“All my friends are talking to me about their renovations. Talk to me about something real.”
BOOM.
There it is.
Right in the middle of the conversation the woman I was chatting to expressed her gratitude for the depth of our conversation and then said the above statement.
I was struck by it. The desire to be seen, to be met, to be in deep interactions and deep relationships with people was so obvious.
I felt like she put into one simple sentence what I was feeling, and what I had worked so hard to unravel for myself. As well as that thing that happens when we get swept up in other people’s energy and the flow of conversation.
From all the work I’ve done, both study and personal growth/recovery, I am aware that what we talk about is so often muted or primed towards certain subjects.
We all know that old saying to never talk about religion nor politics. But this goes so much further than that. It’s not what we will and won’t talk about. And it’s also how we talk it when we do.
As women we so often learn invisible rules for life that include us playing small. Adhering to the rules of ‘tall poppy syndrome’.
With that, comes not talking about stuff that’s too good because we might upset someone.
The flip side of that is that we also don’t talk about the depths of our discomfort.
What we do talk about is the surface level frustrations and shit in our lives. How our kids walked mud in on the carpet, how we’re pissed off that our partner leaves white toothpaste spots on the mirror and how the line up for coffee was too long this morning.
In short, drama.
It’s almost like we’re competing about what is hard in life, but not too hard.
Not the real and raw hard, but the surface level, little annoyances hard.
As I’ve become closer to this subject, I’ve really looked at myself and my own behaviour. What is it I talk about. Am I just perpetuating drama?
How real am I? How honest? Even (and especially) with myself?
As I examined this, some time ago now, I realised that I never rocked the boat.
I didn’t really disagree with people.
Some of that was about the conditioning I’d received in life. What I call “shitty life training”.
I’d taken on very strong rules about what I should and shouldn’t be saying. And that was particularly in relation to whether someone was going to be upset (or not) by what I was saying.
The fear of getting in trouble was strong enough that I didn’t talk about what was real. Not really. Not truly. Not even in my own journal.
Playing the good girl in this way I really lost myself. The evidence of this in my life was depression and anxiety and some shitty relationships.
It’s taken years to find myself. To open the bars of the layers of cages I found myself in and free myself.
Being ‘free’ means so many things to me. Most importantly, the freedom to feel what I feel, to wear what I want, to do the things that fill me with joy and to live to my own timetable and definitely not being a slave to my phone.
Being free and continuing to do the work to show up as the most true version of myself I can in every situation means that my desire for deeper emotional connection can be met.
As humans, we need connection.
There’s connection and there’s connection. The deeper kind. The stuff that goes beyond renovations, whether your kid still wears pull ups and what your ex did this time.
Truly writing and sharing from our hearts connects us as emotional beings and offers greater impact to those around us.
Sooooo…. I’m here to talk about what’s real. For me. And I absolutely invite you to do the same. If the idea of that is completely overwhelming jump into a free 45 minute chat with me to work out your next step into deeper more honest, more beautiful communications https://emmamccann.as.me/introsession
