Hey smart people… this one is for YOU. For the first 42 years of my life- KNOWING shit and managing my mind protected and propelled me.Critical thinking, research, learning everything I could about whatever I was interested in brought me success, power, position.
Just like many of my high-achieving clients- our intellect and performance masked and hurried an ability to meet and manage emotions. We used force of productivity to shove down intense and uncomfortable feelings. And certainly, we weren’t taught these skills in our families or education.
Honestly, I was 7 years into a coaching career before I realized I had zero capacity for difficult emotions- I’d been bypassing them with “mindset and change your thinking.”
If you are like me and my clients, these buried emotions could often erupt instantly and unexpectedly- as rage, verbal violence, name-calling, cutting people off and out of our lives with no warning and other emotionally harmful behaviors. I particularly had a verbally violent rage that covered my deepest abandonment fears and pain.
Interestingly it was never coaching that led me to meeting my emotion. It was art, and expressive arts (therapeutic intuitive Painting).
This experience and training – in the context of a culture of polarized politics and some personal family stuff- gave me the opportunity to meet my own most tender parts.
My lifelong depression lifted and the anxiety intensified- as my thinking self wanted to continue to stop me from feeling.
Actually feeling and being with emotion and sensation has become a practice in my life and in my work w clients.
Thank you to the mentors like @wildheartqueen and @richlitvin @rebeccachingmft who make space for me to make space for my most tender parts. I am grateful to myself for being willing to dive into what felt like the darkest spaces of my heart.
I am almost 50. If you are reading this- whatever age- I invite you to begin meeting your emotions and feeling with space and compassion. It is the gift I want the whole world to have.
This is peace. This is wholeness. This is love.
