Maybe at work you’re quite able to say whatever you need to say, straightforward, no problem. But when it comes to things that are more vulnerable, maybe in your personal relationships, it’s really hard to say certain things. You’re prepared to hint, to use euphemisms, but to really be disclosed, cards on the table, with people it’s worth doing that with, you’re still bottled up. And you know it.
I came up through the human potential movement in my twenties, and for me it was a huge breakthrough. I was a highly, highly repressed and bottled up person. It felt like there was a valve in my throat. I kind of knew what was going on in there, to some extent, but I just couldn’t let it out. I didn’t know how to say it. And even when I did know how to say it, because I could watch other people saying it, I couldn’t let myself say it. I was too bottled up. So I did a lot of work to deliver all my undelivered communications, to become fully self-expressed.
Then in my thirties and forties and beyond, I learned that you don’t always have to say everything. There are situations where it would just serve no good purpose.
Yes, it’s how you feel.
Yes, you deserve to feel that way.
Yes, they really did wrong you.
Yes, there’s some record to set straight.
And when you really net it out, maybe that boat has sailed. It’s just too late to get into it with that person. Or they’re frail, they’re vulnerable, maybe it’s an aging parent, and it would just serve no good purpose to trouble their mind with that again.
You get to decide.
So there’s a place for some filters. But very often we overfilter ourselves, especially when the conditions are actually ripe to be more fully expressed.
What I want to get into next is the actual fear underneath staying bottled up, why it’s running on information that’s years out of date, and a specific way to claim for yourself the same room you’d grant to anyone else you love.
