"Whether YOU want a better relationship or a better life, it all starts with getting in touch with Your own emotions"
What? An Artist Out of Touch With His Emotions?
When people told me to stop being so analytical and to start actually feeling things, I used to object. I wasn’t restricting my emotions, I told them. After all, I am an artist for crying out loud.
And yet it turned out that even when I was writing music, I was still holding my emotions at arm's length. I wasn’t consciously restricting my emotions or pushing them down, but I wasn’t allowing myself to feel them either. The extent to which I had truly been limiting my emotions became clear only when I finally started to allow myself to feel my emotions somatically – meaning in my body.
Up until this point, I had no idea what to do with my emotions and how to relate to them. My inability to feel them was creating all kinds of trouble, both in my relationships with others and myself.
In romantic relationships this played out as me being clingy and needy. I wasn’t able to articulate what I wanted so how could I possibly get it? I was insecure and possessive. This wasn’t fun for myself or all the people in my life. I also used to get stuck and lost in a loop just dwelling on emotions and anxiety.
It was only when I learned to consciously feel emotions with my body that things started to change. As I was allowing myself to feel in this new way, two things happened: The anxiety lessened and I began to notice beliefs and past programming that were affecting me all the time.
My Past Programming Was Messing With My Life
Negative beliefs I had about myself kept me from living the life that I wanted. I'd just accepted these beliefs as being true without ever even questioning them.
Until I was able to get in touch with my emotions, I was never able to see how this programming was restricting me. Once I used my body to feel, I saw clearly how this programming was operating and I started to change.
Because this has made such a difference in my life, this is what I'm now sharing with others. By getting out of your head and into your body, your intuition is heightened and solutions flow.
One example from my own life was uncovering internalized beliefs related to craving affection and asking for it: "You can't do that", "You want too much", "There is something wrong with you", and "Wanting affection is embarrassing". These were attached to a bunch of images from my childhood.
Instead of telling my romantic partners what I wanted, I would unknowingly do things to make them reject me and not give me the affection I was looking for. I was doing this to prove myself these deficiency stories were true. My behaviour did not change before I allowed myself to really feel my feelings and got in touch with the emotions associated with these beliefs.
For me, this all happened through learning a process called The Kiloby Inquiries. To learn how exactly The Kiloby Inquiries help uncover and dissolve unconscious patterns, please see my Short Introduction to The Kiloby Inquiries.
The Way of Compassion and Acceptance
Allowing your emotions to be experienced can be daunting at first. As for me, I needed someone to be there with me, someone I felt safe with while allowing my emotions to surface. I got this experience from facilitators of The Kiloby Inquiries.
As my emotions surfaced, the Kiloby facilitators I worked with never judged me but gently helped to guide me in the direction I needed to go. I felt complete acceptance even in the midst of emotional turmoil.
From experiencing this, I learned to emulate this acceptance and have compassion for myself. This, in turn, has allowed me to have more compassion for others and show up more authentically in all my relationships.
This is also the basis of the sessions I now offer to my clients. I am now a certified facilitator of The Kiloby Inquiries (D1 & D2). While these tools were very helpful for me in learning self-compassion, I have since learned even more straightforward ways of accessing self-compassion. I, therefore, use a number of approaches with my clients in addition to The Kiloby Inquiries.
For practical examples of how my sessions have helped other people, please see the testimonials.