Many people, including myself, can relate to feelings of anxiety. It would almost be impossible not to have experienced fear of one kind or another in our current unconscious societal beliefs. We hear messages daily that evoke responses of fear, but are we aware of what these responses are doing to our overall well-being? For one, when our mind thinks a fearful message, it is essentially sending a message to the brain of impending threat.
The body interprets the threat to be real even when it is only a thought form, and braces or prepares itself for the impending doom by creating a stress response…better known as the fight or flight response. It is wonderful how the body works to protect us from outside predators, but what if the outside predator is actually our selves.
When we think of outside threats, today we often think of acts of violence. There are other threats that we often overlook as “threatening to our survival.” These threats are the continuous stream of negative thoughts that often provoke our body into the fight or flight mode.
For many of us, the threats occur so often that the flight or flight response doesn’t extinguish even when the threat dissipates. It has become a habituated response to the degree of resistant and fearful thoughts that most of us experience several times every day. Of course, I am not referring to acts of physical violence in this statement, but rather to acts of mental and emotional threats that we pose on our psyches in a conditioned and continuous pattern.
When we think thoughts that take us away from the present, we are resisting the present moment which means we are resisting the life force energy, or life itself.
When we resist the life force energy, we resist the resources that allow us to embrace life, rather than fear life. Therefore, you could say that it is possible to alter the continuous activation of the fight or flight response by aligning with the present moment. When there is nothing to resist against, there is no threat.
https://youtu.be/UBBpNhvc5Ks
I can attest to this from my own experience of feeling under siege by perceived constant emotional threats like…
“Will I be able to get everything done, will people like me, will I be able to take care of my kids and work, will I be able to make everyone happy, will I be able to make myself happy, how will I take care of everyone,” etc., etc., etc.
I can honestly say that every day was a race to fulfill a tall order of requests…OR ELSE! Of course, the “or else” was the threat. Or else what? I wouldn’t be adequate, I wouldn’t be worthy, I wouldn’t be responsible, WHAT?
Looking for yourself in an “or else” is like looking for $50.000 in an old suitcase. It isn’t there. The constant threat that we incur on ourselves to find ourselves in an “OR ELSE” has the potential to end our physical existence. When we set these external standards for ourselves, our bodies must prepare for the constant threat of “measuring up” to these delusional beliefs.
I use the word “delusional” because the standard of worthiness that we have set for ourselves is a standard in which others have defined for us by not accepting all aspect of who we are. Therefore, you could say, it’s a distorted belief that has been conditioned in all of us.
What I have learned for myself is that when I begin to accept the parts of me that other’s did not, the fight or flight mechanism slowly begins to subside, my energy level begins to rise, I begin to see things that, although familiar, I haven’t really looked at before, I choose music that touches my soul, I remember the forgotten, and I find myself smiling when nothing else is happening.
Essentially, I am closing the gap of what others have discarded of me to make themselves feel whole.
It is up to me now to bring myself home.
Are you coming with me?
Elle
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