So I’m in this new class right now. It’s called Big Emotions for Sensitive Souls. We are facing emotions head-on. The other night I learned something that was pretty powerful. All day before the class I was feeling off. I felt irritated by just about everything. I didn’t know what was truly causing this irritability—so I just pushed it aside, hoping that it would go away.
Well, what I didn’t realize was that what I was feeling all day was preparing me for class. So when I found out we were going to be confronting sadness in this class, I was like, Jeez! That’s what I was feeling! Thankfully, I don’t regularly feel so disconnected from my feelings—which is why I was so irritated.
When I sat in class and went into meditation (that’s actually where we confront those feelings), I was like, oh hell no, I don’t want to do this. All day I’ve been feeling sad—but the other part of me– the competitive good student thought, I’ve got to do this. This is why you are here. You signed up for this class to process emotion and now you are trying to bag on it? Lame.
So I sat there and went into my trance-like state and took a look at sadness. As soon as I saw it, I again felt like don’t make me do this! My sadness was huge, grey, and ugly and I felt a strong resistance to it. Then my teacher Karena said, I want you to visualize vacuuming out everyone elses’ emotions around sadness that is showing up in your image of sadness. At that point, my sadness shrunk to a tiny pea! It was cute! Little. And green. I couldn’t believe how much of other people’s sadness I was carrying around with me without realizing it! When I looked at the pea again it was actually happy— happy to be seen by me! I felt like I wanted to give it a hug!
In that moment, I realized that it’s not MY sadness that I don’t like to deal with, it is the sadness I pick up by accident from other people!
When I do energy work I have a bunch of techniques I do to remove feelings from my space that aren’t mine. It’s basically energy hygiene. Being sensitive, I’ve developed somewhat of a “permeable” skin that I regularly need to “clean out.” This “permeable” skin is essential for my work. In my sessions, I use my whole body to sense what my clients are going through, so in a sense, I can “feel” my client’s broken toe, or how my client is holding grief around the passing of her mother. I purposely tune into those things. It’s super helpful in a session, but not when I’m on the floor playing trains with my son.
Looking back, I have an idea of where I picked up that sadness. At the time I remember noting to myself, I’m connecting deeply with this other person’s sadness but completely forgot to clear myself of that emotion. What is interesting to note, is that I wouldn’t have picked up that emotion if there wasn’t some piece of me that was resonating with that sadness. It was buried in me and became activated within me when I connected with this other person. That’s why it seemed out of the blue and I couldn’t place it. No one had done something obvious to hurt me. But in me, this connection pulled out a part of me that needed to be healed. It became amplified so that I’d notice it and process it.
This class was so powerful because it illustrated to me how important it is for me to stay on top of my energy hygiene and that I’m really not all that terrified of my own sadness. I also gained a few more tools to move past the reluctance in dealing with my emotions (if it comes up again) and how I can process them in the moment even if I’m feeling overwhelmed.
I’m super grateful for these opportunities to learn.