Sometimes I think the entire right side of my house could fall off and no one would even notice it. You see that’s where we have our "formal" living room and dining room and we’re not exactly "formal" very often. Sure, I go in there to dust from time to time but that’s pretty much it. When the kids were little I kept thinking I would turn the dining room into a playroom. It would be great! They could be in there and I could be in the kitchen, separated but together. Never did that. So when my older daughter turned 13 or so, one day she was having a few girls over for dinner, and glancing at the kitchen table I saw it buckling under the weight of the backpacks and the half finished science projects and I thought, “Where are these girls going to eat?” I suddenly remembered we do actually have a second dining table. So I set them up with their pizza on the “good china” with place-mats and linen napkins with cute little napkin rings. The girls were stunned. “We can’t eat in here, “ they said. “Sure you can,” I answered. And a funny thing happened. They sat up a little straighter and spoke a little kinder and felt like I had somehow bestowed on them a great honor. I do it from time to time and they always seem to get the message that they’re pretty special.

And to think I neglected this room that had so much power!! All of this has me thinking about the theme of our Camp Connect this year which is about finding those neglected, hidden, blocked spaces within us and figuring our how to let them blossom into a gift for ourselves and others. Hope you can join us to learn more and..me…well now my daughters have taken to studying on the dining room table and it’s become impossible to eat in there again but THAT'S another story!

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We have been talking a lot about feelings lately and how important it is to process them as they occur, rather than letting them fester, grow and eventually negatively impact our health and wellbeing.

During our recent podcast, we talked about the book The Clarity Cleanse by Dr. Habib Sadeghi. In his book Dr. Sadeghi states that there are three main ways that people hold their feelings inside; he refers to them as mechanisms of repression or protection mechanisms. Recognizing your preferred protection mechanism can be helpful in identifying and shifting your habitual response to negative emotions. Here are the mechanisms of repression according to Dr. Sadeghi:

1. Emotional Shutdown ~ “we find an empty room inside ourselves, pack our feelings in there and lock the door” The problem with this is that our emotions are meant to flow; and it's like a faucet, if we shut them down they all stop. So we are not just avoiding the negative emotions, we are missing out on the positive ones too! And eventually we become emotionally unavailable.

2. Emotional Posturing ~ we pretend that the emotions aren’t there, that they aren’t really important or that we’ve already dealt with them when we haven’t. “It shows up in our lives as a story we tell ourselves and others that explains why we are ignoring or minimizing our feelings.” Basically we put on a happy face to cover up our repressed feelings.

3. Emotional Armoring ~ the act of putting up barriers between ourselves and others. “This happens when we see ourselves as victims and someone or something outside of ourselves as the cause of our pain.” We armor ourselves in order to feel safe and protected. The problem with this is that we are concealing our true self when we armor up!

We will be talking more about these mechanisms of repression at our upcoming Camp Connect along with tips and tools to help you process through any difficult emotions. Hope to see you there!