Doing Things that Scare You
Reframing the fear around new beginnings.
I avoided conflict at all costs when I was growing up. The reasons for that are many and varied and, as with almost everything, there is nuance and complexity.
We don’t need to go there right now.
A consequence of that impulse, however, is some of what I talk about when writing about raising my trans son. Mainly: I had very few if any boundaries of my own to solidify and reinforce my person, my sense of self.
How was I going to be the best parent for this kid who was wholly embodied when I really had no I to ground me?
Instead, like water insisting on taking the shape of its vessel, I became what and who people wanted or expected. To put a finer point on this: I became what I thought they wanted or expected. So, in reality, I was twice removed.
You might imagine how out of my depth I was, then, when first coming to understand my transgender child. I often and most accurately describe that time as feeling like I was thrown in a lake of ice cold water, and, when I finally come up for air, I’m in an entirely new universe where all my internal messaging has been erased and reset.
Honestly, those first years were almost exclusively filled with personal unpacking, so much sitting with myself and really untangling my own history. I questioned every assumption. I turned every reaction over and over and over.
I quickly came to realize that to be the parent I wanted to be to my trans child, I had to first find myself.
Gratefully, my son, unknowingly, perhaps, helped birth a much truer and more authentic version of myself.
I mention this here because without this work, my ability to take risks, to challenge myself to really sink in and meet the unknown with eyes and heart open, would be stifled and stunted. I would likely still be running on autopilot, unaware my foundation was continually in jeopardy of folding underneath me in an instant.
Not long ago, I started a professional coaching program. I want to eventually focus more specifically on working with families of LGBTQ kids, as well as people who are dealing with grief, because I feel like my experience lends itself to these two demographics well.
With the personal work I’ve done and my own commitment to self-awareness, I thought I’d be a natural. I am curious and genuinely engaged with my world and the people in it, I told myself, and these seem like essential qualities for success.
The first classes were beautiful. I felt invigorated and sustained. I am going to rock this!, I thought.
I imagined being for others what I really needed in my own journey: safe space to be messy and tender. A place to take myself apart, poke at the depths and then put myself back together, sometimes multiple times. A place to explore my contradictions without judgement, and to honor what is so basic and yet so easily forgotten—being human is complex and nuanced.
Then we did some coaching in class and I … flopped. I stacked questions. I had trouble giving the person enough space to explore their own thoughts. I was nervous and felt like my brain was always on the verge of going completely blank. I was so caught up in thinking about the next question I had trouble really tuning into what the person in front of me was telling me.
In other words: Two thumbs all the way down.
Nobody but me might would likely describe the time that way, and I’m not meaning to be unnecessarily hard on myself here. I know myself well enough to believe that I’ll get better. I can assess through the soft lens of self-compassion: I didn’t know we we’re going to be coaching so was caught a bit off guard. This was literally my first time doing any coaching.
But I’d be lying, too, if I said there wasn’t a tiny voice in the back of my head that told me: Hey, maybe you’ll never be any good at this.
So, how do I quiet that voice and continue to do things that scare me?
First, I go back to what I was talking about at the top. Mainly, sinking into vulnerability and letting myself really feel the potential for failure.
That means quiet. That means sitting with myself. That means when my stomach starts to turn flip flops and my toes start tapping and I feel like I need to get up and move, I take a deep breath and sink deeper.
Because when my body is calm, my heart and head usually let me know the story. They serve up to me in sometimes remarkable clarity what is at the root of most my feelings, especially those I experience as conflicting or uncomfortable.
When you know where many of the most tender and sometimes darkest parts of yourself are rooted—and what they’re helping you believe about yourself, the world, yourself in this world—you can start to chip away at the hold they have on you.
You can start to more consciously decide who you are and who you want to be. You can choose what has importance and what doesn’t, and you can more easily quiet the noise, the constant hum of a world that isn’t always very good at acknowledging we are whole humans with a wide range of thoughts, feelings and experiences.
When you can do that work for yourself, the reward is freedom from the perception that only the ideal will do and only the best version of yourself has value.
The tricky part is that I’m not always ready to know what I need to know.
But that’s another post.