nervous system relaxes and releases, and lets go of the tension. I meant to say this earlier, but one thing I noticed throughout this whole thing was how much of the time I was holding my breath. I would catch myself as I would notice my breath being held, and then would invite myself to, to breathe.
[00:27:41] And I started doing a bit of a intentional breathing practice. There were times when at the scariest part, which was right before the construction happened, where I was doing some physiological sighs. Breathing in and then doing that second breath at the top of the first breath and then exhaling twice as long.
[00:28:02] 'cause I was like, I don't need to change or fix what's happening. I just need to attend to my physiological self by helping it regulate, by helping my breathing shift me into a parasympathetic state and then my worry mind will quiet. So it goes both ways. It's a bottom up and a top down experience, and it's really helpful to be able to have a nimble set of skills to be able to apply both a bottom up approach and a top down approach.
[00:28:37] And so if worry, rumination, and I've been talking about avoidance a lot. If those are strategies that have been present and working for you as a survival strategy, but you're really recognizing that at the same time they really amplify that threat detection system and the protect with pain or protect with symptoms, strategies in our nervous system, if that's something that you're noticing that you can't quite step out of on your own and you want help with. I'm traveling for a little bit, but please book a curiosity call and we will meet when I get back because this entry point into recovery is a skill-based learning and it requires knowledge, awareness, self-compassion, and repetition.
[00:29:32] You'll notice how things start to change, and you might even notice already how things have changed for you just from getting this psychoeducation and understanding the nature of pain and the nature of symptoms. You may have already witnessed change happening for you.
[00:29:53] So I am excited to be sharing these stories. Happy to be talking about recovery from symptoms. I am now actually after telling this story on this podcast recording very curious about my trip. I feel like I have shifted my own internal state from a little bit of worry and dread into excitement and curiosity, and I really like how curiosity feels inside of me.
[00:30:21] Right now, I closed my eyes and I see this yellow sun that's beaming and shining its warmth and light everywhere. Right now, that's what curiosity feels like for me. So I'm just gonna spend some time before my trip anchoring in that yellow sunlight, really noticing when I see it in places, noticing, in remembering what that feels like in my body, and really imagining applying that in these moments more and more to help me relax into the feelings that I would like to be experiencing more of. That includes curiosity, lightness, humor, relaxation, and whatever the opposite of controlling is. I hope that you can recognize experiences in your life where your desire to control, and there's no shame in desiring to control things, but where your desire to control has actually created rigidity or created more fear or created this amplification of distress.
[00:31:35] So holding you in my heart full of compassion and love and knowing what that feels like to be in that place, but also knowing what it feels like to be able to shift out of that state pretty quickly. I know that that is possible. Thank you so much for listening, and I hope that you have a wonderful day.
[00:31:59] Thank you.