The One Emotion You Need to Work On... Disappointment
When I start working with a woman that is brand new to embodiment and nervous system work she is either very numb and having a hard time feeling at all or her emotions are extremely reactive. The first client typically numbs emotions through over working or with bad habits like several nights a week ending with a full bottle of wine. Sometimes this first client might have a hard time understanding that they aren't experiencing a full range of emotions. Talk therapy and mindset work have made it feel normal to examine human relationships like they are business deal. Housing, jobs, and connections are based on what makes the most sense and almost never what is deeply desired. These clients initially have a very hard time seeing that they are numbing and how much they avoid their inner world. Especially if their numbing habits are viewed as healthy. 80 hour work weeks, to do lists and workouts are just as effective at turning off emotion as a couple bottles of wine and a TV binge are. She often attracts people in her life that want her to carry more of the financial or executive functioning weight. She feels confused about why she can't get people on board to help her or 'receive from men'.
The other scenario is a client that comes to me with extremely reactive and raw emotions. She is ok for a while and then she's slumping into weeks of not following through on her goals and feeling like everyone in her life is against her. This second client has a really hard time with conflict and small conflict that she wishes she could just blow off feels very big. Her over reaction to a careless comment from a co-worker or partner can feel emotionally dangerous to the people around her. When this client is going through a hard time or has her feelings hurt she feels entitled to hurt other people and often forces punishments on others through cutting comments or threats. She attracts people into her life who will engage in months of stormy conflict with her. She feels confused when healthier connections quietly pull away.
Often clients are struggling with a bit of both scenarios in different aspects of their lives. These are two ends of the spectrum of the same problem. The problem that I have struggled with myself and now help women get through, which is fully feeling emotions in the body so that they can be expressed creatively. This is the core of what feminine embodiment teaches. When a woman can't feel and express wintered and matured emotions she is subject to only feeling controlling emotions like wrath, annoyance, and vengeance. Her other option is just to press mute on feeling at all which is just another form of control. I work with women 1-1 and in my curriculums to simply start feeling and to signal to their body that holding an emotion, examining it and creating life from it is safe.
How do I know a woman has arrived? Spoiler alert it is NOT because everything in her life LOOKS perfectly aligned. An embodied and fully turned on life is often unconventional and complex. When you start operating from the body instead of from a rule book there is a lot of experimentation required. If you spent your entire life choosing what is right as opposed to choosing what you want you'll need to do a lot of pivoting to understand yourself. Pivoting and experimenting isn't culturally encouraged for women on either side of the aisle.
I have come to realize a calm disappointment is the most significant emotional turn in a client. When I hear a conflict story about a male partner and he doesn't sound dangerous or Christ-like and the story doesn't sound like an emergency I know we've made progress. Having strong clear preferences, feeling disappointed, disinterested and simply turned off is part of being emotionally online. You can't know what you like unless you equally know what you do not like. An embodied break up is typically a client feeling like regardless of what 'makes sense' they just aren't interested in continuing to work on the relationship. The desire to force a connection that is outside of their personal interests and doesn't align with their life desires is simply not interesting. When a man is emotionally unavailable, unreliable or promiscuous he just seems unappealing. When a co-worker becomes competitive and disruptive it does not devolve into an extremely personal and emotional drama.
Alternatively, disappointment can help a great partnership continue because it can become easier to accept and grieve things that you wish were different about the people in your life. You can move away from controlling everything that might disappoint you because the feeling of not liking something is safe in the body. All jobs and relationships will include disappointments. If you can hold the feelings that come up when something doesn't play out exactly as you had expected, then you can respond in any direction you want. You can learn to hold the tolerance for differences required in a long term relationship. You can move past things that don't feel good and into clarity and creativity. You can solve sticky relationship problems instead of leaving or making them worse. Making embodied invitations and building connections starts with feeling disappointed and not being triggered or shut down by it.
