The Key Quality-of-Life Factor When You Don’t Have Control

Source: Karen Smith/Pixabay

You notice your elderly dog, who has been declining for some time, having more trouble getting up the stairs. Do you start to worry about what that could mean, running stories in your mind of different, awful scenarios? Do you tell yourself just not to think about it? Do you not think anything at all, but find yourself later being irritable, or overeating, or getting lost on your social media feed? What’s up with that?

There’s an experience inside us that wants to help us grow. That experience is emotion, heralded by a precious alarm in our body meant to wake us up. Unrest calls us home to the body in moments of vulnerability, when reality’s limits get in the way of what we want. We want our loyal, loving old dog to live forever, and the sight of his wobbly back legs straining to climb the stairs is a pivotal approach/avoid moment. And most of us are leaving home right about then.

The Radical Power of Mattering

Our relationship to ourselves in moments of vulnerability determines the quality of our lives. When limits and uncertainty loom and unrest stirs, if we tell ourselves the lie that ultimate control is possible, we’ll find ourselves worrying over catastrophic possibilities that we feel we must avert. If we instead tell the lie that “it doesn’t matter,” we disconnect from the enlivening energy of desire, and flatten our lives.

But if we recognize unrest as our friend and pause in moments of vulnerability, we are free to feel the truth, painful as it may be, of our limits. We can slow down and let it matter. Let ourselves matter.

In facing what we feel when things are not as we long for, we show ourselves we can bear the pain of life. We don’t need to reject ourselves or the reality of our limits. We grow confidence that we can cope, and we feel worthy of love without conditions. The radical thing with mattering to ourselves when we are vulnerable is that we give ourselves unconditional love. Things don’t have to be rosy, and we don’t need to land the 10 out of 10 to deserve our own care.

Fear of Fear at the Heart of It All

Unrest feels like fear, and our unconscious impulse is to avoid anything that evokes feelings of tension and agitation. But vulnerability is not danger. Danger is immediate threat to life and limb. Now. Not in the future or past. Not a threat to our feelings or ego or bank account. This reflex ejects us from our inner experience. It’s at the heart of human suffering. Everything we do to not feel creates problems. We worry and become anxious and controlling, we shut down and get depressed, we shop and go broke, or we eat and can’t fit into our jeans.

The Door Opens Two Ways

Unrest is a doorway into a deeper, richer, more well-resourced self. It signals vulnerability, the optimal moment for growth, when emotion is rising. But that doorway opens two ways. If we embrace unrest as a friend, we enter into the emotional truth that grows capacities for authenticity, resilience, and connection. But if we miss the signal, we find ourselves distracted, worried, and numb. We cannot feel adaptive emotion so we cannot grow. We are shut out and stuck.

Our Body Holds the Key

Our wise bodies hold the key to living engaged, powerful lives. It’s the felt experience of life, not our ideas about it, that gives meaning and richness. Unrest is a physical signal of muscle tension and agitation. Unrest wants a physical response—the body speaks in sensations, not words. Paying undivided attention to sensations assures the body that the trigger is emotional, not a threat to life and limb.

Our warm interest soothes the unrest, and we can ride waves of core emotion. This too is a physical experience as our biochemistry shifts and muscles activate, revealing our authentic selves, illuminating what matters to us, and strengthening our capacity to bounce back from difficulty. Our physical experience of caring about ourselves in the emotional pain of our limits connects us to the rest of humanity in the paradox of our vulnerable strength.

Living an Approach-Based Life

When we long for something (perhaps a reply to that important email, not catching COVID-19, a good night’s sleep, your luggage to arrive when you do, or your beloved companion to live a whole lot longer) and see limits to being able to 100 percent secure it, we can pause, tune in, and pay warm interest to our constricted, fidgety body.

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Source: Gerd Altman/Pixabay

It’s counterintuitive to approach what doesn’t feel good. Even more so to approach sensations that feel like fear. But not having control over things that matter to us is not dangerous, it’s simply vulnerable. We don’t have a steering wheel to direct reality, but we do have one inside ourselves that lets us turn toward our inner bodily sensations.

We can approach the discomfort of vulnerability, soothe the body with warm attention, and open to the wisdom of the body as we feel emotion carry us to new shores of ourselves.

Your dog stumbles on the stair and you let yourself register the tension in your diaphragm and your hunched shoulders. You approach those sensations of unrest with warm interest. As your muscles release, you feel a pressure around your heart. An impulse to resist the pain is there, and you make room for it, but still stay with yourself in what you feel. Sadness rises into your throat and eyes and the pressure becomes an ache in your heart. Breathing into it, you make room for the pain. It hurts, it peaks. Then ebbs. As the tension lets go you feel a space inside yourself, there is more room in your heart. You look at your old dog and feel an urge to scratch behind his ears and feel his velvety fur. You find yourself smiling and murmuring "hey buddy,” as he pushes his head back into your fingertips. He matters, you matter, and love holds it all.