TRANSCRIPT
In a few days, I am going to be taking a big trip, a journey. I found a very inexpensive ticket from New York down to Ecuador, and I’m going to be, I guess, disappearing into Ecuador for three weeks. I don’t know exactly what I’m gonna be doing. I know I’m gonna be living very low budget. I know I’m gonna be spending my first night in the airport because I arrive at midnight, and I don’t really feel like going and arriving at two or three o’clock in the morning in a hostel, potentially over an hour away, and spending in a taxi, blah blah blah. So I’ve got a lot of unpredictable stuff ahead.
Well, the reason I come to make this video is to talk about fear of change. Basically, what’s gonna happen is my life, starting in three days, is going to become profoundly different from what my life is like now. I’m not going to have a stable home. I’m not gonna have a stable place to sleep. I’m going to be speaking a different language. I’m going to be interacting with a completely different version of people because they’re not going to be people that I even knew before. I don’t know if I’m gonna have internet reception in a lot of the places I’m going. I’m not going to have a telephone.
Well, basically, what’s been coming up for me is fear, a lot of fear of change. And that’s why I think I thought this is a perfect time to talk about fear of change, because I’m going through it right now. Now, I’ve done a lot of traveling like this. I’ve done a lot, done a lot of really low budget traveling. I’ve traveled to a lot of places that I’ve never been before. Well, I do speak Spanish, but I travel to a lot of places where I don’t speak the language. All sorts of different reasons to have anxiety. But what I’ve seen is right before I go, right before I hit the road, prepare for these trips, a lot of very similar things come up. And I’ve done it so many times, so many travels, that I’m kind of used to it. I even expect it. But in a way, that doesn’t really make it easier. But what it does give me is some more insight into it, and that insight does, I think, actually help.
One of the things that I go through very regularly before I take a big trip, a big unpredictable journey, a voyage, is that I get afraid that I’m gonna die. I go through a lot of fear of death. I have dreams about dying. I have dreams about very stressful situations in which people are maybe gonna kill me, or maybe just bad things are happening to me. I go through a lot of just mmm extrapolate, extrapolating out about ways in which I could die. I get anxious. I get a little superstitious sometimes. I started thinking about different ways that I could have really bad things happen to me: disease, or violence, or robberies, or accidents, parasites, all sorts of things. All sorts of these things which in different ways I actually have experienced.
So what I think is for me to look at what of these fears that I have are realistic fears. And one of the fears I have are me, I don’t know if the right word is projecting my fears out there, displacing my fears. I think actually I, and I do a lot of displacing. Now, one could say yes, it’s very healthy and normal to have some real realistic fears about traveling, about going to places that are so unpredictable, or any sort of change. And I’m, by the way, I’m just using travel as a sort of metaphor for a big change. But I think changes can happen in all sorts of ways: moving to a new home, entering a new relationship, having a death of someone you love or care about, major changes in family relationships, going off to college, finishing college, changing jobs, getting a promotion, losing a job, losing money, buying a house, buying a car, renting something, spending a lot of money on something, making an investment, losing on an investment. Anything that can really encompass a lot of change. Also being ill or getting well. Well, anything that really changes one’s life, I think they can all bring up these feelings and this question: how much of my fears are realistic fears that really are connected exactly to what I’m going through in a realistic, practical way? And what of these fears are old things in my life?
Well, let me just start by thinking a little bit about where would my fear of change come from in my past. What would lead me to have extra fear, more than would be realistically expected given what I’m going through? And for me, that comes down to my existential insecurities from very early childhood, where I, in my very early childhood, was incredibly powerless and experienced a lot of really significant change that the outside world decided for me. And often that change that I had went from one situation which really wasn’t so secure into an environment that was even less secure.
What I learned again and again as a very early child, as I got passed from nanny to babysitter to schools, all of which really didn’t take care of me, didn’t hold me, where I was attacked, where I was bullied, where I was bitten, where a nanny did who knows what to me, and also from what I do know, at the very least, psychologically tortured me, where my parents could be really unpredictable. Who knows what else they did? And then moving, we moved a few times. We moved when I was very little. I lost my environment, my home, friends that I had. And this is all, well, at least one move, one major move was before the age of three. But a lot of these really unpredictable things that happened, happened when I was under the age of one. And somehow it’s like deeply embedded in me, in my neurology, in my actual brain nerves. It’s like there’s patterns in me of like fear and terror of change.
Well, one could ask, well, if you have that much fear and terror of why in the world are you doing these big trips? Why do you do that? Or how are you able to do that? And I think for me, part of it is that I’ve grown a lot. Part of it’s that I have resolved a lot of my traumas. Part of it is that I’ve learned a lot of skill at dealing with the world, learning how to function in all sorts of different external environments, learning how to handle unpredictability. Also, because so many changes happened throughout my childhood, beyond the age of two into the age of five, seven, nine, eleven, all up through my teen years, that I did get good to a degree at learning how to cope with change, how to be strategic at handling change, how to make new friends, how to somehow sort of keep myself in stressful situations, learning how to find me, how to take care of myself, how to not be so scared in the moment.
And that’s another thing that I find again and again when I’m traveling, when I do all sorts of things that require big change. A lot of my terror and fear happens before I make the change. Once I make the change, I sort of like snap out of it and jump into life. Do I dissociate a little bit to be able to function in this changing situation? Perhaps I do that. But I think beforehand, in my safety, in my secure environment, I go through a lot of anxiety about speculating about what’s going to happen, what is the change going to be like?
So for me, how do I figure out what’s the ancient historical stuff and what’s the realistic stuff? Well, one thing is I journal a lot. I write a lot about my fears, and it really helps that I have my old journals because I can refer to them. Also, I remember on my last trip and my trip before this and my trip before that, I was going through so many of the same things, and I can read about it in my journal. And it’s like how literally the exact same things that I’m afraid of, even though I’m going to a different place. And so what I can do is I can extract the things that are my baseline of fear before I travel, and it’s often this fear of death. Another one that I feel I go through this real…
Speaker: Grief process. This feeling of sadness, like I’m losing my whole life. I’m losing my world. I’m losing my stable things. I’m losing my patterns, my routine. It’s like, where I’m going, I’m not gonna have any friends. I’m not gonna have any people that I know. I’m gonna have to rebuild everything around me. All my externals are going to start over. I have these bouts of sadness that come up, sort of like, whoa, I’m a disconnected person. I’m a person who is not rooted in the world. And I think this is real because this is actually what I’m going through. I am unplugging from my life, my life of meaning and purpose here, and friends, and work, and things like that. I’m pulling out of all of that. And the things that give me meaning are things that are not going to be giving me meaning in a very short time when I move to this completely different environment. But it’s also connected to this ancient loss, this historical loss. I think there’s like a lake inside of me of grief that’s not fully resolved. It’s almost like a little bird when it’s inside the egg has a yolk sac, a sac that it feeds off of. And it’s sort of like I’ve got a strange sort of yolk sac of grief, of sadness from my unresolved trauma still. And I think the grief that I feel now, connected to the real losses in my present-day life, are connected to those ancient losses. And it helps me to think about it, to think about what were those ancient losses. And now is it time that it really, I’m very open and vulnerable in a way, and really do have access to it now. What’s going to be really interesting is when I go to this new environment, this new unpredictable unknown environment where I’ll be in three, four days for a few weeks. What I will have then is a chance to really have perspective on the things that I’m talking about now. I’ll probably have much more perspective on what I’m talking about now in a way when I’m there. And I realize, oh, so many of those fears were unrealistic. I’ll probably, considering how my travels usually go, have a great time, have a lot of adventure. We’ll meet people. Yes, I’ll probably have loneliness. I always have some of that. But then that motivates me to meet more people, which is scary. Part of why I’m scared now. So I’m gonna really have to put myself out there in the world in a way that I don’t have to do now because my life is more comfortable. But I will have to put myself out there in this new existence of mine. But then I’ll be in that new environment, and I’ll find it’s exciting and it’s fun. That’s probably what I’ll be going through, probably what I’ll be thinking. And I’ll probably be thinking, yeah, you went through all those fears and sadnesses because of your ancient historical stuff. So much, I would guess, if I was able to put a number on it, probably 70 to 80 percent of my fears, my fear of change, is my unresolved historical stuff. And interestingly, when I first started traveling, twenty alone, that is traveling, doing this kind of wild traveling, the first time I ever went hitchhiking, 27 years ago, I was doing that a little over 27 years ago. And then my fear of change before I made big transitions into traveling freely in the world was much bigger than what it is now. I think also the more that I make big changes, the stronger I get, the more life experience I get, the more I know myself and know how I can handle change. Back when I was 20 years old and I took my first big trip, I went to Wyoming. I was hitchhiking. Actually, I brought my bicycle. I ditched the bicycle, and then I started hitchhiking. Well, on that first trip, I didn’t really know myself that well. I didn’t know what my capacities were. I don’t really know who I was all that while. I didn’t know how I would behave. I didn’t know, like, so many of my internal qualities. I didn’t know strengths. I didn’t know weaknesses. I had a lot more weaknesses. I was scared. I knew I had some weaknesses, but I don’t think I could have put my finger on exactly what they were, not at least to the degree that I can now. Well, what I find now more and more is that I have a lot of history to lean on. I’ve made a lot of changes, and I’ve survived. I’ve made a lot of changes, and I’ve thrived. In spite of these changes, actually, I’ve thrived because of these changes. Because what they help me do, and this is why I’m so motivated to make these big radical changes in my life, even if they’re only for a few weeks here and there, is they do help me grow. They do really give me life experience that increases my strength for being able to face the world, for being able to make better decisions on my own behalf externally, helping me be able to function better in the world. Also giving me perspective about who I was. Sometimes there’s no better way to look at the life that I’m living now than by getting out of it, sometimes from a lot of geographical distance, cultural distance, and just think about, whoa, what is my regular normal life? Do I like it? Do I not like it? Do I like the people I’m spending my time with? Do I like the way that I’m earning my money? Do I like the way I’m spending my money? Do I like the way that I’m living, the ways that I’m living? Do I like the place that I’m living? And maybe that’s another reason why I’m so scared too. Maybe it’s like, oh god, maybe I don’t want to change my life. Maybe I’m scared to change my life. And it can be scary to look at one’s own life, to really assess it clearly. I think there’s a reason that so many people so vehemently don’t want to change, don’t want to look at their lives, don’t want to look within, don’t want to look at their relationships, their friendships, don’t want to look at their living situation, don’t want to look at their work, don’t want to consider the possibility of changing any or potentially all of these things. It’s so scary. It’s so frightening sometimes. And also one thing I find is when I do grow, a lot of feelings come up. One thing I know when I travel, it’s so normal for me when I go to a new country, often I cry. And sometimes, like, I actually haven’t cried in two weeks at all. I probably will be crying sometimes within the next week, sometime when I’m in Ecuador, in some place. And it might catch me at a totally unexpected moment. But it’s like sometimes these changes, they do facilitate grieving. And it’s like, yeah, I can be grieving, but the loss of my regular normal life, if only for a few weeks. But I also think in some way it can help me grieve that deep ancient historic cool stuff. Because I think when I have all these fears, ancient and present fears, I’m getting access to something deeper in me, some losses that I’ve suffered, some losses that I’m about to face. And when I make the change and I survive it, and I find, whoa, I’m in a totally new place, a new continent, a new hemisphere, and I have myself, and I find that I love myself again, and I can have a conversation with myself on the inside, it’s like, whoa, here I am. And sometimes my sadness just erupts, and it’s like in a strange way, yeah, it feels sad, but it’s also, I know it, it’s a gift, and it’s a wonderful gift. And it’s like all this anxiety and terror and fear that I go through can find some degree of resolution. And I do find that as the result of this, I do mature. And I see that in people. I see that often in people. People who can make a lot of change in their life and thrive in spite of it, and learn and grow and gain, again, a life experience, they become more mature people. There are people with more experience, more life experience, more insight, more wisdom about the world and about themselves. But I also see the opposite. I see people who are stuck. And when I speak of stuckness, I do speak of stuckness from experience because I have…
Been majorly stuck in my life. Sometimes I still do get stuck. Some ways I still am stuck. But I see people who make a lifestyle of never making changes or making minimal, minimal changes in their life, and they can be incredibly stuck.
What I find is often the people who are really stuck, the people who don’t make changes, are people who have even more fear, have changed than I do, and give in to it. And it keeps them stuck to the point that they live lives to just stay comfortable. They really have a very, very hard time growing.
Another ancient historical traumas, their ancient historical terrors and fears and anger and sadness and grief and loss, that can all stay really buried. And that can make life more comfortable, but things don’t get resolved. It’s like a life that’s not really in sync with the change of the world.
Sometimes I think that about our whole species. I think our whole species writ large is often terrified of change, terrified to make some of the really big changes we need as a species to become more in sync with the changes of the world’s changes that we are wreaking on the world, changes we’re wreaking on our environment, on our planet, on each other.
So I think about this. Yeah, I think this is how I’ll end, thinking about this whole terror of change, fear of change writ large as a species. I think by and large we are a species, this Homo Sapien species, that is very traumatized and that is living for comfort, that is terrified to change, that wants more comfort, makes decisions that have very negative consequences for the outside world to bring ourselves as a species more comfort.
And that this isn’t working for us. And that as a species, by and large, we’re not really growing, or if we’re growing, we’re not growing very quickly. We’re not growing nearly as quickly as we can, and I would say as we need to in order to preserve some degree of our environment, if only for ourselves in the future, for future generations.
So that’s where I think there’s real value in making change, in making strategic change, and making conscious change. Because if we as a species don’t change, roll with the flow, grow, learn, heal our species, why’d trauma? If I don’t change, change on the inside, make external changes, learn how to handle change, deal with change, handle my fear of change, then what’s going to happen to us as a species and me as an individual is the change is ultimately going to happen anyways.
And the question is, how prepared am I for this change that’s going to come and hit me? And how prepared is our whole species? And I think that if we don’t have agency and get at the fore of our own change process as individuals and as a species, we are not going to be ready for it when it comes. And we’re going to be facing a lot of destruction and ultimately be facing a lot of the very terrors that I’m feeling now by making these changes. But I would be feeling them, and we as a species will be feeling them a heck of a lot worse.
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