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6th
key
STOP
BEING AFRAID
TO CHANGE
(how
is it that I understand everything by now, but in truth I'm
scarred shitless by just the thought of really changing my
life?)
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We're not here to see how it happened. The fact is that life often
seems like warmed-up pasta seasoned with rotten goat cheese.
And ever since I was small, nobody understood me.
At birth, they separated me from my mother: for three hours I felt
like an orphan, and she didn't feel all that great herself. There
were Thursdays when I felt really shitty. It seemed to me that an
international organization of aerophages had decided to meet at
my house to hold a contest. Nightmare Thursdays: she had left me,
and the members of a police division from Padua would try out a
shipment of new billy clubs on me which they had to test in a hurry.
All these experiences traumatized me a bit.
It is right and useful to be aware of the sources of our problems,
but it is also useless to devote the next twenty years crying and
punishing oneself while financing our psychoanalyst's purchase of
a villa by the sea. There is, however, a purely psychological matter
that we cannot avoid facing. Even after having assimilated the 5
steps that I have proposed to you, you will find yourself in front
of an apparently insurmountable obstacle. Something holds you back
that inside you objects to listening, to letting itself go and it
says firmly:
"I
don't want to change!"
One
should acknowledge this volition. Don't fight it: understand it,
and satisfy its aspirations. It's meaningless to stir up an inner
war with oneself. One needs to learn to love and to understand oneself.
What frightens us is that, after the first simple steps, the different
awareness that we have of ourselves makes us feel our emotions in
a more vivid and powerful way.
Disappointment or joy, anxiety or satisfaction are stronger, and
we feel them with greater clarity precisely because we have opened
the channel of listening to ourselves. In childhood, we were capable
of real emotional storms. They would shatter us. And often, they
were connected to the scoldings and the incomprehensible discipline
that was imposed on us little creatures.
Bursts of aggressiveness and rebellion that would end up directed
against our parents and adults. Outbursts that provoked disapproval,
scoldings and refusals. There is nothing worse for a child than
not feeling in tune with daddy and mommy. It is a distancing that
the little one's unconscious brain experiences in a dramatic way.
That is why we have learned to bottle up our emotions and, as soon
as we feel them coming out, we panic.
We are terrorized by not knowing how to control these emotional
outpourings. In these moments of anger and tears,
it seemed to us we were possessed by a demon. Our body would tighten
up, turn red, heat up, and tremble without our very young will being
able to control it. We aren't children anymore. We can calmly listen
to our emotions without necessarily falling into asocial behaviour.
Therefore, the next time that you feel the brake on your fear of
emotions giving way, calm down: you can listen to the emotional
storm that will hit you without feeling overwhelmed.
The power of emotional possession is physiologically frightening,
but it won't hurt you. In fact, it is beneficial. Crying, laughing,
trembling, feeling your heart leap inside your chest or being bored
to tears by someone are enlivening experiences that make your energies
more fluid and free you from deep contractions. Breathe and enjoy
them.
(Continue)
Index
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