Emotions and How to Deal with Them

So, like I said, I had my first acting class yesterday.  Actually, it was just an audit, but I got to see some really incredible acting.

The thing I had not counted on, however, was the intensity of the scenes.  Somehow somewhere along the line I forgot that acting involves work with difficult situations and emotions.  Being an HSP (highly sensitive person), these scenes really bothered me and I ended up with a terrible headache that has lasted well into this evening.   So what should I do?  Not go to acting classes?  Not use the gifts I have?

Um... no.  The headache is caused not by the emotions themselves, but my unwillingness to acknowledge them.  I have very big emotions, and I've found that in life it has been better for me to hide them and bury them.  Ha- go figure that I would want to go into acting, where it's all about finding those hidden emotions and using them!  

I am in the process of dealing with this headache by crying and screaming and FEELING.  Feeling, for the first time in many years, with the full intensity God intended when I was designed.

It hurts.  It freaking hurts.  Right now it's just a blob of stuff inside of me- I can't name any of it- it's like a black and grey force inside of me that just FEELS.  

Weird, huh?

So, for today- self-nurturing artists must let themselves feel all the things they want to forget.

(by the way- I finished the song I mentioned yesterday and I am proud of it!)

Discomfort

So I am in week 4 of the Artist's Way, and one of the things Julia suggests this week is to give up reading.  READING!?  HOW COULD I GIVE UP READING!?  And indeed, my soul has thrown numerous tantrums these past few days as I have deprived her of injuring, numbing, distracting material.

Without books and facebook and how-to books giving me a sense of complacency, I have had to get up and get things done so I don't go crazy by just doing nothing.  I have painted my bookshelves, cleaned sections of my house, practiced jazz piano, practiced singing, and written a new song.

Ah- but wait.  I HAVEN'T written a new song.  One of the unbelievably unpleasant side effects of this media fast is that I am getting in touch with my soul and what she wants and needs to create.  This is not an easy task.  Yesterday, I began to write a new song, but the subject matter was so vile to me that I had to stop.  I couldn't go on.  I proceeded to judge and shame myself for having even thought of writing such an awful thing.  And I went into a pretty bad downward spiral last night.

You see, when I get in touch with my soul and then I invalidate her, terrible things happen.  I become cranky and moody and restless.  I become hateful towards myself, telling myself all kinds of mean things just to try to shut the Pandora's box I opened by trying to get in touch with my soul in the first place.  The sad thing is that I am the one who opened the box in the first place- why do I now want to shut it?

Art is not all beauty.  As a matter of fact, some of the best and most meaningful art is difficult to process.  It elicits extreme reactions, both from the artist and from the one who absorbs the art.  It can be ugly and wild and disgusting and gruesome and vile.  It can be uncomfortable.  The thing I'm trying so hard to learn right now is that in order to be an authentic and truly self-nurturing artist, I must be gentle and non-judgmental of the art I create.  I must allow myself to be a vessel- and most of all, I must allow myself to face the darker parts of me.

Art is created through honesty.

And this honesty is sometimes very uncomfortable.

And now I am off to audit my very first acting class since... well.... high school!  :-)

To honesty!