This came at the intersection of a conversation and the real work applications of the frameworks I've been contemplating.
What follows is my attempt to hold that still, woven in a way that was meaningful to a particular situation. True to form, I do not consider it a complete map. It maps most particularly to the I AM Field, which is the part of you that cannot be threatened by any of what follows. I'd encourage you to read that if you want a bit more context.
There are moments where the mind becomes consumed with projection.
It tries to predict every possible outcome. It rehearses pain before pain arrives. It attempts to solve futures that do not yet exist.
Sometimes this appears as catastrophizing. Sometimes as shame spirals. Sometimes as compulsive control, over-analysis, emotional collapse, or the desperate need for certainty before taking the next step.
At the root of many of these states is a loss of contact with the Here and Now.
And I'm not talking about the "mindfulness practice" in a theoretical sense. I'm talking about it in a very real grounded way - actual contact with reality before it has been distorted by fear, projection, bargaining, or panic.
If you know anything about me, you know I have a strong aversion to toxic positivity, and I very much do not like rolling over or pretending difficult things do not exist.
This is about learning how to remain in relationship with reality long enough for coherent action to become possible.
Coherence is such a popular buzzword lately, but it is just TRUE and I mean this in the most literal sense: square, level, plumb, true. The condition a structure is in when it doesn't have to fight itself to stand.
Layer One: Orienting Theory
“The Now and How Information Is Accessed” in The Cosmology Underneath my Practice describes my definitions of past, future, memory and imagination. I consider memory and imagination to be links between all nows within personal experience. Memory links to what has been realized, and imagination links to what could be realized.
The Future Is Not Fully Formed
One of the most destabilizing things the mind does is treat imagined futures as though they are already reality.
The nervous system reacts not only to what is, but to what might be.
And because imagination opens up links to all possible nows, this can create endless psychic compression trying to:
- predict every branch
- avoid every painful possibility
- control outcomes before enough information exists
The present moment is where reality is actively becoming formed.
When awareness becomes over-fixated on catastrophic futures, it often loses access to the actual doorways available in the present.
Opportunities, choices, support, movement, repair, and unexpected pathways can become invisible because awareness is trapped managing imagined outcomes.
Returning to the Here and Now restores access to:
- perception
- responsiveness
- grounded choice
- relational contact
- embodied awareness
- participation in reality as it unfolds
Capacity to move within uncertainty can be restored.
Nothing Meaningful Is Truly Lost
During periods of anxiety, depression, overwhelm, or disconnection, we often feel cut off from joy. We get disconnected from former parts of ourselves, unable to access memories of safety or happiness.
This is one of the cruelest features of a catastrophizing spiral: it does not just predict loss, it creates the felt experience of loss as if it is happening now. It is confusing memory with imagination.
But temporary loss of access is not the same thing as true loss.
What I call the I AM Field is the complete invariant you across all of time, space, and possibility. Itself does not go anywhere. What changes is which part of it your Present Self can reach from here, now.
I have a strong belief that is at the level of full trust that I have access to any part of the I AM Field that I need – some may be harder to get to – but it all starts with staying still enough to come back to here, now.
As the body becomes safer and more grounded in the present:
- memory returns
- emotional access returns
- connection returns
- inner continuity returns
The self is larger than any single emotional state.
Nothing meaningful disappears simply because fear temporarily obscures it.
Layer Two: Transitional Reframes
How to begin moving differently in relationship to pain and mistake.
Pain Is Not Identity
Pain contains information.
Fear, grief, anxiety, guilt, shame, heartbreak, anger, overwhelm: these are all experiences moving through the system.
Easily conflated with the total definition of the self.
One of the distortions we can internalize is the belief that:
- pain means failure
- suffering proves depth
- shame proves goodness
- self-condemnation proves accountability
Pain may indicate misalignment, overwhelm, unresolved experience, grief, exhaustion, need for change, need for repair, need for rest, fear of loss, or fear of uncertainty.
It hurts because something matters, or something is off, or something needs attention. Pain is telling you something true about what’s happening. It has no idea who you are.
Pain describes the conditions in the field, not the conscious being.
We may unconsciously overcorrect against avoidance by believing: if I am not suffering enough, I must be bypassing.
But deeper truth does not always require deeper suffering.
Sometimes growth occurs through honesty, contact, embodiment, and reorganization, and you need not confuse that with prolonged self-abandonment.
Repair Without Shame Collapse
Causing pain or making mistakes does not require identity collapse.
There is an important difference between acknowledging impact and becoming consumed by self-condemnation.
Shame often says: I am bad.
Presence says: Something happened. What now?
Repair becomes possible when we can:
- remain present with reality
- acknowledge impact honestly
- stay connected to ourselves
- make changes where needed
- communicate clearly
- move differently going forward
This is not avoidance of responsibility. It is responsibility without self-annihilation.
We don’t need to hate ourselves in order to grow. It might feel like the avoidance of responsibility – but, in fact, self-annihilation can never truly be an act responsbility because then there is no self left to make the repair.
Shame performs reconciliation. Accountability stays connected enough to make repair.
Layer Three: Practice
Containment vs. Contact
Sometimes systems attempt to preserve stability through containment.
Emotions are suppressed. Symptoms are hidden. Patterns are controlled rather than understood.
From the outside, this can appear stable.
But containment alone often preserves appearance rather than restoring integrity.
Contact asks:
- What is actually happening underneath this?
- What became tangled?
- What lost space, breath, orientation, or movement?
- What is trying to emerge?
- What requires reorganization rather than suppression?
Living systems do not heal the same way machines are repaired.
Sometimes deeper contact initially looks messier because compressed energy begins moving again. But movement is not always dysfunction. Sometimes movement is the beginning of restoration.
Not everything that appears distorted is fundamentally broken. Some things have simply become tangled, compressed, or disconnected from relationship within the larger system.
Practice: The Contact Check
When you notice yourself managing, controlling, or pushing something down: pause.
Ask: Am I containing this, or am I in contact with it?
Containment grips. Contact breathes.
You don’t have to resolve what you find. You only have to be willing to feel it without immediately suppressing or performing it. That willingness is the beginning of contact.
If it feels like too much to hold alone: that is information too. Contact sometimes reveals that we need a witness. This may come in the form of a a therapist, a trusted person, or even just a practice. Noticing that need without shame is itself a form of contact. Then it is one step at a time from there. Continuing to recenter to contact when containment starts to grip.
Trusting the Self
Many forms of anxiety are attempts to create safety through prediction.
The mind believes: if I can map every future possibility, I can prevent collapse.
But certainty is not always available. If often isn’t.
And trying to mentally inhabit every possible future often disconnects us from the reality we are actually living. In the language of The Three Registers of Self: the Present Self gets so consumed with imagined futures that it loses contact with both the Narrative Self and the I AM Field. It is operating from projection rather than from here.
Trust develops through repeated contact with the realization:
Even when fear appears, I am still here.
Not:
- Nothing bad will ever happen.
- Pain will never exist.
- I will control every outcome.
But:
I can remain in relationship with myself through uncertainty.
This changes the nervous system over time.
Instead of requiring omniscience before movement, the self begins trusting its capacity to respond in real time. Planning still matters. Discernment still matters. Boundaries still matter. But hypervigilant control begins loosening its grip. Fear collapses discernment into urgency.
Practice: The Stability Inventory
When the catastrophizing spiral begins, before trying to solve the imagined future, ask:
What is actually here right now?
Not what might happen. What is present.
Name five things that are stable, real, and in contact with you right now. Your feet on the floor. The temperature of the air. A sound you can locate. Something you can touch. A person who exists and is not gone.
This disallows fear as the only thing that gets counted as real.
The nervous system cannot distinguish between imagined threat and present threat. But it can be gently reoriented toward what is actually here, and then from that ground, discernment becomes possible again.
Here and Now
Staying in contact with The Here and Now is the willingness to remain in accurate contact with reality before fragmentation takes over.
In the awareness stack: it is what becomes available when attention, orientation, and embodiment are all present simultaneously. When the Present Self is actually here, neither collapsed into the past nor projected into futures that don’t exist yet.
It is learning to:
- breathe before projecting
- feel before collapsing
- perceive before reacting
- stay present long enough for clarity to emerge
The Here and Now is where imagination, memory, embodiment, choice, relationship, possibility, and lived reality meet.
And from that place, movement becomes possible again.
Practice: Zooming
Coming directly from Thresholds and Zooming – I’m naming it here because it is one of the most practical tools I know for catastrophizing specifically.
When the scope of what feels threatening becomes too large to hold, zoom in so the field is smaller.
Cut it in half. Then cut that in half.
Not the problem. Your contact with it. If you are not able to hold it all, cut it in half until you find something you can be with. The “half” simply takes out the additional decision of how much to focus to cut away.
You are not pushing the destination further away. You are finding where you can actually stand. And every time you find a piece of ground that is real and manageable, you are building trust. Perhaps, not in the outcome, but in your capacity to be present within it.
You could start with: what is the smallest true thing I can be with right now?
And try doing that without any judgements on what “should be”. “Should be” is not fully present with the “what is” of the here and now.
From there, the next thing becomes visible. And then the next.
You don’t have to see the whole path. You only have to be here, with what is actually here: physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, relationally.
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