confidence

A Question of Spirit

an essay by Christopher K Wallace

We don’t often talk of spirit when discussing substance use. Go big or go home seems to be the order of the day: all-in belief or nothing. I suppose this might be due to our physiology. After all, our eyes see out. We should be forgiven for seeking answers to big questions out there somewhere. As if looking to the heavens will reflect some perfect truth we can use to guide our actions. There’s merit to this: it often does.

But first, let me ask you something: Have you ever been afraid? Where you momentarily had the wits scared out of you? What happens? 

Your breathing shallows, your heart rate increases, blood pressure rises and thinking narrows as you focus on escape or resolution. We all know these symptoms as classic fight or flight. Now, think of what happens after you drink a couple of beers or smoke a joint or take any other mood-altering chemical. Sure enough, it’s the same thing: breathing shallows, heart rate goes up, blood pressure rises, and most importantly, thinking narrows. Using these substances puts your physiology into a fight or flight state.

The body doesn’t distinguish between medicines; moreover, it has no idea it’s “just a joint,” or “just a couple of beers,” or “doctor prescribed.” It’s all the same, considered as a threat to your system from foreign poisons, where your body is put off-balance, out of something called homeostasis. And once in this state, the body counters by doing everything it can to restore itself back to normal, including engaging the sympathetic nervous system to help.

Perspiration, breath, heart rate, liver and kidneys are all put on overtime use. Adrenaline and cortisol course through your veins in preparation for fight or flight—or freeze or feint, the other two Fs of the 4Fs, and often overlooked when your being is under attack. Meantime, the feel-good neurotransmitter dopamine provides cover for the habituated user, making them think the buzz means everything’s OK. It’s not.


Let me give you some examples.

If you think of your first experiences with any of these substances, you may recall how your body and mind reacted with fear. It could be dizziness or vomiting from alcohol use; or an intense fear from using cannabis. Some people say they don’t get off on pot the first time they try it, that’s how good your body is at countering its effects. People stick with it and adapt; eventually, they feel it. Cocaine is another one which induces intense fear. And for some people, first LSD use is the scariest thing ever, resulting in a “bad trip.”

Remember in high school being over at that one friend’s house with the cool parents, where a garage or basement became a drug zone after school or on weekends? Maybe you passed the bong around until you were all pretty much unable to speak. Oh sure, maybe someone says, “Hey dude, do you think your cat’s stoned? Do you think it knows we’re high, man?” We all thought we were buzzed; when in truth, we were immobilized by fear.

Nietzsche said, “All credibility, all good conscience, all evidence of truth comes only from the senses.”

The brain relies on what comes in from touch, taste, smell, hearing and sight to log onto our world. Experience is derived from the senses; therefore, undermined sensory inputs means compromised experience. Alcohol and drugs create a fear response in the body while using dopamine to trigger your reward centers, keeping awareness of fear symptoms at bay. Beneath the surface, a tug of war is going on while you sit and get high.

The brain and body are not separate entities. In fact, your whole physical being is the universal address of your existence. As such, feelings live as equally in the body as they do in the brain through the tenth cranial nerve. Known as the Vagus Complex, it connects your brain stem to most of your internal organs, including the heart and gut.

Feelings come from experience. Think of what kinds of feelings a baby has compared to an adult. As the baby matures, it’s capable of a variety of emotions in increasing complexity as its experience grows. And, feelings are predictive, not reactive as we often think. Much of the brain works this way. Let me explain.

Your brain predicts your sleep and wake cycle and builds up levels of melatonin to prepare you for slumber. It predicts the eventual need for food by signaling with the hormone ghrelin well in advance of meal-times.  Even your visual cortex receives inputs from the eye, but also has neurons running the other way, from the cortex, which carry predictions affecting what you see. At any moment, beneath awareness the brain predicts what state is required and scans your bank of previous experiences for matching emotions in preparation for what’s ahead.

In this way, science tells us we live emotionally and use our thinking brain to explain things after the fact. Emotions rule because they occur milliseconds faster than we can think, acting as our early warning system. The line between reality and imagination blurs during substance use, while the body tallies the score. The brain’s memory doesn’t discern between stoned or drunk and straight. It’s all just input.

After decades of smoking hashish, the last ten or more years as a nightcap to my day the way others use a glass of wine to unwind, I noticed (and for the first time really took stock of) my physical symptoms. Then I asked myself this question: “Can you be afraid and confident at the same time?” Most people’s gut answer to this is to say: no, it’s one or the other as the feelings are mutually exclusive. If you are in fear, you may still be in action, but it is unlikely to be with much confidence. It’s more likely you are going through the motions, rather than giving things your best.

Moreover, if emotions rule my actions, without me even realizing it through my databank of recalled events, I had to ask myself what compounding effect substance use was having on my confidence?  I’m talking about real confidence here, the kind gained from trial and error. Sometimes, it comes from taking a great leap of faith; other times, it arises from a series of small victories adding up to a quiet competence. Either way, it’s always hard-earned.

Math is like that, so is spelling or writing. Even riding a bicycle results in a lasting physical confidence, whereas doing something like public speaking for the first time can vault a person into a new sense of self. Think of the first time you climbed high into a tree or jumped off the high diving board at the local pool. So much of our progress in life is because of these quests to add to our personal repertoire of skills and emotional durability. Life usually gets better when we get better at life.

The times on weekends where I’d drink a half-dozen beers on a Friday or Saturday night, or both, I’d find not much got done during the day. I would also fail to connect with my wife and children in a meaningful way. The things I’d planned to do on my days off were often put off or started but never finished. Once, I built half of a fair-sized shed, became unsure of my plans, so just dismantled it. I stacked the wood behind my house, and never returned to the task. Confidence.

And small things, ordinary demands a man rises to meet during life, were not being handled with any urgency. It didn’t take much to put me off my game. I came to realize with every beer I drank, what I was really doing was sipping on fear and pissing out confidence. Every haul on a joint meant inhaling more fear and exhaling a critical part of my power.

Who needs this confidence thing anyway? Turns out, we all do. I’ve heard it said confidence is the stuff we use to turn thoughts into actions. This has wider implications. Let me ask you, “How then, do you live confidently when you regularly subject your body to a fear state which cannot be resolved with action?” In my case, when I was honest with myself, I had to admit I could not.

I’d work hard at gaining confidence, and yet, doubt would creep back into my life. It meant I didn’t invest in all the technological wonders that have arisen in my lifetime and which I could have easily participated in. It meant I took jobs which kept me safe. It also resulted in me not standing up for myself when I should have. Overall, it kept me playing small. It was two steps forward, and one step back. Sometimes, admittedly, it was just one step back. Though, I had all the trappings of the middle class, I was living a charade.

I’m not talking about occasional substance use. I’m referring to habitual use, from more than once per week to daily consumption. Under the fear-load this engenders in the body, assuredly, confidence wanes. In time, this steady assault on confidence can become something called “learned helplessness.”

That’s when you tell yourself a story about confidence. You may realize it’s for other people, something off in the distance, far from your existence. Or, more likely, it’s something we don’t talk about at all because it means we have given up aspiring to becoming something more. In a measure, we abandon our dreams.

Can you live this way and survive? Sure. You can get by. But even now you’ll realize it’s not what Mother Nature or God had in mind when you defied the odds by beating all those other sperm to the egg, when you won the race of life. Damn it. This was not supposed to be our destiny. The Universe wants more from you, from me, and confidence is key to allowing our spirit to fly, to soar with the eagles in full view of the sun.


But here’s what happens. Twenty years may go by. If you’re lucky, one day you’ll have an epiphany like I did.  You may realize you have not lived those twenty years at all. Instead, what you have really done is lived one year…twenty times. 

Let that sink in a bit. I had to soak in it for a while.

 

Why did I need this jolt of fear everyday? When I searched a little deeper, it dawned on me. I’d been creating fear like this since I was a kid. I figured out my family of origin likely set me on this path through its uneven attachments and unpredictable violence. Paradoxically, I was a fear seeker. Early on, fight or flight had carried the day for me and I survived, thereby searing its red-hot brand upon my soul. I lived by it. It meant life or death to me. If there was no fear in my life, I’d seek it out, create it out of thin air if needed. As I recalled the decades gone by, I could see a significant part of my time was spent re-enacting a deep need for fear. Imprisoned this way as a little boy, I carried these emotional shackles into adulthood.

Fact is, I meet fear at an entirely different level than most people. I have been strangely attracted to it, mostly beneath my awareness. It’s as if my body survived it before and needed to prove it could survive it again. I was stuck in a loop. Perhaps it’s why I stand up to bullies. My first question when encountering people is to unflinchingly think or say, “How can I help you.” It’s why I act best when I’m protecting my tribe, a brother’s keeper. My self-concept silently commands: “Stand aside, this is for men.” It’s because I can, capably, fearlessly.

Yet, this was the gift I’d allowed to wane over time. The difference between how I saw myself and how I really acted caused me untold dissonance. Once I understood why I continued to use drugs and alcohol, and how this diminished my confidence, the allure soon faded. I must live true and free. I have a destiny to fulfill, a pact with the universe: to let loose my spirit as a guardian to others. When honourable men use their power for good, in service of themselves and those around them, life becomes meaningful.

This, then, is the key to our freedom.

More questions I asked myself: How much of your confidence are you willing to sacrifice to keep a fear habit for another year? How much more of your spirit can you compromise? We think we have time: we don’t.

And so, it was for me. I had been using drugs and alcohol to narrow my focus. Instead of finding my personal tract, where my spirit could expand and answer the universe’s calling, I was running from it.  Narrowing my focus was a good objective, but not this way. I have experienced the zone before: it’s a place where a mighty congruence of my ability and drive and concentration allow me to feel as if I am forcing time to stand still. It’s a place of command, where my spirit lets loose and flies high. And there, fully aware now, filled with meaning from serving myself and others and connected by purpose, I am set free: powerful once more.

It was Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. who once said, “Every now and then a man’s mind is stretched by a new idea, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions.”I say to you then: let this be one of those times.

Stretch, my brothers and sisters, and we will find each other up there.

CKWallace, Advisor to Men @ckwallace.com
©2018 all rights reserved

References:

Alcohol, aging and the stress response,  See Spencer and Hutchison (1999) Alcohol Research Health 23 (4) 272-83
And Allostatic Load, Bruce McEwen, PhD in Neuropsychopharmacology, Nature.com

(Nietzsche quote, “All credibility…”: Basic Writings of Nietzsche (2011 edition), Modern Library – ISBN: 9780307786791. Also, Beyond Good and Evil, 1886, p. 134)

(Emotions live equally in the body and brain: See Stephen Porges, Polyvagal Theory, 2011, Norton Books ISBN 978-0-393-70700-7)

(Emotions are predictive: See Lisa Feldman Barrett, How Emotions are Made, 2017, Houghton Mifflin, ISBN 978-0-544-12996-2.

And The brain is predictive: Diane Kwan writing in the March Scientific American issue, Self-Taught Robots, has a nice graphic about the predictive brain citing How Evolution May Work through Curiousity-Driven Development Process, Pierre Yves Oudeyer, Linda Smith is Topics in Cognitive Science, 2016)

(Holmes quote, “When a man…”, See Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., Autocrat at the Breakfast-Table, essay series appearing in Atlantic Monthly (1857) and book (1858))

 

Christopher K Wallace, B.S.T., C.H.

Advisor to Men

© 2017 and 2018 ckwallace.com

Anxiety’s riddle

 

acorn tree_edit

Anxiety and stress are good things. It means your body and mind is working as it should.

I like to tell people who are anxious that they should be thankful for their anxiety because in days of old, they’d be less likely to be eaten by a bear.

It’s also a signal that you care about something. After all, if you didn’t give a hoot, there’d be no reason to feel anxious. You have no vested interest in feeling fearful about something that you have no feelings for.

Anxiety and stress: caring emotion.

There you have it: both can be a good thing, and it means you care. Something has meaning for you. We are meaning-makers: we search for meaning our whole lives. You’ve found some of it.

I wonder if Olympic athletes are fearful before they compete, or if actors feel anxious on opening night? What about those who have to give a speech in public, folks like politicians, academics, even Tony Robbins?

All of them feel it before they go on.

Top performers in every field you can imagine feel nerves and anxiety when they are challenged. I did my best exams in college when I felt my most anxious. Executives in companies and people in everyday life feel it. We all do. There are people right now all over the world feeling anxiety and stress. You are not alone. It happens to everyone.

When you ask people who have excelled at something, you rarely hear “it was nothing, no big deal,” unless they’re bullshitting, or trying to calm themselves.  No. Usually, you hear how they wondered if they’d pull it off. We hear about their fears, their trepidation. They might downplay something, probably so they don’t get a big head, or just to put things into perspective. But almost always, they use determination and perseverance to stick at something despite how awful it might have felt at times.

Determination and perseverance.

It’s like the sapling growing in the forest: when the wind blows it bends deeply, opening tiny cracks in its bark that quickly fill in with new growth. In this way, it thickens until it becomes as solid as the giant oak it was destined to be.

Anxiety and stress can be our wind, there to make us grow.

Here’s where it gets interesting. When we are pushed, we often find a deeper level of creativity or resourcefulness that we can call upon, and we often do things we never thought possible when under stress.

Everyone has heard the story of someone lifting a car off someone trapped underneath after an accident, or braving flames to rescue someone in the nick of time, acting without thinking out of fear. Being scared shitless can make us push back. As a kid, I ran my fastest getting away from that bully that was going to kick my ass; it made me go like the wind. We all have times we can remember where we rose to challenges in an unforeseen way. While such heroics sometimes make the news, all of us have a hero inside us coming up with new ways to overcome obstacles and burdens–often energized by fear.

You can use that stress and anxiety to search and find answers that you perhaps didn’t have before. The discomfort is there to propel you forward into action, often new action. Not to fear it, but, instead, to use it.

Here’s a suggestion: use three Ds to handle anxious thoughts. First detect a fear producing thought. Then detach from it–making no particular judgment about it–just that it’s there. Then detour around it by leaving it to hang and disappear on its own, realizing that you are not your thoughts. You know how as wee kids we blew bubbles?  Thoughts are like bubbles that hang in the air for a moment and then burst. They just come and go; some are useful, some are useless, some are freaky shit. Detect, detach and detour.

I do something similar with my feelings. Allow yourself to feel them as temporary physical sensations, without allowing them to define you. You are not your feelings either. Instead, look to how you can put your body to good use in that moment, in a way that allows you to live truer. How can you take your emotional energy and use it to live what you value, to pursue a goal, to meet your desires?

What if you find yourself with big anxiety? I’ve had that. It’s a bitch. I’d get a big pain right in my chest, in the sternum. First time it happened, I thought I was having a heart attack. Friends took me in to hospital where I got hooked up to all the machines and had blood work done. Old doc, about seventy, came out and told me my gullet was flipping. To me that meant there was something seriously wrong as I imagined some part of my chest tied in a life-threatening knot. I wondered how the heck I did that, and would I need surgery?

Seeing the dumb look on my face, doc tells me, “You’re having an anxiety attack. You can go home now.”

What the…? Anxiety attack? Me? Isn’t that for girls?

I had a bunch of them until I learned how to get control of my body. Another old guy, this time a psychologist-priest I knew, told me to go for a run next time it happens. He said you can’t feel anxious and run at the same time, you’ll fall down if you do. There’s something about putting one foot in front of the other at any speed that alleviates the tension. The deeper breathing helps too. Sure enough, within a few blocks, the tightness in my solar plexus would dissipate.

It worked like a charm. After a few months, I never got them again. That was thirty years ago.

What’s interesting is looking back at those episodes the same principals apply. I used my high anxiety to get moving, first by running off the tension and then to make huge adjustments in my life. I had just given up a ten year heroin and cocaine habit. I had a three year old son we just brought out of hiding after stashing him with relatives for a few months. A bunch of my friends and “co-workers” had been killed or died recently, and even I’d been shot, stabbed and had an arm broken with a bat over the course of a few months. Now I was in school full time studying behavioural sciences and working as a doorman/bartender at night. So my anxiety meant I cared. My stress was there to push me forward.  So is yours.

Anxiety and stress is just part of your energy, a deep wellspring of power you can harness for good. It’s a signal to find a way to live according to your own version of value-based happiness.

And here’s perhaps its greatest gift: It can put you into the zone. That state of flow that represents your best level of confidence.

Confidence isn’t a feeling,  at least not at first. No. Confidence is an action. Its Latin root is con fidere: with trust. Confidence is an act of trust. It’s acting with the highest degree of trust in you. More often than not, it is fear that puts you there.

Here are three ingredients to getting into your zone. But first, here’s what I mean.

I used to play a lot of pool. Snooker, nine ball, you name it. When I was in the zone, there could have been five hundred people watching, twenty-five people watching, or no one watching, it didn’t matter. I’d prowl around the green baize cloth, my eyes focused so intently that I wouldn’t even notice my surroundings, only what was under the lights. Commanding concentration shrank my world down to the size of the 6 x 12 or 4.5 x 9 foot table. The key to pool is controlling the white ball and I’d feel as if I could put it within a quarter inch of anywhere on the table, as if I had it on a string. If my opponent spoke, I wouldn’t acknowledge or hear them beyond what information they could convey that I needed to control the table. Time would seemingly stand still; I’d feel no hunger. And it was fear that would put me there because before every big money game or tournament match, I’d feel anxious to the point of shaking throughout my body.

The first zone ingredient is to master the fundamentals of whatever it is you are involved with. I’d practice twenty hours per week at my pool game, taking on players all over southern Ontario back in the day. I even got coaching from Canada Fats, Tony Lemay.

Second is to focus one hundred percent on the task at hand. At every college or university I attended, I sat in the front of the class and took the best notes possible, completely absorbed in the lessons of the day. That allowed me to excel.

And third, try the impossible. When you allow fear to put you into the deep trance of your zone, calling upon everything you know and have practiced, creative solutions emerge that you never knew existed. I’ve made impossible shots at the table while in my zone. When pro ball players learned to block Michael Jordan’s jump shot, he came up with the fade-away jumper during a game to compensate, sending the ball over defenders to the net. Somehow, acts of confidence are summoned from within flow, often surprising even yourself.

If you can see fear and stress and anxiety as your body’s way of signaling you have extra energy to devote to living according to what you value, suddenly a force that once held you back is replaced by a power that brings out your best efforts.

Before you know it, fear, stress and anxiety is replaced by action and confidence.

What a gift this thing we call fear.

P.S. Have a fear you need help with? See me at ckwallace.com, or  contact me here and we’ll talk

 

cue

 

© CKWallace 2016, all rights reserved

ckwallace.com

photo credit: ckwallace.com

Top: The Acorn Tree. A large white oak that has been growing near my parents home in Heron Park, Ottawa, since long before me.

Bottom:  combination snooker and pool cue. Four shafts, three extensions fit in the custom case. I traveled to Montreal to meet and be measured by Marcel Jacques himself somewhere around 1990. In his day, Marcel was one of the best custom cue makers in the world.