- Ariel Benavidez
- Posts
- Life Without Bodyguards
Regulating my nervous system has been an interesting experience. Interesting is a loaded word. It's been a fucking rollercoaster with no safety measures in place. But I'm grateful for it.
Here's why:
For most of my life, I have disconnected from my nervous system. Fear of others seeing my essence and choosing to reject me has guided my actions. This pushed me to develop maladaptive behaviors to keep me 'safe.' I kept safe by keeping everyone at a distance without anyone knowing. I realize now the harm I've brought upon myself by operating this way. And it hurts like hell.
A metaphor for anxiety.
Imagine yourself walking around surrounded by 10 bodyguards. You hired them because you fear being hurt, and they are your only way to feel safe. Their job is to warn you of any potential threats. This way, you have a heads-up and some time to avert it by any means necessary.
The issue is that there are always blind spots. There are things you will not see coming, and it will hurt. When this happens, you become more afraid of the world and hire more bodyguards. Still, blind spots are inevitable, and the cycle continues.
These 'bodyguards' represent your focus. And your fear of being caught off-guard creates so much tension that you're never present. You're always out of your body, in a "What-If" scenario. It's an attempt to protect your fragile self by predicting the future. This keeps you in a state of fear, paranoia, and weakness. Not to mention, maintaining this focus is exhausting.
And from this state, I'm sure you could guess that you're not making good decisions. At the core, you're trying to avoid the world. And when you focus on avoidance, the price is your well-being, sense of purpose, and self-trust.
So what's the move?
"Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear—not absence of fear." — Mark Twain
You must wrestle with reality with your own hands. And it must be voluntary. You must approach it with courage rather than avoiding it in fear. If you continue to evade your fears, you lose ground, and spaces you once felt safe in no longer feel safe. A toxic pattern emerges when avoidance is the priority, leading to chaos.
You have two fundamental options:
1. You may follow your fears wherever they go.
2. Wherever you go, your fears will follow.
Why would anyone choose to follow their fears?
A friend of mine said to me, "A familiar discomfort is comfortable." It hit like a truck. You choose option 1 because the experience of that fear is familiar. You've felt it before; you know how to cater to it, and you're aware of the consequences. In a sense, you've been through the cycle, and even though it sucks, you know it won't kill you.
Option 2 means facing new consequences and fears. It demands a new set of actions and behaviors you don't feel capable of. Not to mention that these new fears may be the end of you. So you say the devil you know is better than the one you don't. It's how you find comfort in the discomfort.
Your focus is on sustaining this unsustainable way of being. In a way, you're preparing for disaster—but chronic preparation isn't living.
"Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow, it empties today of its strength." — Corrie Ten Boom
Your nervous system feels fragile. You project this fragility into the future as you think of all the things that can harm you. To cure this, you need to embody the awareness that fears don't go away; it's a matter of who's leading.
When you trust yourself to handle the present, you don't need 'bodyguards' scouting the future. The stronger this trust to handle life as it comes, the less you need to predict threats.
And so this is where I'm currently at. This cross-roads of realizing I have not trusted myself for a long time. I was depending on other people and society at large to tell me what is right for me. And that is not a life worth living.
It's scary to feel unequipped to navigate the world. But at the same time, I'm grateful because I know that I am now rooted in reality. At least now I can say "I'm here." Because from "here," my actions and thoughts have traction in the world. I can make progress in any direction I'd like—but progress requires self-trust.
How I'm developing self-trust (and how you can, too).
The first thing I did when I dropped back into my body and out of my mind was self-soothe. There was a lot of pent-up pain that I've ignored for many years. The sensations in my body were intense. It was like I had fallen asleep on the beach on a hot summer day, and I woke up with the most intense sunburn.
I used somatic techniques to feel and release this pain. This included breathwork, shaking, and crying. I also chose to reach out for professional help early on in my new awareness. My intention was to make sure I'm not making things worse. It would be like feeling your skin burning but still standing out in the sun as you don't understand why.
These sessions helped me frame my experiences. They gave me tools and the language to process and integrate things as they popped up. I dove into conversations with people I love and trust and whom I felt wouldn't judge me. At times I even spoke out loud to myself to express what I was feeling, and I found it quite cathartic. Journaling has been my anchor since I was 19, and that has come in handy as well.
A mindset shift is a big part of this. A mindset that prioritizes patience and humility is important to the healing process. Much like how aloe vera soothes the burn, the body still needs to go through the motions of healing. There's no rushing this, so do what you can and settle into the sensations.
Part of coming back to reality is that it requires you to sit with yourself and ask difficult questions. Questions you don't know the answers to. But if you make the space, sit with them, and let the questions breathe, clarity will arrive. At first, not at all, and then all of a sudden.
The answer is sometimes overwhelming, often surprising, and always revealing. So be patient and give yourself grace. Give yourself more time and space than what you think is necessary. And ensure you have systems of support in place to help you navigate. Friends and family are great for a cathartic expression of what's coming up for you. It also helps to work with someone who has the training to help you better frame the experience. I can't express enough how the reframing of your experience can ease the healing process.
1. Use and develop tools that help you self-regulate, process, and integrate.
2. Let your loved ones know.
3. Invest in professional support to ensure you're not still standing out in the sun.
Until next time, friends.
Live while living,
Ariel