Folks in Alcoholics Anonymous speak of having “the RIDs,”
meaning they feel restless, irritable, and discontent without knowing what’s
causing it—a generalized feeling of anxiety and fretfulness. I know the feeling
only too well, although my addiction is not to alcohol but to fixing people and
circumstances. I say that, but of course it’s really an addiction to trying to fix, which results in being
unhappy because I can’t fix other people—or
most circumstances. Thanks be to God, over the past thirty years or so I’ve
learned to more quickly recognize this temptation to fret over what’s beyond my
control and instead to refocus on what I can
fix: my own thoughts and actions.
When the RIDs come, once I realize what’s going on, I may go
for a walk, pray, meditate, read, journal, talk it out with someone, do “the
next right thing” (another AA term meaning “something constructive”), do
something fun, or use a technique called “focusing.”* But the RIDs eventually return,
and I find myself fretting over something I have no control over—an unpleasant
memory or a “what if” scenario.
The other morning at the close of my prayer time, I decided
to do focusing. The RIDs emerged as the subject I wanted to focus on, and I
felt that unsettling, “something’s wrong” awareness as a churning in my upper
chest and arms. Pretty quickly, the image came of a rat scrambling in a pile of
dried vegetation and chewed-up paper. I sensed the rat’s ugliness, its destructiveness.
That image came so quickly because, a while earlier, I’d heard something
scrambling in an outside wall of my bedroom and bathroom. The sound was
unmistakable: A rat is in the walls—chewing up what? The wiring? Help! Fire!
Chaos! Call the exterminator! Get it out—or worse, get them out—what if it’s a colony! These creatures are invading our
home and threatening my security, hidden away somewhere I can’t access, can’t
fix! I bammed on the wall and yelled at them to leave, but to no avail. The
scritching continued. Then I walked away, irked and resigned. And the RIDs
began—though I didn’t identify the feeling as the RIDs until I began focusing.
When, in the next movement of focusing, I asked, “What does
it want?” I saw my hands reaching out, without fear or repugnance, to gently cover
and calm the rat. As my hands rested on the rat, it became still, small and
contented—a pet mouse. Each time it tried to reassert itself and become a big,
scary, evil-eyed rat again, I laid hands on it as before, and it shrank again.
Then Jesus became the one who was touching and calming the rat, and I saw that He
didn’t hate it or see it as ugly or evil. He fully accepted the rat—loved it!
He said, so gently, “It’s okay.”
A few minutes later, when I heard the scritching again, I
walked over to the wall and put my hands flat on it. I sensed the presence of
the creature just going about its rodent life, but it wasn’t where it should be.
I spoke to it calmly and asked it to make its home somewhere else, somewhere
more suitable. After a moment, the wall quieted, and I haven’t heard the sound
since.
But yes, I still called the exterminator. Guess what I
learned when he came out several days later: Other customers have reported
hearing sounds “in the wall,” but when he encouraged them to check outside
while it was happening, they’ve seen squirrels running around on the roof above
the offending wall. Apparently the scrabbling sounds from the roof echo down through
the wall below and sound exactly like they’re coming from within the wall. Well,
maybe so, but I still wanted him to check the attic for any evidence of critters that might have found their way—or chewed their way!—into into the wall. No
critter evidence at all! Just squirrels playing on the roof, not rats, thanks be to God! (He may love
rats and squirrels equally, but I’m not that holy yet.)
What a perfect picture of the RIDs! My restlessness,
irritability and discontentment come from my own negative thinking, not from the
outward reality, no matter how bad that reality may seem—or actually be. When I
“embrace the RIDs” and pay attention to what they’re trying to tell me, I come
to realize they’re merely echoes of something going on above, out of my sight. If
I can find out what it is, I can choose to do what’s in my power: accept the
current situation, call the exterminator, go on about my life until he can
come, leave the “what ifs” in God’s care. If the root causes still elude me, I
can remember that I, my loved ones, and all our circumstances are in God’s care. When I pay
attention to, and calm, the RIDs, they turn into something much more manageable,
and I can go about my life in peace.
* Focusing is a psychotherapeutic method of paying attention
to what’s going on in your life that has you stuck in a distressing pattern,
using a whole-body approach called “felt sense,” plus imagery, guiding questions,
inner listening, and a “felt shift” that gets you unstuck and able to move
forward. It is best done with a partner but can be done alone by one familiar
with its movements. Focusing was developed by Eugene Gendlin and has been
carried forward by many of his students and fellow practitioners. For more
information, see www.focusing.org.
July 2018
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