Day 12: Energy Management 101, or, How to Help Yourself

A frontline healthcare worker called me yesterday in high dudgeon, rip-roaring mad, ticked off, pissed, angry, mad as a wet hen. Mad mad mad mad mad. I can’t blame her.

She’s a pharmacist in a major grocery store chain, and the management of the specific locale of her employment is wringing its metaphorical hands like a heroine in a melodrama about how to care for its employees. In short, they’re not. She has every right to be mad.

That is, however, not why she called me. The reason for her call was that she is about to lose it, go postal, and tell someone off in no uncertain terms, and she wanted to know how to manage her own emotions at this volatile time for which there is no end in sight.

David L. Ryan, writing in The Boston Globe said two days ago, “People are losing their jobs, way of life, and grip on their sanity.” That last phrase was a live link to an article on meditation.

Uh, I’m a fan of meditation. Really, I am, I’ve done it daily for more than 35 years, but learning to meditate in order not to tell off a customer isn’t what I’d consider a coping skill, or, not a useful one. So today, class, we’re going to learn about managing energy. Our own, and that of others.

I know, I know. It’s very woo. But I double dare any one of you who read these words to tell me that you haven’t been aware of energy at some point or another in your lives. We’ve all walked into a room where people have been arguing, and felt like we wanted to exit stage left like the Pink Panther.

Call it energy, call it your emotional self, call it your subconscious. Call it late for dinner, but call it what you will, we need to learn to manage the energy of what’s going on both inside us and around us. Hence, Energy Management 101.

First, let’s acknowledge that everyone knows about energy. Most of us with a high school education could probably come up with E=mc2. We might not be able to explain it, but that theory? You know, that theory? It’s about energy. E actually stands for energy here.

Second let’s acknowledge that very few of us know how to control our own energy. Energy lives in world of reactivity most of the time. Hence my client’s desire to tell off the persons who are not following the basic physical-distancing recommendations that are saving lives even as I write these words.

Third, let’s acknowledge that a little bit of energy education might go a long way toward preventing emotional implosions and explosions that are bound to arise in people who are being asked to behave consistently in ways that are uncomfortable, unnatural, and unending at this very moment.

Ow.

Let’s go back to The Angry Pharmacist. It sounds like a modern-day fable title, doesn’t it? Why was she angry? I know I’ve said she was upset that people aren’t following the rules, that management isn’t doing what they can to protect their workers, that customers are assuming she’ll break the rules for their own convenience. Well, between us, I think she has a right to be upset for any one of those reasons, don’t you?

This morning’s Huffington Post had a blistering article by Dr. Dipti S. Barot entitled, “I’m A Doctor. The U.S. Response To Coronavirus Has Been Nothing Short Of Criminal.” She’s both enraged and outraged, and eloquent in her appalled disbelief at the response of our country. She herself is immuno-compromised, so she’s safe at home, whilst “my colleagues are marching into war with plastic water guns and papier-mâché bombs, lambs to the COVID-19 slaughter.”

So, yes, all of those reasons of the pharmacist are legitimately angering, but that’s not why she felt like she was going to fall over the edge of the abyss into emotional reactivity that she, her customer, and her management would not recover from.

The real reason is that, energetically, she encountered someone, and she had no idea who, whose level of fear matched, and activated her own. You see, often underneath anger, righteous anger, necessary anger, or gratuitous anger, is another emotion altogether. That emotion is most often fear.

What is she afraid of? Oh, take your pick.

& Dying.

& Her grandchildren or children getting it, and dying.

& The stupidity of the deniers and disbelievers.

& The selfishness of those who, I quote a climbing blogger based in Bishop, California, “Climbers from around the country have descended upon Bishop as though a global pandemic were some sort of hall pass from responsibility and magnanimity.”

& Those who place their own specious freedoms as more vital and therefore above those of others.

& Those who so don’t know what to believe that all they’re trying to do is maintain some semblance of normalcy.

& The willful ignorance of government officials who stood before us proudly declaring the virus as a “Democratic hoax” to prevent the re-election of the Idiot-in-Chief.

& Her own helplessness.

& The horrific projections of epidemiologists the world over who say the need for this self-quarantining measure could wax and wane till as long as the end of 2021. Yes, more than a year and half from now.

& Those who are conflating “confidence with immunity,” to quote today’s Times.

& Those whose bosses insist that they come to work, because they’re “more afraid of missed revenues than of spreading viruses.”

& Those who gouge prices on hand sanitizer in order to make a profit.

I am stopping there before I fall off the edge of the world and into the abyss myself.

What’s a person to do? It’s relatively simple, but it’s not easy to remember in the moment.

First, speak aloud that something’s got you frightened. Go find a mirror, ideally a private one, and say, “I’m afraid.”

Acknowledgment is power in this case. Denying it, decrying it, delaying it just debases it. We have legitimate reasons to be afraid, Beloved. Sir Paul McCartney has some good advice for this, “Let it be.”

Second, let the feelings sit, no matter the feeling of the need to react to them or do something about them. Feelings are.

Jill Bolte Taylor, the author of My Stroke of Insight, maintains that the full arc of a human feeling is approximately ninety seconds. After that, it ebbs UNLESS we rehearse it, revisit, replay it over and over again. What that does is dig deeper neural pathways. It doesn’t help you release it.

Third, if you can, do something physical. Ten jumping jacks—as fast as you can. Stamp your feet. Swing your arms. Spin till you’re dizzy.

Energy responds to motion. In fact, motion moves energy, and that’s what’s needed here. To move it, not to express it where it’s triggered.

Fourth, and you most likely will need to be prepared for this step, find something beautiful to look at, or think about, even if it’s just for a moment.

Energy tends to focus itself on its stimulus. When you change the stimulus, the energy changes. Think of a hopping mad three year old suddenly confronted with their favorite ice cream flavor, or The Little Mermaid. The same distractions (read: change of subjects) that work for little ones work on our inner children as well.

For this step, consider a quiet time in your self-imposed quarantine, and make a list of things that, essentially, change your mind. When you change your mind, Beloved, you change your feelings.

The right-hand side of E=mc2 means Mass times Speed of Light Squared. Our fear, the mass, is moving as fast as the Speed of Light Squared. Facing and, really, loving our fear in the face of it is the only thing I know of that can slow it down enough to stop it.

Dr. Susan Corso is a metaphysician and medical intuitive with a private counseling practice for more than 35 years. She has written too many books to list here. Her website is www.susancorso.com