Learning to sit in the fire
For the past 3 years, I’ve had aggressive intrusive thoughts - hearing screams in my head, unwanted thoughts about things that scare me, reliving unpleasant or traumatic memories - you get the gist. It was as if one day, I cracked my brain open and ripped out several protective layers - the coolers of the nuclear reactor stopped working. Sometimes I had unwanted thoughts hundreds of times per day, and for many months they were the first and last thing I thought of before and after going to sleep. (As an aside, please be very careful with abusing ketamine - this is what I believe helped open the floodgates for this problem.)
Last summer I took MDMA with a therapist. Though the experience itself was healing and generally supportive, the aftermath was catastrophic - I woke up in the night to what felt like a lightning bolt going through my spine. For the next 6 months I experienced more lighting bolts (which I later learned are called “brain zaps”) along with intense and persistent paranoia unlike any anxiety I’ve had before. On top of that, I was experiencing bouts of stress that made me feel like I had metal in my blood, as if my body was screaming back at me for something I had done to it.
Overlapping these events I also experienced severe, repeating night terrors about a dark, enraged entity coming into my family home. Sometimes I would have multiple nightmares in a night and just remain in a constant state of panic until sunrise.
I could go on about deep feelings of shame, other forms of anxiety, and more, but I’ve shared enough to illustrate that I have been through some hard times.
Although these experiences were incredibly difficult to navigate, I am deeply grateful for their impact on me, and that I had the strength to navigate them. They have been my most intense experiences to date of what I have heard referred to in men’s groups as “learning to sit in the fire” – the practice of accepting and being with one’s pain.
I recently listened to a podcast episode by Boyd Varty called “The sacred enemy”. In his monologue, Varty shares what it was like dealing with extreme forms of financial harassment from a group that came after his family for their money. He compares it to the difficulty of tracking an animal in the wild and being forced to trust himself despite the dangers and uncertainties involved. His take is that we can see any difficult experience as an opportunity to cower before what causes us pain, or to see it as a source of strength-building, a chance to deepen our own capacity and be grateful towards the thing that is helping us to see who we really are.
Most of us probably agree that life is difficult, at least at times. What these experiences have taught me is that learning to sit in the fire is good for us. Of course, there are caveats here - sometimes the suffering can be too much and break us - we all deserve the opportunity to heal, to be held, and to put ourselves back together.
For me, the biggest outcome of learning to sit in the fire so far is this: the suffering I’ve experienced has helped me to build my capacity to endure extreme difficulty, and to support others in dealing with their own difficulties. That is a very special privilege for me.
Our suffering, or the fire we sit within, can look different for each of us. Some of my experiences of sitting in the fire include:
exploring and integrating my shadows
managing persistent stress and uncertainty, or feeling them while making big decisions
sitting with fear when telling people I love the truth
sitting with shame, guilt, sadness, and anger about who I am, my experiences, and my relationships
dealing with intrusive thoughts
Building my capacity to sit in the fire has also helped me with my inner work. I now feel much more comfortable sitting with myself undistracted and asking what is within me, with looking at my truth. It’s given me a deeper self-knowing and confidence that I can get through whatever comes my way.
One thing I want to add is that I started sitting in the fire at a young age. When I was around 8 years old I started ski racing competitively, and our coaches would push us really hard to help us develop mental toughness through intense exercise. In high school, I switched to competitive rowing where this continued, then in university, it became even more intense when I was competing with the varsity team. Training for a sport or physical activity can be a really powerful way for us to learn how to access and be in what is sometimes called “the hurt locker” - the place of body pain and mental anguish when you are in the middle of the workout, the competition, or the race, and your body is telling you “F*CKING STOP!” but you know that you don’t want to - else you will lose.
Without this prior experience in sports, I’m not sure I’d have been able to manage the more difficult stuff that came my way later on, at least not in the same way. I’m deeply thankful for all of the coaches who helped me to develop grittiness.
To all those who are currently sitting in the fire, I hope you find everything you need to get through to the other side. I believe in you.
🙏
