What are you going to do about it - this thing that is blocking you?

I FINALLY got my butt into the studio. One thing that helps me is to pretend I am filming a workshop. The workshop I created for myself was to use opposite colors to explore inner conflict.

I set things up on zoom and started painting and (self-)coaching. I started working with orange and blue. I went with the totally obvious symbols of those colors, happiness and depression. I wrote more words on my paper as I worked and felt new meanings. An odd figure emerged, awkward and weak.

The big insight I had is that I am much more scared about sharing publicly than I was acknowledging. I like to explore honesty and vulnerability in my work. I don't seem to be FB friends with any jerks or trolls, but witnessing the comments I see on other people's posts makes me sad. Why can't people just shut up?

Some things are very easy for me to express, but there are other things that are much harder, where I am still in the learning and processing of it and therefore myself extra vulnerable. I was putting my pressure on myself to be more vulnerable and open than feels safe.

It was good to see this, that I need boundaries around my work. That I don't have to share before I am ready.

But for a day or two I really felt my fear about this growing edge. It was like my mild social anxiety flared up very large and dramatically and that part of me was yelling "I AM REALLY NOT SURE ABOUT THIS AND I'M QUITE SCARED."

So, what am I going to do about that? At that moment it felt bigger and scarier than it does now. It felt like a deal breaker. Sure, I can have a "thicker skin" but what does that mean in practice? Does it mean not engaging - post and flee? Does it mean sharing less fully, protectively?

Now it feels like something I can manage. I can wait to share things, I can keep some of it private, I can share more fully in safer spaces, I can block people that have icky energy, I can do energetic work around what I share to make sure it is strong enough to be let loose (and I am strong enough to protect it).
​
This painting is the final version of the one I started with the orange and the blue. It has many layers on it. And suitably bare-assed!

---