To feel my heart : being breathless

When the feelings in my heart break through the barriers in my mind it always comes with a deep feeling of letting go. I think the undefended heart just knows how to love, not to protect itself. As a baby we just express ourselves with our entire bodies, watch a baby cry when it is hungry or longing to be held and you will see this, but over time in life we learn to shut down our hearts, or at least many of us do. And with it we shut down our primal longings that so often went unmet while we create schemas or thoughts in our mind that were probably true at one time but can limit our lives a lot later on in life.

I posted a lot of information from Alexander Lowen’s book on Narcissism a while back, as a bioenergetic therapist he deals with the emotions trapped or locked down in the body and works with his clients to surrender their armouring and open up the feelings lack of parental attunement made them swallow or brace themselves against. We also learn to hold our breath over time if we went through a lot of shaming, being hit or traumatised. We bite down on it all and lifting the lid on emotional repression for some of us make us look ‘mad’ for a while which people believe is insane instead of suffering instead from too much thwarted life and lively energy. Something David Richo talks about in a lot of his books.

I uncovered so much sadness in therapy yesterday over the way things panned out with my ex husband, I did get some affirmation from one of our friends after he left. Andrew was a friend we made when we moved to the South Coast after returning from the UK. He was a very gifted artist and he said to me after Jonathan left and I was grieving and blaming myself that Jonathon was one of the most emotionally shut down people he had ever met. Thinking about it over the past 24 hours I see that Jonathan wanted me to get my buried emotions under control, also when I started expressing grief over all of my earlier losses it triggered his own since also lost his Dad around the same age of me and then just like me his partner dumped him pronto. It was one of the things that most bonded us when we met.

Curiously Scott also lost his father around the same age as me. I am aware that the prospect of being together finally is filling me with anxiety as I don’t want him to shut me down in similar ways. His wife betrayed him with another man and he has always told me its a no go area to speak of. I know because it caused him hurt, while I respect that I don’t want to be with another emotionally unexpressive or connected man.

I have not been making myself as available to him lately and I just got back from a later walk with Jasper to see he had texted me an hour before. After he gets back from patrol there is a window of an hour or so he can talk before he needs to rest. I cried when I got home and got the text. I told him I was not feeling so well today which was true, I didn’t sleep as well last night, was awake between 3 and 4 with a lot of body symptoms and it took me hours to get out to the park with Jazzie this morning. My chest is burning now as I had a cup of coffee and it seems to affect my heart centre and then I worry about it. I have such fear associated with relationships, that much is becoming even clearer to me. I know if I can get a hold of my own boundaries things will go better but its the defences that worry me. Scott said in his text, just tell me what you need from me to make you happy. How sweet of him to care. My last partner just refused flat out to care about what I wanted or needed. It was always his way or the highway. I don’t want to push Scott away out of fear, he is such a loving guy and really understands me when I am angry or upset. I am so grateful for that care and maybe that is why as soon as I read his text I just burst into tears.

The therapist Robert Firestone claims that when we finally learn to open our hearts in love to a partner and have attachment trauma we get to feel all the pain of the longings that were never met for closeness and emotional intimacy with our parents. I see that this is true and for some like my ex it comes out in abuse or lashing out (as it has for me a times). Its good to have this recognition anyway of where my tears come from. I don’t see anyone much here at all these days. I hear from no one at all apart from my nephew. This lack of connection is hard but I just continue to try to connect to my deeper loving self more on those days. I feel the love in the sun or the breeze and from Jasper and comfort myself with these. But at times the floodgates of my heart just open a torrent rushes out. Holding it back makes no sense. In time it subsides and then I can breath again even though I know in time the breathlessness will return.