Emotional processing is absolutely fundamental.
Let me qualify that statement: I learned at a very young age that certain feelings were not okay to express, to take ownership of or maybe even to have - and that if I did express them, I would be either rejected or punished because of it.
So I developed a lot of unhealthy ways of hiding and contorting my feelings. I became a master repressor - automatically burying my feelings before I even fully recognized them consciously.
Today's post is a VLOG I recently made that I'm very excited to share with you.
In this video I share my experience with and an approach that has been a complete game changer for me in the realm of emotional processing - turning towards and integrating all of the feelings that traditionally I would have turned away from.
I am a crown prince of tiggering. Or I would be, if they gave out crowns and royal designations for getting triggered and acting a fool.
But, alas, they do not. Still, I have a colourful history of getting triggered and enacting outdated, inappropriate and toxic patterns - not an incredibly unique trait, I know. But one of the greatest journeys of my life so far has been studying the process of emotional “triggering” - in my own life. Slowing it down while I am in it, learning the signature thoughts and feelings of various unconscious patterns that have traditionally subsumed me, and developing the awareness and emotional resilience to withstand this type of inner coup.
When I was about five years old, I was on a trip to the city with my family when I lost my wallet.
Somehow I had saved up fifty dollars - a significant fortune for my five year old self - so the level of devastation I experienced when somehow I wasn’t able to find my life’s savings, contained within my precious wallet, was profound.
A few years ago this experience came to the surface as I was doing some inner work and excavation around feelings of loss, betrayal and scarcity - all of which were certainly cultivated by the episode of my lost wallet.
Author and psychiatrist Judith Orloff has a great quote that I am going to paraphrase here: "When you are empathic, there is no such thing as casual sex."
When I read that, it resonated with years of personal experience and observation - lessons I have learned through tough, sometimes devastating, love.
I have a lot to thank Polyamory for.
Let me be clear from the beginning though: I don't actually practice polyamory. However, my one brief foray into it's landscape was the catalyst for a period of deep soul searching that completely changed my life, in more areas than just intimate relationship.
Many years ago, I had been in a relationship with a woman for several months when they made it clear they were not comfortable with the relationship being exclusive.
The list of things I felt when I found this out was long and intense: Confused, devastated, overwhelmed...
