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What Happened When I Got Still and Quiet

31/3/2016

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dIt’s a strange thing when your body forces you to rest. In my last blog "Altered Landscape" I told the story of the recent events in my life that lead me to an unfamiliar sickness that required me to spend lengths of time sitting still.

I come from the ingrained cultural belief in staying busy and productive, believing that my productivity is tied to my value. Previous life experience with exhaustion enabled me to look honestly at this firmly held belief and get over it! The belief caused much pain and destruction to my body, mind and spirit. But old habits really do die hard and I struggled some with that belief at the beginning of this recent bout of forced rest. But once I regained my rehabilitated belief, that my value is not based on what I get done in the day, I was, however, kept busy with thoughts and emotions that hadn’t received my attention while I had been previously occupied with my life’s events.

I noticed at my brother’s funeral how my tribe prides themselves on the forced control of emotions, like it is a badge of honour. Displays of grief, anger, sadness, etc. are met with slight panic—an attitude of ‘put a lid on that as soon as possible.’ I know that I modeled this to my daughters, when they were growing up. Any sort of, what we call ‘negative’ emotions, would set off alarm bells within me and a desperate need to extinguish the fire-like feelings as quickly as possible.

Much of the work that I do with myself and with clients is processing emotions. Emotions are very misunderstood in our culture as well as grossly mishandled. I say ‘process’ emotions because they are wells of information that needs to be excavated, because, usually, on top of an already stifled emotion, is a layer of guilt, shame or scorn. Not only do you have sadness, anger, etc. but you’ve told yourself you shouldn’t feel that way.

People that I work with are often scared that if they let their emotion ‘out,’ it will wreak unpredictable havoc and destruction, like a wild animal uncaged and unleashed. I can assure that a flow of emotions is just that. The emotions come and, when they are allowed, they flow through, then go. They don’t require that we act on them. Shutting them down because of fear that you will be overwhelmed and stay stuck in that emotion causes problems over time. Repressed emotions don’t go anywhere. The result, after mining the emotion for information, is relief and freedom. The heaviness of carrying around stuffed down emotions is released and you can now experience lightness, happiness and joy.

When I attended therapy and when I was being coached, every time I felt like crying was a signal that we’d hit upon something important. I notice now with my clients, the very same thing—when the core of a belief is discovered, people often cry. Protection is disarmed and the truth is revealed.

“People don’t cry when they lose their hope. They cry when they get it back”—Martha Beck.

Not sure if you have stuck emotions? Get still and quiet for a while.

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Altered Landscape

17/3/2016

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Life has been having its way with me for the past 3 weeks. I got a terrible phone call on February 24th that my oldest brother Eric was killed in a vehicle accident. There’s been a blur of activity since then.

I travelled to be with my family so we could process and plan. Then there was the gathering in my brothers’ home town for his funeral. I was asked by his wife to give the eulogy. That is a strange honour, I can’t quite describe. It was amazingly easy to write because I just described what he was like as my brother from the time I first had memories of him to the last time I spoke with him. I had my very kind editor help me because I needed it to be ‘right’ for my brother, so that people could understand how I felt about him. My friends, neighbours, my on-line community have been so kind, compassionate and supportive. Their energy most certainly helped steady me while I read that eulogy to a crowd of strangers.

My husband and I rushed home to catch a flight to board a long-ago-booked holiday cruise. We reasoned that a get-away would do us good—give us time to rest and recover from the shock, from all the travel and all the upset in routine.

I suffer motion sickness, so I was well-prepared with a Dramamine patch applied behind my ear, long before I stepped aboard that cruise ship. I sailed without trouble. I slept well. I took advantage of the food, the entertainment and the ports of call. A strange thing happened when I returned home. The Dramamine wore off and I was suddenly, violently motion sick! My body, it turned out, wasn’t tricked.

I have been unable to do my ‘normal’ routine. I’m spending most of my time resting, trying not to move my head quickly. This sitting still has allowed my thoughts and emotions to come to the surface. And guess what? Just as my body was not tricked by the medicine, my feelings were not tricked by the distractions. Grief, joy—a whole mixed bag of emotions, have been my companions while I struggle to regain my balance, albeit, a new balance, on this landscape altered by these life experiences.

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