No longer living in my head
We are in the counselling classroom conducting our triads, a weekly exercise we do in threes. Swapping around the roles of counsellor, client and observer, each taking turns to share. I dread my turn at counsellor.
My turn rolls around, I remember all the things that I need to do: make eye contact, ask open questions, don’t assume anything, remember the important words they are saying, keep an open posture (oddly one of the hardest things to do when you feel self conscious).
Our fifteen minute slot ends abruptly with my shrill iphone alarm, and we all return to ourselves, offering our opinions, advice and unrestrained empathy. If I were you I would…Have you considered…That sounds horrific ngl.
Peter gives me my feedback. Your session was great but when the session ended you dropped your shoulders and started showing even more empathy and it just seemed easier for you.
It was easier to be a counsellor when I wasn’t trying to be one.
I realise how much of a pattern this is in my life, how often I try to think my way through everything, leading with my head, relying on my overthinking to protect me from making a blunder. I tell myself that if my brain wasn’t running at one hundred miles and hour, I might not be as patient, kind, good, interesting as I want to be. If left to my own devices, I might let myself down.
I am living in my head. I saw it this week when I pushed myself hard in the gym, without remembering to stretch and recover. Remembering my body. I see it often when I spend so long focussing at work that I realise that i’m desperate for the toilet and have been desperate for a while. Remembering my body.
Counselling requires intuitiveness. Feeling not thinking my way forwards. I am realising that the intuitive centre for me is not located in my head, but much lower, somewhere near the gut, and therefore to awake intuitive thinking is REMEMBERING I HAVE A BODY. It sounds so obvious and yet for people like me, people prone to living in their heads, it feels pretty revolutionary to learnt to think with my whole body.
I have come to see intuition as the opposite over overthinking, perhaps even the antidote to it.
I am so struck by people with non-anxious presences. The kind of people we describe as chilled (lol what’s that like?!).
I am fascinated by them, I often don’t see what there is to be chilled about in a world that seems to require me to be on high alert all the time.
I recently had the privilege of photographing some creative people in London for a project. I went to the home of a painter and that of a coffee roaster. I was so struck by the calmness of both people. One bought me a coffee and asked if I have time to sit and drink it with him. The other wanted to chat and show me his art before we started taking any photos. It struck me as how rare it is to meet people who have time, who aren’t bound by their to-do-lists, who are entirely open to a new experience with a new person. The cynic in me wants to say “must be nice” but the yearning part of me wants that too.
I want to be more intuitive, more chilled and able to go with my internal flow.
Yesterday I met a Sikh palm reader on the street who said, “you think too much” just from the sight of me. Okay universe, i’m listening.
As children I think we are a lot better at being embodied. We’re closer to the ground, and can touch our toes with much more ease. Maybe that’s part of it. My sister and I once entered a colouring competition, we were given an outline of the Pink Panther and a myriad of colouring pencils. After 10 minutes of concentration, I look up and was horrified to see my messy rainbow panther beside my sister’s neaty-coloured pink panther. I had done it wrong. I didn’t know what the Pink Panther was, nor did I care to check or to even register the word pink. I felt stupid and wrong. Two weeks later, a box of prizes arrived in the post, I had won. To them, my panther was inventive and followed a different set of rules. It wasn’t correct but it was good.
Thinking might keep me safe but my intuition can also be trusted. I can be trusted to colour outside the lines. I’m packing my bags, moving out of my head, unclenching my jaw in order to rediscover my rainbow-pink-panther way of being again.
