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Have you recently gone to the movies (or rented on Netflix) and thought, “Dear Lord, why didn’t you warn me!” Yes, me too. So I thought, why not start a bi-monthly report here at The Designing Fairy, to warn my fellow sensitives and save them a ton of therapy.

This week’s selections: Bates Motel and The Awakening

photo credit: Netflix

• Netflix description: “Everyone knows what happened in Psycho, but this chilling series takes viewers inside Norman Bates‘ world before Marion Crane checked in.”

• Warnings posted: The show is listed under “scary and dark.” My gut should have alerted me since it’s not a happy bunny kind of subject.

• My warning: Don’t watch the Pilot. If you are a sensitive, you will need years of therapy to process the senseless violence you just witnessed for the sake of entertainment. *Spoiler alert* there’s a rape scene halfway through that can’t be stomached, and I do understand the writer’s motive including it to show the breakdown of the psychological state of Norman’s mom, but c’mon! The character committing the act was cartoonish, one-sided aggression/craziness and the act portrayed and showed in the movie, just out and out horrible. I can’t tell you if the rest of the Pilot was worse or better as I pretty much stop watching at that point and had to fill my mind up with happy things like dancing bunnies and happy wagging tails. (Several episodes of Adventureland seemed to help)

• Sensitive consensus: I talked to my friends on FB who all agreed that they also stopped watching after the senseless violence.

photo credit: Netflix

• Netflix description: “A haunted boarding school calls on Florence Cathcart, who disproves hoaxes for a living. But the strange place leads Cathcart to question rationality.”

• Warnings posted: It is listed as a horror movie and categorized as “chilling and suspenseful.”

• My warning: This was a really interesting plot for a ghost story and very clever. Many, in the reviews I read, compared it to The Others, which haunted you psychologically way after watching it.  The scary element isn’t too bad more like lots of “boo” moments. No visions that will stick in your mind until more toward the climax of the movie is a scene of sexual violence that matched Bates Motel. The character culprit was useless to the plot, the moment contradicted the story as the main character was rather powerful and strong, and viewers did not enjoy watching her helpless, at least I sure didn’t. I did enjoy the movie up until that point, and it was so distasteful it was like hearing someone write on a chalkboard with their nails.

What’s with it, Hollywood? A movie nowadays isn’t complete without violence to women? Rethink your writing. Then we all wonder why politics takes our rights away out from under us. As for you my fellow sensitives, stay away from these two and for scary, stick to old episodes of Goosebumps and Are You Afraid of the Dark?

Until next time, Fairy blessings,

I got the best birthday present the other day. A precopy of Somerset Studio magazine.

What’s this? I had just submitted an essay a month or two ago and hadn’t heard a thing.

Holy cows! What a fabulous and important gift from the Universe/God/Angels. I am beyond thrilled and a great way to start the new year.

It’s available now – January 1st – at most Barnes and Noble’s and Michael’s shops. And yup, national magazine and one of my favorites! Hope you like it and especially, hope you like the message in the essay.

Leotards vs. Tutus: rebuilding me

I recently took a ballet class. Now it’s been years since I’ve been near a ballet bar. Dancing was one of my first loves growing up. I have fond memories of my Mom driving my sister and I to the Robin Hood School of Dance from the age of five way into the self-conscious teenage time of existence.

Listening to the melodic piano music for the first time the other day, I almost burst into tears but I held them back. My body wanted to move and stretch and my legs remembered how to point and hold long balance positions. And it hurt, a lot, because I was out of practice, but it felt good at the same time. And on my way out, I caught a quick look at the mirror and I felt years of disordered-thinking flood back to me, and I was knocked out of my perfect balance hold.

School has a dress code so I reluctantly ordered two standard issue black leotards and I grumbled and thought again about the reflection I caught of my hips that had spread out from sitting on my butt for months and eating on the go working to earn my Graduate certification.  I was eye to eye with that teenage me.

I was a good dancer then which gave me pride. But I did not have a dancer’s body by a long shot. I am tiny and curvy not long and lean. And what was curves felt like fat then. My dance teacher did something stupid. He actually had a talk with my mom telling her to “work on my weight.” Ugh. What ensued after that was a lot of eating disorder thinking–I took it as a challenge to see how thin and tiny I could get. Luckily, a wiser part of me finally intervened and I was able to stop the madness. Many girls are not so lucky.

That’s what flooded into my face when I saw that dance mirror, and the anger came out at those f$#^ing leotards. The next dance class I slept through it. Inner teen was pissed and rebelling and making itself loudly known. You see, I’m a 40-something woman now, and I like my curves and my juicy pieces. I like being “woman-like.”  I saw a photo of me taken a few years back when my life sucked and fell apart and my face was gaunt, and I remember then, I couldn’t get thin enough for my taste. When that line of thinking shows up it’s not health, it’s moving away from me.

And with this experience, I realize I am rebuilding my relationship to myself. The mirror-critic chatter in my head started in those crucial years in that leotard. I was being taught from that dance teacher how to compare, contrast, and rip apart. This was education aimed the wrong way. How many of us have had this training in the classroom, at home, in the school playground? Who does it serve? The dance teacher?  I was taught to incorporate a running stream of dialogue in my head that needs to be overhauled and reprogrammed to “woman-like.”

I’m sending the leotards back and ordering a tutu. My inner teen wants one. Not to hide behind, but because Tutus fit around your hips and celebrate them. 

photo credit: State Library of New South Wales collection

As a sensitive, do you have the habit of popping out? I mean, do you find yourself leaving your body a great deal when either under attack or on overwhelm? Many of us developed this “skill” as child empaths either from an abuse situation, or in my case, from having an illness. As a child, to avoid feeling pain, I’d often find myself “sitting on the ceiling” looking down. I do believe today, this trick allows me to communicate with spirit so easily, or even talk to animals that are halfway across the world. But how do you control this gift? It’s not conducive to many conversations if one moment you are there and the next you are blurry-eyed and vacant, right? (Although with some threatening or clueless people, they don’t even notice you leave.)

I look to Tool #38 from Help! I’m Sensitive.

Problem 38: Leaving your body

Sensitive tool: Grounding

Lisa Campion has a great article on her blog about grounding and shielding for Empaths. She says that empaths, when overloaded, leave their bodies. I can attest to that!

During a period of time, whenever I felt emotionally attacked I’d find myself seeing a symbol and leaving my body to some astral place. From some detective work, I realized that this was a skill I learned in childhood when I had bad stomach problems and I didn’t want to be in my body in pain. So, I’d find myself sitting next to the ceiling looking down.

This skill helps me in my work locate a lost animal or talk to someone who has passed, but doesn’t need to be there in my everyday life. The tool needed here is grounding. I am stronger when I stand tall and firm in my space. Once I felt less vulnerable and stronger and was able to speak my feelings, I left less and less.

Feeling your legs and reaffirming that you are safe is the tool to use here. Carry a tourmaline rock in your pocket. Its healing qualities will pull you right back in and keep you on the earth.

It’s also important to notice, where and with whom you feel this urge to leave. Why are you feeling unsafe? Can you speak your mind or your fears to that person? Perhaps, empathically you are registering that this person is unsafe for you. Honor this as best you can, limit your exposure, and then always make sure there is extra protections for you put in place whenever you have to deal with this person.

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