INNER WORK
Continued from page 11
historical trigger impact your narratives and behaviors?
• Future: What narrative gets projected into the future as a result? What is the worst case fear? How likely is that fear to come to fruition?
• Present: How are you likely to react when triggered? If you did not catch it happening, what are your patternistic behaviors, e. g., are you likely to snap at the child for violating the rules? What are your alternatives? What understanding and compassion do you need to extend to your past self? What will help you to calm your future projections to be present now?
• Emotion: What emotional charge alerts you to a pattern being activated?
• Body: Through what sensation, and where in your body, is your intuition speaking to you?
The brain time travels to the past and to a predicted( and, usually, awfulized) future. When our brain is activated, the neurowaves mimic those when we were first exposed to the threat, often in our childhood, and just as often from our ancestry. This phenomenon requires our awareness to avoid taking control and our compassion to avoid dismissing our subconscious needs( Swartz, 1995).
When we are actively engaged in this practice of our own inner work, we are more self-aware, self-compassionate, curious about others’ experiences, and empathetic. In doing so, we connect with our inner child and our lineages, and we are reminded that everyone has their own history driving their behaviors. We remember anger masks fear, fear drives behavior more than any other emotion, and how we respond to that inner child and experience matters. When another person is angry or acting irrationally, we can try to remember that they are afraid, and that fear comes from somewhere, potentially childhood and / or generational trauma. Instead of judging oneself, we can be curious about what may have happened to result in the reaction.
The crises of this time are activating our brains, and in doing so are pulling a catalogue of memories up to the surface; some of these are memories of grief and trauma from our own lives, and from the epigenetics of our ancestral lineages. Our brains are also projecting awfulized future narratives in response to the current context, e. g.,“ What if I / my loved ones get sick?”“ What if I lose my
“ When we are actively engaged in this practice of our own inner work, we are more self-aware, selfcompassionate, curious about others’ experiences, and empathetic.”
Page 12 Fall 2020 CSEE Connections