I’m in my third week of massage therapy school, and wow is it ever interesting. The class material is so fascinating (I’ll have to write about that at some point, too), but it’s also really new for me to have classmates. For the past six years, I’ve been working from home and my business is online, so while I deal with people a lot via email, it’s just not the same, of course.
I feel like I’ve been thrown into an anthropology experiment.
Like any new class, we spent some time getting to know each other, and since we have multiple instructors we’ve all been asked to give our little “who I am” spiel a handful of times. Every instructor asked “Why do you want to be a massage therapist?” and this is where things got juicy.
When I’m around people, I often see images or hear “thoughts” that feel distinctly different from my own thoughts; this happens during a tarot reading, and it’s how I receive information to help people with their question. I can block this to a certain degree, and I do that sometimes when I’m around friends and simply want to concentrate on what they’re saying rather than getting distracted by this additional layer of information, but when it started to come through during class introductions, I decided to go with it because it was fascinating.
When certain people shared their motivations, contrasting images and thoughts were firing in neon, and it was so interesting to see where the conscious motivation was wildly different from the underlying drives.
For some, there was a general haziness around why they were doing this that swirled around “I don’t like what I’m doing now, and this seems like a reasonable way of changing my situation.” Fair enough. I’ve certainly gone to school for that reason in the past, and it seemed like a good idea at the time. I didn’t end up sticking with any of the paths I chose in the head space, but they all served their purpose, if only to lead me to something else that I really did want to do. Case in point: pastry school, which never resulted in my actually pursuing a career as a pastry chef but which did lead to my current job, which I absolutely love.
But even more interesting were the explanations accompanied by images of the person’s past illustrating why they were drawn to being in a profession where they will be taking care of other people.
To me, taking care of others is a tricky area, because it’s super easy for many of us to go from being helpful in a healthy way to being codependent. Many of us get hooked on other people depending on us; we like to feel needed, even when we simultaneously resent other people for asking so much of us. This makes us feel secure and can quell our fears of abandonment. It can also make us feel in control.
One of my classmate’s intros was accompanied by images of taking care of a parent when they were younger. I’m going to leave my description pretty sparse so I’m not divulging personal information, but suffice it to say, this person was swimming in a mix of rage and resentment at having been put in this position of caring for their parent, but they also felt safer in that position of caretaking because of the sense of control it gave them. Plus, they were just used to living that way whether they liked it or not.
What was strange is that everything in their energy was indicating that, in their current state at least, they do not want to be pursuing massage therapy. Not even a little bit.
They are sick of taking care of people and not attending to their own needs, but consciously they’re unaware that there’s another way of approaching life because they’re unable to see their current approach. It feels so natural to them that it’s like the old saying about the fish who’s oblivious to the water because water is all it knows.
I did get a sense that if they were to explore these patterns and work through them, they might actually love being a massage therapist, but if they approach this as they did taking care of their infirm parent, the end result seemed quite clear: burnout.
This really had me in an introspective mood, thinking about the actual reasons why we do the things we do versus the reasons that we tell ourselves. In my experience, when the two match up more or less, this is often an indication that we’re tapped into our intuition and are pursuing soul goals. When there’s a major mismatch, this typically indicates a call to dig deeper.
And I can totally relate to my classmate who kinda seems like they’re here against their will. In my undergrad, I was on the pre-med track for three years, and I was utterly convinced that I wanted to be a doctor. It felt like nothing could sway me from this goal, and yet the process was one of near-constant struggle, both in class and out, which I’ve since learned is another obvious clue that I wasn’t on my soul path.
I remember waking up one day feeling like I was going to explode; I was crawling in my skin and had through-the-roof anxiety. My inner world was a mess and my outer world was quickly following suit. Something had to give, and in that moment it was starting to feel like that was going to be my sanity. I was on the verge of a major meltdown.
And this ended up saving my life.
In that space, it suddenly became crystal clear that I had no interest in being a doctor. None. Sure, I loved science (still do) and I wanted to help people feel better (still do), but I hated every other aspect of it. I hated going to class, I hated studying, I hated competing with other pre-med students.
And then it hit me.
I was going to be a doctor because my grandma really wanted me to be a doctor.
Holy shit.
That day, I walked into my academic advisor’s office and announced that I was switching majors, and I ditched a dream that wasn’t mine in search of what it was I really wanted to do.
Was it a simple straight line from there? No. Shortly after, I went to pastry school. And did a bunch of other jobs. And thought about going to school for a dozen other things. And so on.
And do I have everything figured out now? Of course not. But what I have figured out is what the voice of my intuition sounds like, something I was totally disconnected from for a long, long time. I might not know where a particular course of action is going to lead, but I know in my heart of hearts if it feels right. And equally valuable, I know when it doesn’t.
Learning how to listen to your intuition, which is alive and well whether you tap into it or not, is like pulling out that compass that’s been in your pocket the whole time and finding your true north.
Your intuition knows what will light you up and what will drain and deflate you.
It knows your unique skills and how you’re being called to express them.
Ask your intuition. Talk to it like you would your best friend. Share your deepest fears and your wildest dreams. But most of all, listen.
What you hear might surprise you.
