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So, attend - breath in, feel it - befriend, offer space, say yes, some kindness.
So an example that I'd like to share with you is of one woman I worked with some years back,
she had gone through a series of really painful relationships and
they all ended, and they all, she felt, were failures that reflected on her
undesirability, her lack of worth...
Then she had a 10-year hiatus, like from like 32 to 42 or something like that,
and so it was a long time, and then she began dating,
and as you can imagine, in this new round,
she was terrified of what was going to go wrong
I mean she was so set, so primed with fear and fight/flight
and her main way of fight/flight was this generating all the stories
like she'd tell herself 'I really need to be like this because that's what's going to show that...'
you know, she had all these ways she wanted to configure herself to be likable
and her fear was he'd see her fear, that was her fear.
So, when we worked together, you know, and I asked her what was going on,
you know, she described the fears 'I'm gonna blow it, he'll see how afraid I am,
he's just being patient right now but who likes insecure people', you know, that was,
this stuff that I'm sure many of you can relate to... So this was the mental fear-body, okay?
And then her physical body, she'd say, so the first step was,
okay, just say to the thoughts 'thank you very much but not now' and come into the body.
That's the first step, you know, just attending, contact: what's here?
In her body as she she named it, it was clutching and tightness and pounding,
so she'd name it and then say 'yes, okay, let's just agree to let it be there,
agree to let it be there'...
And then she'd go off into thoughts again as soon as she was settled into it
and the thoughts, she was believing:
'These are real, this is really what's going to happen.' I said: 'No wait,
you don't have to believe them: thank you very much, come back.'
So that was step one:
recognizing how she left, thank you very much, come back,
feel and name and agree to what's here.
As she got a little bit of the knack of being with the sensations,
and it takes something to stay with unpleasant sensations,
then she began to very intentionally become more gentle.
And that's what I mean by befriending, it's, in some way there's a sense,
just as the gesture of touching your hand on your heart (I should use my right hand)
[laugh]
that, just like this gesture, in some way she was communicating to the place of fear:
'it's okay, you can be there.'
I've done many many sessions with people
where if they can get to the point of like sensing 'well, what does the fear most want?'
often the fear just wants us to accept that it's there
it's a part of us that just needs to be accepted.
So in some ways she was saying 'okay, you can be here.'
That's what I mean by befriend; the intention to be kind.
And the more she became gentle and the more she just let it be there,
the more she discovered what we call space, a kind of tender space,
and as she described it, you know, 'I get it
that that fearful insecure person is not who I am.'
It doesn't mean I am this secure, confident, together person, it just means
I get that that's been playing out for years and years - it's not my identity.
She had more space, more freedom. And in this relationship as it worked out,
because they both were practicing meditation and they put a value on
honesty, they began to name out loud what they were experiencing,
which truly is, I think of it as Vipassana out loud or
we now call it 'Interpersonal Vipassana' or 'Ivip'
that's our latest phrase, but it's where we start naming out loud
and holding a space for each other and what we're feeling,
it's a very powerful practice with another person.
You just name what's true, you name it, hold it, name it, hold it...
If what you're naming brings up conflict then you need to bring in some other skills,
but if you're just holding a space for each other,
in the naming, what's here becomes less personal.
It's just, it's not my fear, it's the fear.
And they were both able to find they both were insecure, which of course helps it out too
because we all are; I mean, when we're with each other,
if we're really honest, much of the time
there's a fear there, we're afraid of each other some.
And that's okay, I mean there's also love and appreciation and fun and...
but there's some fear, and to the extent that there's fear,
and it's not acknowledged and processed,
it creates a separation, it stops us from
being able to sense the springtime of who we are together
that aliveness, that spontaneity.
This is the gift of opening to the fear body:
the fear body, if we're fighting with it or avoiding it or acting out of it,
keeps us from that tenderness.
It keeps us from knowing or belonging,
it's very premise is separation.
When we bring presence to it,
we begin to rest in and inhabit that presence and discover
that set of thoughts, those physical sensations,
that does not define who we are.
We sense this very deep belonging to
the space and the awareness and the tenderness
that's attending and befriending.
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