The invisibility of inner work

It's just me in here

For countless years, I was self-consciously “on a journey.” Most of what hurt were things I was convinced “shouldn’t hurt.”

This meant:
“I can’t tell anyone about this. It’s inexcusable that I don’t have this figured out yet.”

And yet, I knew I had to work through it.

I felt trapped in relationships with people whose voices sounded just like my inner critic. Just one text message from a person like this could ruin my day.

Often, merely passing a stranger on the street was enough to trigger comparison and self-judgment. I hated being alone so much - yet this was the place where I experienced the most ease.

At some point, I realized that the majority of my inner work would be invisible. There was simply too much of it to think that I would always find a container to pour it into, that there would always be a friend willing to listen.

Sometimes I would just have to face the hurt head on, and marinate in the feeling. Often, it was extremely unpleasant, but on other occasions, weirdly, exhilarating.

It can be frightening to face your demons alone - yet, most often, this is how they seek you out. Learning to choose this confrontation shifted my experience from feeling trapped by the pain to seizing agency.

Many of my old journal entries are just rants. Yet for years, the feeling of not knowing “what to do” could find a home here. Scrawling out my complaints and projections necessarily slowed my thinking down - I just couldn’t write that fast!

Bridging the gaps between sessions with a coach or somatic therapist by deliberately swimming in my own goo made my periodic offerings to space holders just a little more coherent. I started looking forward to holding space for myself and got more skilled with it.

At a certain point, I realized another important thing about my internals struggles: they really were invisible!

So much of the shame and embarrassment I faced in countless situations was based on an unacknowledged belief that somehow people could see right through my skin.

Of course, some people are skilled at picking up on subtle signals, but I realized that I was projecting that my faults were like giant spots all over my face. I assumed that if others didn’t remark on them, it was only because they were being polite.

It was a revelation to realize,
“Ah, while I’m sitting here torturing myself, this person is offering me connection I didn’t think I deserved - but what if I supposed that I did?!”

The only obstacle to breaking through was the willingness to deeply feel what I was feeling. If I was willing to keep marinating on the inside - instead of running away - I found that the outside world often continued to smile at me and offer its hand.

Then, strangely, there was a way out - and that way was “through” this inner stew:

- seeing good qualities in others as reflections of my own faults
- trying to let go of grief about the childhood I “should have had”
- worrying that saying what I thought would inconvenience others
- getting dysregulated by my own enthusiasm in the situations where I felt I had something to offer
- trying to be a superhero to counteract my inner narrative
- vacillating between thinking no one else suffered like me and that I had nothing to complain about

These were never just words in my mind. They were always sensations in my body.

Most of those old thoughts are gone now, but fresh ingredients keep getting added to the stew! I’ve learned to breathe through them until they pass through.

I’ve had a lot of help from other kind souls along the way, but in the end, I know that I am the only one who lives inside this realm.

This territory is for me to explore, to make discoveries and to map out. The map will never be complete. It doesn’t need to be. Meanwhile, the world is smiling and reaching out its hand. It’s not judging what it can’t see.

---

So much of what hurts is the product of our own imaginations.

We interact with our story about a person rather than the living breathing human in front of our eyes. Meanwhile, we imagine that they see a story we have about ourselves, rather than than who we are. But this can be straightened out. That's what Somatic Inquiry is for.

---