There are therapists out there who will let you come in, disconnect from your body, and speak directly from your mind. They will listen. You will feel heard. You will feel seen. You will experience some relief from feeling heard and seen. But you may have not truly processed your feelings.
Feelings are experienced in the body. They are not in the mind. Thoughts are in the mind. Feelings are in the body. They are inextricably linked.
Anyways, in a Real Healing therapy session, we invite our clients to slow down, to be present with themselves and to notice what they are experiencing in their bodies and in their breath. To learn how to label their emotions and feelings accurately. to eventually be able to tune into the inherent wisdom that their bodily sensations (feelings) are trying to tell them.
Children and people who have had a less than nurturing childhood experiences learned how to detach themselves from their bodies. They subconsciously learn how to not feel. This may have actually saved their lives. Can you relate to that? Have you ever subconsciously or consciously made an attempt to not have to feel, to not have to be in your body? Well, therapy with Real Healing invites you to notice this in real time. We invite you to stop self-abandoning and to stay with yourself, to learn how to soothe in healthy ways. And you know what? That can be hard and painful and difficult and probably will not hit the same as taking a drink or a drug or losing yourself to work. Letting go of these unhealthy coping skills can also be really, really hard and can require a grieving process of their own. Especially when some of these dysfunctional ways of coping have been there for us when we truly needed them, consistently, and have made us feel safe when nothing else has (and now they are stopping us from living the lives we want to live, from being connected to ourselves and others and from feeling fully alive).
At real healing, we invite you to honor yourself and your story and what you have been through. We invite you to love on that inner child in a way they never have before. This sometimes hurts, too. Sometimes we are hit with a wave of grief and sadness for what we didn’t get. Therapy is hard work. It is not sunshine and rainbows. Being present with ourselves and our pain hurts. But this is how we heal the unresolved wounds that continue to show up in the present.
Whether I or you like it or not, Pema Chodron (one of my favorite authors) said it best, “nothing goes away until it teaches you what you need to know”. (PS. her books changed my life. it was the first time I ever heard that it is okay to feel difficult feelings)
Until light has been shined on these unhealed wounds inside of us, we continue to react and respond from them, as if they were continuing to happen in the present. We can spend our energy trying not to feel them, which is exhausting. Also trying not to feel can lead to dysthymia which is a general sense of blah-ness (in non-clinical terms), where things just feel kind of grey and there’s somewhat of a numbness and not much sparks joy. This is what happens when we try not to feel. So when we are asked to feel again, in therapy, and I mean truly feel, it can feel pretty overwhelming. We use therapeutic strategies to assist in this process so it isnt TOO MUCH. But its still hard.
I hope you have a therapist that believes in you and your capacity to heal enough to challenge you lovingly. I hope you have a therapist who shows you that you can do hard things, that you can tolerate big feelings, even if you have historically been scared to. I hope that you leave therapy not feeling rainbows and butterflies but empowered, knowing that you can tolerate life on life’s terms and walk through difficulties in a healthy, imperfect way. This actually contributes to feeling safe in our bodies and safe in life. You deserve this. But damn, the road to this sure does hurt sometimes.