Tag: meerkat

Categories
fearful trauma

But What About Me!

Between Traeth Lligwy and Moelfre at 3pm Sunday 23rd April 2023. Photographed by myself

I’ve been pondering how to pull the last four posts together and this came to me this morning.

When we live in a state of high alert, high anxiety, of fear, of high meerkat mode, even though it doesn’t appear that way to our logical minds we are too often thinking of ourselves and how things will affect us. We overlay it with looking as if we care for others but too often, not every time, it is that “but what about me!” fear. This leads us to being greedy and selfish, to taking the job that makes us miserable because we want others to see us as in a respectable position, putting our own egos and own self image before what our heart really says. The system is broken but we only really want to fix it if it helps us not if it helps a wider world, a world that will exist after we are gone.

Many people bemoan the state of the UK’s National Health Service and say more money needs to be put into it, but if something went wrong with the treatment they are having many would sue. I learned the other day that there is a department in each NHS health board that deals with people who wish to bring litigation against some part of the Health Service. Often because they think they have been short changed. This does not help with putting more money and resources into sorting out this system. Interestingly too I knew of someone who had to fight with lawyers who wanted her to take the NHS to caught because twice her babies had died a month before they were due to be born. She felt that the NHS was not to blame but also that no amount of money would ever replace her babies. Yes she wanted something to change but did not see how suing for a large sum of money would change anything.

Yesterday in the UK we had a nationwide security alert go off on our mobile phones. This was a practice to see if it was possible to warn people of an impending disaster. [The above photo is where myself, husband and dog were at that time] Now much as I do not like the idea of any government department being able to get into my phone and send me something I also think it isn’t such a bad idea to know if one was likely to be flooded, earthquake, fire, bombed, whatever, in time to take evasive action. But what tickled me was that many people were saying how it frightened them and that they would be really upset if something like that happened unannounced. So now we want to be warned about warnings of impending disaster. Nice idea. But again it was “all about me”.

So why are so many people on such high alert? For good reason. There have been so many traumas, many of them passed down through the generations, that too often they are seen as just what is rather than a trauma. A friend once commented at a map I had on my wall to help with home schooling about how many it was all just about commemorating battles, and of how many there were. Our land is littered with fighting, much of it internal battles of who should be king, who should rule, how people should worship God, etc. Then in more recent times those who came back from both the 1st and 2nd world wars who were traumatised, those who had lived without a man in the house, etc. And for myself I campaigned with CND and learned about what would happen in a nuclear war. All very scary. All things that make one on high alert. All things that make one put oneself, and often those closest, first. It does not encourage thinking of something bigger like a national health service, a national education system, a national anything. It all comes back to “what’s in it for me?”

Again though we revolve back to getting rid of those traumas. I know I’ve been pushing QEC but I do also think there are many others ways too. QEC worked for me but things like Sozo, and other inner healings works for other people. I would say anything that helps deal with trauma, deals with pulling down those walls that separate us from each other and the world, from God and the Universe, are all valid. But I do believe, as I say so often, that until we can release ourselves from being on high alert – which is often so ingrained that we don’t know it’s there – we will not be able to really put others before ourselves.

Love your neighbour as yourself

Mark 12:31

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life

John 3:16

God loved because God isn’t traumatised. Jesus was able to do what Jesus did because he put others first. We can only love others if we truly love ourselves and are willing to stopping having to protect ourselves by being on high alert and so having to protect ourselves first.

When someone is on high alert it is not about the other but about them. Let go and let God in and then I think we can truly heal our broken systems and our broken world and let of of logical thinking and replace it with heart thinking.

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Faux Pas Lord's Prayer

Faux Pas

Desolation and lone footprints. Photographed by Diane Woodrow
Footprints across a deserted beach taken by myself March 2022

Why is it that it is so much easier to remember one’s mistakes and faux pas than one’s triumphs?

Yesterday I was chatting with a fellow writer and something slipped out of my mouth that I did not mean to say. He was a bit irritated by it at the time but I apologised and the conversation resumed. All the way home in the car I was waiting for my friend to say something about the gaff I’d made, but she never did. All she wanted to do was talk about the serendipity of being in the building at the same time as this person she knew through other outlets. And we twittered on about how amazing life can be, etc, etc.

But still when I was out with my dog walking I could feel the embarrassment of it. As I pondered by reaction rather than what I’d said I realised that it was actually my autonomic nervous system [ANS] that had gone into fight/flight/fawn/freeze mode and I needed to calm down my “meerkat” panic.

So as I walked I pulled my ANS back into a calmer, relaxed place via things I’d been taught via QEC – telling my ANS to realign – which is just says “ANS come back into alignment“, repeating “I’m safe, you’re safe, we’re safe” thus convincing my subconscious that there was nothing to worry about, and also being grateful – for the encounter with the fellow writer, for the time with my friend in the car there and back, for the joy of walking my dog. By the time I got home I was calm.

Even as I write this I can feel myself laughing at what I said, because it was daft and out of order, but I do not feel that awful grumpy-dragging-me -down-ness that I have felt in similar situations before. I can see it as a mistake I made and that I have learned from but not an “end of the world” thing.

It has made me wonder how many times I may have not done something, or even done something, because I was in that heightened “meerkat” mode – fearful, hyper-alert, anxious – rather than acknowledging it, taking those breaths, realigning myself and being able to let it go. Because that is very much what I did – let it go.

It also made me think of the lines in the “Lord’s Prayer” – about forgiving and forgiveness. Too often we are ready to forgive others but how often do we forgive ourselves. Or even how often do we say “Lord, forgive me my trespasses” but we are not willing to do it ourselves – thus making us bigger than God???

So as I realigned myself, stepped out of my fight/flight/fawn/freeze mode, I also forgave myself for what I’d said and have been able to get on and do things – which today have involved sending a proposal for some work and entering a writing competition. I have moved on from my faux pas!

Categories
accepting Feelings

A Feeling Is Just A Feeling And It Will Pass!

Diane Woodrow's fridge sticker "a feeling' just a feeling and it will pass" from Little Meerkat's big panic.
Stuck on my fridge. Sent to me by my dear friend, Jane Evans

Monday would have been my sister’s 58th birthday. It is strange that I felt so low about it because I cannot remember the last time I celebrated her birthday with her. I don’t remember doing anything for her 18th or 21st. Yes I’m old enough to have had both an 18th and 21st birthday party!!! But by the time my sister was 18 our parents had separated. In fact even by her 16th they were apart. But even before that I don’t remember her birthdays unless I look at photographs and then I’m sure it is more perceived memory rather than really remembering. My sister has been dead now for over 9 years and of course I still miss her. It is hard work being an only child now after having had a sibling for 49 years.

But anyway Monday I felt this overwhelming sadness mixed with other emotions of guilt, regret, fear, anxiety. I checked dates, remembered the significance, and accepted how I felt. Our bodies are so much better at remembering things than our heads. We so often need to bypass our heads and listen to our hearts and bodies. Something I am learning often. And we need to accept that a feeling is just a feeling and it will pass.

If we have lived a long and full life there will be many days where we remember things with sadness, with loss, with regret, with grief, and I am learning that this is alright. It is how I feel. It is a feeling from what was, but it is just a feeling. It is not the “now” of my life.

So when I realised the source of my sadness I journaled it, walked the dog and pondered it, accepted it, and placed it in a safe place. Not buried but not somewhere where today would fall over it. I got on with my day, checked out my heart regularly, was kind to myself – because I think often we can tell those feelings of loss, grief, anger, fear, anxiety, that they are negative and so shouldn’t be a part of our lives. But that is so untrue. Feelings are not negative or positive. Yes some are easier to sit with than others. Some we prefer, especially in others, than we do other ones. But they are just feelings.

Our feelings colour our memories and we need to accept that. We also need to accept that we won’t have a photographic memory of the past, no matter what some people tell themselves they do. What we do have is a memory of an event coloured with our feelings at the time overlaid with our feelings of where we are now.

So Monday I accept that I was feeling what I was feeling. Kept my thoughts to my journal. Waited till the feeling had got to a more settled place to be able to share on this blog. And it did as the sticker on my fridge said it would. It passed. I now have other feelings about other things but I know they are my feelings and are not the fact of the event.