Your Presence is Requested…

“Training your mind to be in the present moment is the #1 key to making healthier choices.” Susan Albers

“Be where you are, otherwise you will miss your life.” Buddha

I remember being invited to a 50th anniversary party many years ago. The couple were nearing 80 years old and wanted to celebrate the momentous occasion with friends and family. What they did NOT desire, however, was more junk around the house. They declined the customary gold lamé pillows and celebratory plates with a simple statement; “Gifts gratefully declined. Your presence is our greatest present. ” For some reason that little play on words has stuck with me for the decades since I received the invitation.

The word “presence” is a tough one to define for our purposes. It is often marked by my body existing in a particular place at a specific time. But, we can most certainly be present (physically) without being PRESENT (mentally, emotionally and spiritually). I am sure we can all think of times that we attended a class but our mind was distracted and we hardly heard a thing or when we drove home from an event on autopilot and can’t remember a single stop light. (Scary isn’t it?) In the case of the anniversary party, I believe the hosts were hoping for more than just my physical appearance to manifest itself. They were requesting that I attend with an attitude of love, support and good intention towards them and their union. They wanted me to celebrate with them, share memories, and bring a sense of companionship and care to the special event. Would they have appreciated my showing up but bringing a huge stack of paperwork to do while sitting in the back corner and only occasionally glancing up to see what was happening? I don’t think so!

FULL PRESENCE, for our purposes, is the act of actually BEING where I am, with complete awareness, and a sense of the 8 C’s ** of Self Energy flowing internally (calm, curiosity, courage, connectedness, compassion, clarity, creativity and confidence) in my spirit. It means that I am not sitting around all day contemplating future events or playing back historical stressors. Most of all it is about me being WITH myself, no matter what I am feeling in a given moment and the security of knowing deep in my bones that I have my own back and I am going to be OK. When this type of living is my fallback position, my go-to way of life, I can approach things with a sense of optimism and security, rather than with a constant orientation to stress and hypervigilance. Whew. That sounds like a lot doesn’t it? Let’s unpack it together.

I’m gonna be honest with y’all. I find this much easier to write about than to live out in a practical sense. As I have said one or two (dozen) times before in this blog, most of my life I was addicted to staying out of self as much as humanly possible. The safest place for me to dwell always felt like busy, busy, busy… focused on the kids, making meals, organizing, eating, playing a game, watching a show etc. I think you get the idea. I preferred to be anywhere but right here, right now. Here and now felt scary, for reasons I couldn’t explain other than to say a lot of anxiety rose up and I felt agitated, like I NEEDED to move, run, eat, bite my nails, surf youtube or something! Anything! I did not feel safe to feel settle down or relax. I could calm myself down using meditation, yoga, visualizations and the like - no problem! But within a short period of time I would find myself back to disembodiment, worry, stressful thoughts and victimized thoughts.

In fairness, I had spent almost all of my life on “high alert” just waiting for something bad to happen, because it often did. My childhood mind had determined that the best way to avoid catastrophe was to keep my system hovering at maybe a 6 or 7/10 anxiety wise, so that I could rev up super quickly if need be. I didn’t want to let myself hope that things could be OK for fear it would all just come crashing down on me. Eventually this hypervigilance became kind of a habit and I forgot what it felt like to just relax, be calm and be present. None of this was consciously done, by the way. It was a byproduct of growing up in a very unsafe environment where I lacked stability and any adult role models who could show me what it looked like to be well regulated. Perhaps you can relate.

For me, avoidance meant a constant state of agitation in the system. If I sat down outside on the deck to read a book I could not relax into the space and enjoy the moment. I would be thinking I missed my yoga practice, I desperately and suddenly need a snack, maybe I should go for a walk, phone a friend, watch a T.V. show or clean the kitchen. But, and here is the kicker, if I switched to another activity, I would have the exact same rumination start all over again. It had nothing at all to do with what particular thing I was doing but it had everything to do with my system feeling unsafe to rest in the present. I would suddenly feel that fight, flight, freeze energy building up internally and the pressure to do something else right now. Interesting.

Even as I started into nervous system practice, it was usually focused on things like future visualizations and things to keep me out of my body and far away from my current emotional state. I was crazy level scared to allow myself even a second of time to feel sad, depressed, angry, or even happy, for fear I would lose control of my emotions, and be caught unawares somehow. I spent a lot of time numb, going from activity to activity until I was exhausted and crashed. A rather vicious cycle. It hasn’t been easy for me to practice being present in the moment, in my body, with my psyche quiet and my heart open. Yikes! And, suffice it to say I am still on a learning curve with this one.

A few blogs ago, we spent some time discussing the concept of safety in the nervous system in the post “Safety First.” The thumbnail quote, by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, talked about the need for traumatized individuals to experience the feeling of safety in their bodies (emphasis mine). We can not feel that sense of safety when we are avoiding sitting with self in the present moment. This felt sense of safety is critical because the very nature of trauma is to take our systems out of the present moment and lock them into patterns from the past (freeze) and/or hypervigilance (anxiety about the future). This is an understandable approach, if you think about it, as our nervous systems are designed to do their very best to keep us safe. It seems logical that rehashing the past might bring some closure to what happened or trying to obsessively plan the future might offer a feeling of preparedness or the ability to avoid a repeat stressful performance. But I am here to tell you that it is almost always a false sense of security.

Quite a few of us FM/ME/CFSers have a significant history of childhood trauma. We came to these coping mechanisms of “stuck in the past” and “hypervigilant for the future” through no fault of our own. When there is so much fight, flight or freeze energy forced upon a tiny little system that has absolutely nowhere to go with it all, we do the best that we can to keep ourselves safe. Let’s just stop and remember that. It is NOT our fault. We do not have character defects. We are not insane. We had too much happening in our nervous systems before we had the ability to process and there was not enough support to help us handle it. That is not on us. Full stop.

I have found that for me, cultivating presence is so much easier to do (especially at first) when done with a partner. A coach or therapist can be a great first buddy when you really need 100% of someone else’s self to help focus on your own, without feeling any need to balance the energy out with another. I have experienced this myself and I LOVE it. But, I also spend weekly focused time with my own practice partners, where we share self-energy, mirror neurons and all the great stuff that helps to co-regulate our nervous systems. In the case of self-energy, 1+1 does not equal just 2. Self grows exponentially when shared with another.

So today, I am dropping a party invitation into the mailbox with your name on it. Your PRESENCE is requested this very moment to celebrate all the amazing things that make you who you are. To remember that you already have all 8 C’s, living inside you, whether they are tiny little seedlings recently planted, or full grown flowers decorating your garden. Practicing presence is just that… a practice. As we apply the principals of nervous system regulation, we gain new skills and become more and more capable. That is what presence is all about.

** 8 C’s of Self-Leadership from Internal Family Systems Model, Dr. Richard Schwartz https://ifs-institute.com/resources/articles/evolution-internal-family-systems-model-dr-richard-schwartz-ph-d