Feeling not suppressing

I am a professional processor of other people’s feelings. 

But guess what I’ve learned the hard way? 

I have to process my own too.

The 20 years I worked as a Director and Artistic Director were spent 

diagnosing

decoding

understanding

articulating

recreating

evoking 

and provoking 

feeling. 

Transmuting it from page to actor to audience.

Or more accurately

working out what an audience should feel

and reverse-engineering it from there

back through performance

to text.

As a Coach

my job is to hold 

a safe and confidential space 

for my clients 

to feel the full depth and breadth 

of what is happening for them.

To heed what those feelings are telling them 

and to intentionally respond in accordance.

To bring about the change

they most want to see.

Put simply then

my life’s professional work 

is to package up my emotional intelligence and sell on my empathy

to facilitate trancendence or transformation.

But it turns out 

- and it has taken me four decades to properly realise this -

I have feeings too. 

And guess what? 

It seems I can’t just give them all names

diagnose their origin

box them up 

and carry on with my day. 

I actually have to FEEL them.

And as someone who prides themselves on being so careful with the emotions of others

by containing my own

feeling things fully doesn’t come easy.

And that has to change.

How?

Well I’ve learned the hard way 

by watching the love of my life die fast and slow in front of my very eyes 

the unavoidability 

and importance 

of feeling it all. 

Of being with those feelings 

making space for them 

and accepting them. 

And you know what?

It’s strangely addictive. 

Once you tune into the pit of your stomach

dark as it may down there

two things happen:

1. You find you have more courage than you thought you had.

and

2. Your feelings start to give your actions a greater sense of purpose.

I remember the quote from Sarah Kane:

“When I don’t feel it

It’s pointless.”

Now

I want to feel it all.