He wiped tears from his cheeks and looked up at me. I smiled gently at him, knowing that he was just orienting back into time and space after coming out of our somatic session. 

“How are you feeling?” I asked.

“I have been in therapy for years and have never felt a release like that” he responded. 

“I think that my answer was fair and reasonable. I openly set and communicated a boundary with you and it feels really yucky to me to have you try to pressure me into bending on this boundary. If you want to have an open discussion with me, you know that I will always do that but I don’t like it when you try to pressure or manipulate me.” 

I recognized that my nervous system had been in a freeze response, which meant that something was really overstimulating for me. I had two choices, I could continue to avoid whatever was happening in my nervous system and emotionally, or I could take the time and space to really BE with whatever was coming up for me.

Additionally, my body was reacting to the way that he was pressuring me. I didn’t like it. If I am being fully transparent, someone trying to control me never lands well. It didn’t land well when I was a small child and it absolutely doesn’t land well as an adult.

I glanced in my rearview mirror, and the speed that he was driving was almost shocking to me. We were in northern VT driving on the interstate, and people typically didn’t drive that fast in this area. I looked to my left to watch the truck speed by my driver's window as we crested a hill and started down the other side.  He flew past me like I was standing still, except I was driving almost 80.

Their mother had a deep “need” to be in control of everything in life. There was almost no ability for her to find safety in a state of surrender. She was constantly pushing in some direction. She always had an emotional attachment to something.

“There are very few people who I could have heard that from” she said.

I nodded while maintaining the intensity of the energy that she was meeting with me.

“I would have walked out that door” she said as she pointed to the door and broke eye contact. I felt my body relax as she softened her energy. “I really needed to hear what you just said to me”.

I nodded as I held her, energetically, and I felt her let go of the control that she had been holding inside of her body.

I stood contemplating what he said to me. I was standing still and waiting and couldn’t understand why he was asking me to wait because I wasn’t going anywhere. I was trying to understand if there was something that I was doing that was causing him to feel like I was leaving him.

A huge part of my job is to be a “hollow bone” when holding space for someone else. My job is to be as clean and clear energetically and emotionally as possible. It is what allows me to hold my energy “out” with the person(s) who I am engaging with rather than “in” with my own emotions. If my energy is “in” feeling my own feelings then I can’t possibly have my awareness “out” with the people who I am engaging with, and where my awareness should be.

“I don’t want to hold any divine masculine energy right now.” I stated clearly, understanding the root of what was happening for me. I had been immersed in deep business planning activities for 2 weeks. My days were filled with structure, stability, and production.