Opening to joy
Let me ask you something:
How much joy and pleasure can you feel before it starts feeling uncomfortable?
What are your go-to strategies when things are feeling “too good”?
Those are some of the most important questions I ask my clients when exploring joy.
These inquiries come from my own experience getting to know my edges and “pleasure” limits.
For years I’ve been getting veeeery familiar with the ceiling I’ve carried through most my life on how much abundance, ease and flow I feel comfortable embodying.
Growing up, our bodies and nervous systems get used to operating at a level of excitement, love and trust that feels manageable, safe and familiar… anything above that limit will often feel uncomfortable, unknown and unsafe.
And thus we find ways, whenever things feel “too good”, to contract into that familiar level.
Some examples of self-sabotage are: creating an argument with a partner after an amazing weekend away, spending all of our money once we reach a certain financial threshold, procrastinating to avoid being too successful in our career, etc.
The subconscious belief is usually that something terrible will happen if things are great. That somehow, if we allow ourselves to fully experience those expansive emotions, we will eventually lose that joy, abundance, success… which would be devastating.
So we protect ourselves from the pain of loss/death by not allowing ourselves to experience it in the first place. You can’t lose something you’ve never had right?
And yet, by staying stuck in that limit we miss fullness of the human experience.
We survive. We get by. We are “ok”…
Yet… is that enough?
As Tennyson said, isn’t it better to have love and lost, than have never loved at all?
Do we ever regret having laughed until our bellies ached?
Can we truly lose those moments of deep ecstatic bliss?
Feeling deep pleasure, joy and love is one of the most courageous decisions we can make.
It requires us to be vulnerable, open, present, fully alive. To choose life over fear.
So, my love, are you ready to lean into your edge and open into more joy than you’ve ever experienced before? X