“Ignore most of this, it’s probably rubbish”
These were the words that I said to my therapist two years ago, after she invited me to share my internal experience.
Even in a space where my inner world was not only welcome but ready to be honoured and accepted by a non-judgmental listener I felt the need to diminish it and question its validity.
I thought I was “making it up.”
I thought that someone else had the power to know me better than I know myself.
I thought that my experience could somehow be ‘wrong’.
I look back at this version of myself with so much tenderness. You see she thought that she knew herself. She had journalled for hours, and hours, and hours. She had meditated on and off for years.
She had read multiple personal development books, and could tell you all about her attachment style, and how her life experiences affected her current reality. She could analyse her smallest interactions in the greatest detail, as well as everybody else’s.
And yet, for all this knowledge, she felt completely lost.
I felt completely lost
At 29 years of age I carried around an inner terror that I had absolutely no idea how to truly navigate my life. I struggled to make even the simplest of decisions, and deeply questioned the ones I did make. I didn’t know what I really enjoyed, and felt constantly frustrated when my life failed to live up to my expectations. Worst of all I had this suffocating feeling that time was running out, and if I couldn’t “fix” all of this right away my life would have been wasted.
It was only when I started learning how to live inside my body rather than my mind that things started to change. It was within my body that I found that the first step to knowing myself was learning how to be myself. And to be myself I had to be willing to believe myself.
You see, the body doesn’t lie. It is grounded in the truth of our experience in this moment, and has the ability to absorb information about our reality more deeply and quickly than our minds.
Have you ever felt the energy of a room from the moment you walked into it? Your body knows that there’s been an argument or raised tempers before you even spot who else is there.
This doesn’t mean to say that our body is always an accurate representation of our external environment. Often it holds imprints from experiences we never got to complete within ourselves, or blueprints of responses programmed into us since birth.
But it is always bluntly truthful about our current experience.
The simplicity of the body
When I lived my life from within my mind everything needed to have a meaning attached to it; and more often than not I required that meaning to make sense to my logical brain. This created enormous conflict within me, as I was constantly questioning my own experience, desperately trying to make sense of it and rejecting anything that wasn’t logical.
We’ve all had the experience of attending an event which we expected to enjoy, but when the time came expectation didn’t meet reality. My mind can tell me over and over that “this party is fun” and I “should be having a great time” - all my friends are here, I’ve been looking forward to it and they’re even serving my favourite food!
And yet there’s a churning in my stomach, a numbness in my heart and a heaviness in my shoulders. I’m not having a great time at all. My mind can try to convince me otherwise but the body never lies.
When I live in my mind this conflict between expectation and reality is fertile ground for an inner crisis. “Why aren’t you enjoying the party?” “What’s wrong with you?” “Does this mean you don’t really like these people? Does this mean you’re no fun to be around? Does this mean you’ll be alone forever?”
And before you know it I’m desperately trying to get these feelings out of my body because apparently their existence means I’m doomed! I’m at war with my own experience.
But when I allow myself to live from the simplicity of my body there’s no need to attach any deeper meaning to it.
My stomach is clenching.
I’m feeling disconnected from the people around me (and from myself)
There’s sadness bubbling in my heart.
No need to question, no need to argue, no need to fight with my mind. Only to be with myself, and to believe that this is my current experience.
Get to know yourself
From this space something magical starts to happen. I’m able to respond to what is happening rather than react to it. And I’m able to stay with uncomfortable feelings rather than push them away because they no longer need to “make sense”; they just are. There’s an undercurrent of peace, even to the deepest pain.
As I stay with those feelings I can give my body what it needs. Perhaps some reassurance, or a moment of stillness to myself. And the more time I spend with the feelings the more likely the true, deeper message that they carry makes itself known to me - not through a loudly screaming anxious mind, but rather a quiet whisper from my soul.
“You’re tired from a long week at work - you need some time to yourself.”
“You said yes to coming along when really you wanted to say no”.
“A part of you is still that really shy kid on the playground - she needs some reassurance when you’re around new people”.
And from this space of gentle acceptance, often, my feelings start to transform. The tension loosens, I stop adding to my own frustration and my self-kindness offers me a moment of happiness and lightness.
Trying to think my way out of my feelings only takes me further from them, but by diving in head-first I allow them to move through me and change into something new.
Believing myself simply means turning towards my inner experience and accepting what I find there.
From this acceptance I am finally able to let myself just be. I can allow all parts of myself to exist, be heard and be expressed - even when they don’t make sense to my logical mind.
And at last, I start to feel like I know myself.
The peace that I thought I’d find when I “figured myself out” was there all along. But I only felt it when I realised that there was nothing to figure out.
I can just be.
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