LEARNING HOW TO LIVE #2
living is about experience, and how you experience it is up to you
I was sitting on our couples therapist’s couch in the middle of our 2 hour session completely in a confused fog and exhausted.
My ears were hearing what she was saying but nothing in my brain and body was comprehending what she was saying.
The words I’m hearing are, “what if I told you that you are enough and you know enough right now, just as you are?”
In my mind, I looked like I’d just run through the jungle for 10 hours, sweaty hair strands in my face, face twisted with exhaustion and scrunched with confusion. But in reality I was just sitting on her couch in my sweater and sweatpants probably looking completely fine on the outside…my, now annoying - once useful, response that I always employ to show people that I’m great and perfect on the outside.
She continues, “when I say that, can you let that in? Can you receive that?”
“No, I can’t,” I said, “because I feel the most awful I’ve ever felt. I should feel better by now with all the work I’ve done…how could I possibly take a break? No, I just need more sessions to get to the bottom of it, I can feel it, I’m almost there. I just want someone to tell me what to do. And when I try to let that in, it’s like it’s in my head and I try to bring it down into my body but it won’t go past my throat.”
Which sends me into tears because earlier in the session I was telling her how I experience the sensation in my life a lot where my belly feels super distended and bloated but my belly feels so empty. Like I keep grasping and gasping but all that fills my belly is more and more air and nothing of substance. And in reality I deal with a ton of bloating on the daily, and I was starting to see how emotionally this was connected to the physical bloating I experience.
“What you need is a break. What you need is integration. You have 6 years of deep, trauma unraveling work that you’ve done and it’s all swirling around up above your head and it hasn’t been digested down to be integrated and used.”
Again, it made logical sense, but in my state of desperation all I could mutter is, “how do you even do that?”