Rice Experiment Week 5 & Vicarious Stress

Hate is winning?

Of course it’s too soon to tell, since we’re only 1/3 of the way through the experiment, but interestingly enough, there are some noticeable differences between the jars of rice starting to form; and the Hate Rice looks the best so far!

Hate & Depression Rice is still white and fluffy, just like it was on Day 1. Indifference Rice is similarly white and fluffy in the upper half, but clumpy and moldy on the bottom. Love & Gratitude Rice is, interestingly (to me), sticky throughout the jar and tinged an off-white color; not quite yellow or tan, just off-white. I’m very curious where the experiment will go from here.

In my expectations, I imagined the Love & Gratitude Rice staying white & fluffy like on day one and the other two turning off-white and eventually darker as they rotted. But of course, “Man makes plans and God laughs”, right? Luckily I wasn’t holding too tightly to my expectations and am enjoying the unknown of the journey as it unfolds.

Perhaps it’s noteworthy to mention that during Week 4, I spent 4 days walking through a stressful experience with a family member who needed a little company and support in their journey. For their privacy, I’ll remain vague on the details of this experience with them. I will share though that along the way there were plenty of beautiful moments of connection, but also a lot of stress and heavy emotion. For a little while, I wondered if perhaps the stress of the journey effected my ability to emit distinct-enough Hate vs Love energy to the rice. (Yes, I brought along the rice, similar to a flour sack baby school assignment, lol. Do they still do those assignments in high schools now-a-days?… My family member didn’t mind the rice hanging out with us – just the Love and Hate rices of course. Indifference Rice was left at home to be thoroughly ignored. :p )

As much as I was trying to bring Love, Gratitude and steady support into the situation for my family member, the vicarious stress of the experience definitely caught up with me here and there along the way.

At one particular moment of heightened vicarious stress during our trip, when I felt lost in the mental/emotional tension of the experience, I remember thinking, in pep-talk fashion, “Wait a minute, I’m basically a human stress filter. This is what I do – for a living, no less! I’m good at this! (Most of the time.) All I need to do is remember my tools…” Once I got my head back in the game of being present to what I was experiencing, I switched from ‘Holding Stress’ mode to ‘Letting Go & Being Present’ mode. This can be a difficult task to actively achieve at first, especially in the throws of stress, until the feeling habit of it is learned and becomes second-nature. Luckily in this instance, I had plenty of experience already with this feeling habit, so it was already second-nature to me and easy to tap into. Also luckily, I had a heads-up of what I was walking into with this family member, so I had time to prepare. I was well rested, feeling strong and healthy going into this adventure with them and had a few stress-managing tools metaphorically ‘in my back pocket’ to help along the way; and they were a willing participant to my suggestions. One more lucky factor was that I was already enthusiastically doing the Rice Experiment, so all the energetic benefits of Love & Gratitude were front and center in my mind, ready to be applied to this situation we were facing together. All of this worked in our favor.

To me, ‘Holding Stress’ mode feels like holding tight on the inside, like resisting pain or stuffing down emotions; not expressing what begs to be expressed. ‘Letting Go & Being Present’ mode, on the other hand, feels like an easing and softening on the inside; a choice to trust that if I let go and feel the emotions I’ve been resisting, while staying grounded and present, the feelings will process, move through me and eventually leave me, like they just float away. I always feel lighter, looser, happier and with clearer thoughts once I can process and let go. Interestingly, usually this results in a contagious relief for whomever I’m around that was also swimming in the stress – Vicarious De-Stressing, if you will.

If I don’t process and let go, I’ll usually feel uptight and stressed for a very long time, until I finally do let it go involuntarily somehow. Sometimes that looks like a migraine, an emotional outburst, stiff neck, getting sick with a cold or any other creative way my body figures out how to escape the stress experience. The conflict behind it usually is prolonged right along with the held stress as well.

In a massage session, I often don’t know what stress my client is holding on to or trying to let go of. I just get to feel it vicariously in my own system and feel the tension in their tissues as I work my way through their massage session. From my Healing From the Core trainings and years of experience, I’ve witnessed over and over that when I can release the tension from my own system, more often than not, the person on my massage table finds a way to release it from their system as well.

So how do I acheive this? Here are some of the tools that I’ve accumulated over the years…

• Take inventory… How am I feeling?… Am I low on sleep? Am I hungry? Am I triggered/projecting/emotional with my own ‘stuff’? (Most of the time just acknowledging when these are part of the equation of the stress I’m feeling helps me to separate them out so I can then feel what else is still a factor (like the stress stuff of others). Obviously taking care of any personal needs of my own helps me to be a healthier, more helpful presence to diffuse the stress of the person I’m with.)

• Tune into how my body feels. Notice where in my body I feel tight and/or ill and intensionally breathe into it. Sometimes it’s too hard to breathe into the tight areas right off the bat, so I’ll start a little more simply with feeling the movement of my breath. Then, tuning in to feeling my spine, my hips, my feet, as well as the chair I’m sitting on and the surface my feet are touching. Getting grounded in this way helps orient my perspective from all the stimulus around me, to what I’m feeling/holding in my ‘inner landscape’. Eventually I’m able to start gently breathing into the tight area where I’m really holding the problem-stress build-up. Once I’m to that point, I can intensionally ‘listen’ to my tissues and soften them, allowing the tension and stress to dissipate. I can also gain clarity on any insights that perhaps I can verbally share to help the person I’m with better tune into whatever they are feeling; helping them hopefully let go a bit easier, too.

Once I have myself in touch with letting go and grounding, then I become the initiator for calmness and grounding in those around me = Vicarious De-stressing.

It’s nice when it’s just that easy. Sometimes it’s not though. Or, sometimes I just have other tools available to use that are more helpful when not in a massage setting.

Here are a few tools to help de-escalate a heightened stress situation…

• Get out in Nature. Step away from the source of stress (either literally or in your mind) and immerse yourself in nature. Go for a walk, sit by a stream or stand in some grass (or snow?) and start noticing the details of nature… Feel the temperature of the air, feel the sun or wind on your skin, smell the freshness of the outdoors, look around at your (hopefully beautiful) surroundings, listen to the sounds of your surroundings. Getting all your senses involved in the present moment helps calm down stress responses to help your mind clear and come back to situation with fresh perspective.
• Turn your focus to something familiar that makes you feel good: listen to your favorite music; look at photos of happy times or people you love; do a favorite past time of self-expression (paint, journal, cook, sing, dance, etc.); exercise, stretch, move your body to release tension; read a book you can get lost in; hug a loved one; snuggle with a pet; enjoy a game or puzzle… Once you feel better, you can rejoin the situation at hand with a helpful, healthier state of being.
• Use therapeutic tools to calm your nervous system: Relaxing Bath or Shower; Aromatherapy; Therapeutic sounds like crystal singing bowls, the didgeridoo, whale sounds, ocean waves, Gregorian chanting, etc.; Massage Therapy; color therapy; yoga; feldenkries; meditation; compression/weighted blanket; deep breathing… These therapeutic tools can have a deeper, feeling-habit forming effect when done regularly, creating a wider base of grounded stability within your system; a wider base sure to come in handy for managing times of greater stress more effectively.

My family member and I had a successful trip together and I’m so glad I was able to go along as a support for them.

I’m really not worried beyond my moment of wondering if my few days of stress during our journey effected the Rice Experiment at all. After all, it just makes the experiment more realistic to the world we live in, that is full of the ebbs and flows of stressing and de-stressing. Plus, it hopefully goes without saying, that even if it did somehow impact the experiment in some confusing way, my beloved family memeber knowing they are loved and supported is far more important than a recreational rice experiment. In my world, that’s one of the most important things in this life.

Thank you for staying tuned to the Rice Experiment and all the interesting topics of conversation that seem to be coming up along the way. 🙂 May you experience enough Love & Gratitude in your daily life and freely share it with those around you as well. Until next week, be well.