Hike, Cry, Eat Pasta, Cry

I’m back from my three week tech break and feel like I was on another planet. I didn’t miss the web or social media at all. But re-entry into the regular world is disorienting.

While on my tech break, I went to Italy as part of a class I’d been taking on emotional intelligence. We stayed at an alpine village hotel in the Dolomites, where from morning to night we practiced identifying and owning our feelings, wants and stories about ourselves and other people, and then speaking those truths. Some of this was done at the hotel, and some while hiking on nearby mountain trails. When I described the class to people, I said we were going to talk about our feelings, cry, hike, cry, eat some pasta, cry. That was a fairly accurate prediction.

It was rough. And I’m used to this kind of thing – being direct, tapping into my emotions, trying to understand where other people are coming from. I’m a huge fan of the Nonviolent Communications movement and work to incorporate the NVC principles into my daily life.

But this was different. It was immersive, for one thing – over a week of focused practice and not a lot of time to process or reflect in between sessions.

We were all vulnerable and asked to be honest about our hurt feelings or anger, when in everyday life the pressures of social norms often have us disguise our emotions so as not to upset anyone. It was also triggering. Revealing uncomfortable feelings in the moment flipped open the lid where those same feelings had been hidden away in the past, when it didn’t feel safe to explore them. But when does it ever feel safe?

No doubt the experience was harder because my beloved cat has been so sick. We were in and out of kitty ER three times in the months leading up to trip, and I only felt comfortable leaving Milo because his new pet sitter is a vet tech who thought he was stable enough to hold on until I was home. There were some scary middle-of-the-night texts when he had to go back to the hospital, and a voicemail letting me know he’d been diagnosed with intestinal lymphoma.

It wasn’t all gloomy. There was great scenery, hikes, laughs and new friendships. There’s no better way to bond than sequestering 39 people in a small Italian village for a week of emotional plumbing.

Jet-lagged and sad, I didn’t do much besides sleep and laundry for the first few days back home. Re-entry into the land of the internet is taking some adjustment. I have two tendencies: connect and avoid. It’s so easy for me to go off the grid and enjoy my solitude, until suddenly I realize that I miss people. My last emotional intelligence class project is to seek a healthy middle ground.

Hike, cry, eat pasta, cry – it’s not such a bad class formula after all.

Tags: living a bigger life, taking a break