Let me live! So much trapped inside.

I got to therapy with a splitting head this afternoon.  It was from the sheer force of old feelings that I had to hold being evoked by a family visit this weekend that caused the sense that I had of an ocean or torrent of feelings rising up in both my head and my heart that were about to burst the boundaries of my skull apart.     I shared my post on the grief of yesterday with Kat and cried for most of the way through it, telling her how lost and hopeless I have been feeling today.

I came to the session with the sense that for most of my life I have lived doubled up inside a box that is too tight for me.  We talked about how hard I try to ‘do the right thing’ and keep everything tidy and in order, which vies with the dynamic vital life energy inside me that so longs to live free of prohibition which so often my inner saboteur or naysayer tries to kill off.  The sense I have is that if I fully allow myself to live I will die.

In a post the other day I shared about panic attacks prior to therapy and then today I connected that with the fact that after a therapy session that intensely dealt with the trauma of my near death collision at age 17 all those years ago, I did crash and break my head open on an iron foundry.   My sense is that that imprint is with me prior to any session with my new therapist, there is a feeling I wont make it back home in one piece and I didn’t share in that post about how so often after arriving home I have another attack..  (Today I didn’t have one, though!).

Kat’s feeling is that in session the young child in me who was such a free spirit, full of sass and vigour and energy is finally feeling it is safe to come out of hiding or out to play, but another side of me is scared.  I cannot tell you how many times prior to therapy I nearly don’t make it to appointments and how when I arrive there in the depths of despair, after I am able to unload, the entire feeling I carry shifts, as I feel the joy and possibility of life and happiness near by.   The attacks that followed come as a response to that, the fear is that if I really allow myself to live I will die.  What a terrible situation?  Makes me want to cry but instead I am going to see it as a breakthrough.

Are there many of you out there who also have felt for years like who you are is ‘too much’?  I know I have and do.  There are other painful feelings around at present and these concern the feeling that for most of my life I feel I have never really had a home or ground beneath my feet to hold me, or to fall onto.  I often feel as though I have been flung out into space and into ‘a world of strangers where I don’t belong’ to quote Karen Carpenter – one of my favourite lyrics of hers that really used to resonate with me in childhood.

This too muchness and the feeling that I have been and will be permanently exiled for expressing it or being by true self was highlighted by an astrologer I spoke to a few years back who told me the story of Lilith, a strong feminine archetype which is about having an energy that is complete within itself and full of passion, but is so often exiled from a normal home or from connection with others.   She said it would always be a strong theme with me.  And that is sad in a way when I long for the cosy comfort of feeling that I belong.

But as Kat pointed out today I have yet to really find my peeps, those free spirits and souls who feel deeply and are sensitive and aware like me.  (With the exception that in many ways I feel that many of the beautiful soul’s who write and share their own processes and feelings on WordPress are the closest ones I feel to forming part of a family of emotional/spiritual siblings which I can and do identify with).

Anyway I left today’s session with less of a headache.  I was able to share and unpack some of the fears surrounding my nephew’s visit this weekend.  It was clear that this is triggering grief, not only around the loss of my sister but of my father too and I need to be realistic that maybe as the one who is in a more conscious relationship with a lot of those familial feelings, the fear may be that expressing them may be seen as too much in some way.   Can I hold onto myself in the midst of the together time this weekend being aware of all the layers of feelings that may be triggered not only for me, but for everyone else too?  I am not sure, but its good to be able to acknowledge the fear and to know its natural I would be feeling the way I felt today.

It was a tough day and I didn’t share much about how tough it was before I got out this morning as now I have moved through it I am no longer in that space.   Which makes me wonder where I would be without therapy and my blog, for without these two resources all those feelings and fears kicking around inside me would have no outlet.  And that I fear would be dangerous territory for me.  Without self expression and a person who gets us and allows the gates of the dam to be opened all that energy would bank up inside and become the flood that threatens to drown us (me).