The sheer panic of being wide open and vulnerable.
Photo by Daiga Ellaby on Unsplash
The SHEER PANIC of being wide open and vulnerable.
So many of us want to ascend and meet god. So many of us want it so badly that we'll do anything we can to get there, and fast.
Because we understand that it doesn't feel good to be closed off, defensive, shut down, or otherwise protective of ourselves.
We want community. We want a family (maybe even one we never had). We want to collaborate with other people.
One of the ways this materializes is through joining spiritual communities (one of the other ways is through trauma-bonding, which I'll get to some other time). Because in spiritual communities most people are wide open and vulnerable and so it feels like a safe place to take a cue from the modeling around us and open up, too.
Poof: insta-family! Brothers and sisters as far as the eye can see!
But one of the other things that is pretty common in spiritual communities is a lack of boundaries (just like the family you grew up in).
And so inevitably, even in spiritual communities, we reach a point where we discover, once again, our own defenses, and we close off and shut down.
What happened? I thought we wanted to NOT have that experience anymore?
That's part of the problem (only part, not all).
Once open a time, I was wide open and vulnerable. You were, too. It's called being a child.
And once upon a time, other people's lack of consciousness on something or another impacted me so heavily that I went into the SHEER PANIC of being wide open and vulnerable and I shut down.
In my case, that led to being a highly sensitive person with a mind of a fierce warrior. I could handle almost anything without so much as a flinch. All while expertly abandoning my own intuition, needs, and boundaries. On the regular.
I've learned a lot on this journey, and one thing I've learned the hardest (which is to say, as a tough lesson, over and over again), is that it's really compelling and easy to identify with being wide open and vulnerable prematurely and as a default without really checking in with our bodies, just like we identified with being a fierce warrior (I'm still talking about myself here, but maybe this is you, too?).
All the while, we never really learned to listen to ourselves.
How to resolve?
No, you don't need to leave your spiritual community. But you do need to start to tune into yourself a little (a lot) more deeply.
What are the cues that you're closing off and shutting down? What does it feel like in your body?
When I ask my clients, many of whom oscillate between being wide open and shut down, this question, they often can't come up with an immediate answer. Usually because they only realize it when they get resentful and start to panic, not when it's actually happening. And so they might eventually answer with what resentment feels like, or what behaviors in other people set them off.
Sometimes there are hours, days, weeks, and even months in between the moment when they overstepped a boundary in themselves and the moment they realize it.
This was my experience for a really long time, too.
In those moments, there is a lot of URGENCY in needing to change our environment, control other people's behavior, or, if you're anything like me, result to a sharp tongue to set someone else straight and then fleeing the scene (disconnection). Those were my defaults I used with pride in order to cope.
Recovery from this sort of whirlwind is rough. Recovery from living BEYOND a closure, in total survival mode, can take a really long time and is really really hard on our bodies, and our spirits. It makes it hard for us to trust anyone, because we can't even trust ourselves. Often our only resort is to isolate ourselves for days (or lifetimes).
Learning how to restore in community isn't something I've ever witnessed someone be able to successfully jump into without consequence. It is something you can learn there, though, through lots of practice.
But not with lots of practice in what you think you're there to practice (being wide open and vulnerable): lots of practice listening to yourself while surrounded by people you love, and practicing taking action on your boundaries as they arise for you in the moment. To be clear, I'm talking about the boundaries you feel, not the boundaries you think about.
Often this requires clearing the "backlog" of resentment first, so you can actually start to respond in real time to your real environment. With a lifetime's worth of resentment packed into your psyche, it's going to be super hard to feel anything besides your own reactivity, because resentment is a form of perpetual reactivity in itself.
This is why 12-step programs are so powerful for so many people.
Because the program is designed for you to DESCEND, first.
When we descend, we heal, but more importantly, we get sovereignty over our bodies, and our own free will. It's the place where we gather up all our personal power.
From here, being wide open and vulnerable triggers less and less sheer panic the more we work with it. With enough practice — and with enough healing — we begin to discover wider and wider levels of openness and vulnerability, all while staying lucid enough to hit the pause button anytime we need to, with zero remorse.
And what often occurs is that, because we're now able to stay lucid as we move into experiences that have higher and higher levels of sensation, we can begin to flirt with opening wider even when it's uncomfortable. Soon enough, we discover our limitlessness.
This is when we meet the *integrated* fierce warrior inside ourselves. Wide open, vulnerable, warrior of infinite love.