A Quiet Time

[Tree Fitzpatrick]

A small contribution about touching, just my individual perspective. . . I
am not offering suggestions for anyone else.

I am a high empath, deeply intuitive and sometimes I think I am a gifted
psychic, although I don't foresee the future.  But I am highly, highly
sensitive.  I feel all kinds of energy.  Before I fully realized on I feel
many different kinds of energy that not everyone feels (certainly I am by no
means special).

I have always resisted a lot of physical contact with other people.  I have
been told, countless times, that my resistance to being touched was somehow
a 'wrong' choice or, at least, a less than 'optimal' one.  I can't tell you
how many times wonderful, loving leaders of one variant or another has tried
to persuade me that I needed to push myself into accepting hugs, that I
didn't know what I was missing, that I needed what I was missing.

And I have yearned to be able to get over this resistance-to-touch thing.  I
hate it when people, be they people I love and trust or people I have just
met at a gathering, take notice of my resistance to touch.  I hate it even
more when people impose touch on me without asking.

I have sat with this situation for a long, long time.  Over the years, I
have grown more confident of my ability to trust myself.  Gradually I
realized that I could be me.  I can trust my Self to know when I need to be
touched and I could block out all the well-meaning and, I am certain,
wonderful people who wanted to 'fix' my resistance to a lot of touching.
Hey, I realized with happiness, maybe I am okay just the way I am.

Giving myself this permission led me to what has been, for me, an exciting
new/next realization:  I found out that I don't like to be touched a lot
because I am already feeling so much energy.  At special events, especially
events where I am holding space, I am picking up many, many streams of
energy with the finely attuned instrument that is me.  It is real work to
stay tuned.  And it is perfectly reasonable to do what I need to do to feel
okay.  Hugging people shifts my energy.  Hugging three people in a row
shifts my energy three times in a row.  It is sort of like moving a
satellite dish on your roof and changing your television's ability to
receive programming.

As I said as i began, this is just about me and touching other people.  I do
not propose that what is true for me is true in the same way for one
another.

I am just voicing, with the above explanation to give my message some
context, that there are all kinds of things going on when two or more people
are gathered and none of us can really ever know what all the other people
need to be doing to feel just right.  I always feel highly anxious when
people standing up in front of groups of people, leading, start asking
people to touch, touch, touch.  I have a deep, visceral resistance,
sometimes, even, revulsion.  I feel faintly panicky.  I lose my sense of
centeredness.

Well, I used to.  Now I remember that I get to be me all the time, no matter
what.
--
Warmly,
Tree Fitzpatrick
Hearthkeeper

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