The Conscious Heart (12 page)

Because we can get something out of our bodies by spitting, coughing, or sputtering, we believe that if we spit our anger out, it will help. But anger is only an expression of fear. The real issue is to get to what you are afraid of and say it clearly.

F
EAR
H
AS
F
OUR
E
XPRESSIONS

W
hen we are in the grip of fear, we are programmed to do one of four things: flee, fight, freeze, or faint. These four moves are all survival-oriented, ingrained in us through hundreds of thousands of years of threatening situations. We still respond in the same way, if not to the same degree, that our animal relatives do when threatened. Each of these four survival moves heightens our ability to deal with the unknown. Our bodies release adrenaline, which alerts many systems in the body. This heightened state of arousal originates in areas of the brain more primitive than the problem-solving cerebral cortex, and it can arise so quickly that we’re already defensive before the problem-solving brain even knows anything is wrong. Unless we defuse these fear defenses, reconnecting in essence is very difficult. Without understanding our wiring, we may try to reason ourselves or others out of fear, but this never seems to work very well. The admonition “There’s
nothing to be scared of” generally has little impact except to annoy the receiver.

Two of our relationship-training participants got into such a vivid fear-tangle during a movement activity that they later shared their experience with the whole group. They were amazed to discover the repercussions of assuming what the other was feeling and not checking their perceptions.

DANA: I had a strong desire to hug Samantha because she looked afraid. Then I got scared because I thought if I tried to hug her, she wouldn’t appreciate it and would reject my hug. Then I would feel abandoned. So I backed up so Samantha would feel safe, and I could then reapproach her as I so strongly desired. I realized later that I was afraid of her fear, and I was also keeping myself safe by backing up.

SAMANTHA: Dana could see I was afraid when we were close, so she backed up to give me space. What she didn’t know was that I wanted to be close, and it’s okay with me to feel the fear. One of my relationship complaints is not being close enough to people. Now I suspect that people’s interpretations about my fearful expressions have gotten in the way of creating closeness.

The Four F’s (as we call them around our house) have a great deal of power to cause problems of intimacy in close relationships. Let’s look at each one separately.

Fleeing

Thousands of years ago, when human beings were in the wild, we absolutely needed to have programs in us to get us out of dangerous situations. Life, in Hobbes’s memorable phrase, was “nasty, brutish, and short.” Fear, with its heightened arousal and hypervigilance, was of great help in keeping us ready to run. Nowadays, when commitment arouses our fears, we have different ways to run: We
flounce off to the beauty parlor or roar off in our car or stay very late at the office. We slam a door as we exit, or we sprint around the running track to try and get distance from our fear. Other fleeing moves are much subtler. We withdraw into ourselves, we sulk and play hard to get, we pout. Sometimes people are unaware that they are fleeing, but their partners almost always register the blank look or the mechanical gestures of fear.

Fleeing involves withdrawing energy from the relationship and pulling it into ourselves. We may not run physically, but most of us flee from essence on a regular basis. It is important to make a distinction between fleeing from intimacy, which is driven by fear, and consciously taking space, out of the desire to rest, rejuvenate, and get grounded. Taking space nurtures the spirit, while fleeing obscures it.

Fleers need to learn to stand their ground. They need to learn to say no out loud rather than let their flight speak for them. When fleers learn to make requests consciously, to say what they want and what they don’t want, the automatic fleeing response loosens its grip on them.

Fighting

When we get scared, some of us run, while others stand and fight. The runner and the fighter are equally scared. The sooner they both recognize it, the sooner the problem can be solved.

The style of our original families usually determines whether we fight or flee. In some families shouting and hollering are favored styles of interaction, while others strictly prohibit loud expressions. In both our families the shout-’n’-holler style was off limits—at least for the children—while the “hide it and get back at the adversary later” style was favored and practiced daily.

The energy of fighting is so close to the experience of sexual arousal that these responses are often confused. In many relationships partners need to fight before they can have sex, or they create
ever more dramatic scenes as foreplay. Our society seems to promote a great deal of confusion between anxiety and arousal, between fear and fighting. Consider action and horror films: The heroine is being threatened by the bad guys; lots of things blow up in adrenaline-packed chase scenes; then at the end the hero and damsel-in-distress lock in an embrace. If people learned to distinguish between sexual charge and anger, they could express themselves much more freely and have more rewarding sexual experiences.

True anger is useful and necessary in situations that are fundamentally unfair. Anger can clearly define boundaries. It can communicate, “No, you may not treat me this way. This is not all right with me, and I will protect myself.” But if we use anger primarily as a self-defensive cover-up for our fears, we lose our ability to express this genuine anger. Many people blossom when they learn to identify their authentic feeling of anger and express it straightforwardly.

Freezing

In our lectures we sometimes survey our audiences and ask them which of the Four F’s is most typical of them. The majority of audience members, about two-thirds, usually say they are either fighters or fleers. The other third will say they are freezers or fainters. Of course, sometimes there is an overlap, but most of us, if we look deeply enough, will find that we have a favored move and a couple of backups.

People who freeze become immobilized when they get scared. They can’t think of anything to say or do. In Richard Adams’s magical masterpiece
Watership Down
, rabbits become “tharn” when extremely scared: frozen, immobile, locked into place like a deer in the headlights. One of our friends, a freezer, describes her experience: “I’m just stunned when my husband yells about something, even if it’s not about me. I can’t move. My breath freezes,
and my legs feel like stumps. All my thoughts are erased as I lock in on this seemingly huge threat. I guess I’m trying to be invisible, something that usually worked when my father was raging around the house. I noticed that my brothers and sisters who fought back got punished, while Dad seemed to ignore me.”

Freezers need to thaw out. Just moving, stretching, or changing position can unlock the paralysis and restore flow and a feeling of connection. Taking a deep, centered breath often shifts the frozen person back into their experience of essence.

Fainting

Full-scale, falling-down fainting may occur on rare occasions, but here we are talking about a milder type. When they are scared, fainters get spaced out and confused. They fog over in the heat of conflict. While the fleer is busy retreating and the fighter is shouting nasty things, fainters are standing there with goofy looks on their faces. They may be feeling light-headed and “out of their bodies.” Louise, a friend, is a fainter: “I get stupid. It’s as if my thoughts are submerged underwater and get very slow. I totally lose my breath, my whole sense that the world works. Everything looks foreign and fuzzy, as if nothing fits anymore or makes any sense. And that all happens in a split second.” Fainters space out until the danger passes.

Fainters need to come back into their bodies. Simply shifting their attention to a physical sensation will help them to reconnect. Tensing and releasing muscles, bouncing up and down, or stretching the jaw can return a fainter to the present moment and the possibility of flowing with feeling again.

C
OMMITMENT
M
ISTAKES

F
ear leads us to make four mistakes around commitment, mistakes that lead to self-sabotage.

Making Insincere Commitments

In therapy we have worked with hundreds of people who were sorting through the damage caused by sabotaged commitments. The most important factor leading to sabotage, we found, was that one partner had not really wanted to make the commitment in the first place. They had “gone along with” the commitment but had not embraced it at their essence level.

Make sure the commitments you make are ones you have freely chosen. Commitments made under duress or threat—“Promise never to do it again or else”—are seldom useful because they are not chosen freely at a soul level. Forced commitments are ripe for sabotage from the moment they are made. In our therapy sessions we get very pointed when people are making commitments. “Are you really sure,” we ask, “that you want a relationship where both you and your partner tell the truth?” We pursue, badgerlike, a whole-body yes—a spoken yes accompanied by congruent body language. When commitment is chosen both verbally and physically, the energy of the room shifts dramatically. So when you have sabotaged a commitment, the first thing to do is to ask yourself, “Did I really want to commit in the first place?”

Committing to Things We Cannot Control

Many people set themselves up for failure by making commitments to things that are far outside their control. Outcome commitments, for example, attempt to control events and feelings that are beyond control. You may promise to love, honor, and obey another
person forever but overlook the fact that at times you may not want to obey or even love the other. You may also overlook a host of variables that could impact the outcome “forever,” such as an accident or illness, or a political or economic upheaval. So many people live in the future of the question “Will you love me forever?” that they neglect the essence-exchanges that make love real right now. A more meaningful commitment to intimacy would be an agreement about how to handle situations when you’re
not
feeling loving—by telling the truth, for example.

In order to serve yourself well, make commitments only to things that are within your control, like process commitments. You can control whether you tell the truth when you are frightened or ambivalent.

Sexual commitments are a good place to practice distinguishing what you can and can’t control. Hundreds of people have shared with us their confusion about what sexual commitments they should make and how to keep them. Their most common mistake is to try to commit to having sexual feelings only toward their mates. Human beings do not come factory-wired that way; thousands of generations of sexy ancestors have predisposed us otherwise. No one has total control over their sexual feelings, so it’s meaningless to try to make a commitment that implies we do. But we do have control over whether we’re aware of them and tell the truth about them. And we do have control—although some may argue this—over how we act on our sexual feelings.

A truly useful sexual commitment is to tell your partner the truth when you feel sexual feelings for someone else and to listen nonjudgmentally to their reaction. In our relationship we’ve established a criterion for what we share with each other. If either of us has done something that would probably not have occurred if we were both in the room, we tell the truth about it. For example, if we were flirting more intensely or dancing more closely than we would have if we were both at the party, we tell each other the truth about that. You can also commit to certain ways of expressing your sexual feelings, such as having sexual intercourse only with your partner.

Our clients have told us repeatedly that they experience freedom when they let themselves feel all their sexual feelings and, at the same time, commit to express them in ways that support an essence-connection with their primary partner. This action grows not only a conscious heart but a smart body. These people let themselves enjoy their sexual feelings as they move easily through aerobics class infatuations, office flirtations, and other daily fluctuations in the sexual thermometer. By feeling their feelings and telling the truth about them, they actually cycle more sexual excitement back into the primary relationship.

Leaving a Back Door Open

Many of us try to leave open a back door through which we can sneak out if a commitment becomes inconvenient. But we’ve found that the possibilities of growing the conscious heart of relationship really take off only if we close that door. Eliminating the escape routes contains the relationship energy that was leaking out the back door. This energy is fuel for changing the patterns that must be altered if the relationship is to grow.

As therapists, we pay attention to people’s body language as they are making commitments to each other. Halfway through making a commitment to tell the truth, one person may scratch a shoulder. Another person, when making a commitment to take responsibility for his or her life, may cock their head to one side. These body-reactions
always
mean something. Your body will always tell you where you are blocking the true soul-level embrace of the commitment—and when you have left a back door open.

We remember one couple with whom we worked on the issue of wholehearted commitment to an exclusive relationship. On the surface it looked as if she was committed and he was not. In many of their arguments, she demanded more commitment from him and he backed away. In our office we asked them to look each other in the eye and make a complete, whole-body commitment to the relationship. Her eyes flashed as she said yes, but she
unconsciously scratched her left arm vigorously. He took a slight step backward. We called these bits of body language to their attention and asked them to tune in to what they might mean. She got angry and defensive, accusing us of pettiness and picking on her. She thought our observation was quite insightful about
his
body language, however, saying that it meant he wasn’t committed.