There’s a key piece of information you should have been taught as a young boy; a fact that once adopted, can vastly change the course of your relationship to the entire world around you. This is where I want to begin.
I want to start not with a denial of your right to ask for help, a denial of your needs as compared to another gender, race or economic status. The place we instead kick-off from is the knowledge that all feelings held within your body and your mind, are valid. They are valid in that they reveal parts of you which would otherwise remain hidden. They communicate to you, and me, what is most keeping you stuck, most useful in propelling you forward, most essential on your personal path to fulfilment.
Imagine, you’re a child experiencing pain in your body, and someone says you’re imagining it, that it’s not that bad. How many times do you think this would need to happen, to create a lifetime of doubt in the validity of your own feelings?
Imagine, something upsetting happens and your emotional urge is to cry or shout, but you’re informed that both options are inappropriate – that in fact, most of your natural responses are inappropriate. How long before you instead choose to hold these emotions somewhere inside of your body and let them live there?
There is a very real disconnect that grows between the mind and the body, when you spend a lifetime being taught to value one over the other. To overcome this disconnect, your first port of call is to prepare for the undoing of the conditioning; to acknowledge that a re-connection is both necessary and possible.
Will it be comfortable?
Maybe not.
Will it be liberating?
Definitely.