Have you ever been ‘spaz’ shamed? Let me break it down for you. You…normally calm, cool and in control happens to let loose and get downright silly. An occurrence that happens rarely, and I mean rarely. And as you’re just about to get to your finest groove, your spouse (or child, or parent, or friend) says, “Geez, calm down already.” Talk about shutting.it.down. It might as well be a pin to a balloon. And then they wonder why you are most always calm, cool and in control.
I am that person. The calm one. In control all the time. Because if you’re not in control, absolute mayhem could break out at any moment. Literally, it could happen. So, when someone wired like me lets loose and dances in the kitchen, or breaks out laughing hysterically and is told to calm down? It stings like a jellyfish. And if you’ve never been stung by a jellyfish, yay you. It is MOST unpleasant. Needless to say, once stung, it’ll be a good long time before I muster up the nerve to let loose again.
Laughter is the best medicine
As the serious one in the room, days can pass without any laughter escaping my lips. And while I’d like to change that, it’s the straight up truth. It’s an actual medical fact that laughter is good medicine. The Mayo Clinic and 66,200,000 Google results will tell you so. Laughing stimulates your organs, your lungs, it activates positive hormones in your body and reduces stress.
I know this, and in fact believe myself to be a doctor some days. Yet, I persist in my serious outer demeanor. Calm, cool and in control. But lying below the surface is a silly girl who genuinely wants to play.
Danger Will Robinson
I do, I want to play. But once you’ve been serious for so long, it’s not a matter of flipping a switch. I lived through a period in my life that was incredibly hard. So much so that I became hypervigilant to the possibility that a negative downturn could happen at any moment. In this situation, my fight or flight hormones were continuously activated. Which served as a protective mechanism at the time. But now? I don’t need to be on alert anymore, but my brain hasn’t gotten the message yet. This is the case with a person who undergoes long term stress, or trauma.
The good news, according to neuroscience and this article, is that our brains are ‘plastic,’ meaning that they’re adaptable. They can be altered to respond differently. 2020 hasn’t exactly helped any of us who are vigilant. Carefully guarding ourselves in our homes, our limbic systems are in overdrive because of a potentially deadly virus. But we can make choices to change our thinking. I can make choices to rewire my thinking.
Wholehearted Living Guidepost #10
Cultivating Laughter, Song and Dance
Letting go of cool and always in control
Letting go of always in control
And while I’m serious with good reason, I know that I can let go of the reigns – if only a tad. This year of Wholehearted Living calls for it. My experiences reinforced a proclivity to being serious and any of us who are wired similarly can make a choice to rewire our main circuit board. Letting go of cool, calm and in control? It’s one thousand percent worth it. Being the grown up all the time is exhausting. So, when your normally serious friend, aka, me, starts laughing over nothing in particular? Don’t shame her. Or when you walk into the kitchen and find your reserved mother dancing? Don’t shame her. Ever.
Don’t shame her for being serious, and certainly don’t shame her for letting loose. Because only you have lived in your body. Lived your life. Been at the other end of whatever it is that you’ve experienced. Only you. And sister…if you want to cut a rug in the middle of the CVS…I say, ‘go for it.’ If I see you, I’ll stand 6 feet away with my mask on and join in. It feels brave to let ourselves go because it is. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. I’m with you my loves. Be Brave. Lisa