Having the courage to keep your heart open

We are powerful beyond measure, and so deeply vulnerable at the same time. This may seem like a dichotomy, but it isn’t. We have misunderstood real power. It has been something assertive, non-surrendering, pushing on through. This is not real power. This is simply willfulness. Real power is something else- receptivity, openness, the courage to keep your heart open on the darkest of days, the strength to feel it all even when the odds are stacked against you. Real power is showing up with your heart on your sleeve and absolutely refusing to waste one moment of your life hidden behind edginess and armor. -Jeff Brown

This quote really spoke to me because I speak to so many people who are jaded and bitter about love. I see so much heartbreak and a “closing in” of emotions. I see people going through the motions with sex and dating, or even pulling back and not dating anyone, because they don’t want to feel and they don’t want to hurt.  I’ve experienced this in my own life, so I can truly understand. I can understand the pain of heartbreak and not wanting to open yourself up to someone like that again, just to feel the pain of disappointment or betrayal again, but we can’t stay in this stagnant No Mans Land forever. We have to move forward and embrace growth and change.

A lot of us have very strong defenses up to keep this pain away. We can be too busy all the time, as a way of making sure someone can’t sneak through the cracks of our emotional fort. We can have “fuck buddies” and move on as soon as emotions start getting involved, we can serial date, or have serial relationships or we can close down emotionally. We can have sexual relations with others but be so closed down that our emotions are turned off and we don’t experience sex and intimacy to its fullest potential.

Get in touch today if you would like to break down those walls, open your heart, own your own power and experience love and intimacy without the armour and walls.  Let’s embrace our power and our vulnerability.

On Heartbreak and Healing..

I just want to post this beautiful writing about healing. Sometimes the pain of a break up with a partner or lover can make us vintage-woman-free-clipart-sad-blues-blogbecome bitter and hard. We can close up and put our defenses up and this can affect relationships into the future. We can pull away and retreat from the world or throw ourselves back into it with so much gusto we can try and “fuck the pain away.”  The pain can be so overwhelming that we can self medicate ourselves with drugs and alcohol. Sometimes we have put so much pressure on ourselves to find “the one” that we feel like we can’t live without this person. Life feels strange and alien to us without them.

Depression and anxiety can result from a break up. It can be a huge challenge to cope with life after a break up. Imagine trying to hit a tennis ball with your non dominant hand and how strange that can feel. However, we can adjust.  I can help you adjust your irrational thoughts after a break up (“I will never find anyone else and walk the earth alone“) and I can help you get over someone that you might be pining away for.  Our mind is powerful and can trick us. We believe what we tell ourselves over and over again, but with my help you can start telling yourself the right things.

Research into victims of domestic violence who were still in love with their violent partners showed that they all thought about their ex in a very particular way. They glossed over the negatives and continually kept focussing on the positives of the relationship. Like a movie in our head, we tell ourselves the stories that we want to hear. I can help you change those stories. We can re-program your thinking. Imagination, memory, the unconscious and stories are powerful things to harness to move you in the right direction and heal your broken heart. 

I loved the metaphor of the tree in the writing below. It helps us to know that in dark times like this we are changing and transforming.  I do a lot of art therapy and meditation sessions with clients where we visualise a tree or a plant and how parts of their life are unfolding.

“On Healing…

callous
the strangest thing about a heartbreak is the emptiness that takes temporary residence in your body: gut, spine, taste, touch, smell, even your thoughts fall into an empty or bland blank. but what will fill them? what will slowly seep into that time and the attempt to forget where and how someone made their way into your almost everything day by day? what kind of ruin will take place? what kind of mangled growth will follow suit? will you have to wade through a post-apocalyptic jungle? will you start singing lullabies in your mother’s tongue? will you have to scrape your insides with fingers and mouths and dig and dig and dig? what exactly will you find there: bones? a dead body? a silent whisper? rot? and who and what will eventually take it’s place? will they be just as temporary, just as fleeting, yet just as stubborn and solid? will they ever get as deep and dark as that person did? will you trust them to enter into you like that, to make love and way? will opening your legs be the same as opening your heart? or does it all become shallow breath from then onwards? does it all become a small step and a terrible, cavity laden void they will never fill? can anyone ever swim there? will they know how to? will the doves come or will all that be left crows coming to feast on that which never made it out alive?

sometimes our bodies are like trees. we focus so much on what blossming and blooming looks like, we forget the most important parts of us: the root. today i begged my body back into the ground. there are always two ways to grow.

( from inbetweenlove.tumblr.com)”

  The seed cannot sprout upwards without simultaneously sending roots into the ground,” says an Egyptian proverb.

“Keep that thought in mind as you head into your next phase of growth. What part of you needs to deepen as you rise up? What growth needs to unfold in the hidden places as you gravitate toward the light? How can you go about balancing and stabilizing your ascension with a downward penetration?”  Rob Brezsny

Before you rush off into your next relationship (perhaps too fast to try to not deal with the pain-rebound is another word for this), let’s get you healed and happy on your own  first so that you will attract the right person into your life.  Too often people rush into new relationships after break ups because they don’t want to deal with the pain or examine what went wrong. It can be very beneficial spending some time on your own, sorting yourself out, learning from the lessons of the past and working out what it is you are looking for in a future partner.   Let’s work on getting you empowered and then you can invite the right person into your life from a grounded and healed place.  Starting a new relationship for all the wrong reasons can become very messy.

Are you projecting the fears of the past onto your present relationship?

“To grow, you must be willing to let your present and future be totally unlike your past. Your history is not your destiny.” – Alan Cohentrapped_by_myriahanyia-d32mglx
Too often people are so scarred by past experiences with sex and relationships, and they project these fears and expectations onto the present with hazardous results. Insecurity can scare away a new partner, and sexual anxiety can limit your potential to experience true connection and a sexually empowered life. How often have you projected the fears, hurts and experiences in a former relationship onto a present lover? How often have you tried not to do this, but just ended up doing it anyway?  We don’t have to repeat these old patterns again and again..

 

Book a session with me today to leave these scars behind and experience true fulfilment and sexual empowerment. I can help you live in the present, not dwell in the past and open yourself up to receiving and giving pleasure, bliss and love.  Art therapy can help heal old hurts and give you insight into your life. Sex therapy can help you create the fulfilling, exciting sexual life brimming with good sexual health that you deserve. Click on the link to book a session with me today!
https://creativesexpression.com/book-a-session/