Working With Heat

I’m hot. My face. My throat. My chest. The heat seems to be traveling down my body. Or maybe up? It’s hard to source because the heat is consuming me. Everyone is waiting. I feel their eyes through the computer screen. They are waiting for me to click a button. And I can’t find the button. My mind knows exactly where to click, and it should take two seconds. But my eyes aren’t cooperating. It’s taking two minutes and counting. It feels like two hours.

“Joy, if you go to Participants, all you have to do is click on the arrow next to the ‘More’ button, and arrow down to ‘Make Host.” Then, I’ll be able to share my screen,” my Regional Coordinator says as if I’ve new, as if I don’t run virtual meetings regularly five days a week.

“Yep, I’m working on it,” I say like responding to someone who asked me to take two simple steps toward them as I stand still, staring at them.

“You can also just right click on the box where my face is.” My RC sounds stressed, probably regretting making me begin the meeting, so that I could lead us in a relaxing mindfulness exercise. I thought she was going to make me “Co-host”, but for whatever reason, she clicked on “Make Host,” and now the only way to continue with the dozens of slides she needs to share within a tight timeframe is for me to click a button.

My RC is unaware that what can be a simple walk to the corner, to me sometimes feels like a hike up Mount Fuji. I manage to drag my giant mouse icon to the “More” button arrow, and I arrow down to “Make Host.” I sense relief. Then as I move slightly off-course, the drop-down options disappear. I nearly reached the mountaintop and it feels as if someone has whisked me back to the base.

I return the mouse icon to the upper left corner to find it, and then to the participant’s window at a snail’s pace. Then to the “More” button arrow and down to the vanishing drop-down menu. I know I can do it, but it will involve more awkward silence or with instructions strewn from well-meaning bystanders. Panic ensues, and I debate hitting the power button to end the meeting all together. But then, I’d have to restart it since I’m still Host.

The internal sauna expands, and the vapor is exiting my pores, billowing in front of my eyes in thick fog. My co-workers clear their throats. I am no longer in my work meeting. The heat has somehow burned through the ozone, and a Portal to the Past has opened.

I am sitting in Mrs. Peterson’s 5th grade class, and my classmates are waiting. I don’t speak. I don’t move. The task is simple. It should take me two seconds, but it has been two minutes and counting, which feels like two hours. Mrs. Peterson has called on me to read a sentence on the overhead. I made the “battle of the books” team so my classmates know I’m smart. But suddenly I feel stupid. I want to say “I can’t see the words”, but nothing comes out of my mouth.

“Can you not see the words, Joy?” Mrs. Peterson asks, and I’m horrified when hot tears begin pouring out of my eyes instead of words from my mouth. Why do hot tears of shame surface? My hot tears are fogging up my glasses. Why do I even have glasses if they don’t work?

Why do I feel like I’ve done something wrong because my eyes don’t work like those of the other children?

“Sorry, still working on it,” I say, back in the present-day Zoom meeting, “my mouse keeps freezing for some reason.”

A co-worker asks our RC a random question, and I feel the interruption shift attention from me. I feel a window of time open up, and the temperature drops two degrees and the fog thins.

Finally, I click “Make Host”, and I exhale, cooling. I summited the peak, though I don’t feel any sense of accomplishment. The boiling sensation coursing rapidly throughout my body, signaling danger, has dimmed to a light simmer.

I fear this heat and its accompanying fog that stupefies and traumatizes without warning. The fear makes me want to stop volunteering to do things I love, such as leading mindfulness exercises. The threat makes me want to shrink my body into a speck of cool soil underground, protected.

And yet, I keep showing up, even to the places where heat threatens to burn.

I have come to know two types of heat. The first leaves blisters, and they sometimes still fester, causing terrible pain. But the second is an inner fire, and it ignites and refines. I’m learning to recognize the slight variation, and I am feeling cooler in the process.

How do I transform hot shame into fiery strength?

I suppose it’s partly, “showing up in the arena,” as Brene Brown would say. Partly processing my stories by sharing them or writing them. When they’re laid out in the open, I can examine them,. Dig into them. Searching for the courage in them.

Where in your life do you feel the heat of shame? What ways do you use to transform your hot shame into fiery strength?