The evidence to the contrary however is constantly building and it's very evident that where I fail is in not giving myself enough credit. If I step back and view my current reality with a wider lense it's pretty clear that I can do hard things, I have the ability to be creative and pivot at a moment's notice. Being a dementia carer is honing those skills. It's just that I automatically apply those skills in my role as a carer for my friend, so rather than standing out to me I just see it as the norm.
It reminds me of job interviews when they ask you how you would handle a certain situation and your mind goes blank. Because so much of what we do is day to day and is literally done on auto pilot. There is no narrator of your actions, they just are.
The answer to fear is being brave and as I've said in an earlier post because we don't analyze our actions on a daily basis few of us realize how brave we actually are. Most of us tackle the hard stuff on auto pilot and it's not until something new that we have time to ruminate on comes along that we throw ourselves into self doubt. It's the contemplation and the stories that we tell ourselves that are what sink us into fear.
I may have mentioned it before but there is something that being a dog mum taught me. Dogs lack the part of the brain that creates story. It's how you can yell at them one moment and the next moment they're giving you kisses. They are so in the moment that their brain says I'm being yelled at and then they move on. As humans we would attach the story about why we're being yelled at, how it makes us feel and how mean the other person is. Dogs don't do this.
In the last few months in order to get through the sadness of loss and be able to function I've used this as a technique. I can think of what happened even tell someone about it and I'm ok as long as I don't attach the story and the emotion. The only thing that cracks me when I'm doing this is when someone is being compassionate to me.
Which leads me to think that this concept could be useful for facing up to situations that provoke a fear response and hold me back. Maybe if I be 'like a dog' and drop the story I may be able to push through and maybe that thing that I need to do may actually get done.
Lib xxx
Photo by Kelli McClintock on Unsplash
