STOP MAKING DECISIONS WITH YOUR MIND - Part 2

Self-Imprisoned with Doubt, Distrust and Anxiety

My quirkiness as a child started to make sense when I was diagnosed with ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) in my forties. Human Design takes that understanding to a whole new level.

I was that little girl who followed her older brothers into the house and when everyone would kick off their shoes and run up the stairs, I would stay behind and organize everybody's shoes into neat little rows.

My half-brothers are older than I am. They were already in school when I was born. My mother would take me with her to go shopping at K-Mart. I would wander off and do my own thing. She would eventually track me down and usually found me in some bin. Try to imagine this. A huge square bin full of shoes that had been dumped in randomly. You would have to dig around to find what you were looking for. That’s where she would find me – dead center, organizing all the shoes according to their size. Another bin I enjoyed organizing was the underwear bin because it provided the extra challenge of organizing them by size and color.

I was a handy kid to have around. My mom loved this aspect in me. She didn't have to ask me to organize stuff. I just did it. I was the one who would always organize our closets, kitchen cupboards, and drawers. My mom kept a tidy house, except for the areas you couldn’t see. That’s where I stepped in.

As I said, I was a quirky child. I also didn't play with toys like other children. I enjoyed organizing my toys. Even today as an adult, I love to collect markers. I have hundreds of markers. I love to arrange them according to their color group and seeing them spread out like a fan of every shade possible within one color scheme is deeply satisfying for me to see.

This is part of my innate nature, the gate of detail (gate 62) out of the Throat center in my Human Design body graph.  This is one of the ways I manifest myself in the world through attention to detail, in its purest simplicity. That is before conditioning distorts it.

The gate of detail is described as “the preponderance of the small”, a “design of being an organizational being”.

What does “the preponderance of the small” mean? Imagine a little girl sitting on a front porch step. She’s not even school-age yet. She’s sitting there bringing her two index fingers together, very gently and very slowly until they touch. Over and over again. That was me. What was I doing? Observing. Contemplating. I was trying to determine which finger was touching which finger. I know that sounds crazy! What I was trying to know was which finger was sensing which first. Did my right finger feel my left finger first? Or did my left finger feel my right finger? Do this slowly enough and you’ll notice that your fingers sense each other before they make contact. I was already aware of an energy field. With this exercise, I was also observing my mind at work. I was asking the question, what was my brain picking up first? I questioned, how was my brain measuring this? I would be completely absorbed in this exercise and had no sense of time. Yes, I also had the aspect of being “the thinker” (gate 61) but that’ll be a subject for another time.

I was very observant of my environment, in the sense of the world around me as well as my physical being. Perhaps that’s why I was drawn to take up yoga at a young age. I was 9 years old when I started to practice yoga. I was fascinated to observe and experience my physical movement.

The gate of detail is my method of learning however it is also an unconscious aspect of my nature. I just can’t help myself! Even with knowing my Human Design and wanting to “ease up on the details”, I still spend far too much time collecting data. Data that I already know. For instance, in preparing for this article, I collected 15 pages of notes before even starting to write a single line. I say, “Far too much time” because I recognize it is unnecessary. The information is already in my mind. But I still enjoy collecting the data. Spreading the pages out in front of me and playing with the many different ways of communicating these concepts. I have no shortage of material. The difficulty for me is to not bombard my audience with too many concepts at once.

I also experience sensory overload because of the way I take information in. I take in the whole picture but as if I am seeing millions of micro-bits at once. I’d liken this to the famous artist, Georges Searat (1859 – 1891, Paris, France) the post-impressionist painter who created the techniques known as chromoluminarism and pointillism – essentially painting with tiny dots. Here’s one of his easily recognized pieces.

My mind sees the whole image but it’s also driven to see those dots. It can become overwhelming because not all information is important but my brain doesn’t realize that.

I love to collect data and organize it. This was a skill that others observed in me and they would volunteer me to be the minute taker at meetings.

It was a skill that proved useful for my ex-husband as I was an important member of his pit crew. His hobby was GT Racing and I collected all the specs on his car and the tracks we raced at. From analyzing the data, I was able to help him determine the best setup for his car, given the specific track and weather conditions. The year I became involved like this was the first time he finished second in his class.

This aspect of my nature can get hijacked by what is called the “not-self” in the Human Design system. It's our shadow, and we all have a “not-self” as long as we’re not following our inner authority and strategy according to our auric nature. In Human Design, everything that is white, or undefined in your body graph is how you're conditioned away from your true nature. In this article, I'm primarily focused on this gate of detail. But this gate is not isolated. It is part of a whole system and there is a flow within our body graph, an energetic flow to our mechanics.

When we’re looking at this gate of detail, it is also related to the channel of logic which starts in the Crown and Ajna centers (gates 63 and 4) and then flows energetically into the channel of acceptance (gates 17 and 62) between the Ajna and Throat Centers.

In my body graph those first three centers, the Crown, Ajna, and Throat are undefined, they’re in white. This is how I am conditioned by the world around me, through my connections with others and through the very environment, through the neutrino field. [For more about this see my post Your Mind Is Your Nemesis]

My mind is not designed to plan for the future. That question that parents and teachers ask, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”, was not a question I could answer and it makes you feel like there’s something wrong with you because you don’t know. This question becomes even heavier as you get older and still don’t have an answer.

It’s the same with the question that often gets asked when you go to job interviews, “Where do you see yourself in 5 years, 10 years, or 20 years?”. Again, that is not a question that I was comfortable answering but you feel pressured to answer it anyway. That pressure to answer questions that are not important to me is coming from the Crown Center.

Within my Human Design, I have this pressure to look to the future from the channel of logic (gates 63 – 4) that is not who I am yet I will experience. Within that channel is the gate of doubt (gate 63). There's this uncertainty about the future and there’s this pressure to use logic to predict the future. What can provide temporary relief from doubt are other opinions that are offered through the gate of opinions (gate 17). I would look to others for their opinions on that interview question.

Uncertainty requires proof and is where my gate of detail excels. It's also as someone on the autism spectrum, why I love rules. There are patterns to rules. Rules are logical. They exist to ensure our safety. Perhaps this is why fresh out of high school, I went into law school as a paralegal.

There’s an inherent distrust when there’s something not coherent in a pattern. This energy questions patterns. Doubt arises when something is unclear in a pattern. Doubt and suspicion are the beginning of the logical process. It's the beginning of formalization – how we arrange something according to a fixed structure – but it is not a solution or fact yet. It must first be substantiated with facts. This is where my energy of the gate of detail seeks out facts and data to bring me a sense of security.

Having grown up in an environment where there was alcoholism and abuse my “not-self” experienced anxiety with chaos. However, because this gate of formulization (gate 4) is undefined, it is amplified in my system, and I would have experienced anxiety in any environment that presents disorder. Hence, my drive to put order to those pesky K-Mart bins.

There is also this drive to find answers and to give answers from this undefined Crown which feels pressure. As an employee, when a client asked me something and I didn’t know the answer, I would research it in my own time and get back to them with an answer.

By the time I was a teenager, I learned to caution people. Don't ask me a question if you don't REALLY want the answer because I am brutally honest and I’m frequently criticized for my delivery.

Because I have that gate of detail as a hanging gate that's unconscious, I was never one to have strong opinions. Instead, what I experienced as my “not-self” was this fear of being challenged by others. I don’t do well in an argument because I freeze up. All the details in my head get jumbled up. And I’m like a deer in the headlights when I’m asked a question in the heat of a dispute because I can’t collect my thoughts quickly enough or find my voice to speak (that’s the undefined Throat as well).

How this gate correctly operates is that it needs periods of isolation and reflection and only then can details be clearly expressed. This is absolutely part of my writing process.

However, it’s also what has held me back for so long as a writer from publishing my material and why I am so meticulous in verifying my facts before I publish anything. My opinions have to be based on facts, my gate of detail at work. It's why it’s taken me over 50 years to start publishing my written work. My “not-self” got in the way.

Now, I am comfortable in my knowledge. I am secure in my knowledge. I’ve also lived it. I’ve tested it. I know it to be true. I no longer fear my work being challenged by others. It’s also because I am not attempting to exert my outer authority over anyone. You are free to come to your own conclusions. Do what you want with this information.

But I admit I tend to over-prepare because there is still this fear of not being ready. I wasn’t aware of this until I wrote THIS article. I love learning something about myself in this process.

Typically, in Human Design when we speak of fears, they are from one of our awareness centers; the Ajna, Spleen, or Solar Plexus. The Throat Center is not an awareness center. It’s our manifesting center. It’s how we show up in the world. This gate of detail (gate 62) had an impact on me when I suffered from PTSD before I learned about my Human Design. It metaphorically paralyzed me. Because it is future-oriented, as I said through that channel of logic, where I'm not defined, I experienced this pressure to be certain about the future. But the reality is, life isn’t always predictable so I no longer trusted my mind to keep me safe. How could I always be prepared? Be prepared for what? This is MENTAL ANXIETY.

The “not-self” mind is always trying to predict the future by understanding patterns. What is repeatable can be predictable. But life has its fair share of chaos. When a pattern is not predictable, there is doubt and distrust. This doubt and distrust can either be directed outward or inward. It was impossible for my “not-self” mind to trust life or my ability to be prepared for the unexpected after a lifetime of experiencing the unexpected. Because these are aspects of my Human Design that are undefined, this doubt and distrust are amplified.  Are you beginning to see how the mind can never be an inner authority?

The correct use of the mind is as an outer authority. Please don’t take that expression to mean to usurp others’ authority. It’s an outer authority in the sense that it serves to expand others’ awareness by providing a different perspective. Everyone has their own inner authority.

It's so remarkable when you are living in alignment with yourself. I've shared with my readers that my mother has had a health crisis and remains in hospital care as I write this article. While the initial reason for her to be hospitalized had been treated, and she had a procedure done, there were complications. She needed emergency surgery.

The hospital is an hour's drive from my home and every day I pack a backpack to go and spend time with her. There are standard things I take, water, a book to read to her, or my writing material to occupy my time if she's sleeping. Following her procedure, a Thursday, she was bright-eyed, in good spirits, and eager to go home.

The next day, Friday, when I put my backpack together, I packed more than I normally would. Way more. I got out my cold bag and icepack and brought extra beverages and snacks even though there was a 24-hour Tim Horton’s in the hospital. I packed my eye mask for sleeping and earplugs. I packed my journal where I process my feelings. I collected all this stuff. My body did. I wasn’t even aware I was doing this. When I got to the hospital, I found my mother unresponsive, near death or so it seemed. I spent over 24 hours in the hospital. Waiting. Waiting for her to go into surgery. Waiting to get some news. Waiting for her to be out of surgery. I didn't KNOW, from my mind, this was going to happen but because I was in alignment with my nature, I knew exactly what I needed. I used all of it. It was only when I returned home that I realized that I had done this.

It is through learning my Human Design that I have gone from that paralyzing fear where I had difficulty leaving my house to go buy groceries to being ridiculously happy. It's through the knowledge of Human Design and practicing my inner authority along with my strategy as a generator to wait to respond to life, that my body can be prepared even for the unexpected.

Thank you for reading Mental Health Matters.

P.S. At the time of this post, my mother remains in hospital care but is currently stable.

I sincerely enjoy receiving your comments, feedback, and most especially your questions. Thank you!

How has this article helped you?

Remember, we’re assembling a puzzle and I’m only delivering one piece at a time. Each piece will require time to process on your own. Questions or comments are welcome.

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Next Time…

I am inviting my readers to ask me a question about their Human Design. Perhaps, something that has been covered in one of my articles that you need some clarification on or something entirely different is also welcomed.

I will give priority to my subscribers who are not my friends although my friends are still welcome to ask me questions.

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Disclaimer: I am a student of Human Design. I do not claim to be an expert in Human Design. Anyone can claim to be an expert when they have more experience in something than someone else. If you’re new to Human Design, I only appear to be an expert because I have more knowledge than you do at this time. Keep in mind, even certified analysts will have their unique way of communicating what they see in your body graph and no two answers will be the same.

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Resources

Why Human Design? (jovianarchive.com)

Get your Human Design body graph here:

Get Your Chart (jovianarchive.com) or

Your Free Personalized Human Design Report is a 19-page overview that introduces you to your design and describes your Type, Strategy, Authority, Defined and Undefined Centers, and Profile. This introduction to your design starts you on your path to self-discovery.

Chart Reports - IHDS (ihdschool.com)

List of Professionals in Human Design to get a comprehensive chart analysis, also called a foundation reading:

Certified Human Design Professionals - IHDS (ihdschool.com)

A vast archive of stories and articles including audio and video files on Human Design:

Stories & Articles (jovianarchive.com) and

Free Resource Library - IHDS (ihdschool.com)

The Daily View; Following the Sun’s transit through the 64 gates

IHDS (ihdschool.com)