Talking a lot
about something that bothers you
is a pretty good sign
that you’ve got something huge
and profoundly liberating to learn.
~Mike Dooley
Oh honey, can we talk?
If we can’t let a subject go, if we are compelled to go over and over it? When we simply have to talk it out and then talk it out some more? There’s a lesson in it.
If you’re lucky, you have at least one good friend with the patience of Job, willing and able to be your sounding board. But what if you don’t?
Write about it. Journal. I can’t tell you how much it helps me to lay my feelings out on the page. Yes, sometimes I have to read it again and again. Take some time let it sink in, before the lesson becomes clear.
What if you don’t like to write?
Draw. Sketch. Paint. Use markers. If you don’t like to do that, make mini-collages. Or a big one. Just cut out photos and sayings from magazines, catalogs, brochures, arrange them on a page and make liberal use of a glue stick.
You might not have anyone to talk it out with, but ANYONE can do at least one of these things.
Just get it out. That’s what’s important. Get it out.
And once it’s out, the lesson should be clear.
If it isn’t? Repeat the process. Lather, rinse, repeat.
That aha! moment when you finally get clarity? It IS profoundly liberating.
As a good friend always says to me, “Clarity is a beautiful thing.”
She’s right.
This is also the concept behind our guided journals, one for grief and one for healing. Each page prompts you to get out on the page your deepest feelings and your thoughts. Take a look here.
I find talking it out with my husband is very important. Sometimes anger and hurt feelings will fester, but once it’s out in the open, it seems to vanish. Most of the time we had no idea what the other was thinking. (How have we been married 40 years?)
That’s how. That’s absolutely how.
Yes, Carol! Talk it out! I have a small group of close friends who are my sounding board. And their help has been…therapy!
And what great suggestions for those who haven’t that option!
I remember, years ago, a buddy of my Husby’s went to his ecclesiastical leader and suggested they organize a group of men to do what their wives do naturally. Talk it out.
The leader told him to go get therapy.
So short-sighted!
I’m so grateful for my ‘therapy’!
I love it all!
Sometimes it takes me a while to share my feelings with my boyfriend. But I don’t like to get resentful so I try to catch it as early as I can.