I have been a full time sex and relationship coach for the last decade.
And in my time as someone who is on the front lines of facing into people’s pain, I have noticed a few pervasive patterns.
Primarily, that the root issue of everyone’s questions can be boiled down to two simple questions:
1. What emotion are you not allowing yourself to feel?
2. What truth are you not allowing yourself to face, speak, or live out?
Let me break these down, so that you can see them in action in real time.
1. What emotion are you not allowing yourself to feel?
In a high percentage of cases, many coaching clients come to me with left over pain that they didn’t have the sense of deserving or permission to feel when they were going through the original difficulty.
Maybe they never grieved a break up or divorce when it happened. Or they had a significant amount of abuse in their childhood and repressed all of their sadness and anger about the event. Or they were angry at one of their parents for not showing up in a way that they needed them to.
Whatever the event, the individual still has left over pain in their body that they haven’t allowed themselves to feel.
The lengths that people go to avoid feeling this pain is staggering.
People form addictions (to work, sex, drugs, alcohol, gambling, unhealthy food, unhealthy relationships, video games, social media, etc.) and run from themselves for years (if not decades) to avoid feeling what they’re afraid of feeling.
And while allowing the pain, sadness, anger, frustration, hurt, and resentment to move isn’t easy as it’s happening, I would argue that it is a lot easier than spending the majority of your life feeling uncomfortable in your own skin and running from yourself.
As Carl Jung once said, “There is no coming to consciousness without pain.”
In order to go from numbness to joy, you must go through pain. It is inevitable.
Before you get to a place of genuine forgiveness with the people who you perceive as having hurt you, you must walk through the internal hell that you have been avoiding. There is no other way.
2. What truth are you not allowing yourself to face, speak, or live out?
If it isn’t repressed emotional pain that people are running away from, it’s the truth.
I would say that at least 90% of the people who come to me for coaching support have some relationship to the truth that they’re trying to avoid, but they want a second opinion. They want their truth to be validated, but they’re also afraid of their truth being validated.
One common example is people coming to me with a “Should I stay or should I go?” situation in regards to their intimate relationship. If I were to estimate, I would say that 70% of the time, they should go (because their reasonable needs are not being met with who they are in relationship with), and about 30% of the time they should stay (and they simply need to verbalize what they’re saying to me to their partner).
Another example is someone who knows that they are overdue for an overhaul in their life trajectory. Maybe they want to stop dating around and commit to one person… or quit their day job and start their own online business… or make more time for rest, relaxation, and play.
Or maybe you haven’t let go of the old ego based belief that you are somehow uniquely unlovable, and someone is currently getting closer to you in relationship and it frightens you. The easier said than done action to take here is to simply trust and allow the burgeoning romance to continue on its merry little way.
And, make no mistake about it, just because someone knows what they should do doesn’t mean that they’re doing it.
Knowing the path is not the same thing as walking the path.
Insights don’t automatically equal action.
It takes courage to lean into your fears. Whether those fears be on the emotional level or the behavioural level.
And, at a relatively early stage in the journey, nothing will give you more of a sense of momentum, power, and aliveness than simply living out what you know to be true for yourself.
Tell them you love them. Start that business. Honour your body. End the misaligned relationships. Heal your relationship with your parent. Own your part in past pain. Say you’re sorry.
Do the hard thing. Especially because it’s hard. Repeat. Watch your life expand.
How To Move Forward In Life
In the stage of functionalizing whatever isn’t working for the individual, some issues are emotional, and some are behavioural.
In other words, sometimes you have to feel old, stuck emotional residue… and other times you simply need to start doing something different. And often both.
So that’s it.
1. What emotion are you not allowing yourself to feel?
2. What truth are you not allowing yourself to face, speak, or live out?
I wish you the courage to lean into your growth edges, over and over, throughout the entirety of your life.
Dedicated to your success,
Jordan
Ps. If you enjoyed reading this, you will also love checking out:
– How To Fully Release Difficult Emotions That Hold You Back
