If you’ve read my book you’d know that I’m a competitive Masters track and field athlete and I consider my sport to be a big part of my growth practice. Non-sporty people might wonder how that works. This post and the last one are good examples.
Last week I shared with you my recent experience of reactivity arising with the prospect of cancelling my World Championships trip to Europe because bodily problems had set me back on an already-too-short training window.
I was curious about this reactivity, and last week I shared the partial unpacking of the experience – I went on a curiosity expedition to understand it and I’d concluded that it wasn’t an egoic fear of missing out on glory or disappointing those around me who expect me to do well.
This curiosity brought me to the insight that it was the prospect of continuing to be under-stimulated in my very good, but too-familiar-for-my-liking life. And I contrasted this with the Buddhist monks who continue to have what psychologists call a ‘startle response’ to familiar stimuli while the rest of us tune out – we habituate to things and stop noticing them or appreciating them once they become familiar.
As I followed this curiosity further, continuing to ask: what is this?, it led me to this answer: personality and character structure.
Let me clarify the two.
Personality traits are enduring. They’re based in our physiology. If you’re born an extravert, you’ll die an extravert. Psychologists talk about the big five personality traits – that is, the five that are almost universally agreed upon despite the myriad models of personality out there.
In addition to extraversion we have neuroticism (essentially anxiousness), conscientiousness (that ability to focus and be tenacious with tasks); agreeableness (as it suggests, easy to get along with, congenial) and openness (the extent to which we are open to new ideas and experiences versus gravitating to the known and the familiar).
In contrast to these permanent traits that we’re born and die with, I talk about character structure as the set of auto-emotive patterns we’ve acquired through our experience. These are of course affected by our personalities (if I was an extreme introvert I may not love the World Champs trips so much as they are intense people-experiences!) but they are essentially our learned reactions to circumstances.
In simple terms we’re talking about the impacts of nature and nurture. The Buddha talked about everything arising as a result of conditions: internal conditions, and external conditions. The habits that show up as our character structures are, initially, a response to external conditions - our circumstances. But when they become habits, when they become ‘wired in’ to our physiology, they then become internal structures - conditions that affect us as we go through life.
The good news about character structures is that they can be changed. The less pleasing news is that it takes a heaping helping of courage to do it. But deep personal growth requires us to go there.
So I’m going to share with you my musings on this instance of reactivity that arose within my body-mind, when I thought about cancelling my trip. I hope it might inspire you to go there with your own sensitivities and release yourself from their grip.
So, character structures are essentially auto-emotive patterns. In my work with leaders over the years, I’ve referred to them as AEPs (think: scary gorilla). I also sometimes talk about them as demons – things that scare us.
An AEP that I carry with me from my developmental years, is a fear of nothingness.
My mother was afraid of the world. I think her idea of paradise was a large group of children (all hers) playing in the yard, with no need for the outside world to intrude. She almost never allowed me to socialise with my peers, which meant it was hard to make friends. I felt cut off from the world, isolated, bone-crushingly lonely, frequently bored out of my mind, and as I went through my teen years, increasingly angry and resentful.
I remember the distinct sense that there was this world out there with good and exciting things in it, it’s just that…..none of it was for me. It was just there, just out of reach, almost like I looked at it through a pane of glass. I could never touch it, never experience it, never inhabit it. I could only catch glimpses of other people enjoying it. My life was confined to the two acres of land we lived on, on the outskirts of Adelaide, 3km from the nearest bus stop.
I remember noticing very long periods of time with nothing pleasurable in my life. At that point we rarely even had sensory pleasures like sweets after dinner. Because we lived so far from public transport I couldn’t get myself a part time job to earn money to purchase any pleasures myself, I’d have little to no social pleasure because I wasn’t allowed to go out, and my parents weren’t very physically affectionate, so there weren’t even basic physical pleasures like a good hug.
Life felt like a desert. A vast expanse of nothingness.
Can you see my AEP that might arise at the prospect of being stuck at home and under-stimulated?
My mind made a match between an old experience and the current situation – missing out on the travel adventure of a World Champs trip.
As I’ve mentioned previously, our minds are well intentioned but only semi-skilled friends. They make these matches with past experience, but those matches can be sloppy. This one is!
During my teen experience, I had no power to change anything, no choice, no money, no freedom. I was isolated and unhappy. My life is very different now. Yet the sloppy match triggers some quite intense feelings regardless. And those feelings can trigger reactivity – I’ve just GOT to go overseas!!! Not getting what I want is NOT ok!!! Reactivity has an urgency to it, a kind of non-negotiable-ness.
The fact that this scenario triggers reactivity means that I haven’t yet fully made my peace with this demon. I’ve done quite a bit of personal work over the years, invited many demons in for tea parties, several of which were vastly more powerful than this one. Nevertheless, it shows me there’s another demon to befriend here, or to befriend some more perhaps – this AEP/demon still has its hooks in me a little.
Most of us have numerous AEPs of varying power. Each time they make their presence felt, we have a choice. Do we do the work of releasing ourselves from their grip? Or do we walk on in life, knowing we carry with us the potential for reactivity on this, should the conditions arise to trigger it?
The how of doing the work involves facing our demons, and giving our body-minds the experience of being ok in their presence. This re-wires the AEP; creating new associations with them.
There are numerous ways to do this. If you’re new to personal growth, or it’s a particularly scary demon, seeing a psychologist can be the best route. At first, we often need the support and guidance of someone skilled in this kind of endeavour.
But as we tread the path of personal growth more and more, we can start to walk on our own, or even better, with others who are committed to doing the same.
On our own, we can try exploratory journaling for example. I have a powerful tool available on my website called Inviting your demons in for a tea-party designed to lead you through just such an exploratory process.
Options for group exploration are a little more sparse, but some Buddhist meditation groups engage in this kind of activity together. Mine does. When I launch my online personal growth program which I plan to do later this year, I’ll be offering participation in such groups.
But the first crucial step is to know ourselves – to know our AEPs, our demons.
What are yours? Can you name them as I have here? Or do they take you by surprise, and you only know of their presence when they’ve catapulted you into reactivity?
I know this fear-of-nothingness demon still lurks within my body-mind and is a potential trigger for reactivity. I know that I've only partly befriended it and it’s there as an offering to awaken a little more. I expect I’ll go there some time when I have the mental and emotional space to do so.
In the meantime, knowing myself, including my AEPs, my demons, my personal pattern of human messiness, will help me cope better and avoid causing reactive damage to myself or those around me.
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