What Happens When Women Finally Have Space to Exhale
My last therapy stint was a semidisaster (here's to praying my therapist never reads this😂). It wasn't her. I don't think. It was what talk therapy is set up to be in most cases? I guess? It was similar for me in the counseling I went thru 23 years ago when my daughter died.
I process by talking about something. A lot. Often, I have epiphanies or deeper understanding when I say things out loud. An analysis or questioning of it isn't always necessary.
Therapy strangled me unintentionally. (Please do not think I am anti therapy - I am not!). It is just that I was rerouted more times than I wanted to be in our sessions.
But. Come sit with me with a puzzle. A paper and pencil. Some paints. My t-shirt printing supplies. Any crafty thing. And talk to me. An intricate dance of doing the activity and a personal conversation emerges. Suddenly, I am realizing why I reacted the way I did to an incident last month that still bothered me.
Or, I stop looking at it this way and look at it that way. Whatever the hell "it" is. And the person sitting with me is oohing and aahing over their own growing awareness around their own issue.
No affirmations, no goals list, no deep inner questioning, no character assessments. Just what appears to be mindless repeating or rambling about whatever my brain is fixated on in that space and time and my hands creating and working. A combo where the natural occurrence of release can happen.
This can happen with journaling. Not just writing, but keeping an audio journal, too.
Decompression can have so many alternative outlets. It is often what we need and not necessarily a moment where we have to condense our thoughts and feelings to fit and then hold the rest of them until next time.
It is like being hungry, and never stopping to savor and eat a full meal. You're just always grabbing the quickest thing. Decompression is the meal you sit down to and relish every bite. Every turn of your hand, every word from your mouth. That deep exhale of no obligation to be at your best or hold it together? Freeing. Like grocery shopping on a full stomach so that your list is adhered to better.
It can also set the stage to better receive what therapy has to offer.
That’s why the spaces I value most aren’t the ones asking me to perform healing.
They’re the ones where my hands can move, my thoughts can wander, and whatever needs to surface… eventually does.
Sometimes we don’t need more damn analysis.
Sometimes we simply need room to exhale long enough for the truth to rise on its own.
There was a time where everything was so deeply bottled up inside me and came out in an unhealthy way. But, I had moments where I was able to exhale what a ripple effect as seen here in an older blog's post.
Reconnection rarely starts with effort. It begins with space.
Don't be afraid to take space. You deserve it.
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