Unlocking emotional freedom begins with speaking your truth and releasing the fear that holds you back. Expressing hidden emotions can help you uncover long-buried secrets and find freedom through creativity and self-discovery.
I think there’s always this feeling when I’m making a book that I’m doing something wrong or I’m doing something bad or I’m going to get in trouble.” —Sheila Heti
You go to trouble, then you get out of trouble, then you get back in trouble. —Amy Sillman
(with thanks to Austin Kleon)
What Are You Hiding, and How Is It Holding You Back?
A few days ago, Marion, my brilliant coaching client from upstate New York, left me a voicemail. She was out on a long walk and had had an epiphany.
Here is what she said:
“I just figured something out. Throughout my entire childhood, I feared getting into trouble. I don’t mean the regular way kids worry about making a mistake or disappointing their parents. No. I was petrified of my mother’s anger, and my focus was on keeping her happy.
I held my breath a lot like I was trying to keep from taking up too many ambient resources. I tried to make myself small and disappear into the background. I didn’t want to stand out or be noticed.
Never, ever, ever did I want to do something wrong in her eyes and risk her wrath. I was mostly successful, but the fear of getting into trouble kept me in a constant state of worry—the height of anxiety—as I tried so hard to be good. Always striving for approval.
Because deep down, I had a troubling notion that it wasn’t my actions that could be bad, but that I was bad. Like an apple, while appearing red and delicious on the outside, housed a secret worm.”
The Healing Power of Speaking Your Truth
When you begin speaking your truth, it creates fissures in all of our vaults of toxic silence. As the stories hidden away in these vaults are validated and shared, they erupt like steam through the cracks, and fresh air—pure oxygen—rushes in.
We can breathe again even when we had been completely unaware our tanks were low.
I think we all can relate to Marion’s experience in some form or fashion.
Perhaps instead of a parent, we worried about not angering or outshining a co-worker, boss, friend (this was my experience), or significant other. Maybe we didn’t want to ruffle any feathers because we equated conflict with the most terrifying thing we could imagine.
Somehow it made sense in our minds to let the tire tracks run across our foreheads and take the hit of being complacent, silent, ever one to obey. We’d mourn the loss of our truth, and our authentic selves, quietly and out of sight.
Creating through Art: A Pathway to Emotional Freedom
I called Marion back and told her I had a hunch as to how to begin her healing journey. We made arrangements to have a Making Something session together over Zoom.
A few days later, she and I showed up with all of our favorite art-making gear prepped. I suggested that we work on two pieces, flowing from one to the next every five minutes. No materials were off-limits.
I reminded her of the cardinal rule of Making Something: the outcome of the session was irrelevant. She might like her two pieces or not. It did not matter.
We were leaving perfectionism and control and people-pleasing at the door and taking only our curiosity and joy and explorer’s hat with us.
I set a timer for one hour, and we were off.
The Creative Process: Finding Healing Power in Our Art
We worked in silence as the world melted away. We pushed our work as far as it would go in one direction and then moved to the other piece. Back and forth. Into trouble. Out of trouble. Finding our way as we got lost on purpose.
We’d get excited about something that appeared in front of our eyes and then remember it was important we didn’t get too attached too quickly. More layers, more mistakes, more wrong turns would not only turn us on the lathe of surrender but would also make our work vastly more interesting and rich.
The process would also reveal secrets to us. Secrets once locked in the toxic vault could at last be liberated, experienced, and released. A sauna of colors and textures that purifies and heals.
At the end of the hour, we stopped and took in what we had made. We chatted about what we loved in each other’s work and our own. We made note of certain elements in our pieces that were especially resonant with us and why.
And then the deeper stories emerged.
Marion noticed how one of her pieces contained the colors of her childhood bedroom. Her place of refuge in a stormy house. Surrounding the yellows and pinks and purples were swirls of black and gray. She and I knew in an instant what those dark marks represented.
“How are you feeling?” I asked Marion.
“I’m not quite sure yet,” she said. “Well, actually, I do. I feel seen. I feel like I just lowered my shoulders for the first time in my entire life.”
Set Yourself Free by Speaking Your Truth Daily
Take a gentle self-inventory right now. With compassion, is there something you would like to release from the vault of secrets? How can you begin speaking your truth today?
Making Something is not only a gentle, lovely, and fun way to surface what lies in our depths, but it also takes us to and through our trouble. If you’d like to learn some easy ways to get started, play around with the exercises in my book, BUOYANT.
Speaking your truth and setting yourself free is a daily practice. Let’s speak up. Let’s take up space and be seen.
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