Being human isn’t evidence I’m doing it wrong

There are days when I feel deeply connected to the person I am becoming.

And then there are evenings when I lose my patience.

When anger arrives.

When something hurts and I react before I have found the wise words for it.

When I know the breathing practices, the tapping points, the HeartMath techniques, the grounding tools… and somehow none of them magically turn me into a permanently regulated human being 😅

I have been thinking about this a lot as we move into October.

Because October, for me, is about Pro-Touch Awareness month, so really to its core about connection, co-regulation and receiving support.

But perhaps part of that conversation also needs to be about what happens when connection gets messy.

When we get tired.

When we misunderstand one another.

When the emotions aren't particularly pretty.

When all the things we know don't stop us from being human.

The One when one difficult moment swallowed a beautiful day

The first day of October was National Massage Day, and it was genuinely lovely.

I worked with clients. I connected with people through touch. I began my fundraising for Samaritans. I talked about professional touch, trust and the products I use in my treatment room.

Then I came home and massage carried on there too. We said goodbye to each other in the morning saying that in the evening we will celebrate with massages too.

This spectacular art of care and motherhood have grown up together in me, and that evening massage became a family affair.

One of my daughters gave her dad a massage. And she really did it, bless her … properly, lovingly, completely involved in what she was giving him with those super sweet tiny hands, working those muscles, applying the msaage oil with care❤️

Afterwards, I gave him a back massage too. My daughter had told me that really I only needed to massage his neck because she'd already done the rest. She kept checking what I was doing and somewhere in that tiny detail was the beginning of what happened next.

It was bedtime. She was tired.

And I think catching me massage the back too, that she had already worked on felt, to her, as though what she had done had somehow been overwritten. As though this lovely thing she had just given Dad with her whole heart hadn't quite counted and either way, she told me that only the neck needed attention from me..

That hurt her…. and the hurt came out as a meltdown.

By then, my own battery was blinking red too….and when her feelings came towards me through her behaviour, I didn't receive them with endless calm and understanding.

I became upset.

I went into her room upset and suddenly I wasn't the complementary therapist talking about co-regulation and connection.

I was a tired mum whose feelings had been hurt too, trying to navigate a tired child's hurt feelings when neither of us had much left.

There wasn't a beautiful therapeutic ending.

We didn't sit together and perfectly co-regulate.

She didn’t want me to touch her, she was lying in her bed, I was sitting in the swing under her bed. I was there with her as I could. We both cried..

..and we went to sleep.

And it hurt.

What happened afterwards is probably the part I have been thinking about most.

Earlier that day, I had written a comment about what a beautiful National Massage Day it had been.

That evening, I deleted it, because somewhere in my head, one difficult ending had apparently cancelled everything that came before it.

The clients..

The conversations…

The fundraising…

The connection…

My daughter's beautiful little massage and care for her dad…

The massage I gave my family…

All the care that had moved between people that day.

Gone, apparently, because I hadn't managed the final difficult moment in the way I thought someone like me should.

And I think that “should” is exactly where the shame found its way in.

Because motherhood and complementary therapy have grown side by side in me. They have shaped each other, and they have shaped me. So somewhere along the way, I seem to have quietly decided that because I understand these things, I should always be able to manage them.

I should understand what's underneath somebody's behaviour… and if I understand these things, perhaps I should always be able to manage them. All the time.

I should understand why somebody is behaving the way they are behaving.

I should be able to stay calm.

I should hold space.

I should know what to say..

I should be able to meet somebody else's anger without becoming angry.

Meet hurt without becoming hurt.

Meet dysregulation without becoming dysregulated myself.

…and especially with my own children, surely I should be able to recognise the hurt underneath the behaviour AND simply be there without becoming upset or hurt myself. But that would require me to stop being part of the relationship and become some sort of permanently regulated Jedi hovering peacefully above it 😅

Except I am not standing outside these relationships observing them.

I am in them.

I have feelings in them too.

I love.

I get tired.

I have limits.

Things touch old wounds.

Sometimes I misunderstand.

Sometimes I'm angry.

Sometimes somebody else's behaviour hurts me.

Sometimes I react in ways I later wish I hadn't.

Knowing about the nervous system doesn't remove my nervous system.

Knowing how to hold space doesn't mean I have endless capacity to hold it..

..being able to accompany another woman through something difficult doesn't mean difficult things stop affecting me.

Being a complementary therapist has given me practices for being human. It hasn't removed my humanity, experience being a human with such a wide spectrum of emotions… and that, I think, is the part I am learning not to treat as failure.

The morning after

The next morning, my daughter and I talked. Not about who had failed, but about what actually happened.

We realised there comes a point when we are both so tired that continuing to talk doesn't help anymore. We still need connection, but perhaps not more words. She may still need me nearby, while neither of us has much capacity left for conversation or even touch.

So we came up with something practical.

A code word.

Something either of us can use when we recognize that w're done, we're tired, this isn't going anywhere useful.

It doesn't mean leaving each other emotionally.

It means I need space, but I still need you here.

No solving, no forcing the conversation towards a tidy ending.

Just presence.

..and strangely, that little idea taught us far more about regulation than pretending the difficult evening hadn't happened ever could.

Because perhaps this is what evolving actually looks like, right?

Not never getting it wrong.

Notice.

Repair.

Learn.

Try something different next time…and keep loving each other through the imperfect middle of it.

Feeling isn't the problem

I have been thinking about anger in particular.

We can become so frightened of certain emotions.

Anger. Jealousy. Resentment. Frustration. Grief. Irritation…

We label some emotions as good and others as bad, and then when a "bad" one appears, we can very quickly make it mean something about who we are.

I shouldn't feel this…

I know better…

Why am I still reacting like this?

But an emotion is an experience.

What I do with that emotion is another matter.

That distinction feels increasingly important to me.

I don't necessarily get to choose what moves through me.

I do have responsibility for my behaviour.

And somewhere between those two truths is a much more human way of living.

I can acknowledge I am really angry.

without handing anger the steering wheel.

…and sometimes I will still get that wrong.

Then responsibility becomes repair rather than shame.

Maybe that is what all these practices are actually for

I don't practise breathwork because I want to become somebody who never gets angry.

I don't use EFT because sadness or fear means something has gone wrong.

I don't practise HeartMath because I expect my heart and nervous system to remain beautifully coherent while actual life happens around me.

And massage isn't about becoming a permanently relaxed person.

Sometimes these practices simply help me come back.

Into my body, into this moment.

From my head towards my heart.

They remind me that I am allowed to receive.

That another person can support me.

That I don't always have to be the person doing the holding.

That my body isn't a problem to overcome.

..and perhaps most importantly, they remind me that my worth was never dependent on how successfully I performed being calm.

One evening does not erase a day

This is the part I want to remember.

I deleted that comment because shame convinced me that the ending changed the meaning of everything that came before it.

It didn't.

Both things were true.

I had a beautiful day.

And I had a painful evening.

I showed up with love.

And I reached my limit.

I helped other people feel held.

And later I struggled to hold myself.

None of those truths need to cancel the others.

One difficult moment doesn't erase years of intention.

One argument doesn't erase the work happening inside a relationship.

One old reaction doesn't erase all the times I have responded differently.

And having human emotions doesn't take away the worth of the life I am trying to live.

October: receiving support too

So perhaps this is where October begins for me.

O - Open to support, because we don't have to hold everything alone.

Not as another instruction to follow perfectly.

Quite the opposite actually.

Maybe receiving support begins with admitting that sometimes I actually need it.

That I have limits.

That I can be the complementary therapist and still need somebody to sit beside me.

I can be the mum who knows the tools and still say, I haven't got much left tonight, the battery has gone flat..

I can be committed to living from my heart and still occasionally find myself spectacularly stuck in my head 🫥

I can care deeply about how I affect the people I love without demanding perfection from myself in order to prove that care.

There is something I want my children to inherit from me.

It isn't an image of a mother who never became angry, overwhelmed or tired.

That wouldn't even be true and faking things would turn myself against myself.

I'd rather leave them something real, you know.

That relationships can survive difficult feelings.

That we can take responsibility without making ourselves worthless.

That we can repair.

That we can change something when something isn't working.

That we can ask for space without withdrawing love.

That we can receive support as well as give it.

And that being human isn't evidence that we're doing life badly.

It is the life we're actually here to live.

Messy evenings included…

Perhaps the legacy isn't perfection.

Perhaps it is what we keep choosing to do with all this beautiful, uncomfortable, complicated humanness.

Head to heart 🙏

Again and again

❤️

Always with love,

B