You Are Not a Fish
and anything else you don't want to hold
The Intention
Welcome to 2023,
I hope it’s been full of magic, wonder, and a little bit of shedding the bullshit you no longer wish to carry.
A ritual I’ve created for myself over the years is to sit down, open my Pinterest, and build a character for that year. Just true photo-dump magic.
I also choose a theme for that year. 2022 was the year of Honesty. I wanted to shed any white lies, lies by omission, fibs, what have you, that were stunting my authenticity. And trust me, you don’t realize how often you lie, even to yourself, until you set out to live in truth.
But this year, is the year of Flight.
I want to feel like I’m taking off. Flying high with what I’m capable of, my abundance, my confidence, my joy.
Whenever I go about setting my intentions and characters, I move through a beautiful ritual and feel this deep sense of gratitude…and then the second week of January I turn into that scene where you hear that loud bang on the trash can and the cat screeching in the alleyway. I am the alleyway, the cat, and the trash.
Especially this year.
It might be because I spent last year grounding into my self, my safety, and my home. I thought last June was the hardest phase of life, but now that I feel safe, it seems like the hardest tests have come to my door: relationships.
December into this first month has been an explosion of relationships for me, something that I hold very near to me, to an insecure level I might add.
When I envision a character for the year, I also ask myself, “what does this character let go of to thrive?” and with my theme Flight, I think the character is shedding a lot of things right now.
One such piece is my anxious attachment.
It’s my least favorite thing to admit, something I couldn’t even admit to during my year of honesty, but also something I desperately wanted to leave behind.
The intention was set and immediately, I had people and experiences coming at me in which I was incapable of ignoring that attachment.
One friend even told me that I only seek them out when they are unavailable because that is when I believe I need to seek attention.
Not the most fun thing to hear.
Did I do this consciously? Fuck no. But, as someone who felt that she always had to be available or else she would be forgotten, I can see how this could easily have become a pattern for me. I saw it in romantic relationships, only falling for unavailable people, so of course, it would happen in my friendships as well. And the worst part is, I wouldn’t have acknowledged it if it didn’t come from a friend.
Lately, all of my lessons, shedding, and expanding have been from cracks in my friendships. Something that would have made me so sick I wouldn’t have been able to leave my room as a kid, is consistently showing up for me over the course of these past few months.
And it’s the world telling me, get out of the fucking nest little bird. Friendship is beautiful. But, no one is going to fly for me.
And if I’m constantly attaching my worth to whether or not my friends or lovers notice me, then I’ll never reach any dream, ever.
A great example is pottery. I’ve been waiting to do pottery for YEARS. And friends keep coming into my life that also wants to do pottery. Do we ever do it? No. This problem or that commitment keep getting in the way and I feel like I’m being tied back because I’m so afraid to join a class on my own.
Flight is about independence. And I’m finally ready to admit that that terrifies me.
The Release
One of my favorite findings this year is that some scientists propose hiccups are relics of the transition from gills to lung breathing during evolution.
There are a fair amount of theories for why we hiccup, actually, and it seems like we still aren’t fully sure.
But, with the fish theory, they found that one way to get rid of hiccups is to remind yourself you are not a fish.
That’s a real suggestion. From a scientist (it works btw).
I love this for many reasons, obviously, but a main is it’s a perfect example of our cycles.
If this theory were fully true, then it shows how easy it is to become trapped in a cycle. We are no longer fish, but sometimes our bodies revert back to an old pattern deep in our code, and we have to remind ourselves that we are no longer in that cycle.
Who knew to better understand the idea of hell loops one simply had to read up on hiccup theories?
*side note* A more comprehensive theory looks at how babies hiccup more than adults, so hiccups could offer a function of releasing excess gas and we’re just keeping the habit as we age. So maybe tell yourself “I am no fish nor baby,” next time you hiccup.
And with the hiccup reference, it’s the perfect time to re-examine hell loops.
Some envision hell loops as a spiral staircase. The lesson begins the stairs and every similar experience you are moving up the staircase, receiving a higher perspective.
I could see where my penchant for the unavailable formed in my romantic relationships, but I guess I have upgraded to a higher stairwell and am now looking at how this plays out in every relationship, even my relationship to my business.
Going even deeper, I get insecure about my art and my business, to the point I only seek it out when it feels unavailable to me. I crave attention, that’s when I post. I don’t feel like I am enough on my own so I try to force my way into success. Embarrassing really.
The loop is the chasing.
When that loop shows up, it’s an opportunity to gain perspective and choose a new timeline.
The loop could be seen as having energetic hiccups I guess. When it comes up, I can tell myself “I’m not a fish,” so to speak.
The trick is witnessing the loop and asking yourself if you want to continue down the pattern or choose a new. But, when we’ve developed a pattern, the loop can be so unconscious that any deviation might feel, well, shitty.
We want what we know, even if what we know isn’t what’s best for us.
A great read to better understand this dissonance is The Body Keeps the Score. Be warned though, there is a lot on sexual assault, but the book is a great handbook for understanding our attachment to hell loops that we so want to break.
And with my hell loop identified, it feels like I’ll be spending the rest of January uncovering and reminding myself that I am not that identity, the identity I have to shed, to take flight.
Did that read as corny as it felt writing?
The Movement
When we release a hell loop, the best thing we can do is identify a new, more interesting pattern.
That’s where the character intentions come into play and create the movement necessary to break the loop.
The ego will seek out the old pattern unless we find a more enticing pattern to hold it’s attention; feels very much like a cat to be honest.
When I first began exploring hell loops, below were the activations that allowed me to come from a place of curiosity instead of survival.
I hope this is the year we all break a hell loop we’ve been afraid to explore.
Subtle Activation
When you start looking into your patterns, ask yourself where you experience deja vu? Are there certain people that remind you of each other?
Write those people down and ask yourself what their common thread is. Do these people fill a childhood wound or something you are seeking?
Look at what you say about yourself.
Do you shut down compliments? A specific compliment? Do you call yourself something that a part of you feels shame for?
Something that I did when I first started was sitting with one hand on my stomach and one on my heart and tell my inner child “you are safe now. you no longer have to survive. let me protect you,” over and over.
When we move through a hell loop, it’s important to fill the energy. We can remove something, but then we will be left with a void. So make sure you find aligned action you want to hold.
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