growing beyond the baby fawn
image via gochagia
The UNHCR call rep asks me why I first decided to give money to the cause. I think: ‘saviour complex’, but instead I tell her I do not recall. She validates me: it was 2018, it can be hard to remember. I start thinking about when Uranus ingressed into Taurus in 2018. She starts telling me about the war. I sense heat rising in my chest. I know my cue to end the call came when she first told me where she was calling from, but somehow I said yes and stayed on. It’s now or another polite three minutes.
She cannot see me but I raise my index finger and say: “I am going to pause you right there. I do not have the capacity to help right now, so I am going to end the call right here.” Her voice is sugary and reassuring, straight from the template they sent all on-boarding employees, words that sound strangely familiar in my mouth.
I hang up and feel the heat still radiating from my chest. I walk around my house and tell myself I am proud of myself for cutting things off. It’s a new daily ritual I made up for Leo season, naming one thing I am proud of myself for.
I think of all the minor inconveniences and irritations we are willing to put up with, when we know full well it is not what we want to experience. I am learning to enter the heat of the moment to feel the discomfort right now, to teach my body that it is safe to stay in my body while saying no.
When Yes is your default, starting with No can bring waves of guilt, shame and criticism from the inner judge within.
Our younger self that did not have our No’s honoured, respected or even acknowledged may have learned very early on to shut down our internal No or face the consequences of continual misattunement. Some of us learned that it is safer for us to fawn, till our inner No becomes so quiet that it is barely perceptible.
Fawn is a version of that charming nervous system blend where our ventral vagal system is engaged - why yes, I am connected to you - while our sympathetic system (fight or flight) is also online.
‘I'm going to look like I'm really interested in you and I'm looking at you and I'm talking with you and I'm being nice to you and I have a lot of charge inside and I've learned how to look like that's not there and support you and be friendly with you just in service that I am safe.’
We can carry the somatic imprint of bodily sensations, behavioural gestures and emotions that remind us of how this is still present in our nervous system today, even when it has far outlived it’s relevancy.
This embodied No was clear, differentiated. Less to prove. Disentangling from the identity of a good, generous, charitable person, always ready to help. Even if I am also all/none of those things, and so much more.
Practice when the stakes are low low low, not when you are in the boxing ring and your opponent will most likely wipe you out with one swipe.
(My sensei tells us to keep training even when we’re injured and I’m like I know you’re a Capricorn but I’m staying home)
I am proud of myself because even just a year ago, I would probably have let the phone call go on for more minutes and let the person talk at me before I politely decline.
The difference may be small, but pay attention to micro, tiny shifts because a drop becomes a ripple before it becomes a wave.
