Earlier today I was with a client in session and she was updating me on how she had been doing. It’s been a while since we’ve seen each other but before she even opened her mouth, I could tell she was different. She looked at ease, confident, peaceful, a far cry from the gal who had first come to me. When she was telling me about her life and what it looks like these days, I got overwhelmed with emotion. A huge wave of joy came through me accompanied by a big ol’ well of tears. I tried to keep the tears balancing on the edges of my eyelashes…. You know that feeling when your eyes are burning from being completely full but it doesn’t feel right to let them out? Anyhow, I’m no stranger to tearing up in my sessions with clients because seeing people feel better just moves me. To see them with hope that wasn’t there before… with a sense of freedom and ease that they didn’t know existed. But with my client today, I wasn’t able to keep the tears at bay, they had to pop out, and I shared that with her. I said, “I am teary because I am just so happy to see you happy” and she joined in and said she felt the same and she let herself get teary too.
One of the things I’m grateful for that has been natural to me since I was a little girl, was the permission I’ve always had to feel my feelings, even if that meant potentially making someone else uncomfortable because they don’t know what to do with a crying person. I know it’s because I grew up in a family where emotions and feeling our feelings was always allowed; They might’ve gotten the best of us at times, but the foundation of being free to release whatever was present is a gift I am now fully aware and appreciative of. What’s interesting though is that as I got older and I had to have difficult conversations with bosses and co-workers in particular, people who I didn’t necessarily want to feel all my feelings with, I found that I had a hard time pulling back on my feelings. I didn’t know where the e-break was. And it would drive me nuts - not because I was worried about how I was being perceived or judged, I just didn’t feel like being so open and vulnerable in circumstances where I didn’t want to be that way. For example, I remember at my first restaurant job when I was 18, I got written up for being late, and I tell ya, he couldn’t have been more kind and complimentary in doing so, but I still had huge tears that I kicked myself for as I walked out of the office.
In conversation with Claire Warden yesterday, an Intimacy Director for theatre, tv, and film, who, in part, teaches actors to become aware of their emotions in their body, shared that it is hugely helpful for them to begin to understand what emotional experiences feel like, to have an awareness of what their own journey in their body is like, so they can begin to know when and how much of their own emotion they want to bring to the table in their acting. Now of course, you may say a great actor brings it all, but specifically in scenes that Claire works in, physically intimate and simulated sex, she knows that the actor may have a hard time not tapping into their own past traumas and experiences for the script, and that can be not only exhausting but also re-traumatizing. So she shared this wonderful visual of a camera’s aperture that she gives to actors saying (and I’m paraphrasing), “When we have more understanding of our own emotional experience and what that feels like, we have the ability to be in control of how open we want to make the aperture… when the emotions of the past start flooding in, maybe you want to close the aperture a bit, then maybe open it a bit after you’re feeling balanced again.”
What this part of our conversation made me realize, is that as soon as I saw that my emotions are always coming from my thoughts and my thoughts are completely neutral… they aren’t good, they aren’t bad, I was able to feel less afraid of the experience they were giving me, and therefore, I was able to feel a bit more in charge of when I felt safe and comfortable to be vulnerable. It’s an incredible thing because before, although I see the huge benefit of being so naturally vulnerable, my vulnerability was a knee jerk reaction. Now, with knowing where it all comes from, similar to what Claire was talking about, I can sense when I want to close the aperture a bit. Now, does this mean I’ve built a wall around my heart or that I’m stuffing my emotions? Not in the least, frankly, quite the opposite. Having the skill of seeing my emotions and my thoughts objectively allows for me to keep my heart wide open, to be more present then I actually was before (because when I would start to cry when I didn’t want to I’d get in my head about why I was doing it), and it allows me to ride the wave of emotions moving through. You know where we’re really good at this? Grief. Whether you are the person grieving or you are the person supporting a grieving person, because we kind of have a sense of the cycles of emotion that comes with grief, we’re really good at riding the waves as they come, holding space for them, as well as keeping an open heart even when we don’t feel like feeling ALL the feelings with certain folks around us, because we just can’t help ourselves. But it’s wonderful to see that. That we are very skilled at being objective of an experience while also being vulnerable, keeping an open heart, and feeling the feelings so we can continue to process whatever is present. Today with my client, is an example of exactly that. A huge wave of emotion came over me, I was objective of what was present to feel out how much I wanted to share that emotion with my client, then when my gut said go, I was able to connect in a really deep way because I trusted my own boundaries. I trusted that I checked in with the aperture and I was willing to let it stay wide open.
For today, consider this for yourself. Start to get an understanding of what your emotions feel like in your body, know that you are safe no matter what is present, and see what happens when you watch your emotions move through you without doing anything about them. Like watching an energy wave of whatever color feels right to you, washing over you. Just watch it. And see what you notice. It’s incredibly empowering the more you know about yourself.
Sending love in all directions and I’ll see you next week,
Jess
