Mini Retreat: Seattle 12/6 1:30-5:30 pm, full session in The Work from start to finish. Everyone will get to investigate at least one stressful situation from their lives, past or present.
Click here to read more and register to come. Limited to 12. 4 CEUs for mental health professionals.
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The other night I ventured out to a party at an old friend’s house, someone I’ve known since high school days.
Taking off for an event at someone’s house alone….a party, a gathering, a dinner….a social event of some kind….
….isn’t the easiest thing in the world for some people.
Well, I should speak for myself.
I once felt very anxious almost every time I approached the scene of a party.
The voices are coming out of the windows, there are cars parked up and down the street squeezed nose to fender, music wafting into the night air, bright lights from inside.
Lots-of-people sounds.
If you’re like I once was (and I still have ideas waft through like this for sure) you may notice you get nervous at that moment. People are going to look at you when you go inside! They might talk with you, too!
Twenty-five years ago I was in a therapy group.
Those scary, scary humans, OMG!
(It was one of the best things I ever did in my healing process, by the way).
I had been in this marvelous group for over a year.
I shared with everyone during the little beginning check-in whats-going-on start of group that I was invited to a big huge party….but I didn’t really do so well at parties so I wasn’t going to go. Sometimes I drank too much alcohol. Staying in was better. Going out was risky.
One of the therapists stopped me.
“You know, there’s another option besides Not Going. You can go to a party and be completely honest.”
Gulp. What does she mean by that?
She went on:
“For example, you could walk in, look around, go stand near someone and say to them that you feel kind of nervous going to parties and you’re a super-extreme introvert.”
She said I could practice relaxing, not needing to “do” anything, see if a question comes to ask someone I encounter.
Oh.
Seriously?
With this other vision offered to me….it suddenly occurred to me that I had been locked into one story about large quantities of people all together in one place and what you were supposed to be like to be “successful” in that situation.
You were supposed to like attention, love talking with people, love asking and answering questions, and be entertaining, fun, pleasing and likable. You were supposed to be nice, friendly and polite.
But honest? About what you really thought and felt?
Woah. That had never ever occurred to me before.
Who would you be without your story that you are being watched by people with a critical eye, or they need to feel good around you, or you have to fake that you’re interested, or you’re going to “have” to talk to people and be nice?
Without that thought, I’d be totally free to take it all in, move in or out of conversations, or the rooms, connect with the human race, risk being perceived as weird, or quiet, or rude.
Sharing that I was nervous around big groups of people, with people, began a turnaround inside me, even though I didn’t know about Byron Katie yet.
I began practicing genuine honesty, and self-care, in large groups.
Sometimes I bumbled, it didn’t go so well, I screwed up, I got scared.
But then even though I felt shy, I’d try again.
The other night…I had such gratitude about humanity at that party.
The host who opened up his home and baked bread and chicken for guests, the band who played fabulous music, the old friends who I unexpectedly got to see after years and years, the new friends I met for fascinating conversations, the room, the lights, the chairs, the floor.
Even though there were tons of new faces and I had a little of that background of alarm when encountering the new and strange when I first walked in, I had the best time.
Keep questioning your beliefs that groups of people are scary, if you notice they are. Or boring, or irritating, or strange…whatever.
Maybe everyone you encounter is a friend, open, interested in sharing and connecting, curious, accepting, loving, kind, even if they’re also anxious. Maybe you belong everywhere.
Including this party.
Doesn’t that sound more fun, a bit lighter?
“There is only one nature, and it is friendly. If I am perceiving you as not friendly, it is THIS unfriendly mechanism [Katie points to head] that is perceiving the unfriendly….the only thing in that situation that needs to change is ME….Identify what you’re thinking and believing, wake yourself up, you’re in a dream!” ~ Byron Katie
Much love, Grace