The Fear of feeling and the etiquette of sorrow
One problem I often face when helping clients in recovery is their fear of feeling. Because, as Gabor Mate says:
"A hurt is at the centre of all addictive behaviours"
...and this hurt was successfully and reliably numbed through the substance or action used in one’s addiction. So now in recovery, the pain is resurfacing and it’s scary not to have protection.
A choice must be made: to feel the pain or not?
While of course it’s normal to not want to feel pain, in this case and for long-term recovery to be successful, one must go against their natural inclination to avoid pain and instead, learn to lean right into it.
Why?
Because the pain also holds the gift. This gift is our unique perception of, and related ability to, experience and respond to all of the fleeting beauty in this world.
How deep you go in will be matched by exactly how much you can radiate out.
How far down into the depths of feeling pain you can descend, will be matched exactly by how high into love you can rise.
This follows the fundamental Yin Yang nature of the Universe.
Here is a perfect story to this point from Stephen Jenkinson, as he appeared on the A Tranquil Passage podcast by Michael Brooke.
Stephen is speaking about a time in young adulthood when he was leaving a movie theatre with his mentor Brother Blue. They had just watched the film, The Elephant Man, and Stephen asked, “So, what did you think?” and Brother Blue, replied,
“My heart is broken, I never want it to mend.”
Stephen explains, “Now I have never heard anyone approach the alter of human suffering that way. Not before, not since.”
“What he was saying was, ‘Human suffering is one of the sources of humanity.’ You solve the human suffering, you end up with less humanity, very, very likely.”
“Now. I’m not advocating meaningless and mindless endurance of horrendous personal or cultural circumstance, now he didn’t mean that either, he said, ‘My heart is broken, i never want it to mend,’ what he meant was, my memory of what it means to be human is connected to my heartbrokenness.”
“If I have no more heartbrokenness, the chances are very good that I don’t have much heart either.”
“And sadly that’s the solution in a time of plague and otherwise, that so many seem to be seeking, right?”
”That less heart results in less brokenness. No, it results in a kind of numbness instead that the chances of you recovering from aren’t great.”
“No, so what’s one alternative? Life will deliver to you many opportunities to learn the etiquette of sorrow. The etiquette, not the endurance of it, but how to do it.” 1
Not the endurance of it - but how to do it. And to begin, one must face their fear of feeling.
"Being human is not hard because you're doing it wrong it's hard because you're doing it right. You will never change the fact that being human is hard, so you must change your idea that it was ever supposed to be easy.” Glennon Doyle
Turning into the hurt at the centre of an addiction is not easy but turning away from the hurt can have even more profound and longer-lasting consequences. The strategy of avoidance never works; especially in important matters of health.
Fortunately, we can identify the exact point at which one turns away. This happens when the fear of feeling is expressed in a statement. A few of the common ones are:
Right now is not a good time
That’s why I relapsed before, so…
My recovery is too fragile
I don’t have enough support
I’m afraid of…
While all of the above can:
be true, and
be an excuse, and
be an avoidance, and
be a valid, logical concern
and all be true at the same time! So…it can be tough to know exactly where one is and exactly what the next steps should be.
So to make choosing a bit clearer, we can revisit…
The Etiquette of Sorrow, which recognizes:
My heart is broken, I never want it to mend.
This provides:
The ability to dive into the natural depths of grief and sorrow
To do so without seeking numbness or avoidance
Gifts to recognize the stunning and-soon-to-be-gone beauty of our daily lives.
Opportunity to metabolize both the pain and the beauty into our unique expressions
Less heart doesn’t lead to less broken heartedness
Instead, this results in:
A kind of numbness
The kind of which the chances from you recovering from aren’t great.
More Down Side:
When a person turns away from the hurt and voices their fear as, “Now's not a good time to go into feelings…”
Here are some questions I would ask:
Ok, how long do you want to be aware of those feelings and choose not to feel them?
How much energy is spent on not feeling?
How similar is this to your patterns in addiction?
I’ve seen this last for years…decades in some cases. Is it worth it?
To which I'm given the classic line of avoidance, “I'll try," or "I'll work on it.”
What piles up while one is trying and working on it?
What is lost during this time...never to be gotten back?
And ironically enough, all of this turning away just leads to more pain.
The Upside:
Your Superpower awaits.
When one turns into the pain, practices the skill of broken-heartedness and moves through life with their best etiquette of sorrow, they are doing it like no one else on the planet can.
One returns from this encounter with their pain metabolized in some way. It is “digestive” process, which both coalesces experience into tangible wisdom and sheds any unneeded material, such as the weight of guilt and shame.
One way of looking at this process is provided by the path of the Hero’s Journey (Program Lesson #29) where the Hero has found their treasure lying in the deepest cave and guarded by a great dragon. In this case, it’s the Dragon of Fear, preventing you from reaching the treasure of feeling. This is the moment where the choice to face that Fear and claim the treasure is made.
Caboose:
As Glennon Doyle states, being human is hard - it's not meant to be easy. And no matter how you view the etiquette of sorrow, the skills of broken-heartedness and the alchemy of transforming addiction into Medicine, one issue remains crystal clear…
...we all have a simple choice to make when approaching the alter of human suffering:
Do we allow ourselves to feel the heartbreak…
...or do we turn away?
Our Hearts hang in the balance.
A Tranquil Passage Podcast by Michael Brooke, April 12, 2021 “An Interview with Stephen Jenkinson”
