Photo by Josh Massey on Unsplash
You might be comfortable with your mind wandering during those ‘in between’ moments.
Perhaps to weekend plans. Or a creative project. Or feeling ready for a change. Or a memory. Or imagining the future.
Or you might worry it’ll wander to something you’d prefer not to think about.
That might be:
Worry
Doubt
A deep grief
A flutter about the direction you’re heading, or how much it’s costing you
Stuckness
Disappointment
You might know exactly what the feeling’s about. Or you might not have a clue, which can make keeping it contained feel all the more important.
Whatever the case, by the time it becomes ‘the thing that can't be thought’, it's got a lot of power. You have a sense that if you open up to it even a crack, there’ll be no stopping it.
So you might have built up some reliable tactics to avoid your mind drifting to places you’d rather not go.
Scrolling
Busyness
Giving more of yourself than you can top up
Being the one everyone else can rely on
A packed diary, or a mind that races like a flip book
But in my experience, something as important as whatever you’re feeling can’t reliably be kept ‘in a box’ forever.
And my friend, it can be a bone-wearying thing to carry alone.
The good thing, of course, is you don’t have to.
Talking about it, whatever it is, takes the air out of it. Sometimes (often, actually) that really is all it takes to make it small enough to untangle.
Being in a therapy room can feel very containing (in the good way). It’s just 50 minutes. You’re not on your own. You’re sitting with someone qualified to go there with you, wherever ‘there’ is for you.
They won’t be shocked or shaken by what comes up.
They’ll sit calmly in it with you, and give space to explore what it might mean for you.
Also in my experience, one thing you’ll discover is that the feeling doesn’t overwhelm you after all.
The poet Rainer Maria Rilke puts it more succinctly:
“Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.”
