Protection Mode

Sometimes life throws things at you all at once and you enter Protection Mode.  Making it a positive experience is a great growth opportunity for you and can help you emerge quicker and with greater positivity in life.  Photo credit:  Microsoft

A lot of times when I write, it’s because I’m processing something going on in my life or I’m interested in the topic and want to explain my thought process to those that will listen, or read as it may be.  Today’s topic falls under both realms.  In case you haven’t gotten it from my other posts, I’m an analyzer.  I’ve also made it an important part to not just analyze those things around me, but also myself and how I connect to the greater world I’m living in.  

So, today’s topic I have intimate knowledge of as it’s something I did recently for a long time.  It’s also something I’ve seen others do, and it can be done to varying degrees.  It’s called going into Protection Mode.  A few years ago, someone busted out my car window and stole my purse while I was taking care of my horse at the barn.  Yes, I realize I should not have left it there and it was a painful lesson to learn.  I won’t bore you with all of the details, but all of the shit I had to deal with from that one incident was a lot to handle.  Something as simple as answering the phone or getting the mail became a source of stress for me because I didn’t know who would be calling or what piece of mail I’d be getting telling me to pay a bill I didn’t even create, all because someone stole my purse and tried to steal my identity.  By the way, is anyone else a bit pissed off at all the businesses out there that don’t check ID or do a poor job of doing so when accepting a credit card or check?   

I digress.  When all this happened and for a long time afterward, I put a shell over and around myself and didn’t really trust the outside world.  I locked social things down, trust didn’t come as easy as it had before, and I looked at the world with a skeptical lens.  Eventually I did come out of it, but I look back on that time in my life and feel like I went into Protection Mode for way too long.  

I’ve seen others enter this stage when they’ve had several things happen to them in succession or all at once.  Not only do they stop trusting other people, they actual pull away and alienate themselves AND they stop listening.  Anything anyone has to say is not worth listening to and is wrong.  All of it.  Wrong.  For the person in Protection Mode, this is the right thing to do and they feel good because they’ve cut out all the bad people or things in their lives.  What they don’t seem to realize is that they’ve also cut out the good ones, too.  Going into Protection Mode is everyone’s prerogative, don’t get me wrong.  And, it’s basically a given that we will all enter that mode at any time in life because it’s a natural stage to go through.  What I’m saying is if you’re going into Protection Mode or are currently in it, take a moment and think about whether or not you’re cutting out the good along with the bad.  Are you throwing out the baby with the bath water?  

Protection Mode can be a positive thing, especially if you’re able to reflect on yourself and your actions and be honest with yourself.  That’s a really constructive thing to do when you find yourself there.  However, it can also be a really hard thing to accomplish unless you really work at it.  Sometimes it’s easier to just shut down and shut off when the only way to grow is to turn on and listen to your surroundings.

Coming out of Protection Mode can feel really good, almost like a butterfly emerging from a cocoon.  You’re able to open the wings of your mind and push beyond the little space you only allowed yourself to exist in for so long.  Trust starts to come back and you open yourself up and let things come back in.  It feels good to be happy, feel confident, and to look at the world through bright lenses.  You look back at your time in Protection Mode and you may think to yourself, “I never want to go back into that again.  What a dark and lonely place to be.”  It’s inevitable that you’ll go back there, but realize the signs that you’re headed there and try to make a pact with yourself to make a conscious effort to turn it into a positive life experience so you can grow and emerge out of it sooner.  You’ll still probably shut things and people out because you want to protect yourself from the things in this world that aren’t going the way you want them to or think they should, but make a conscious effort to only do that with the truly bad things.  Limit the collateral damage.  This is an important piece, not only for you and the future, but also for those things and people in the future that didn’t deserve to be cut out.  Realizing that those people and things may not be there again when you emerge from Protection Mode and it’s not fair to expect them to be, especially if they were the baby you threw out with the bathwater.  In this instance, trust is a two-way situation.  You want to trust them and they also need to trust you; trust that you won’t shut them out.

I imagine a higher state of being is achieved when you’re able to float in and out of Protection Mode, using it for meditating, self-reflecting, resting, recharging, and making positive changes in yourself and your life.  Like I said, although it often arrives because of something negative, it doesn’t have to continue to be a negative thing.  You know the old adage, “those who don’t learn from their past mistakes are doomed to repeat them?”  Yes.  Forget the things you did in the past, there are no time machines and you can’t change them anyway.  Go forth and make a conscious effort to be the positive change in your life.  You’ll be happy you did. 

Emotions and environment

Bora Bora, where I did most of my writing.  I would love to go back to where the colors were so vibrant, it turned on my creative conscious and happy vibes.

Environment plays a pretty major role in my happiness and general state of mind.  Being an empath, it’s not particularly surprising that my surroundings would rate high on the importance scale.  When I talk about environment, it not only includes where I work, but also where I live.  It has also played a part in where I have attended school. 

 Growing up in Juneau, it was tough to balance out my emotions, especially during the winter when we were only graced with about six hours of daylight and the rest of the year when the weather was particularly combative.  It rained.  A lot.  Sometimes my mind will crave the sound and sights of a good rain storm, but normally my mood takes on the same colorful frame (or lack thereof) during times of darkness or rain.  It was a little easier during the summer months; however, as we had this wonderful little perk called twilight and we had about 19 hours of daylight, give or take.  Plus, there was a lot of outdoor-type activities to embark on like hikes or camping to help with the droll feelings.  If my environment couldn’t give me the endorphins I craved, then exercise was always an option.  

Environment was actually one of the major drivers of why I moved south and would never consider moving back to Alaska.  Warmer weather, more sun, less rain, etc. etc.  Overall, I’m just happier living where I am, minus the time in 2010 we hardly had a summer and most of the time it was gray, overcast, and chilly.  That summer I really considered moving to a warmer, sunnier climate like Arizona.  Thankfully, we haven’t had another summer like that since!

I have fond memories of my college environment and being particularly happy with where I chose to attend.  UAS in Juneau had this beautiful library with tall ceilings and a wall of windows that let a lot of natural light in.  It was probably one of my favorite places on campus to study or spend a few quiet minutes to myself.  When we moved to Anchorage to finish school, UAA had a fairly lacking library that has since been remodeled, but there were other parts of campus that I was happy with.  I spent a lot of time by default in the BEB building because I was a business major and most of my classes were in there. There is something to be said about tall ceilings and open space.  That was the perfect environment, and I didn’t mind so much that I was there into the evening and sometimes on weekends.

As I grew up, my work environment began to take center stage with regard to importance.  I don’t recall it being so central to my life and happiness as a teenager, but perhaps that had to do with the fact I wasn’t spending several hours of my life each day at work.  It seems to make sense that the more time I spent somewhere, the more important the environment actually was.

When we lived in Anchorage, I was working part-time while attending school.  Before landing where I did, I remember each interview I went on and how I took in the work environment and wondered if I would be happy there.  Some places you knew right away, and others seemed to require a few weeks on the job before realizing it’s not the place to make you happy long-term.  It’s why I insisted on a tour each time I interviewed.  Environment plays a huge role in my happiness and what I am able to give.  If it’s dark, dirty, and the ceilings are low and closed-in, I won’t be a happy camper.  Light, bright, airy – those are all the boxes I had to check.  Sometimes I settled and tried to make a go of it, but eventually I ended up leaving unless the job itself and the people I worked with outshined the fact the environment sucked.  In those cases, the work and the people were the environment.

Environment also plays a huge role in my creative conscious.  I did the most writing when I was vacationing in Hawaii and Bora Bora, or when we went camping.  For different reasons, these places were able to inspire me.  Hawaii and Bora Bora had all of these colors – the water, the greenery, the sea life—all of it contributed to my ability to crank out over a hundred pages of writing during each trip.  Camping, on the other hand, is more about the relaxation that comes when you’re sitting in front of something as simple as a campfire, enjoying the dancing orange flame and the crackling and snapping that doesn’t seem to follow any kind of rhythm.  For the most part, it’s also quiet in stark contrast to city life.  Sure, there are people talking and sometimes hollering, but usually it’s minimal.  Instead, you’re surrounded by tall trees, singing birds, chittering squirrels and chipmunks, and other critters that allow you to share in their environment that makes them happy.

Being emotionally connected to the environment is not without its challenges.  It’s a delicate balancing act of finding the place I crave for happiness at any given moment.  When it’s spot on; however, it’s amazing for my psyche and my well-being.

Goodbye, Cringer

Cringey with his "radar ears."

As a writer, writing about things going on in my life or issues on my mind is a therapeutic way for me to process what I’m thinking about or working through.  Loss and grief is one such time I find it necessary to spill my guts to fill a blank page because I can’t let it swirl around inside my head for fear it will slowly kill me.

Cringey wearing his "heart on his sleeve."

So here I am today, sitting at my computer, sharing with the world my devastation over the loss of my kitty, Cringer.  I see my cats as my own children, and the loss is not easily felt when it’s time to tell one of them goodbye.  Cringer had a wonderful life.  He was almost 20 years old, missing his birthday by a little over a month.  He had a special marking on his right shoulder that often looked like a heart when he sat down.  We used to say he wore his heart on his sleeve.  He loved playing fetch with his mouse toys, rubbing his face all over a catnip pillow, and chasing a laser pointer when he was younger and could get around easier.  He was fearless, jumping up high to explore with his brother in our architectural wall cutouts.  He often greeted you with a small trill or a meek “mow-mow” while he did his trademark little “bump and slide” on your legs.  He loved us, and he loved his kitty brothers and sister, often snuggling with his littermate, Tigger when he was still with us, or one of the others.  He had a short stint as a Household Pet show cat with his brother.  He did well, winning over the judges with his personality while Tigger hated every minute of it.  It was funny how different they were from one another.  I thought Cringer would be skittish, hence the name.  For those that didn’t grow up in the 80’s, he is named after He-Man’s battle cat when he was not fighting evil.  He earned that moniker when he came home with us as a kitten and promptly hid under the futon that doubled as a couch for three days while Tigger ventured around and only joined him sometimes, I think just to keep him company.  

Tiggy and Cringey as kittens.

Brothers snuggling.

One of my favorite memories of him is how he loved to snuggle and hold my pregnant belly as I slept.  I think he’s the one that pushed me into labor because he walked on me, and right after that  my water broke.  Nyah was three days late and I guess Cringer felt it was high time he meet the little heat ball he’d been snuggling with for several months.

Suave little kitty.

It’s a funny thing when you’re grieving … there’s the usual need to put away and hide everything that will remind you of what’s missing.  It sort of seems like you’re scrubbing that part out of your life, when in reality the hole that’s left in your heart can’t take seeing something as simple as a can of wet food in the fridge or bowl filled with dry food on the counter.  And then there’s this new thing that happened to me this time around.  Suddenly little things previously left undone became important and time sensitive.  I feel a strong need to finish them that hadn’t been there before.  Perhaps it’s the need to be busy so you won’t think about it, or it’s the need to feel whole and complete simply by finishing a project.  I grieved differently with Tigger, Cringer’s brother.  I couldn’t be at home because it was too much not to see him and everything at home seemed to remind me of him.  I went hiking, I went to the barn, I went to the beach, I just got out.  With Salty, I bawled often, but was still able to be at home. 

Cringey and Tiggy at a cat show.

 Times like these are a good reminder to stop and take time to spend with your loved ones.  Things will continue to happen when you least expect it.  Today, someone wise told me that animals teach us the hardest things in life.  I wholeheartedly agree with that statement and it never gets easier.  You just learn to expect that it will happen, prepare for when it does as much as you can, and make the tough decision without regret.  

 

Top left to right:  Pouncer, Leo, Salty, Cringer, & Tigger back in 2013.  Rest in Peace, Salty, Cringer, & Tigger.