What I Learned from Turtles About Fear
I learn so much from my walkabout in nature. The soothing space, away from human activity and noise, allows for the voice of Spirit to enter in and be heard. Animals provide many magical lessons to us. Just as mirroring happens in human relationships, so the lessons are shared by animals, plants, and the elements. On my morning walks, I often see turtles. The like to get sun by perching on top of branches and rocks. There is a whole colony of them at a lake near my home where I like to walk in the early part of the day. I'm not quiet when I walk. My feet hit the ground heavily. But I don't talk much, so I"m not a noisy human per-se, but as we know, animals have much more powerful senses of hearing, and sight than we do, so the sound of my footsteps, the crackling leaves and sticks, and my stature, always startles the turtles perched on logs, stretching out into the lake.
When I startle them, they're always about 30 feet away. I don't bear arms, or have any intention of hurting them, but they are blindly programmed by their biology, and see my sudden presence as a threat, and they quickly jump into the water whenever I come close. Once one jumps in, they all do, with the sharp plopping sound of each one reverberating, as they sink under to safe space under the water. After all, I could be a hawk, or an eagle, ready to carry them off to certain death.
As an innocent party, walking with a heart full of wonder, not intentions of violence, it's easy to take it personally, that they are afraid of me. But I understand. They don't know me. They are working off of the information that they have, and playing it safe, and without gathering alot of information. We've all seen the videos of humans and wild animals becoming friends. It doesn't happen overnight. So, although, I'm being perceived as a threat, I know I'm not, but it still feels strange....unseen...mis-seen, if you will...misunderstood.
This can happen in human relationships as well. We are all programmed from birth by fairy tales, religious doctrine, and the war stories of our parents' traumas, all of which can lead us to internalize fear-based thinking. So, we end up in a society full of daulity; men don't trust women, and vice-versa, the rich don't trust the poor, the poor don't trust the rich, liberals and conservatives don't trust each other and so on. So, without really taking the time to understand one another, we make snap judgements and react accordingly.
So, we walk along our patth, observing and enjoying others in friendship, at work, in the public sphere, not realizing that they may not truly see us, or understand us, because they are blidned by their own fear-based programming. This can happen in intimate relationships, where one person is triggered by something which stiumulates a fear reponses, and leads to flight. This kind of departure is often sudden, and leads to a complete shut-down, with little to no contact, or closure. When an adult is healing from truama, especially in childhood, those walls can slam shut very quickly, and lead us to feel abandoned and misunderstood, and unseen.
It's important during a situation like this, not to internalize their judgement. There are always lessons for us to learn about ourselves, but we cannot take on someone else's trauma, by believing their version of who we are. Typically, when someone expresses fear or judgement toward us, we will start to feel pointy shards of self-doubt poking us: "You screwed up", "You weren't good enough", "It must have been what you said two weeks ago", etc. We'll replay the causes for lthe shutdown in our mind, vascillating back and forth between blaming ourselves, and blaming them.
LIkewise, if we turn the mirror on our own behaviors, how often have we behaved like those turtles, assuming the worst about a situation or a person, before really getting to know them? Allowing our past traumas to become a filter, through which we view everything and everyone we meet. We retreat to our safe space, with unbounded fear nipping at our heels, like a sheep dog briniging us home to a corral of our own making. This is not to say that we should not move about life with some manner of conservative observation and judgement about whom and what we want to include. But living in fear can lead us to swing too far in the other direction, and dive into the murkey waters of our own prison, removing us from potentially positive relationships and experiences. Accessing the greater boundaries of our ability to assess what's in front of us, allows us to gather more information, and to make informed decisions that honor both our safety, and our fulfillment.
