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.