feeling emotions vs. intellectualizing them

and an experiment in being more scrappy

posting scrapier, less filtered content

I’m trying out a new format here, posting scrapier and more focused posts without much or any polishing. This is definitely meta - sparked by the very insights I’m sharing in this post. Enjoy!

showing up consistently isn’t all

I’ve been going through yet another creative slump. I am consistently showing up to do “the work” (practicing, writing, sharing my work…), but it feels like more and more that I’m been trying to force my way forward while accumulating emotional baggage along the way.

After serious reflections (and yes, a lot of over-thinking) I got a reality check based on a cool ChatGPT prompt I found on - believe it or not - LinkedIn today. It goes like this:

Act like a close friend who knows me well, someone who cares deeply about me but won’t sugarcoat things. Based on everything you know from our past interactions, tell me 10 things I need to hear right now that will help me in the long run. For each one, explain why you’re saying it, link it directly to a pattern, habit, strength, or struggle you’ve seen in me before. Be honest. Be direct. Be specific.

(Apologies to the original author, I can’t find the original post on LinkedIn anymore. If you find it or if you are the author, please reach out and I’ll cite you here.)

ChatGPT’s reply is shockingly accurate and definitely hits home. go and try it out.

Whether or not this LLM stuff is conscious (yet?), it’s definitely incredibly practical and impactful. So that’s not the point of this post.

I had two biggest learnings from the reply. First of all, I am not bottlenecked by my awareness or this or that. I am bottlenecked by my self-leadership and a sort of spiritual and emotional laziness.

I want to zoom into this for a little bit - there definitely was a time I was super bottlenecked by awareness and reflection. I remember around 2015-2016 I felt super frustrated with everything, with myself, with my life setup… with my lack of perspective etc. etc. - at that point I hadn’t done much emotional work, I didn’t know much about my talents or gifts, I had a very low self-esteem and I was not even aware of that.

Fast-forward to today, I went through multiple year-long coaching education programmes, I’ve supported others in their transformational journey, I’ve given concerts and held poetry performances sharing my deepest truths with an audience.

It’s a totally different base line that I’m living my day to day, and yet I find myself in sort of the same heaviness and emotional baggage that I’ve found myself in all those years ago. On a certain level this is actually funny.

But on a practical level, I was quite stumped for the last 2-3 months because I was running into old patterns that kept me from “breaking through” the heaviness. Until today when I was reading those lines by ChatGPT. This one hit home in particular:

If it’s aligned with me but scary, I say yes. If it’s exciting but off my path, I say no.

and this one:

Feel first, explain later. Freedom starts in the body, not the mind.

intellectuallizing feelings vs. feeling them

Being the intellectual that I am (I hope you can read the snark), I learned to become super fast at creating narratives about what emotions I may be going through right now, in any situation. This is very different from feeling what I feel right now.

I think I developed this ability as a way to feign vulnerability - so “doing the right thing” - while staying in the supposed safety of shielding my heart from any openness, in fear of the humilitiation and pain that would follow (at least that’s what my trauma would tell me).

but in doing so, I inevitably build up so much internal pressure by not feeling my feelings that I get so emotionally drained I can’t even smile anymore. emotionally burned out.

well, the resulting actions here are clear - use the emotionally safe space I have, feel my feelings, raw and with no filters. at least for myself. my art literally lives by my emotions, so no wonder I’ve been hitting creative slumps left and right.

finding alignment

as for the second sentence… alignment sounds so amazing and simple - and it is. but being in alignment also needs action and that can feel scary. the classic “simple but not easy” situation.

I’ve catched myself following the “exciting and obvious” path that would lead me further from myself more often than I can count in the past month. going down the “scary but aligned” path is simply that - scary.

if I would summarize my insights from today in a deep and profound way - I am done up with carrying the emotional baggage with me in order to follow some abstract “ideal” or “exciting path”.

I feel my feelings as they come up, rather than formulating neat and great sounding theories on why exactly I feel that way and what my past traumas have to do with it etc.

that’s all for today, thanks!