My Recent Ninja Move Around Emotions

Weeks ago, I was walking by the river trail behind my house, and I saw a lone walker coming towards me. I recognized him from quite a distance because he was wearing a distinctive safari hat and full UV-protective gear that signaled he took the sun’s power to burn very seriously. Almost as soon as I clocked him and recognized him, I watched him make a quick pivot that put him on a side trail, a hustle and a stumble, a shift in his pace that was a clear indicator that he was altering his path to avoid me.

Look, I know CBT very, very well. I teach it to my clients and draw from its wisdom often. I know there are many ways to interpret someone’s behavior, but this is not a story about overcoming cognitive distortions. It’s a story about trusting myself: he was avoiding me. How do I know? Well, my friends, I know because I DO THE EXACT SAME THING ALL THE TIME. I’d like to think that I’m more subtle about it, but it’s a move that I’m intimately familiar with.

Backstory: this person, whom I see a few times a week because we tend to walk around the same time of day and in the same part of the park, was, until about a couple of months ago, just a familiar person I crossed paths with every now and then. One day, we both must have been going for longer walks because we saw each other twice. I stopped in my tracks when I saw him that second time: “TWICE IN ONE DAY?!!” I said playfully. He stopped, too, and smiled, both of us delighted by this chance connection. He told me his name, and I reciprocated. We moved on. It was sincerely a high point in my day on that day, and I mentioned it to my husband: “I met a new friend today,” I said, and I told him about the synergy. Several days went by without a sighting of my new friend, which wasn’t unusual. But when I saw him again, we stopped to chat, and it was weird, awkward – on both our parts. What to say? Maybe we mumbled something about the weather. Who knows? It’s the tone I recall. Uncomfortable.

So when I saw him quickly veer off the course he was clearly on, the energetic vibe was clear. Cue Scooby Doo: Ruh, ro. About face. Get outta here!

I watched him scurry off, and I felt my stomach drop. I started to pep talk myself. He was shy. We didn’t really gel. I barely know him. It’s not really a rejection of me because he has exactly two barely substantive data points with me. But something in me put the brakes on my chatter. I just sank down into my hurt. I let it be there. I could feel it in my body, and I allowed it. I embraced it. I could feel it move through my body like a wave once I stopped my mental hamster wheel. It was a moment when I really met myself, a visceral experience of believing myself and receiving the truth of where I was in that particular moment. I didn’t need to argue or buoy myself or talk myself out of my hurt. I also didn’t sink. It felt pure and true and refreshing to let myself feel the stab of pain. I finally GOT what somatic therapy has been preaching for years, something I kinda thought I understood intellectually, but until that moment of turning towards myself, I absorbed a new knowing in my bones: an allowing.

I’ve seen that walker one other time since he pulled the rip cord on our coming face-to-face, but I wasn’t wearing my distinctive sunhat, having grabbed Dave’s baseball hat on my way out the door on a whim, so I suspect he didn’t know it was me until we passed. Perhaps he didn’t even recognize me at all. I felt a tiny surge of triumph as we passed each other, some of it because I was disguised because of a shrug and not a convoluted scheme on my part. But most of that triumph was for myself because I accompanied myself when I needed my own presence back on that day that he cut me off. He didn't have the power to hurt me anymore - not because I avoided the hurt, but because I finally knew how to stay with myself through it.