Let's Talk about the Wall

Those of us who work with people in pain, in conflict, in crisis -- we built one of these early on.  A place to put emotion so we could function in the moment that needed us. A code. An urgency. A room where everyone needed us to hold it together.

Setting emotion aside in that moment isn't the problem. That's a skill, and a necessary one.

The wall is what happens next. When the moment passes, and you never open back up. When "set aside for now" quietly becomes "gone for good." The wall doesn't know the difference between the crisis and the rest of your life, so it stays up everywhere. At work. At home. With the people you love.

If that's familiar, you haven't failed. And you're certainly not alone.

But I want you to ask yourself: have you outgrown that wall?

Are you tired of feeling, well, not much of anything? Tired of being told you're distant, checked out, emotionally unavailable? Tired of feeling disconnected from yourself?

There is another way.  It's something I call emotional fluency: learning the language your own emotions speak, so you can work with them instead of around them. Learning to replace the wall with a more supple, flexible system that you can open and close on purpose, instead of a wall that's rusted shut.

This month's Steady Ground article talks about why the walls that once protected you may now be keeping you from feeling fully alive.  One of the hallmarks of burnout is an inability to experience joy.  The walls can keep out the good things, too.

You can read the article, or listen to the audio version, on my blog. Or if you'd rather get it and every future issue straight in your LinkedIn feed, subscribe to Steady Ground there.

Read or listen on the blog | Subscribe on LinkedIn

Here in your corner,~Penni

P.S. If this resonates, and you'd like to start dismantling the wall and building your emotional fluency, let's talk.