Brace Yourself! Or maybe you shouldn’t
You’re riding with someone on a bumpy road and the driver says, “brace yourself.” What do you do? You tense up, hold onto whatever you can grab and push against the floor, the ceiling or the sides.
The warning, “brace yourself!” comes when you see a potential threat coming ahead. Once my wife and I were driving at high speed on a highway and a car just veered from one side of the road all the way across both lanes in front of us. I aimed my car directly at where he was at that moment, because it was clear he was moving out of his lane and into our lane. Fortunately, there was no collision. Telling yourself or others, “brace yourself” can come because you see life pulling into your lane with some kind of threat.
Brace yourself is the same thing as tensing up. It’s natural, like the fight or flight response, tensing up to prepare for a crash is normal. You can picture the instructions given on an airplane in the event of a crash. And bracing yourself could be just to manage rough air, not a full catastrophe. But bracing is counterproductive physically and emotionally. Tightening up doesn’t really help when an actual crash comes, in fact it makes things worse. And emotionally “bracing yourself” means to expect the worst; when that happens you physically tighten up your body.
Where do you tighten up when you’re on alert? You probably know your tense places. Mine are my shoulders and stomach. When I am feeling stressed the muscles at the base of my neck get tight and I usually unconsciously raise my left shoulder. Raising your shoulder when it doesn’t need to be raised and keeping it there for several minutes or hours makes it hurt! It’s not a smart thing to do but I don’t do it on purpose. When I realize it is tense, I relax it. Tightening up my digestive system is also unconscious; I only realize I’ve done it when I feel an ache in my belly or side. Then that needs to be relaxed too. The events, small or large, that cause me to “brace myself” can lead me into an ongoing state of vigilance.
Vigilance springs from worry or perceived threat. But vigilance is exhausting and self-focused, and lonely. And it doesn’t take much to put us on guard; it can be a tone of voice, a headline of a news story, a broken promise. When we feel threatened, we pull back and fearfully retreat into ourselves. This fearful isolation leads to more uneasiness. Only connecting improves our sense of well-being. Being connected to others and to ourselves.
I’ve seen this often in work with couples. Often both of them get hurt by the actions of the other. Trust that the other will tenderly care for their emotions is broken. So, they retreat to the other end of the couch, the other side of the house, to a substance or another comfort. This fearful isolation leads to more unease. The answer is connection and being in the moment. This moment, not the past or future. This moment with its joy and fulfillment, with its pain and disillusionment. This moment with the imperfect spouse, friend, family member. This moment with your imperfect self. First-hand experience that may at times be unpleasant but it is real, not imagined, not an elaboration of our fears.
It seems counterintuitive; it goes against our reflexes. Some other seems to be a threat to us so we pull back from them. We may pull back from everybody because no one is safe the way we want them to be. But in pulling back, we pull away from the sources of help and healing. And we get lost in negative thoughts about how we were offended.
I’m not talking about the truly unsafe people who will hurt physically or destroy emotionally. Distance and safety from them is required. But often we put distance between others who are imperfect as we are, we even get distance from ourselves for not measuring up to unrealistic standards. We need grace here. We will fail, we will not do all we set out to do. Others will fail, they will not do all they tell you they will do. And if we can accept our frailty, our limits and others, we can forgive. We can give and accept forgiveness.
Meditation: Get in a comfortable position and relax. If you can safely do so, close your eyes and let go of the vigilant tension you are carrying today. Try to be at ease as much as possible. Whatever you feel is fine. Now think about this: Do you “Brace yourself?” are there things in your life or the world right now that cause you to tense up? Are you running away to isolate from people? No need to judge what you find, just notice and wonder. Wonder if you must tense up. Wonder if you can risk connecting with anyone or yourself? You might risk trust that a greater power is holding all this. Let go of what you can.
