S1E5 - Soul Suppression

Show Notes:

Alex (finally!) lists all the places to find us and listen to For Thought’s Sake.
(iTunes, SoundCloud, links through Alex’s Instagram, show notes and resources on my podcast blog on my website.)
Have you ever felt simultaneously overjoyed and depressed?
What are you suppressing within you that needs to be unleashed? Something that makes you feel alive, that allows you to release emotion, that feels good in your soul.

Three components to this that we discuss:

Physiological:

Physiological response of doing/not doing things that make your soul sing.
Your body may be the thing that lets you know when something is important. Your brain may not have identified it as being a vital component of your being, but your body knows.
What does a marathon runner do if they injure their IT band, or a violinist when they get arthritis. . . ? Everything happens for a reason.
Sensory integration - the input your body receives from an activity that your soul loves. The activity can also be an emotional outlet, tied to mood regulation, nervous system regulation, etc. Through the activity, you’re integrating your system in a world or environment that is constantly bombarding you with many means to dis-regulate your system. The physiological aspect is weighted in that sensory experience.
Alex is a Capricorn sun and Capricorn rising. Meyer Briggs - INTJ. She does not like experiencing emotions with other people.
AJ is a Sagittarius sun and Cancer rising. Meyer Briggs - INFJ. Emotions are her jam.
Physiological component is what might tip you off to something being missing or lacking in your life that your soul needs.

Access :

Possible self limiting beliefs around access?
When you’re no longer a student, access to free services can go away or it’s not as easy to access the things you want to do. The real world doesn’t operate like school.
Conscious choice - we are choosing not to access something that would potentially be beneficial to us.
Live within the capacity you do have to do the thing you love or need.
Hold space chronically in acknowledgement for the fact that you are going with a need unmet that is affecting you at a primal level.
Just because you acknowledge that there is something missing in your life, doesn’t mean that you have to run forth to eradicate that or fix it right this minute. Sometimes you can’t fix it or it’s not available to you. So what else can you do? You hold space and compassion for yourself.
How do you accept and co-exist with those factors and know that you will continue to survive, to live, and to grow, knowing that they are no longer a variable that needs to be manipulated?

Identity:

Is the activity a part of your identity?
For AJ - if she’s not engaging in the activities that fulfill her, she feels like she doesn’t recognize the person looking back at her in the mirror. It’s like not feeling in alignment with who you want to be or what you want to contribute to the world. It can leave you feeling disjointed - like a Van Gogh painting.
Feeling a loss of identity - working through your emotions in the moment. Acknowledge that you can’t connect to yourself, acknowledge the reasons why (like perhaps a lack of access to the thing that makes you feel alive and who you are), and then releasing that and meeting it with some peace.
For Alex the lack of identity has to do with suffering from imposter syndrome - if you’re not partaking in the thing that makes you feel alive, how can you even associate yourself with that identity? Example - If I’m not currently dancing, choreographing, etc. can I even identify myself as a dancer?

Conclusions: