by David Kundtz
When I was a boy, playing noisily with a friend up in my room, my father would sometimes yell out from downstairs, “Pipe down up there!” It was effective because he didn't do it often, so it got my attention. As if caught in a freeze-frame, I stopped making noise right then. So now I borrow my father's words. I say, “Pipe down up there!” to my endless chatter and to my unwanted music. Occasionally it helps. Other times I just decide to continue to notice it and maybe try it again later.
So using a phrase or a word—especially one that has meaning to you—can help. By focusing on it and repeating it quietly to yourself, you might quiet the noise. If it doesn't work, just take note of it. Noticing and naming have the effect of weakening those invasive guests.
An effective way to use naming during your Stopping, even during the briefer times, is to name the fears that you hold in your body. Often the body remembers what the mind forgets; it can hold on to fears and make them present to you by pain, tension, aches, stiffness, and soreness. So when you experience an unusual discomfort in your stomach, you might ask, “I wonder what was wrong with that tuna sandwich I had for lunch?” More accurate questions would be, “Who did I have lunch with?” or “What were we talking about?” When your neck and shoulder tension become severe, maybe it's not just the lack of exercise, but the fear you are carrying there. Thus identified, the fear is weakened. By naming, you are asking the right questions.
Carolyn Myss, a medical intuitive, had this insight during a recent interview: “One of the ways I tell people to deal with fear . . . is to change their vocabulary. Start there and the rest will take care of itself. That's how powerful language is.” Perhaps your fears are based on always being a victim of life and its situations and always being made to suffer. “If I decide that I am not going to think about myself as a victim anymore,” says Myss, “I won't use victim vocabulary. That alone will change my whole life. Once I stop using victim words, I become mindful. It will change your perception and drop it down to your heart, to your feelings, to your self-esteem. It will eventually make the full journey to ground zero.”
This is like a self-fulfilling prophesy. If, in referring to myself, even internally, I persist in using vocabulary such as “afraid of being an addictive personality,” “afraid of never being able to pick the right partner,” or “always needing approval of others,” then it's likely that I will persist in those fears. Myss's insight is that changing the words we use to describe our fears is a big step in ridding ourselves of them.
There is one fear that must be named here; it's the fear that is almost always a part of every other fear, especially those that might come to us while we are Stopped. Its name is Fear of Death. Even more powerfully and importantly its name is Fear of My Death. Recall Neruda's poem, “Fear.” Another between-the-lines message of the poem is that he realizes he is probably dying and that's really what brings up his fear. Recall also what he does with that fear: he spends time with it and embraces it.
Religious faiths are rich with ways to comprehend, embrace, and give meaning to death. For a contemporary treatment of our cultural tendency to avoid the topic of death, you might read Ernest Becker's The Denial of Death. For deepening a compassionate understanding of death, look at Stephen Levine's Who Dies?
Here I want only to give it a name: “You are Fear of My Own Death.” In naming it I hope to encourage you to acknowledge its presence and to become, if you are not already, comfortable and familiar with it. That we are all in the process of dying need not be sad or depressing. Indeed, embracing that reality can become wonderfully liberating. Our principle still—maybe especially—holds true here: By moving into our fears we move out of them.
I wonder how all those who do not write,compose, or paint can manage to escapethe . . . fear which is inherentin the human situation.
GRAHAM GREENE
38
A Telling Relief
Perhaps the most important and most effective thing to do with our fears is to share them with another person. That's what I mean by narrating: telling someone your fears. Telling brings relief. And the more secret and hidden the fear, the more effective and relieving the telling. In fact, this is one way to look at the process of psychotherapy: one person telling, trusting, and sharing their life with another.
For me, one of the most powerful moments in the contemporary literature of psychotherapy is a chapter from Irving Yalom's book, Love's Executioner. He tells of a client, an older woman who needed to learn to trust again. Eventually, during the course of one of their counseling sessions, she simply emptied the contents of her purse and told him stories—meanings, values, feelings—about all of the items she carried there and was now taking out, one by one, to show him. It was utterly simple and utterly profound, and she left the session more able to trust, less burdened, less fearful. And he, the therapist, said, “I think it was the best hour of therapy I ever gave.”
I remember learning the power of sharing fear from my older sister. I was about eight years old and just beginning to hear and use the forbidden (sinful, dirty, or blasphemous) language of adults and feeling a lot of guilty fear about it. One summer evening, my older sister casually asked me if I had ever said something awful like “God damn it!” I can still feel the blush on my childish Catholic face as I heard the question and felt the guilt. For some reason—probably I could read her goodwill and feel that this was safe—I said, “Yes.” I clearly remember her response, “Oh, that's all right, don't worry about it, sometimes I do, too.” It was one of those moments of surprise and affirmation. By sharing my guilty fear, I lost it. I thought, “My sister is perfect, and if she did it, it couldn't be too bad,” and so, “I am just like everyone else.” What relief and acceptance I felt.
To whom can you tell your fears? This is often not an easy question. The answers can be different for everyone. Is it a spouse or partner? Often, they are the most difficult to confide in, either because they are involved in the fear and feel it too closely also or they are too threatened to be able to understand. A parent or sibling? A fortunate number of us have developed such a relationship with a member of the immediate family. Often, though, it will be a friend. A friend with whom you can talk about who you really are. What a gift! A gift to treasure if you have it; one to cultivate if you don't.
Before you share your fear with another, it is like you are alone in your home and hear someone rattling the front door. Your friend's reassurance is a familiar voice outside the door: “Don't be afraid. It's just me.” What a comforting announcement; fear is immediately transformed into connection. You are no longer alone with your fears. Or think of the relief of confession. How much better you feel when you have told someone of the burden you carry. The weight is lifted, and the fear is dissipated.
Fear can never completely leave us. In a way, it's necessary. We would not be safe without it. “Early and provident fear is the mother of safety,” wrote Edmund Burke, the eighteenth-century Irish author and statesman. Fear helps us to be careful. You would not want to lose completely, for example, a fear of height, of dangerous substances, of aggressive people, or of snarling animals. To do so would be to endanger yourself. No, the fears we are speaking of here are the irrational, the unsubstantiated, the inhibiting, and the self-damaging.
Some of the most wonderful years of my priesthood were spent on my three-and-a-half-year assignment to parish work in Cali, Colombia, South America. Some companions and I had a scary experience there. We got stoned.
No, it's not what you might be thinking. This was well before the time of the Cali cartel. By stoned, I mean literally. Four of us, the religious staff of our parish, a fellow-priest, two Benedictine nuns, and I, were driving to the airport to meet a new member of our team, another Benedictine sister. There had been a recent boycott of all the public busses due to a drastic increase in bus fares. The people simply stopped using the busses, the busses quit running, and the city was paralyzed. Outbreaks of violence were reported; often private automibiles were attac
ked. But all that was over; it was safe to go out now—or so we thought.
We were in the riot before we knew it. And that we got out of it unharmed still amazes me. We had to drive through mobs of people with stones, many of them rock-sized, as if through a tunnel of terror. The car was hit more than a hundred times— we later counted the dents—the windows were all smashed and we were totally shaken. When it was over, we began to tell each other and anyone who would listen about our experience. We still remind each other of it when we meet to this day. It has, for all of us, been in the telling that we have recovered, that we have learned from it, and that we have tried to place the experience within the context of our lives and, at that time, within the context of our ministry. Imagine trying to keep quiet about such an experience! Even at this moment as I write about it, and thus tell it again, I find new meanings and new lessons, and I remember many more.
Fear can be told in many ways, not just to another individual, but to the world. Throughout human history fears have been the motive of great artistic and scientific expression. As novelist Graham Greene reminds us in the epigraph that opens this chapter, fear motivates artists to speak to the world about their most profound insights. Is this a way for you to narrate your fear? What can your fear lead you to express artistically to all of us who would welcome your perceptions?
The most terrifying thing isto accept oneself completely.
CARL JUNG
39
The Doctor's Unthinkable Thought
In the autobiographical Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Carl Jung, one of the most eminent physicians and psychologists of the twentieth century, tells a story from when he was about twelve years old. It's a story about overcoming fear by moving into it and noticing, naming, and narrating:
“One fine summer day . . . I came out of school at noon and went to the cathedral square. The sky was gloriously blue, the day one of radiant sunshine. The roof of the cathedral glittered, the sun sparkling from the new, brightly glazed tiles.
“I was overwhelmed by the beauty of the sight, and thought: ‘The world is beautiful and the church is beautiful, and God made all this and sits above it far away in the blue sky on a golden throne and . . .’ here came a great hole in my thoughts, and a choking sensation. I felt numbed and knew only: ‘Don't go on thinking now! Something terrible is coming, something I do not want to think, something I dare not even approach . . . because it would be committing the most frightful of sins.’”
Jung, the pious son of a clergyman, then describes how he did all he could do to keep the vision away and not give into it, how his mother worried about his odd behavior, how he lost sleep, and how he was deeply fearful that if he let the thought come he would plunge himself directly into hell. This was truly a terrified boy.
After going though much mental anxiety, utterly alone in his painful anguish, he finally was able to resolve his conflict: “God also desires me to show courage. And if that is so . . . he will give me his grace. . . . I gathered all my courage, as though I were about to leap forthwith into hellfire, and let the thought come.
“I saw before me the cathedral, the blue sky. God sits on His golden throne, high above the world—and from under the throne an enormous turd falls upon the sparkling new roof, shatters it, and breaks the walls of the cathedral asunder. So that was it! I felt an enormous and indescribable relief.”
Clearly, there is much that could be said about the meaning of this earthy and dramatic image. But what is significant for us is that he overcame his fear by moving into it and by letting it come. He says, “Why did God befoul His cathedral? That, for me, was a terrible thought.” But it was also an important thought for him, a key element in developing his teaching on the Shadow archetype that is pivotal to the way many understand human nature.
This story from Jung demonstrates so clearly the three processes of dealing with the challenges of Stopping. The noticing: “Something terrible is coming. . . . Something I do not want to think.” The naming: “So that was it!”
The narrating takes a little different twist and reminds us that we are not alone in the challenge of telling our fears to others. Says Jung of his experience at the time it occurred: “It would never have occurred to me to speak of my experience openly. . . . I could never have talked about [it] with friends.” He indicates that he finally talked about his experience with his wife, but that was many years later. The final narration, of course, was to include it in his memoir. It took him a long time, but finally he told about it.
Lord! teach me the art of taking minute vacations . . .that I may know . . . there is more to lifethan measuring its speed.
ANONYMOUS AMERICAN PRAYER
40
Saying It to God
Prayer can help us find the courage to deal with our fears. I remember a conversation I had with a woman years ago when I was a priest. She was ill and scared of what her illness might bring. I was visiting her at home and we were talking of her illness when she somewhat abruptly changed the topic and said, “Father, I have been concerned for quite a while because I don't seem to pray very well.” We chatted about this for a moment and then I asked her, “How do you pray?” With a rather embarrassed look on her face she said, “Well, God and I, we just sit and look at each other. That's all I seem to want to do.”
I remember the conversation because that's when I learned a late lesson about prayer and an early lesson about Stopping. That woman was contemplative, even though she would never have used the word to describe herself. She had come to the prayer of quiet. She told God all her fears by merely (merely?) being open to God's presence. Praying can be just hanging out with God. That can lessen fears.
As I am writing this, there have been a spate of articles and studies, some from medically scientific sources, that say that patients who pray, or have doctors who pray with or for them, get better quicker and more completely. Dr. Herbert Benson has presented research that indicates that an ability to combine a simple method of meditation with one's “personal belief system can produce . . . powerful inner effects.” What scientists have discovered, the saints and faithful have long known: Prayer works on the fears of the soul and even on the body.
Prayer is more simple and enormously broader than is often allowed by the systems that teach it. It is often made too complicated. I still like my former parishioner's description the best: “We just sit and look at each other.” There are many other descriptions: Talking with God, communicating with the Divine, conversing with God, connecting with your higher power, or being open and receptive to God. Mohandas Gandhi said, “Prayer is not asking, it is a longing of the soul.” Pope John XXXIII considered every aspect of every moment of his life a prayer; no exceptions. Whatever words you use for the Divine in your life, a time spent in that presence heals and lessens fears. The members of Alcoholics Anonymous, as they often do, have come up with a pithy way to say it: Let go; let God. Simply, prayer is an attitude of the heart and an attitude most richly cultivated during the moments, or days, of Stopping.
Aldous Huxley wrote: “We apprehend (God) . . . in the space that separates the salient features of a picture . . . in the pauses and intervals between the notes of music.” His statement perfectly ties in prayer with the fundamental idea of Stopping: We find the most important parts of life in the spaces between the notes. God is there, as God is in the spaces of your own life. Huxley adds another, more visually oriented dimension by speaking of the space between the features of a picture as a place to find divine presence. What in art is called negative space—the space between the features—is turned into positive space for those who are Stopping.
Prayer, like Stopping, is the spaces between the notes of life. If you are so inclined, prayer—saying it to God—could be the key way of coping with fears during your Stopping experiences.
We've Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapyand the World's Getting Worse
TITLE OF BOOK BY JAMES HILLMAN AND MICHAEL VENTURA
41
S
ome Help in Getting Help
Sometimes noticing, naming, narrating, and praying are not enough, and you need help. If you feel you want to get help as you encounter your fears, here are a few ideas about counseling to keep in mind:
First, counseling does not have to go on for a long time. Often, what is now called “brief therapy” (in the range of three to fifteen weeks, once a week) is all that it takes. As much as anything, therapy speeds up the healing, the growth, or the problem-solving processes.
Second, you can get competent help at a reasonable price. You might have to look a little harder, but it is possible. Check out mental health clinics and (non-proselytizing) church-sponsored counseling agencies. Trained pastoral counselors are one of the world's most valuable and best-kept secrets.
Third, maybe more appropriate for you would be a mentor, coach, or spiritual director. A mentor is, generally, an older person who is wise, caring, experienced in what you need to learn, willing to help, and a person you can trust. Normally it is not a paid relationship. A coach, picking up its model from the sports world, is someone who is not a professional therapist, but is someone who cares, has experience and exposure to basic mental health practice, and to whom you can report regularly for encouragement, advice, or direction. It is most often a paid relationship. A spiritual director is a friendly guide and companion who helps you focus specifically on your spiritual life and whose main question is based on “Where and how is God in your life? And what are the implications of that?” This is often a paid relationship, but also sometimes considered part of the service of clergy.