This old heart of mine, I don’t wanna talk about it… but I will.

The thing about a closed heart…. The thing about my closed heart, is that I didn’t know it was ‘closed’. Or rather, I didn’t know that it could open more and that I had gradually been afraid to allow this to happen, so tiny-bit by tiny-bit it had squeezed itself smaller.

How did I recognize this? Well, by something really rather silly actually. Confession: I have always been a big Rod Stewart fan, but in recent years I have avoided listening to his music and found reasons not to go to his concerts, when in the past I was a member of the fan club and sometimes been to the same concert twice! (I also invited him to my 21^st birthday party, but he didn’t get back to me, so I assume he was busy).

During this year’s Glastonbury I had friends and family messaging me to say how brilliant Rod was, that they were thinking of me whilst watching and I simply must see it online. So, I was suddenly confronted with the fact that I was steering away from watching. “Have you seen it yet?” Hmmm no I hadn’t, but why exactly?  

I realized I was afraid but of what? I wasn’t sure. I knew watching it would make me cry. But why? Again, I had no idea.

…because the first cut is the deepest, with every beat of my heart, but if you were here with me, I’d  feel so happy I could cry.

So, I decided to do a little experiment. One morning I sat down at my desk, paper, pen, computer, tissues at the ready and opened You Tube. I watched. I cried. I wrote down what happened inside my body physically, I wrote down any thoughts, and I captured how I felt. It was very revealing.

Physically: My heart area just burst open, with feeling (we can go into what the emotion was later. But let’s just say it was my felt sense, meaning I ‘felt’ lots of things). It felt like my heart was expanding and expanding and I thought it might break apart. This sensation traveled up my midline to my throat chakra, so I gasped for air as I sobbed and sobbed. So many tears exploding out of me. My ears started to pain and lose pressure as the energy emerged from there and then straight to the top of my head – a painful exit of mixed, suppressed, emotions. Finally, the energy traveled down to the pit of my stomach, crushing and spinning. I felt sick, sobbing, empty, exhausted and… very silly. Thank goodness I was not at a concert doing all this publicly!

Emotionally: grief – like lost love, like death.

Tonight I’m yours (don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me).

Mentally: nothing in my conscious mind, but washing around just below normal consciousness, like bubbles prickly in-and-out of being on a shoreline tide, I was able to spy a deep-rooted belief: Rod’s songs that sang of not finding love, of being cut deep, hurt, of being left alone, lonely, of being unlucky in love (there are quite a number of them!)  were all about me. I was… unlovable. I was grieving this painful ‘truth’ that I believed about myself. And as someone who studies emotions and the subconscious mind, I know that this is no ‘silly’ thing because, apart from the fact that it’s really not nice to think of oneself as unlovable, it’s also one of the greatest pains a human can feel because it’s potentially fatal. (Unlove = rejected = out of society = eaten by wolves)

Physically it was like a typhoon broke inside me. No wonder I wanted to avoid it! It was overwhelming; my heart, throat, ears, head, stomach, all consumed.

And, of course, the other thing that I noted was how much my heart felt like it was growing bigger, expanding, inflating… and how much fear I felt as this happened.

So, my heart had been closed off to ‘love’ to protect me from feeling this belief. If I don’t let anyone in, then I can’t prove that I am unlovable, and I can protect myself from feeling all that pain. Except that ‘all that pain’ was always there, just waiting for Rod to sing it unlocked.

I was only joking my dear, looking for a way to hide my fear.

So, now what? This knowledge was a huge step in understanding, but the removal of this belief (assuming that I am not unlovable) means full access to my subconscious mind, and for this I sought out my Hypnotherapist. Suffice to say I am now ‘unlovable in recovery’! And in today's follow-up Rod test: no tears... except a couple on "I don't wanna talk about it." (Seems fair.) Overall, I was feeling my heart open and I was smiling.

So it’s good to notice things we are steering away from, that we might normally steer towards. When I see this in myself, I know there’s a subconscious error programme at play and I personally find hypnotherapy a great tool to change it.

What am I gonna do? I’m so in love with you…

And now i'm singing this little number, which makes my heart burst with happiness, smiles and... love-found. 😊  Love within myself that is.