The Dangers of Dahlias

Dinner Plate Dahlias

Hello Courageous Thrivers,

Many years ago, when my now-29-year-old was about two, I started seeing a therapist in the suburbs of Philadelphia.

Once a week I’d drive out to the Main Line from my University City home, always craving a Starbucks mocha or some such treat on the way—but not getting one, since I was usually running late.

My therapist had an office in the back of her home, and to get to it I would walk through her amazing flower garden. My favorite flowers were the Dinner Plate Dahlias. They were so extravagant. So ridiculously large. Unnecessarily so. I loved them for that.

One evening, I asked if I could take one home. My therapist said yes.

Then. I. Froze.

I held my breath. I looked at the floor. My heart started beating fast. I felt panic. I started to feel disconnected from my body—my whole nervous system was on red alert. I couldn’t run; that would be rude. But some part of me exited the building.

Why?

Because I’d just gotten what I wanted.

I’d let myself desire something extravagant. Then I asked for it. Then I got a yes.

Perhaps you’re a more rational (or healed) human than I was. Maybe when you get what you want, you just enjoy it. If so, go you! That is some healthy humaning you’re doing.

But if you ever find yourself waiting for the other shoe to drop, or hear yourself say, “It’s too good to be true,” keep reading.

If you find that—above almost everything else—you fear “being selfish,” and when you ask for what you want and actually get it, some part of you feels really uncomfortable… then you, like me, probably have a nervous system (or an inner child, or a part of you—different ways of saying the same thing) that believes getting what it wants is actually dangerous.

Why Might We Subconsciously Fear Getting What We Want?

For many of us in the U.S., this fear is at least partially rooted in our Puritan cultural roots, where many pleasures were viewed as sinful—or at least dangerously close to sin—and therefore to be avoided.

Or maybe you experienced a huge, unexpected loss right after receiving something you really wanted. It felt excruciating. Something you never want to feel again. And now your body thinks those two always come together: big joy must be followed by big loss. So best to avoid big joy.

It can also feel really wrong to receive goodness in the face of the suffering others are experiencing—especially if you care deeply about equity and justice. That one trips up a lot of us.

Last Sunday in Next Step Forward, we talked about what it’s like to face the reality of our unearned privileges—and how often noticing them can lead to feelings of shame or overwhelm. That too can block us from taking in the deep nourishment of getting what we want when it happens.

It seems counterintuitive, but if you have the possibility of joy right in front of you and you refuse to take it in, you haven’t helped anyone in Gaza, Sudan, or West Baltimore by doing so. All you’ve done is starved your own soul and made it harder to take the actions that are yours to take—or even know what they are.

I’m right there with you. I fall into that trap all the time.

The Good News

You don’t need to know the root of the pattern to shift it. You can start welcoming more abundance, delight, wonder, and satisfaction into your life now—which can energize and inspire you to take the actions that are yours to take. This is not an either/or proposition.

If you want to experience more of what you want—whether it’s a crazy-big Dahlia on your kitchen counter or the abolition of ICE—it matters how your body reacts when you get what you wanted.

You need to create a new nervous system pattern. Something to replace the habit of immediately worrying, numbing out, or downplaying how good something feels.

You need to teach your body that it is safe to want what it wants—and to receive it when Life says yes.

How Do You Do That? By Practicing.

Here are a few techniques I’ve been using lately:

• Havening
  Great if you tend to shut down, dissociate, or fall asleep when something good happens (i.e. a freeze response). It’s a calming practice—you rub one forearm and hand with the other, slowly, like you’re putting on lotion.
  

• Strenuous movement
  Running is helpful because it mimics the body’s impulse to flee. Shaking works, too—giving your body a chance to complete the stress cycle. Stress hormones are great for fight or flight, but not when stuck in your system.
  

• Talking to your parts
  Instead of falling into a tug-of-war between the scared part (“Oh no, something bad is going to happen now!”) and the judgy part (“What’s wrong with me for not feeling grateful?”), acknowledge both with compassion.
  
  Example:
  

• To the scared part: “I see you. I hear you. It makes sense that you’re scared based on what you’ve been through. But I’m grown now, and I love you. You are safe, and you belong. I’m excited for you to have what you asked for.”
  

• To the judgy part: “I see you. I hear you. Thanks for trying to help me do the right thing. But I’m grown now, and I want to experiment with a new way. Wanna help me collect some data? If it doesn’t work, we can always go back.”
  

Keep Crossing the Threshold

I’ve been thinking about that Dinner Plate Dahlia lately because Life has handed me some beautiful “yeses.” And I’ve noticed how easy it is for me to skip celebration and go straight to stress. To worry about logistics. To fear disappointment. To focus on what’s still not working.

But I keep practicing crossing what Gay Hendricks calls the “upper limit”—that threshold of happiness, love, and success we subconsciously cap before we pull ourselves back into what feels familiar (even when it doesn’t feel good).

Recently I got the message—through a dream—that to do what’s mine in the world, I need to be nourished by more pleasure. When I was finishing my PhD, I kept dreaming of soup. Literal nourishment. I didn’t stop having that dream until I started listening.

This time, the dream isn’t soup. It’s about joy. It’s about nourishment through pleasure so that I can take consistent action in service of Love’s work. And to get clear about what form that work needs to take right now—so I don’t stay frozen.

I have a hunch I’m not the only one who needs to learn to receive and be nourished by pleasure in order to do justice work from a place of joy and love. Because joy and love are much more powerful—and sustainable—energy sources than guilt, obligation, and fear.

How about you? Wanna try it?

Here’s to thriving and equity, receiving the extravagant beauty of life when it’s offered, and giving from that place of deep nourishment,
Deb

P.S. When we don’t allow ourselves to receive the goodness that’s available to us, we often substitute with food, alcohol, shopping, or other behaviors that don’t quite satisfy.

Remember how I always wanted a mocha on my way to therapy? On the way home, I never cared about it. Not once. Because my real need had been met.