The blossoming of the wild self

My practice has brought me back round to looking at patterns of control.

Again.

In our culture, we are heavily conditioned to try to be in control – of our emotions, of other people, of life events – and it’s such a huge delusion.

Because when I’m striving the be in control, I’m actually more vulnerable – to fear (catastrophic ‘what if’-ing), to anger (‘should’-ing) and to shame (failing to live up to the impossible feat of being in control).

We can’t be in control and be fully alive. It’s like being a caged bird.

I re-discovered a part of myself recently that I had kept caged for decades – in the pursuit of control – by trying to numb the energy of fear and anger in my own nervous system.

Befriending this part of me has felt like the season of spring has arrived within my own being: the crocuses and the tree blossom don’t try to hold their wildness in, so why would I?

My creative writing practice has taught me so much about welcoming ‘wildness’. It’s only when I give up trying to be in control that the stories flow, and the ‘what-if’-ing becomes a tool that can open up possibility, rather than closing life down.

If I lived like I write stories, these guiding questions might apply…

What if being in control isn’t ‘who I need to be’?

What if I was in relationship to (other people, situations and strong feeling-energies), rather than in control of?

Maybe I could be responsive more often than reactive, and fully alive instead of partially numbed.

If you want to find out more about befriending, check out last month’s post, or use the site search box below.