On Dec 1st, I attended a 3 day workshop (the Authentic Man Program aka AMP). On the surface, the AMP was marketed as a way to relate to women. What they failed to tell me up front was that they way to relating with women was first to be able to relate with yourself! I think this was the piece I'd been missing over the last few years and I'd especially feeling over the last few months.
A detailed review of the workshop is probably beyond the scope of my blog (ie I'm too lazy to write so much) but I'll just say that while I've always felt that I had a good handle on how I feel, the workshop opened up so many doors that I'd walked past and never really seen.
Over the last few weeks, I've felt that the interactions I've had with people have changed. Dramatically. Some examples...
1) a girl I met at Borders told me that it was the most intense and real conversation she'd ever had with someone she just met
2) I went out with a girl I've known for about a year, and she told me I felt so different that it was like going out with a new person
Recently, I've felt more at peace with myself. In my adult life, I've always tended to hide my emotions behind a wall in order to keep myself safe from more extreme emotions such as pain or loss or rejection. While that would keep me "safe", it also prevented me from really going for the things that I wanted most emotionally because at crunch time, I'd pull back behind my wall. Shelly, one of the AMP facilitators, told me that person who kept me safe behind the wall has been watching over me for the past 30+ years, and I should tell the person, "Thank you for keeping me safe all these years, but I'm moving on to another stage of my life where I won't need your protection". When I heard that, it felt so right for me. It was as if I had been wearing a jacket that was too small for me all these years. It was too small, so I'd be a little scrunched up inside, but at the same time, I'd been wearing it for so long that I was used to that feeling. And now, I had just taken off that jacket and realized how much freedom I could allow myself. At that point, I just started crying. And since then, I have been so much more actively in touch with my feelings.
It has also been a great help that I took the AMP workshop with a few good friends, in particular my roomie, Dennis. We've been working actively to keep each other in check, and to call out any bullshit that we're smelling.
In conclusion? No, there is no conclusion. I'm still very much at the start of this chapter in my life. So far, it's been beautiful and I'm more at peace with how I'm feeling. I'm not quite "happy", there's a few things that are lacking in my life. But more importantly, I'm ok with how it, and I welcome the feeling of being not quite happy.
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