Fighting Fear with Compassion

 

Phalaenopsis orchid

I once spoke about the phases in my life when I suffer night terrors. I was terrified of peeking through the window to see the flickers of the lights in the dark; to me they looked and seemed like macabre and grotesque eyes peering in as I lay in bed; watching and staring. I found safety in covering my face with bed linen from the exposure of the night air. I felt a sense of safety in shutting my eyes tight to shut the windows of my soul from the invasion of lurking evil. Mercifully sleep would take me. My nightmares and terrors made me a handful of a child to deal especially when everyone was exhausted and patience quotas were frayed thin. My mother was the only person who could handle my traumatised self. For one she always sat next to me listened to the gory details of my frightful dreams. As I described the depravity of the monsters that terrorised me she listened deeply. She did not interrupt or question me as though to fact check my story. After recounting my sordid ordeal, I felt a discernible lift off my shoulder and the monsters did not seem as scary or big anymore. After she would hold me in her arms to pray, sing and embrace me long enough for her calm to infuse into me. Those moments in her arms were the safest I have ever felt.

The other reactions to my nightmares were rather different growing up. I would sense their need to blame my terrors to something I did or did not do... “Stop watching TV...” “There are no such things such as monsters you just have an overactive imagination.”  “You are are simply too sensitive.” Along with other lists of self-started irritants and a reminder that everyone has problems they need to deal with without me adding to them. The solution to my problem would be to simply stop “over thinking” and ‘saying or screaming’ out loud that I was scared as it was bothersome.

But my fears were real. As soon as the lights flicked off and the door shut and I was left behind, my terrors grew form again in such palpable ways I resorted to seek refuge and so I learnt to scream and run inside myself. My mother gradually stopped coming when I had bad dreams especially when she got sick but also because she was talked out of it as everybody was of the opinion that I needed to show some spine and grow out of my habit of being “too sensitive.”

So I learnt to take to covering my face and shutting out the world at night with my pillow. I would withdraw into myself more and find a shelter in my mind and in my dreams...this included many self-conversations going over my fears and addressing them and it was characterized by deep silences and solitude moments. Most of those around me just thought I finally grew up and were pleased to not waking up at night to deal with a nuisance of a child. In my adult life these phases still continue and typically look like profound melancholic moments.

While I do not cover my face anymore under my pillow, I recognize the patterns in which I cope with fear. I never really changed. My sometimes irrational ham-fisted sentiments or screams when shared frequently solicit familiar reactions of exasperation, eye-rolls and sharp intakes of breath.... “Oh boy here we go again....” and in one sweeping moment it becomes “You overthink things” “You over-analyse” “You are too sensitive” and the default question preempting my need to unload and figure things out would be:

“What did I do wrong this time followed by prompt apologies to contain a situation that is me.”

While admittedly it is not easy working or relating with a highly sensitive person, I do feel the hows and whys we go about weaving into each other’s lives is worth pondering over.

I am particularly intrigued by the neat frames we like to ‘other’ each other where people fit into tight neat boxes of being “either this or that”;   as though things, experiences and whole lives were as simple as this two options. I wonder if we pause to think of the alternative our assertions and assumptions suggest.....

.....So one is either “over sensitive” or.......? (insensitive, thick skinned, unfeeling ....I wonder?)

You are either right or.......? (wrong, really? Is it really always that simple?)

You always over analyze things, and the opposite of this would be......? (apathy? indifference? unconcern - how true is this?)

I find this thinking a way to problematise and cluster people we consider different from us. The idea of ‘them and us’, ‘you and me’ inevitably fall through a further labelling where we value each other different and forming power dynamics we refer to as strength and weakness.... progressively we internalise these labels as true and unbending and they embody us as strengths or weaknesses.

I have been internalising the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh in his book Fear: Essential Wisdom for Getting Through the Storm. He talks about how easily tempting it is for us to ridicule the fear of others because it reminds us of our own fear and how we are also taught to keep fear unacknowledged and out of sight. In his teachings he says that this fear causes us to act out in fits of anger. He suggests that if we as an alternative produce the energy of compassion to replace fear, we may calm our hearts and this allows us an opportunity to help another person.

I really resonate with his ideas on this because I experienced this deep compassion when my mother listened sincerely to me and spoke and acted her love to me when I suffered nightmares. Her compassion on those terrible nights was very real and comforting.

My thoughts and wishes for the day is to invoke this energy of compassion to more people around me and hope that the universe is kind and sees it fit to reciprocate this back to me.