My Reality

This weekend at Bibleution so much happened. One of the things that happened is that in a conversation with the amazing @Bric... we talked about our chronic illness stuff. The question arose: Who would you be without your illness?

And that was huge for me. I don't know that I've looked at it in quite that way. I had 3 realizations about it - one is that in order to heal more I have to have waaaaaaaaay better boundaries than I've been recently. I nearly had a full on migraine this weekend for the first time in 5 years. 5 years!!!! So no, there's a lot I'm not going to do going forward. I'm not even sure what that looks like honestly. I'm just barely starting this journey.

The second, is that I need a lot more support than I've been getting. In a conversation with my beloved this morning I was feeling very, very vulnerable because I needed to ask him for yet more help. He's incredibly generous with me and... And I had the story that if I asked, he'd leave me. I immediately recognized it as a story about fear and about not feeling worthy and deserving of support. About how I long to be supported and loved and seen and yet desperately afraid. So I told him my story and he said the thing that is both true for him and what I needed to hear: "I love you! You are totally worth it!"

It changed the course of my day. And in truth, he's changed the course of my life and work with his love and support. I've never had this level of support in my life before. Literally ever. Not from my parents or other lovers or partners. It's felt like I needed to fight for every single bit of support I've ever gotten. Ever.

And I have - fought for it. My condition went undiagnosed for 14 years. I've fought for medical attention, for medicine, for health care, for work, for my son, my home, my health, the right to live my life my way. Literally everything. So there's no surprise that I spend a lot of time very, very angry - it has literally saved my life hundreds of times over to push for what I want, for the right be alive. To advocate and not give up, to be angry to use that to make sure I can live. I'm not yet willing to give it up - not yet. But as I get what I need a bit at at time, it softens. As I no longer have to fight for every single thing, I relax more and more.

The third thing is that I realized most of you have no idea that I'm chronically ill. That I spend a fair amount of time in pain and that's why I don't do a lot of things and why I sometimes turn away and go, or why I don't stick it out until the end, or sit in that big chair - I can't. I can't sit in a regular chair, after an hour I'm in incredible pain. I think people think that I'm just fat and that it's my own fault, when in fact my multiple conditions/diseases went undiagnosed for 14 years and so spiraled wildly out of control and it's only been the last 5 years that I've been getting them under control. That means I've been chronically ill for 19 years. Nearly all of my adult life.

I'm really, really tired of talking about it and explaining about it. I don't want it to be center stage. But in doing that I have made it so that I am not getting what I need, that I don't know how to get what I need. My disability is inconsistent - sometimes I can and sometimes I can't do any particular thing. It's very moment to moment. Often I'm quite happy. But often enough I need support or someone to listen to me. But I'm not weak and I don't want pity - I have had an incredibly hard time learning to receive and there are ways that I still have a hard time. Like everyone's coaching each other and I often just can't receive it. Receiving kindness for no reason has been suspect in my life - code for someone wanting something from me.

Anyway, I just want you to know me and to know that I'm not trying to keep myself away from you or to distance myself from you in my anger or frustration, but it's kept me alive for decades. I'm working on learning new ways of being.

Thank you for hearing me.

Here are some rails for writing fear inventory that will actually take you into your minds tricksy ways and help me understand my fears and how they are effecting me.

Technical Fouls:

1. Don't write on things that are "coming at you." Or what other people are doing. Focus on what you have agency over.

2. Get specific. Stop the high level of abstraction... "If that were true, then what." What's the evidence of that that thing you're afraid of?

3. Avoid looking at it laterally - move down the thread
4. Avoid changing topics
5. Avoid future or past
6. Avoid generalizing and
7. Look at not beating yourself up
8. Avoid coaching yourself.
Avoid I don't know or I can't.

Hints that you're about to be on the spot:
If you're going in a circle, in a drain, you're off the spot. The mind is insulating itself from the thing.

Or it will look at the same topic from the different angle.

Or you'll start coaching yourself.

That means that right before you did that you were getting somewhere.


Example: "I have fear that I am using chaos and slowness so that there was chaotic thing and then we can't do this thing.

"I have fear that I cannot do this alone."

Don't use anything that's more than about 3 days old
You can't touch a memory without altering it. Your memories are nothing like what happened. It's harder to get vigilant with things that are older than a few days.

Avoid jargon in your inventory.

Binaries
(a level 2 thing)
Fear Inventory is a really useful tool for bringing to light this thing that human minds do when there's something I don't want to wrestle with, deal with, as a means of insulating myself... I'll make a binary.

This situation is either absolutely this way or that way. Other things are impossible.

Corollary: if this, then that.

We are looking to make meaning. "If it's new then it's incorrect." "If it's this then it's wrong." Or right

Fear is useful to bring that out into the light. What's the seed of the thing? Why did you make that decision or judgement?

In Fear Inventory we can bring that to light. We can then decide if there are other possibilities. Yes or no is a good answer.

They might decide, "yeah I want to keep that one." You have the opportunity with the option of honoring that process. Trust that.


Set a timer.
If you always do 15-20 minutes, try an hour. Try an hour every day for awhile. Look at your energy accounting - how much time do you spend on your crazy

Not just when you're upset - write when well so that you can take a look

Must read it. Without back story or context. Hearing yourself say it changes what's goig on in the mind.

Don't replace it with other practices like desire or gratitude practice.