Creating My First Course is Helping Me Work with Fear

I am in the midst of creating my first online course for the blog. The process has been kicking my butt for 2 months now and consuming all of the juice I normally put into blog posts. It’s been an exciting, at times joyful experience. It has also been fascinating to be bumping into one trigger after another. Triggers such as from mobilizing to create something this big, or to being more visible. These triggers keep stirring up symptoms, such as bloating and belly pain. Most recently, this creative process has triggered an intensification of fear to the point of feeling right on the edge of overwhelmed and flipping me into a flare up of fatigue. These are all symptoms of freeze.

Go figure.

There’s nothing like moving towards something you want when you have a chronic illness and seeing what you learn when you experience backlash for taking up your space and speaking your truth.

One of the big lessons so far has come from beginning the process of creating videos. When I filmed my first video a few weeks ago I was getting dissociated and having brain fuzz. These, too, are symptoms of freeze.

I was coming across in my first video as not being present or connected. That’s a big problem when I am teaching how healing trauma heals chronic illness in part by coming into the present and reconnecting with yourself.

When I spent time deconstructing why I was getting dissociated as I tried to take videos, I realized that I was reaching out energetically to the computer screen in front of me in my attempt to connect with imagined participants of this course.

This process was taking me out of myself. It was inherently making me less present.

Going “Outside” for Connection is Learned

The insight that emerged was that going outside of myself for connection is something I’ve learned.

This is one thing many children do when caregivers are not emotionally available: we abandon ourselves in an attempt to find the comfort and nurturing that our young selves crave and need. In addition, we can keep going further and further out into that void in unconscious attempts to find what are bodies are biologically and epigenetically designed to expect and experience: Connection.

I’ve been aware of this phenomenon of “reaching out into the screen” to connect with others during zoom meetings and webinars for some years now. I’ve been recognizing the illusion that connection is “out there,” when the experience of connection is actually “in here.” This course I am creating has helped me connect another one of the dots for how this pattern stimulates freeze because I am at times unconsciously abandoning myself.

Leaving ourselves to get connection is a symptom of childhood emotional neglect. It’s been a huge insight to learn that staying in and with myself is the way to feel connection. “Who knew?”!! Videotaping is now going much better :-).

Helping Me Work with Fear as I Share My Story

As with anything we want to teach, I’ve been learning a lot from the creative process of developing this course. It’s been refining how I think of the chronic illness and trauma connection. It’s also been giving me symptoms and triggers to work through as part of my next steps in healing.

A few days ago, I had another realization with a little extra help from David. The intensification of fear I am experiencing is linked to another feature I’m including in my course: using my personal experience as an example for some of the points I am making. In doing so, I am outing my caregivers as I talk about links between current day symptoms and experiences as a child.

I hadn’t realized how big this particular component of my courses was, given that I have shared personal experiences fairly regularly here on the blog.

This is another way this process has been helping me work with fear.

I had a significant increase in fatigue for about 24 hours a few days ago as I was working on a lesson for my “Roadmap to Healing.”

I was using a metaphor that was inadvertently stimulating hopelessness instead of the encouragement I was intending. I could feel the heavy, draggy, exhausted weakness in my muscles that tends to feel like I’ve overdone it physically. While I had done some physical work, this response was excessive. So I didn’t quite believe it.

Instead of taking a nap and a break I pushed a little with some additional light physical work the next day while pondering the metaphor for the course. I then found a much better metaphor and the process of creating the images to explain it felt so empowering and right that my system sparkled with joy. The flare cleared within the hour.

It’s always fun to show the trauma patterns that we’re catching onto their ways and helping them shift into more accurate adaptive strategies for the present moment.

I do not know how long it will take to complete the course, but it’s exciting to watch it emerge and I look forward to sharing it with you. In the meantime, I’m sharing a few images inspired by the lessons I’ve been working on for the course.

I’ll keep you posted.

Here’s to the ongoing practice of listening and learning. And the process of reconnecting with ourselves.