In my workshops, I teach people about reversals – that’s when we experience a negative mental and/or emotional state that gets us stuck, or worse, dragged into a downward spiral.
It can feel like fear, dread, depression, anxiety, confusion, or just a plain lack of clarity or motivation.
I call it a reversal because what I’ve discovered is that the energy that feeds these states is the same energy that feeds some essential positive quality within us as well. The energy is a force of our nature that needs to be expressed, but how it’s expressed can either move us in a positive or negative direction. Neutral isn’t an option.
Reversals can be incredibly difficult to spot, even while they drain us of our life force for weeks, months or years at a stretch.
For instance, one of my core capacities is that I can make sense of a great deal of complexity. I can make hidden information visible, boil complicated things down to a few principles, and teach those principles to others.
But when I’m in a reversal, the opposite happens: I can’t think straight, I’m easily frustrated and the simplest task feels overwhelming. I get lost in a sea of complexity of my own making. It’s awful.
I’m not alone. Everyone has reversals, it’s just that some of us have them more *intensely* than others and traditional types of therapy totally miss them.
In my coaching and workshops, one thing I teach people is how to recognize their own and others’ reversals and fix them. I call it “reversing the reversal” or “flipping someone back into their strength” and I’ve done it with hundreds of people, even some who’ve been stuck for years. People have often said it’s life-changing.
My own example.
I feel compelled to share an experience with one of my own reversals I had a few years ago and how my friend, Melea, flipped me out of it. I knew I was stuck, but all the awareness in the world couldn’t change it (again, I’m not alone, this is often the case).
I’d been dealing with a horrific bout of PTSD for several weeks. I was only sleeping for 2-3 hours a night, was steeped in constant anxiety, and couldn’t concentrate.
When I’d try to work, I was lost: didn’t know where to start, couldn’t follow-through with anything, and when I tried to read, words just jumped around on the page. It was hell on earth.
And then Melea called. She’s an incredible acupuncturist in town who’d attended one of my workshops. She knew I was struggling and called to check on me.
I told her about the PTSD and what triggered it: a friend of mine I’ll call Dan, a man I love and trusted very much, suddenly quit our relationship via text. No explanation, no adult conversation, nothing. Just a short, “That’s it, I’m done!” and then POOF! Gone. He was obviously very upset, but rather than talk to me, he called it quits.
I was shocked and heart-broken. We’d been in daily contact, often several times a day, for nearly six months. I truly enjoyed him. Among other things, he was a voracious learner. I loved seeing how his mind works. He was kind and made me laugh. I thought we had a foundation for a deep and lasting friendship, and possibly more.
The shock of his behavior sent my brain/body reeling back to several terrorizing experiences from my childhood, moments when adults harmed me and then just turned and walked away.
I couldn’t shake the feeling that whatever happened with Dan was somehow my fault, or worse, that I couldn’t trust myself to choose safe people. This collapse of trust fueled the PTSD fire flooding my brain/body with terror.
I was a wreck and couldn’t make it stop.
Anyhow, in order to flip a reversal, we have to experience it’s opposite in a deeply embodied way, which means, we have to feel it throughout our entire body.
Thank god Melea knew what to do, without me having to ask.
“OK, tell me about a time when you experienced a man, someone you could trust, who stayed with you through hard times, a man who loved you and didn’t walk away.”
It took me a moment to retrieve an experience but one finally came. I told her about my friend, Clifton. Whenever he sees I’m having a hard time, he leans in, “Hey, what’s going on?” He never backs away. He’s intentionally fearless when it comes to bearing witness to others. His motto, “Don’t quit before the miracle” compels him. He’s that way with everyone. He’s a local legend.
As I talked about Clifton, Melea used my method to help me experience my connection to him as deeply as possible. Then she said, “Ok, now tell me about another one.”
I told her about Dr. Don Betz, the former president of the University of Central Oklahoma, and the greatest leader I’ve ever known. Thousands of people, not just me, love and trust him deeply.
I told her about a time when I was consulting at the university and he noticed, despite my best efforts to hide it, that I was struggling. He stopped in the middle of his packed schedule to support me. His kindness turned everything around for me that day. Again, he’s that way with everyone.
She prompted me to live my experience with Dr. Betz all over again. Then she said, “Great, how about another.”
My 28-year old son, Isaiah, immediately came to mind. He too can be fearless in showing up to difficulty, including having the rare courage to confront other men about their sexist behavior.
When the two of us have run into hard times, he’s usually the one to reach out first. I often tell the story of him as a four-year old saying, “Mommy, you’re not actively listening to me.” When I replied with, “Isaiah, what does that mean to you?” his response was, “That’s when you listen with your head, your heart and your tummy, and you’re not listening with your heart or your tummy!” (He was right). He knows how to speak hard truths, how to stick and stay through difficulty.
By the time I shared my experiences with Isaiah, I was coming back home to myself again. I was still sad about Dan but no longer steeped in self-incrimination. The dread and anxiety was gone. I could breathe again.
As Melea prompted me to talk about a few more of the extraordinary men I know, I was woven back into the fabric of trust, love and safety within myself again.
It took less than 40 minutes. The change I experienced mentally, emotionally and physically was so abrupt, that it was hard to believe at first. Even though I’d facilitated this kind of transformation in others before, I’d never known it so deeply within myself. It felt like the first time I’d ever truly experienced my method from the inside out.
I’ve been myself ever since.
Thank you Melea, Thank you.
In some ways, I was lucky, this was an obvious example of a reversal, usually they’re much more subtle.
Now, it’s been my experience that after I share an experience like this, people want to learn more. So, if you are interested in Melea’s work, go to her site.
To learn more about the kinds of questions she asked me, sign up to be on my email list. You will get access to a brief video and all the other free resources that will be coming your way in 2020.