One more time around Piccadilly Circus...
musicman asked the very legitimate question of "What do I mean by a free-fall state?"
Most of my life, I have been a control freak, and changes to my carefully constructed plans constituted a massive and unpleasant travesty of epic proportions (at least in my mind). I don't deal with fluctuations well, and surprises even less well than that, so much of my adult life has been very goal-oriented within the context of controlling my surroundings.
The last few years have taken most of my understanding about why and how I do that and tossed them out the window, generally without necessarily leaving me with much of a replacement strategy for self-soothing and coping with Big and Small Shifts. Ergo, there's been a LOT of emotional thrashing while I adjust to not being at all secure in anything I've done: marriage, relationships, school, career changes, general employment, hobbies, blah blah blah.
That adjustment still looks a lot like thrashing. On most days, that's probably a very generous description of it. The thing that changes over time is the difference between "thrashing to grab at the first external thing that will stabilize me/the situation" and "thrashing because I'm trying to stabilize myself without the external hand-holds."
What follows is obviously not going to be a perfect analogy, but it will give hopefully some idea of how I view the difference:
Most of us have seen the kinds of film stunts where someone goes through a window, or falls out of an aircraft, and pinwheels crazily with arms and legs waving around as they fall uncontrolled and uncontrollably. Contrast that with skydivers, who, even if they have a sloppy exit from the aircraft, can eventually stabilize into a freefall position that enables them to control the speed and direction of the fall before the 'chute opens. Sometimes, this is the heads-down, streamlined "tracking" position that's all about speed; sometimes it's the flat-spread starfish position which slows the fall by increasing surface area for wind resistance, and can be directionally-controlled to a remarkable degree by angling a hand, an arm, a leg *just so*.
People falling out of windows and whatnot are generally not doing so because they want to be, and are not presumed to be looking forward to the drop, never mind the abrupt and possibly liquefying stop at the bottom. They will windmill wildly in a knee-jerk reactive attempt to grab *anything* that will save them, or at least stop the fall sufficiently to allow for the hope of rescue. It's uncontrolled, and reliant on the hope of there being something external to use as a means of stopping that fearful trip.
People jumping deliberately out of airplanes, on the other hand, while still dependent on the parachutes to keep them from cratering in to a field somewhere, are all about enjoying the state of freefall because *they* control the descent, up to and including when and how to deploy the 'chute, and steer it once deployed. That state of freefall might start with a little wildness at the beginning, until the diver gets the balance right or stabilizes in a position that stops the tumbling and accounts for wind and gear variances, et cetera. After that, they are their own control and stabilization. They are still falling - gravity is an inexorable factor in this process no matter how you wound up in the air to begin with - but they determine the speed and direction and timing of whatever factors they can control, and accept the risks of those factors they cannot, or might not, control as being part of the thrill of the dive in the first place.
I spent a few years hanging around with skydivers, and I've known people who've bounced in; I've known a couple of people who cratered in. Bad landings happen even when you've been comfortable in what you've been doing for *years*. Getting better with managing one's self in a free-fall state doesn't mean abolishing risk, it just means you're better at mitigating the risks, and accepting that risk is a permanent part of the equation. Likewise, in the metaphorical context as well, I've also known both bouncers (those who've gotten damaged but lived to tell the tale and generally jump again) and craters (those who took damage beyond repair and never recovered).
Control freaks do everything they can to eliminate ALL risk, which is a desperately dumb thing to do. Risk is like germs: always there, often just on the brink of a breakaway infection. You can be as diligent as you like about washing hands and not touching thy neighbour's germy ass (or thy neighbour's wife's germy ass), but unless you live in a hyper-sterilized bubble for the rest of your life, there will be germs. You will get sick. Thankfully, your odds of surviving a cold or flu (or even surviving a skydiving course and your first jump) are *far* higher than your odds of surviving the unanticipated and uncontrolled fall from a window several stories up.
Learning to manage risk is one thing; control freakism is an extreme response to the need to have everything external to one's self managed, often because the Self is so... unmanaged. Learning to manage the Self in the face of risk is another kettle of fish entirely. Leaving my job in 2007 was risky. Being poly is risky. Grad school was risky. Shifting boundaries in primary relationships is risky. Leaving my permanent, full-time job for a shorter-term contract is risky. Not knowing whether I'll still be married in a month is risky. Not knowing where I'll be employed, or living, next spring is risky. Working with people in emotional crisis is risky. Not having a financial nest-egg to fall back on is risky. Driving my car is risky. Leaving my house is risky. Every movement my spine makes is risky. Every lover I take to my bed is risky. Any lover I take in future to my heart will be risky. Managing issues around aging parents in declining health is risky.
Trying to control-freak my way through zeroing all that risk was making me nutty. Trying to adjust to living in a freefall state in which I can accept those risks more gracefully and fine-tune my movement through them, without pinwheeling wildly in an uncontrolled grasp at somethinganything to stop the sense of falling into overwhelmedness, is difficult to do but, in the long run, provides a saner approach based largely in moderating my own position within that state. Recent difficult conversations that historically would have resulted in see-them-from-space supernovas and contentious, hostile, blamestorming breakups have not only NOT resulted in repeating historicity, but have in fact opened more doors than they've closed (at least for me, as the only party I can speak for with any degree of authority). When asked at one point as recently as last night what I was thinking in a quiet interlude, my response was, "I'm actually working hard to NOT think, because that's what keeps me listening and present with you, and keeps my own reactivity down."
I've learned that if I'm thinking, if I stop listening because I'm waiting for my turn to speak instead (translation: waiting for the chance to make it all about me instead of whomever is speaking), if I'm building the narrative in my head, then I'm already closing down to a degree against the other person. And when I start reacting in my head to that internal narrative, when the defences kick in and I just want to stop someone talking so I can talk... that's when the wild, 14th-story-window-busting pinwheeling begins, and I have lost control of my Self, and my awareness of how better to navigate the situation. NOT thinking, on the other hand, buys me time to settle into the sense of what's going on with the other person, to actually *hear* words and behind-words without running everything I hear through my narrative filters.
You'd be amazed at how hard it is to do nothing in those moments. Last night was maybe the first time I've actively been able to do that (or at least been aware of what I was doing well enough to articulate it in the moment, when asked), but the end result was so totally worth it. Authentic and emotionally-engaged-but-non-reactive presence in the face of dire relational threat made controlling the freefall a matter of tweaking the hands a little to restabilize, rather than flailing wildly for something external that wasn't there to save me.
Finding ways of applying that sense of calmness in the other areas of freefall (like my career/employment state) will come, hopefully, in time and with mindful practice. This is not to say there won't still be moments of wild-arsed pinwheeling when I get overwhelmed - I'd be denying the fully-capricious nature of the passionate and relentlessly-moving Gemini personality if I claimed otherwise - but in this small thing, there is a difference, a newness, an introduction of a degree of Self and tweakable control that makes being in the freefall state more... survivable, if not entirely acceptable (and a long cry yet from embraceable, for all that the control freak's attempt to enforce control often creates as much chaos as it mitigates). With all aspects of my life currently in flux, only some of which is in my direct and legitimate control, something has to change to allow for a greater margin of peace in that state of flux. Thrashing is exhausting, unsustainable, and just as likely to induce collateral damage to those near me on the way down. A (more) controlled descent allows for greater opportunities to surf change with an awareness and acceptance of risk, plus a sense of Self and tweak-level of control that builds on both positive and negative experience without fixating exclusively on either.
Like so many Personal Growth Opportunities, it's a work in progress. And to those of you who think this is starting to look like I'm learning how to lean into the sharp things (finally and for really-realz) after doing all that initial work from Pema Chodron's When Things Fall Apart so many years ago, well... you're not wrong.
And now, for psychedelicbike who is just here for the cat pictures, I give you this:
Most of my life, I have been a control freak, and changes to my carefully constructed plans constituted a massive and unpleasant travesty of epic proportions (at least in my mind). I don't deal with fluctuations well, and surprises even less well than that, so much of my adult life has been very goal-oriented within the context of controlling my surroundings.
The last few years have taken most of my understanding about why and how I do that and tossed them out the window, generally without necessarily leaving me with much of a replacement strategy for self-soothing and coping with Big and Small Shifts. Ergo, there's been a LOT of emotional thrashing while I adjust to not being at all secure in anything I've done: marriage, relationships, school, career changes, general employment, hobbies, blah blah blah.
That adjustment still looks a lot like thrashing. On most days, that's probably a very generous description of it. The thing that changes over time is the difference between "thrashing to grab at the first external thing that will stabilize me/the situation" and "thrashing because I'm trying to stabilize myself without the external hand-holds."
What follows is obviously not going to be a perfect analogy, but it will give hopefully some idea of how I view the difference:
Most of us have seen the kinds of film stunts where someone goes through a window, or falls out of an aircraft, and pinwheels crazily with arms and legs waving around as they fall uncontrolled and uncontrollably. Contrast that with skydivers, who, even if they have a sloppy exit from the aircraft, can eventually stabilize into a freefall position that enables them to control the speed and direction of the fall before the 'chute opens. Sometimes, this is the heads-down, streamlined "tracking" position that's all about speed; sometimes it's the flat-spread starfish position which slows the fall by increasing surface area for wind resistance, and can be directionally-controlled to a remarkable degree by angling a hand, an arm, a leg *just so*.
People falling out of windows and whatnot are generally not doing so because they want to be, and are not presumed to be looking forward to the drop, never mind the abrupt and possibly liquefying stop at the bottom. They will windmill wildly in a knee-jerk reactive attempt to grab *anything* that will save them, or at least stop the fall sufficiently to allow for the hope of rescue. It's uncontrolled, and reliant on the hope of there being something external to use as a means of stopping that fearful trip.
People jumping deliberately out of airplanes, on the other hand, while still dependent on the parachutes to keep them from cratering in to a field somewhere, are all about enjoying the state of freefall because *they* control the descent, up to and including when and how to deploy the 'chute, and steer it once deployed. That state of freefall might start with a little wildness at the beginning, until the diver gets the balance right or stabilizes in a position that stops the tumbling and accounts for wind and gear variances, et cetera. After that, they are their own control and stabilization. They are still falling - gravity is an inexorable factor in this process no matter how you wound up in the air to begin with - but they determine the speed and direction and timing of whatever factors they can control, and accept the risks of those factors they cannot, or might not, control as being part of the thrill of the dive in the first place.
I spent a few years hanging around with skydivers, and I've known people who've bounced in; I've known a couple of people who cratered in. Bad landings happen even when you've been comfortable in what you've been doing for *years*. Getting better with managing one's self in a free-fall state doesn't mean abolishing risk, it just means you're better at mitigating the risks, and accepting that risk is a permanent part of the equation. Likewise, in the metaphorical context as well, I've also known both bouncers (those who've gotten damaged but lived to tell the tale and generally jump again) and craters (those who took damage beyond repair and never recovered).
Control freaks do everything they can to eliminate ALL risk, which is a desperately dumb thing to do. Risk is like germs: always there, often just on the brink of a breakaway infection. You can be as diligent as you like about washing hands and not touching thy neighbour's germy ass (or thy neighbour's wife's germy ass), but unless you live in a hyper-sterilized bubble for the rest of your life, there will be germs. You will get sick. Thankfully, your odds of surviving a cold or flu (or even surviving a skydiving course and your first jump) are *far* higher than your odds of surviving the unanticipated and uncontrolled fall from a window several stories up.
Learning to manage risk is one thing; control freakism is an extreme response to the need to have everything external to one's self managed, often because the Self is so... unmanaged. Learning to manage the Self in the face of risk is another kettle of fish entirely. Leaving my job in 2007 was risky. Being poly is risky. Grad school was risky. Shifting boundaries in primary relationships is risky. Leaving my permanent, full-time job for a shorter-term contract is risky. Not knowing whether I'll still be married in a month is risky. Not knowing where I'll be employed, or living, next spring is risky. Working with people in emotional crisis is risky. Not having a financial nest-egg to fall back on is risky. Driving my car is risky. Leaving my house is risky. Every movement my spine makes is risky. Every lover I take to my bed is risky. Any lover I take in future to my heart will be risky. Managing issues around aging parents in declining health is risky.
Trying to control-freak my way through zeroing all that risk was making me nutty. Trying to adjust to living in a freefall state in which I can accept those risks more gracefully and fine-tune my movement through them, without pinwheeling wildly in an uncontrolled grasp at somethinganything to stop the sense of falling into overwhelmedness, is difficult to do but, in the long run, provides a saner approach based largely in moderating my own position within that state. Recent difficult conversations that historically would have resulted in see-them-from-space supernovas and contentious, hostile, blamestorming breakups have not only NOT resulted in repeating historicity, but have in fact opened more doors than they've closed (at least for me, as the only party I can speak for with any degree of authority). When asked at one point as recently as last night what I was thinking in a quiet interlude, my response was, "I'm actually working hard to NOT think, because that's what keeps me listening and present with you, and keeps my own reactivity down."
I've learned that if I'm thinking, if I stop listening because I'm waiting for my turn to speak instead (translation: waiting for the chance to make it all about me instead of whomever is speaking), if I'm building the narrative in my head, then I'm already closing down to a degree against the other person. And when I start reacting in my head to that internal narrative, when the defences kick in and I just want to stop someone talking so I can talk... that's when the wild, 14th-story-window-busting pinwheeling begins, and I have lost control of my Self, and my awareness of how better to navigate the situation. NOT thinking, on the other hand, buys me time to settle into the sense of what's going on with the other person, to actually *hear* words and behind-words without running everything I hear through my narrative filters.
You'd be amazed at how hard it is to do nothing in those moments. Last night was maybe the first time I've actively been able to do that (or at least been aware of what I was doing well enough to articulate it in the moment, when asked), but the end result was so totally worth it. Authentic and emotionally-engaged-but-non-reactive presence in the face of dire relational threat made controlling the freefall a matter of tweaking the hands a little to restabilize, rather than flailing wildly for something external that wasn't there to save me.
Finding ways of applying that sense of calmness in the other areas of freefall (like my career/employment state) will come, hopefully, in time and with mindful practice. This is not to say there won't still be moments of wild-arsed pinwheeling when I get overwhelmed - I'd be denying the fully-capricious nature of the passionate and relentlessly-moving Gemini personality if I claimed otherwise - but in this small thing, there is a difference, a newness, an introduction of a degree of Self and tweakable control that makes being in the freefall state more... survivable, if not entirely acceptable (and a long cry yet from embraceable, for all that the control freak's attempt to enforce control often creates as much chaos as it mitigates). With all aspects of my life currently in flux, only some of which is in my direct and legitimate control, something has to change to allow for a greater margin of peace in that state of flux. Thrashing is exhausting, unsustainable, and just as likely to induce collateral damage to those near me on the way down. A (more) controlled descent allows for greater opportunities to surf change with an awareness and acceptance of risk, plus a sense of Self and tweak-level of control that builds on both positive and negative experience without fixating exclusively on either.
Like so many Personal Growth Opportunities, it's a work in progress. And to those of you who think this is starting to look like I'm learning how to lean into the sharp things (finally and for really-realz) after doing all that initial work from Pema Chodron's When Things Fall Apart so many years ago, well... you're not wrong.
And now, for psychedelicbike who is just here for the cat pictures, I give you this: