Today, I’d like to write about self-control. I am standing at my desk, wondering what I will write this morning. I am here, holding myself to this task. The ability to hold myself has been a lifelong learning for me. I’d like to share with you several key moments and insights about self-control that I’ve discovered along the way.
When I was 3 and 4 years old, I had two surgeries to correct a birth defect. My levator muscles in both of my eyelids did not fully develop leaving me with the ability to open my eyes only slightly. While I could still see the world, I saw through slits and had to twist and tilt my head to get a better view.
The first surgery failed to correct the problem. About a year later, I had a second surgery at a children’s hospital in Chicago, Illinois. The year was 1978. I’m thinking now of a photo of myself in the glass-walled lobby of the hospital, wearing a poofy powder-blue jacket with a soft white fringe on the hood that allowed blonde whisps to peak out and frame my little face.
The doctors performed a frontalis suspension procedure on both of my eyelids under general anesthesia. The surgery involved making a large incision on my left outer thigh to harvest fascia lata to make a sling that was then connected along the base of my upper eyelashes and anchored above my eyebrows. After the surgery, my eyes and leg were bandaged. I recall the texture and taste of salty green beans being fed to me. I also remember completely freaking out when a pack of my caregivers held me down on an examination table. I was a wild animal, and these huge predators overpowered me, despite my attempts to kick, bite, scratch, scream and get away.
The surgery was ultimately success. But, my older brother commented that I came home a different girl. As an adult in my 40’s, I finally began to look back in time and to consider that the terror that I had experienced was chronically etched into my physicality. My physiology was frozen in a fear response to the trauma I had experienced, and this frozen fear was contributing to symptoms like social anxiety, fear of being touched, somatic flashbacks, and insomnia to name a few.
About 10 years ago, I started a seated meditation practice. I chose “feeling sensations in the body” as the object of my meditation. As I practiced, I began to develop more skill in my ability to simply experience the physical feelings of fear. Over time, I noticed how I could focus my attention with my eye position to isolate physical regions, mostly in my brain but also my body, in ways that would allow the constriction of fear to mobilize and pass.
My awareness was growing, and I began to observe not only my physical feelings, but also the phenomena of my personality. I noticed that there was stuck psychological fear as well. I worked on this too. With the help of process-oriented facilitators, I shapeshifted into the “holder downer” energy to feel it and to better understand that the intention of those people holding me down was to help me. With friends and through contact improv dance, I created touch experiences that were like exposure therapy, such as being touched in safe ways which helped my brain unwire the fear response to normal touch stimuli. Dance also allowed me to sense a wide variety of body types and to feel the relative power in my body. Through this process and increasing the flexibility and strength in my body, I developed confidence in my ability to self-protect.
All of this was wonderful progress, and after the energy of the traumatic memory had dissipated, I was feeling free. My worldview had shifted. I no longer perceived the world and the people in it as unsafe. I started to interact with others more, deepened friendships, and was able to share more intimately than ever before.
Despite my progress, I was still unable to get any traction with my personal projects and I was not meeting my foundational life needs, like shelter, food and medical care very well. I wouldn’t commit to a substantial goal. I uprooted myself constantly by taking short-term gigs all over the country, paid the minimal amount of rent to avoid a 9-5, even living in my van and a barn at times, while continually getting curious about and distracted by new disciplines of study. Having awareness that I needed to settle down yet feeling unsure of where to settle and what type of work to pursue, I wondered, who was that little girl in the powder-blue jacket, the one that my brother said had not returned from the hospital? What were her natural inclinations?
That little girl was a dancer and a dreamer, full of play energy, wanting to be free, free, free to explore new, new, new. Those inclinations were fundamentally a part of my personality, and when I looked back at my life objectively and with full responsibility for all of the actions that I took, even after I processed my childhood trauma, I saw that my desire to be free had a darker side: a fear of being controlled. This fear affected my relationships and professional work. For example:
- I felt sad, angry, and repressed when I perceived others were controlling me, especially blaming the control of patriarchy for my self-hatred, having been born in a female body.
- I controlled my space, rather than feel like my space was controlling me or that others were controlling me via my environment. I was choosing isolation to achieve this.
- I controlled my partner, deciding what behaviors were okay and not okay for my partner or for our finances.
- With unconscious resent and without the skill of self-control, I used social roles to provide structure for my behavior to give me the feeling that I was in control and to hold me accountable.
- I hopped from job to job to job rather than commit.
Now that I have more awareness, I see that I need to drop the controlling behaviors that derive from my fear and develop my self-control.
Seeing this fear as the darker side of my natural personality has given me a new perspective on my childhood trauma. I think my natural inclination to dance freely in life came intertwined with the fear of being controlled and it’s flavors: the fear of narrowing down, fear of committing, fear of getting stuck going over known information, fear of structure. The experience of being held down as a child was so impactful in part due to this underlying fragility, this fear of being pinned down. Releasing the stuck fear of the trauma was important work, however, more work is necessary for me to learn to hold myself down, to develop my self-control, to choose my own goals without external influence and be capable of following through with my own volition.
I know not everyone will relate. Many folks have a natural inclination to stay comfortably in their box and keep perfecting it and organizing it through their self-control . If you are like this, perhaps you have a fear of chaos and the unknown that is impacting your choices in life. I’m just really struggling with my fear of control right now. I need to learn to make a stable box for the foundation of my life. I need to meet my basic needs, and this fear of being held down feels overwhelming at times.
To learn self-control, I just have to repeatedly do it. Psychologically, when I exert my self-control though, I feel physical sensations as if there is an existential threat. In a way, there is. I have to momentarily let die the strong inclination to be free and to pursue “new, new, new” and instead take action despite lingering physiological experiences of fear. It’s hard to remember that the feelings of fear are just psychological, that I am not in physical danger, that there is no monster holding me, that it will pass.
And this is where another side of holding becomes very important. I need to be able to hold and comfort myself. If my inner dialogue shifts towards inner criticism for past behavior or for not having yet mastered self-control, I can hold myself compassionately. I can say soothing words of encouragement, I can take actions to help my physiology re-regulate, and I can hold my insight and the task at hand, which when I am able to defy my fear and master self-control, will be an achievement of a lifetime.
In remembering that some people won’t relate to this particular experience, one final aspect of holding comes to mind. Based on my life experience and observations, I find that I am not alone in that we all have fear and we all have qualities about ourselves that we are unaware of. My experience is not so special even though it feels so physiologically overwhelming at times. It’s a natural human experience. We all have natural inclinations that come with darker sides. You are not that different from me. Perhaps you are me. If you are me, then it follows that just as I need to hold myself in compassion as I learn self-control, I need to hold you in compassion as well.
It seems I’ve made it to the end and successfully held myself to this task! I held my focus on this self-directed goal, held myself compassionately in acceptance of my past behavior, and will remember to hold you in compassion as you dance on your journey of learning!