I wrote in the past about my old teacher’s theory that we are all consciously avoiding one of three fears - rejection, worthlessness or abandonment. In that post I mentioned that some people have trouble distinguishing their conscious fear because all three are valid fears that they’ve experienced at one time in their life or another. The key to locating your conscious fear is recognizing the habit pattern you play out repeatedly to avoid one of those three feelings. For myself, i had zero problem diagnosing myself as rejection fear.
The feeling of being ousted or unwelcome by a person, place or situation where I had once felt welcomed, loved and supported is just the worst feeling for me. I will do Olympic level feats of mind, emotion and body to avoid experiencing this feeling.
The first time I came back to Paris after having lived here as my home for three months, I cringed at every single experience of feeling more like a tourist than a resident. Needing to stay at a hostel for a few days instead of an apartment just felt like I was living in a cardboard box outside my home. And the more I saw it this way, the more I steeped myself in this feeling. Eventually, circumstances worked me out of the feeling. But I never really learned how to work myself out of the feeling.
A few weeks ago, back in Philly, I met an acupuncturist (Doren Day) at a healers networking event and she talked a little bit about her specific type of acupuncture - five elements. This type focuses on the main element that the person seems to be unbalanced in and treats that, rather than the symptoms. The idea was really interesting to me and after more conversation we set up a trade.
Doren suggested doing Medical Qi Gong on me with a little bit of Zero Balancing. I had a good sense of her intuition and skill as a healer, so I was all for whatever modality she wanted to use. In the session, she located a block between the heart and the spleen. This block is exactly in the place that I have felt energy stuck for a really long time. She said that it was in part due to a repeated emotional trauma in childhood and in part due to the perception that was created in that trauma. Which is very much in line with the Buddhist idea of how habit patterns are created. There is an initial trauma and then the ego/mind perpetuates it in a kind of ham-fisted effort to ‘fix’ that initial trauma. ‘Fix it’ by repeating it over and over and over again.
Awesome. Thanks, ego/mind.
I left the session feeling really clear and grounded energetically. But I also knew that I had homework to do beyond the qi gong exercises that can keep this meridian channel clear. I had to work on the mental perception that paired up with this energy and played ping pong back and forth in the space between my heart and solar plexus.
I knew, in part, that this repeated emotional trauma had to do with my experience of being one of six kids. One of six kids of parents who were young and incredibly stressed out and overburdened by regular life and paying bills. During my early childhood, their individual thresholds for any kind of emotional disturbance was incredibly low. Being human, they were often impatient with the problems and emotional hurts I brought to them for attention and healing. Being incredibly overwhelmed, I was sometimes answered with irritation when I came to them and expressed a need or source of pain.
That is the energetic imprint that was blocking the heart and spleen. The mental one is what my ego/mind did with their response. My little four year old self decided that it was my needs and pains that were the problem and so I had to deal with them myself - hide them almost. And so I developed a habit very early on of being hurt and adapting that old ‘mind over matter’, ‘stiff upper lip’ ‘don’t rock the boat’ mentality.
It was the way my ego decided to avoid the feeling of rejection that came when I brought a pain or need to a loved one and felt that I was wrong for doing so, wrong for needing help or comfort, wrong for expressing myself.
The ego will tell me that this is how to avoid suffering. In Paris three years ago, it told me to avoid coming back here and not put myself in the position of wanting to be at home in a place that didn’t seem to allow my need for a reliable internet signal, a bedroom of my own and a key to a place where I could leave all my stuff instead of bungling through the metro like a pack-mule.
A few weeks ago, when I was getting ready to come back to Paris for three months and I couldn’t find an affordable sublet, my ego told me the same thing. Nepal is nice, why not go to Nepal? You’ve never felt at home there so you can’t feel rejected! I caved for a moment, planned weeks in Spain and Marseilles, but there is that part of me that will always want to feel at home in Paris. And eventually Paris won out, or won two thirds of the three months. But here I am, in Paris for four days before heading to Spain. Here I am at a hostel with bags that weigh more than I’d like to carry around with me, searching for a wifi signal.
I decided to do some research on the spleen. I get the heart part of this blockage, but what’s the deal with the spleen? I had already read that it supports the heart in the cycle of chi through the body. But what does it do individually?
Turns out its ‘element’ in five elements acupuncture is Earth, which is about nurturing. The kind of nurturing that comes from paying attention to your body’s needs but also your emotional needs. It can become unbalanced if this nurturing isn’t felt in childhood. And the mental perception that we don’t deserve nurturing keeps it unbalanced. The emotion associated with the Spleen is sympathy and understanding. In my case, this information was really interesting. I tend to be pretty good at understanding other people and sympathizing/empathizing with them.
And then I kept reading -
'As well as the ability to express sympathy toward others, however, we must be able to receive it, too. It is necessary that others understand how and when we hurt, that others know what we are going through. When a child is in pain, it calls immediately for its mother, the source for sympathy and understanding. But with an Earth imbalance, the need for sympathy can become excessive and insatiable; or, in its opposite manifestation, sympathy may be completely absent. We all know people from whom we can expect no compassion, regardless of circumstance. And there are also those who cannot receive sympathy or help at all - the sort who say, "No, I can do it myself.” '
Ahh, that last sentence is me, especially as a child. I thought that if needing understanding and compassion was the problem, then NOT needing it must be a good thing! If I can take care of myself completely, then I won’t be rejected.
The problem is, especially then, but even now, I can’t take care of myself completely. I need others to understand me and be compassionate toward me. I’ve kinda dug myself into a hole though, because in the years of trying to not need any help, I often have difficulty recognizing when I need nurturing. I am notorious for forgetting to eat. I never drink enough water. When my feelings are hurt I tend to withdrawal rather than express that pain. And when I come out of my cocoon, the hurt is not healed and soothed, it’s just quieter.
This afternoon, while I was writing about this in my journal trying to form some kind of coherent point, I sat down on the curb of a Parisian street to tackle the issue at hand. It had become a little chilly, but in typical fashion, I hadn’t really noticed. I just focused on the writing.
Suddenly a man called to me ‘Mademoiselle!’ I turned and saw that he was the owner of the kebab shop behind me. He asked me why I was sitting there. I stood up and apologized. My mind was interpreting his french rather quickly but my ego was interpreting it quicker. ‘He wants you to stop loitering like a freaking vagabond in front of his shop!’ Then the translation came through of what he was actually saying. He was pointing to the only table in front of his shop. ‘Why don’t you sit here? It’s better than the curb, right?’
‘Yes,’ I smiled ‘Thank you, it’s much better than the curb.’ He nodded and went back into his shop. I sat and wrote some more. Then suddenly a small steaming cup of hot fragrant tea was placed in front of me. I looked up and the kebob shop owner nodded. I smiled and thanked him again and he went back into his shop.
And then I realized that I was pretty cold and the tea was very good but more than anything, in this moment, I needed that experience of hospitality, nourishment and kindness. I needed that experiential lesson of how I should be treating myself and what I should allow others to give me.
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