A couple months ago, I freaked out.
I have a nervous system that needs to move in order to regulate. At the time I had an injured foot in a big, grey plastic boot. The only exercise I’d done in months was bike to work. The day before, I had caught the edge of my boot in the spokes and wiped out on the ice, which messed up my arm, and did not help my foot. I could no longer bike.
On this particular day, a blizzard raged outside. It took forever to get the kids into their snowsuits and limp-drag their janky commuter wagon through towering snow drifts to school. Back home, I got sucked into a long list of unexpected chores, and then I checked my phone and learned the streetcars were all delayed. More stupid tasks followed, and accidental internet distractions. I forgot to eat. And so on and so forth, through various life indignities and mounting levels of claustrophobia and agitation.
By three in the afternoon I still hadn’t made it out, and still had accomplished nothing whatsoever of value to myself, my family, or indeed to any part of humanity. Soon, my two boys would be rampaging through the house – a desperate thought that left me panicked.
I gripped my head in my hands … “I …. arghhh … arghhhh” … my back hunched up … “arghhhh … no … I –” … (more muttering) … my eyeballs bulged … maybe I was turning into the Hulk? The inflammation in my body erupted suddenly through the blood-brain barrier into my mind, and …
… Freak out!
I ranted and pounded my fists on the floor! “Le Freak! C’est chic!” I pulled my hair and rolled my eyes like a mad horsey! I pleaded with my partner Sarah: “Baby don’t you seeeee, I’m losing my mind, I have to get out of this shit hole, it’s killing me!” I threw myself backwards into the wall of the mudroom and then curled up on the ground and then made a few more dramatic gestures that I think I’d seen once in a movie, maybe Raging Bull?
I genuinely did feel terrible – in the throes of that peculiar cocktail of physical, mental, and emotional torture that I imagine other highly-sensitive folks will recognize. Is it body pain, or mental torment, or spiritual bereft-ness? This was all three: an anguish highball!
And so I anguished. Sarah made compassionate noises between bites of her yogurt.
All of it lasted about five minutes. Sarah suggested I sign up for a local pool membership, so I texted my sister and she agreed to help with the kids. I left, swam, and came home in a great mood, because someone else had done all the childcare work.
Exercise is regulating, but that form of relief is not my point. My point is the real relief had already happened. It came from intentionally allowing my freak out to come out.
Let’s unpack this for a sec, because there’s a lot of confusion about the healthy expression of emotion, for me especially. I was initially attracted to mindfulness in part because I’m by nature highly impulsive and emotional. I hoped the equanimity would help regulate me, and overall it has, but only in comparison with my youthful unconsciousness and volatility. I also inherited from the mindfulness world a disdain for drama, for the raw wildness of the human condition.
Yet the longer I practice, the more that rawness seems to be coming out. I did not expect that. Maybe this is the true equanimity – a removal of inherited filters, of masks, of pinched judgements around who and how we are. The energy wants to flow now more than ever.
Does that mean I should let it flow all over the people around me, all the time?
No. Most of the time I can breathe and regulate on the inside. But sometimes the energies are so big, so wild, that this is not an option. The only option is to express them. The question then is how to do this in a way that doesn’t hurt myself or the people around me.
We all have our ways. Punching bags or long runs, furious painting or quiet journaling, lusty singing in the shower or primal screams in the woodlot. Personally I like performing my emotions in the moment, ideally alone, but sometimes for an appreciative audience – like Sarah – who knows me well enough not to take my outbursts too seriously. It feels cathartic to ham it up, to exaggerate each inner impulse, like I’m in the golden age of Italian opera.
The difference between acting out in this way and just reinforcing my reactivity is awareness. When I act out my emotions unconsciously (still happens all the time) I deepen the pattern. But if I can notice and then deliberately channel my feelings … wow, big difference. For everyone.
Expressing our emotions and impulses slowly, with awareness, can help us process them.
In today’s guided meditation, instead of dispassionately observing our feelings, we allow ourselves the option of acting them out, in a way that works for us, including not doing this at all!
Let’s get our freak on.
Love,
Jeff
PS- How do you express / channel your big emotions? And what happens when you don’t let them out? People have many different inner strategies too – I’d love to read about your experiences in the comments.
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The Mind Bod Adventure … SQUAD!
June 8-13, 2025
Five day In-Person Retreat, Omega Institute, Rhinebeck, New York
Rewild your meditation practice!
This is the next iteration of my teaching. Omega asked Tasha Schumann and I to offer something together. We loved the idea. We don’t know what that will look like yet, which makes it extra fun. Expect irreverent reverence. Expect creative expression and the creativity of practice. Expect nondual pointing-out instructions. In this FIVE DAY retreat, we take the spirit of The Mind Bod Adventure Pod and remake it into a multi-day community meditation hang out and dance party, with jokes.
We’re also hosting a day-long workshop in May as a sneak peek sampling of this retreat. You can find the details here.
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