Rewards of Living an Authentic Life: Cherophobia

 

 

“Sometimes cherophobia can stem from the belief that if something very good happens to a person, or if their life is going well, that a bad event is destined to happen. As a result, they may fear activities related to happiness because they believe they can ward off something bad from happening.” - Healthline.com

Have you ever felt like you have been gifted, have earned a reward, suddenly and unexpectedly, like a windfall when something wonderful happens and it feels like you do really deserve it?  I do not know about all of you, but I often fear having something really good happen because, deep in the recesses of my memory are places of hurt and once in a when my Evil Inner Witch/Ego/limbic system/Lizard Brain has a break-through – and not a good one, and I feel fear creep in before I can squash it.  ‘cherophobia”, who’d have thought there was a label for even that? Just another type of anxiety and that there is even a Goddess to call on for such things!

Do I need a label for this?  Do any of us?  Actually, yes, because it will drive us to know ourselves better and there is a word for what that gut-wrench feeling that comes when good things come to us.  Why does it make any sense to have such a thing happen?  Actually, it truly does.

In life, we have had the sky fall, the shoe drop, many times and some of those times have changed us.  There, absolutely, can be a fear of happiness.  When we know we have it, understand the WHY of it, it is easier to stomp down when it shows up. 

I have always been a Type A person; work, work, do, do, go, go…  and I think I have a handle on my perfectionism and then…boom!  There it is, again, and sometimes in the form of “cherophobia”.  I think that that fear is so engrained that we overlook the times when something yucky did NOT happen after a jolt of happiness.  Traumatic events seem to embed differently and deeply in our memory.  What might be traumatic to me, can be totally different than what you define as traumatic.  It seems to be a little black box (ever the little black box that Pandora had)  that we tuck those events in, stuff them down hard, and think we have control over them, but, no, one little jolt of Joy and it seeps out through the cracks.  That FEAR of good things keeps us blocked from good things, sure enough.  We forge to be spontaneous.  We might even forget to say “thank you” because there is a gripping fist in our belly.  The connection between fear and happiness is faulty, if we fear happiness.  We are keeping us from the Joy of every present moment.  We are always looking forward and that ‘forward’ is really THE PAST that ha no place in our Present. 

I procrastinate, as soon as I know I should start listing the times good things happened to me, that was NOT followed by something not happy.  Again, fear of abandonment and rejection/ ah, the ever “Primal Wound” in me.  For goodness sakes, I am 74 years old, I ought to have gotten over it…and yet... I have not.  You would think that , with all the wonderful things that have happened to me, that I would be rational and not have fear connected to happiness.  It certainly has not always been a fact that not good things followed something happy.  I have had to sit myself down and have a good talk to myself, yet again.

I have never been a miserable, sad, person, for longer than the time it took me to get some sense to incidents.  I am getting better at getting ‘hold’ of myself.  And, I praise myself, in my quietude, when I realize I have done so.  I need to be more compassionate with myself.  The Child in me is still that rejected child, the 'pleaser' child, the smile-through-your-tears young adult.  Just when you think you have gotten to the root of something, acknowledged it and let it be a gift and just let it go, again, the niggling fear finds a way through the clutter.  Being compassionate with self, as you would any other person, is paramount to Self-esteem. 

Somehow, we have bought into the idea that we should be happy all the time, that we should feel joyous, if we were a good person doing good things for others.  And, that is not so.  We bought into a fictitious ideology.  Life is an ocean full of ebbs and flows.  Life is a forest where the trees bend and sometimes fall.  Life is the adult and we are the child.  Sometimes we need to give ourselves a good talking too.  I am enough for myself!  I matter to myself!  Happiness is an ever-changing state.  Adversity is what teaches us to know happiness.  Every emotion we have is a gift.  We are either gliding along or we are fighting the weather, but it never lasts, any of it.  It was never meant to.  And, sometimes we need to lean on someone else, something else, for a time.  We all have some kind of faith in something.  I choose to borrow the aide of my belief in the personifications of the Goddesses.

Authentic does not mean absolute Joy all the time, ever happy, ever positive.  Authentic Life is one with all the gift of emotions we were created to have. 

Euphrosyne is the Greek Goddess of Joy, of Happiness and Good Cheer.  She was created to fill the world with pleasant moments (– note, ‘moments’, in time.

©Carol Desjarlais 9.7.21

 

The Acorn and Us

 

 

 

“The strongest oak of the forest is not the one that is protected from the storm and hidden from the sun. It’s the one that stands in the open where it is compelled to struggle for existence against the winds and rains and the scorching sun.” – Napoleon Hill

Druids ate acorns because they believed it helped them prophesize.  The Celts and Nordics believed that acorns symbolized immortality, fertility and the tree of life.  Mighty Oaks come from a simply struggling acorn.  We women know what it is to struggle and, my goddess, we are heroines of our own story.

Here we are, against many odds, surviving, overcoming and thriving.  Yes, we have lost some of our branches, our leaves, and might be leaning a bit, but here we are.  We are who we are because we defied many odds, weathered many storms, rose above the flames of lvies that were in many many storms.  Here we are.  We ARE mighty.  We are admirable.  We are ourselves and that matters.

We are great survivors.  We are great overcomers.  We are great thrivers.  We have so much possibility within us.  Everyone of us has had to walk the walk and talk the talk that cried in wildernesses, that cried in our homes, whose hearts were totally torn asunder.  Here we are.  Great possibilities.

We are symbols of hope, of courage, of tenacity.  We have been bent willows drooping into rivers of tears and learned to upright ourselves come beautiful warm sun.  We cast off our hardened shells; slough off our old ideas and the chaff that life left clinging to us.  We let go of what no longer serves us.  Our soul remembers the mother’s great limbs and shadows and lacy leaves that rose, like spirit, towards the great above.  We remember. 

Our maternal ancestors danced around the mighty oak in hope, in prayer, in adoration of who came before us, what we are made of and what we have potential for.  They are still with us, laughing and loving and dancing at who we have become.  We have become the answer to their prayers.  Oh, we so matter. 

©Carol Desjarlais 9.5.21

 

Embrace Learning/Tilting At Windmills

 

 

 

“Feminism isn’t about making women strong. Women are already strong. It’s about changing the way the world perceives that strength.” – GD Anderson

I have seen a great deal of posts, re: “covid” and people not educating themselves about it.  Most of those who post such are looking at conspiracy theories and alternative ideologies rather than scientific expertise.  Most of the Conspiracy Theorist Experts want their fifteen minutes of fame, or infamy, through constant rebellion/ opposition/ attention-seeking.  Anti-maskers, anti-vaxers, anti-everything, you will most likely discover are always in a state of opposition for pretty much anything.  There seems to be little gray area where they are concerned.  As well, we know these people (these kinds of people), they are always causing drama of some kind and will support anything that goes against the norm.  They are difficult people.  You will read/hear them say, “Research!” and claim to do research, which they might be, but they have their own agendas and you cannot trust their opinions because their sources lack credibility. 

I love to do research.  I spend a great deal of time doing so.  I will be thinking about something and I step to my computer to find out more, but then I research the “expert(s) to see their credibility.  I simply cannot bear the “far out” opinions that simply lack the full truth.  For instance, re: covid, I research scientific and medical findings and choose to believe their opinion over armchair experts or antagonistic view points. 

I spent my whole career around the realm of psychology and norms and I have some of my own theories about such.  I continue to be a learner.  I will be a lifelong learner.  And, of course, I can narrow down my theme of interest by looking more into transformational behavioralist points of view.  I do not need to be right for anyone else but myself.  I have collected some wisdom in those years and placements.  After earning my Degree and then my fifth year specialization, and landed at my first posting, working frontline taught me more and my students and clients taught me even more deeply.  I have some ideologies about First Nations that come from experience and living with and amongst the people that gives me a little more credibility in my theories about restoration and restitution.  But I am not out marching and banner waving nor spouting off what I think to the masses.  I need no one to justify my knowledge and I expect that I may know more than someone who did not spend 23 years working in the culture and living within the cultures for those years. 

We are all experts on ourselves, nothing more. Life is too difficult to dream up other ways to tilt at windmills.  Never mind tilting at windmills: dreaming up windmills to tilt.  We all can prove a thesis we dream up.  Why dream up controversy, and all the whole, spout that all you want is peace?  Self-centered righteousness does not mean you are educated.  Why not educated yourself in things of love, of kindness, of compassion, of learning how to surrender, how to sort fact from fiction, etc?   

©Carol Desjarlais 9.4.21