Pressure | Part 2: Quit Pressure
Who Is Pressuring You?
This is the second part of a Pressure article series. If you haven’t read the first one, I highly recommend that you read it first, before proceeding. You will find the German article on my website, or here the English on Medium.
As a side story, you can also read My Love Letter To Reality (Staying out of Pressure) as a part of the Women Of Earth Bridge-House writing on Substack.
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Living under Pressure is a survival strategy.
Who could pressure you, except yourself?
No one can force you to feel like a Victim about the circumstances. No one can force you to feel pressured about what others are saying to you or what you are thinking about it.
But it seems so much easier to accuse someone of being the one who puts pressure on you. Then you can stay in a game of complaining, playing small, holding yourself back and not daring to step forward into new territory of the Unknown.
Functioning and collapsing is a great way to not feel the Fear of the Unknown you would face when you allow yourself to go (back) to Reality.
Reality is when you are fully in your Adult Ego State, without any Contamination by or interference from your survival strategies of other Ego States — without the constant demanding of your Ego States of Child, Parent or Gremlin (read more here: How Your Adult Ego State Can Be A Lie). Reality is where you Hit Bottom. Leaving pressure is an ongoing navigation of noticing your own storyworld, all your bullshit, with all its explanations, excuses, positive thinking, sugarcoating and denying.
One of my pressure-research buddies, Lisa-Maria Görtz, described her walls of pressure (see Part 1) as the “fuck you” and “fuck me” sides. And this describes the dilemma very well — in your pressure you are trapped between covering things up and trying to do the right thing, while hating everyone for that. In between you are falling into despair, beating yourself up and hating yourself. Lisa-Maria said, it is like “masturbating yourself with emotions”, a crazy ecstasy of your Gremlin experiencing fake Feelings.
What is left at the bottom of Reality is a deep relief that your show did finally fall away, and all that is awaiting you is the Unknown with its Feelings and new Possibilities.
How to get out of the Pressure-Machinery
There is no method or right way to Hit Bottom, because then you would try to apply pressure again: “If I do this right, I will be finally without pressure.” And then you are back in the pressure cycle.
But there are several things you can experiment with.
For these Experiments it is necessary that you develop a strong Observer Consciousness. What helped me with this was Gremlin Transformation, so I could look at my life with a neutral eye, without ending up as a numb Zombie or mind-fucking Analyst — to really let my own underworld hit me and feel the impact my decisions and actions have on my life.
One practice as a Conscious Observer is Becoming Centered. Do this on a daily basis to connect yourself to Source so that Radical Freedom from Victim Consciousness becomes possible.
Nothing else, no amount of reading, thinking, or seeking resolution and relief in the external world will bring you the results you seek. Turn inward by cultivating a daily practice, and use the wisdom of that Source to move with your impulses.
This is what I did.
May it serve you as an inspiration.
Phase 1 — Preparation:
List All Pressure Trigger
Identify the situations or people that seem to put you under the most pressure. Maybe it is the amount of meetings and tasks in your calendar — all the weekly calls and “to do’s” in between. Maybe it is a certain person who “makes you feel uncomfortable” and you can not behave naturally in their company because everything you hear is: “Do better”. Make a list of these situations and sort the list according to the level of stress it triggers in you.
What puts you under the most pressure?
Start your Experiment with this.
Phase 2 — The Experiment:
Stop Being Around What You Think Is The Source Of Pressure
Go on a radical detox from it. Give your nervous system time to relax fully to exit any automatised responses to “threats”: Fight (facing any perceived threat aggressively) or Flight (running away from danger), Freeze (being unable to move or act against a “threat”) or Fawn (immediately acting to try to please and avoid conflict).
This could be that you decide — as in my case — to spend a month offline. Away from the cell phone with all the Telegram and WhatsApp messages. No Zoom and therefore no opportunity to take part in weekly calls or to squeeze in many meetings.
This might sound simple to be a month offline, but what I am proposing here is a dangerous Experiment of going Cold Turkey with your Gremlin’s favorite food. This is not the time to just hang around or to compensate with other things, but to feel what is really going on.
The Daily Practice During Your Experiment:
The following steps that I introduce to you here are part of a daily practice. I did not just do them once a day, but whenever I felt the slightest hint of anxiety or pressure.
Step 1: Notice Where The Pressure Really Comes From
If your apparent source of pressure has suddenly disappeared, then things will get interesting. I can already promise you that you will feel pressure in a different way. The Voices of “should have”, “should” and “must” won’t suddenly disappear. They will show themselves in a different way.
Detecting and blasting the Voices are still the more obvious part of this practice.
It becomes a little more difficult when it comes to getting to know your physical body in a completely new way. When and how do you experience pressure in your belly? Tension in your muscles? Anxiety in your neck? Tingling in your legs? Nervously rushing around? Reacting aggressively to others? Or collapsing inside yourself?
At the beginning, you probably do not realize that you are out of balance. As you practice, you will recognize these states faster and faster.
Step 2: Stop Everything
As soon as you have detected any pressure sign: Stop the thing that gives you pressure you are doing immediately. No discussion. Do not ignore the physical symptoms you have detected in Step 2. Sense in your body, what kind of unconscious Emotions are stuck there.
Most of the time you might find Fear in the form of anxiety, restless legs, or a faster heart beat. But also Anger can show up as tension in your muscles. Maybe your jaw hurts, because you are clenching your teeth together. (Perhaps Emotions of Sadness or Joy also put you under stress. But I have not experienced this myself — please tell me about it so that I can include it in this research.)
Step 3: Reboot Your Emotional System
Go to a place where you have set up a small altar with a candle and sit in front of the candle. Sit there until you are fully back in the here and now. This means:
1) Check how you have lost your energetic Center, your Authority, and then consciously center yourself. Breathe regularly and deeply into your belly and bring all your Attention and energy back to the physical center of your body between the two pelvic bones. Take your time with this. Consciously ground yourself with a Grounding Cord and declare your personal energetic space, your Bubble around you. This is called First Position. Stay here.
2) Let the Emotions that are stuck in your physical body flow back into the associated Resonance Tissues. Send Fear into your nervous system, Anger into your bones, Sadness into all of your soft tissues and Joy into your cells.Feelings Practitioner Trainer Dagmar Thürnagel explains how this works in this short video: “Physical Body, Feelings and Resonance Tissues”. (How that can look like, describes Leonhard Geupel in his article.)
Step 4: Follow Your True Impulse
Stay seated.
Stay in connection with the light of the candle.
Stay in gratitude.
There is a higher power than you that you can surrender to. These are the Bright Principles, an Archetypal Force.
Move only if you feel a true Impulse from this state. If you switch back into any worries, thoughts, emotional reactions or pressure, repeat Step 3.
In this state, you may be closer to the Adult Ego State than you have experienced before. From here, only move when having an authentic Adult impulse.
MOVE. BREATHE. AND STAY IN CONNECTION.
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As I am continuing researching pressure here in the Women Of Earth Bridge House in Brazil, this is not my last article about pressure. No promises. Just the joy of discoveries. In the meantime, you can read the Possibility Story “Love Letter To Reality”.
If you do not want to miss the next part, please sign up for my Medium Account or Newsletter.
Love,
Lisa
