In the Equine Gestalt Coaching® and the Gestalt Coaching™ Method training, April is listening month. We are assigned a partner and each day one asks a series of questions and listens to the other’s response. One of our questions has been about fear versus awareness. We repeat the questions for 14 days and I’ll admit in the past some of my answers got a bit repetitive.
Out of a Mountain of Despair A Stone of Hope. This quote is on the Martin Luther King, Jr memorial in Washington DC. I was very moved when I saw it in August of 2017 and that was before the cancer diagnosis.
The first day my answer was a little shallow to this one. As we got into the exercise, I was thinking more and more about it and how it might be showing up for some people during this pandemic.
Fear is what keeps us stuck. For the agoraphobic that fear keeps them stuck in the house. That is an extreme case. Right now, fear may be keeping you in the house as well and there might be very solid reasons for your staying in during this. (You can read my take on reasons for social distancing here.)
Awareness is what moves us through fear. We know it’s a scary world and we feel that the need to go out outweighs the risks. Right now, that may mean wearing a mask and gloves.
Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less. ~ Marie Curie
Fear is why people have hoarded things, they fear running out and there being none left for them. Every time I’ve gone to get horse feed, I’ve been afraid that would be the case. Every time it has not been. I was not going to be the one to leave others in the lurch. The last time I had to ask them to bring some from the back room. I do have a contingency plan should they run out. I hope I don’t have to use it.
Monument Rocks south of Oakley, KS. Enjoy a moment in nature.
Awareness is what keeps me from taking all the horse feed on the shelf and leaving others without any. There have been times when the feed store has had trouble keeping the feed I use in stock; I know how frustrating it is to not be able to get any.
I believe fear is what is firing up the protests right now. Fear that our economy won’t recover. Fear that we will be on stay at home orders forever. The economy will recover, and we will be allowed to roam freely. Right now, the experts think this is the best way to keep our health care system from being overwhelmed and causing more deaths.
On March 30 (the first day of the stay at home order in Kansas) I had an appointment with my oncologist in Hays. Granted Hays wasn’t and still isn’t a hot spot for infection, but I did call to check before I drove 90 miles if I should still come and if so what the protocols would be once I got there. This didn’t worry me too much. I feel like a cancer center deals with immune-compromised people daily so their procedures were already in place.
I’ve talked to a friend who was diagnosed with breast cancer right before all of this. As she’s getting ready for her next phase of treatment, she has such great awareness about all of this. Her fear is not taking over and she will come out the other side.
I’ve also talked to another friend whose husband is in treatment. She is an essential employee and works someplace where sick people come. She fears every day that she might bring something home to her immune-compromised husband. Despite her fear and because of her awareness she carries on.
Adagio for Strings is helping a friend as she goes on with her treatment for breast cancer in the midst of the pandemic.
Make a Connection in the comments below.
Onward! What People Are Afraid Of
