This morning I helped my friend Madeline redecorate her home. For a while, I just kept walking around the house, going from room to room and thinking about what needed to go where, but I couldn’t decide. After a good bit of this, I finally sat down in a chair in the living room. Instead of thinking, I decided to feel. Call it intuition or Feng Shui, but there were areas of the room that felt crowded, and there were spaces on the walls that didn’t feel like they could breathe as well as others. There were pieces that didn’t feel like they got along with each other, like they needed to be separated.

Having checked in with my feelings, I could then explain them to Madeline. “See, all these pieces look hand-made, they don’t belong next to the ones that are mass-produced.” But it wasn’t something I could articulate before I sat down and checked in with my gut. Once I did, we were off and running.

Here’s a picture of three pieces we grouped together because of their complimentary colors.

This afternoon I watched a movie called A Monster Calls. It’s about a boy whose mom is terminally ill and his encounters with a tree outside his window that turns into a monster. The monster tells the boy three stories, for which the boy must tell the monster a story—his nightmare. I really wanted to love this movie, but I didn’t. (I’ve had this same experience with several people and more than one piece of chocolate cake.) Having said that, there was a pretty profound scene in the movie that I loved. (I’m about to tell you about it, so if you’re hell-bent on watching the movie and not knowing what happens, I suggest you put this blog down, go watch it, and come back to the next paragraph. If you’ve already seen it or don’t care, tally forth.)

Toward the end of the movie, the monster comes to collect the boy’s nightmare, and the boy kind of beats around the bush and says, I can’t tell you the truth, I can’t say it. But the monster is really big and really intimidating, so the boy finally comes out with and says that he wishes his mom would die—he loves her—but he wants the whole thing to be over—it’s too painful.

(Since we’ve come this far, I’ll go ahead and tell you that the monster tells the boy his feelings are normal, very human. More than anything else, he says, the boy is very brave for being honest.)

The movie made me think of a situation that came up in therapy once. I was having some difficulties with a friend who was crossing some boundaries, and although I knew I had a problem, I couldn’t articulate it. So kind of like the monster in the movie (and I mean that in the most endearing way possible), my therapist got a little aggressive and said, “Do you want to spend time with this person or not?” And I kind of sheepishly said, “No.”

And my therapist said, “Say it again.”

So a bit more forcefully, I said, “NO.”

And my therapist said, “Say it again.”

“NO!”

My therapist shot to the edge of her seat, clapped her hands together like a televangelist casting out demons, and said, “THAT’S your truth!”

In the movie, the boy thought that he would die or be punished when he spoke his truth, and he was surprised when he didn’t. My reaction to my truth that day in therapy wasn’t that dramatic, but I was surprised that I felt so strongly about the relationship with my friend. I mean, we’d spent a lot of time together. I cared about them.

Over the next few days, I was able to make sense of the truth I’d spoken in therapy. I’d been angry with my friend for quite a while but had been biting my tongue (my therapist says that hurts). I was sweeping problems under the rug.

The thing that I have slowly learned over the years is that my gut is trustworthy. Looking back, I can see so many times that it was telling me to slow down or back away or run like hell. But I almost always made excuses in favor of avoiding a confrontation. (Red flag? No problem—full speed ahead!) However, now I’m learning that relationships are like decorating a room. Sometimes things get crowded and you need space to breathe, and sometimes things don’t go together and they need to be separated. And maybe it takes a little work to make the necessary changes, but it always feels better when you do.

At least in my case, I’ve found that sometimes I have to get out of my head and stop thinking about things so much. I have to sit down and check in with my gut. When I do, the truth is always right there waiting for me. And I don’t blame anyone who runs from the truth because the truth isn’t always pretty, and the truth isn’t always easy. More often than not, the truth is a monster. It gets in your face and makes you get honest. And sometimes the truth even physically separates you from people you care about, if for no other reason than to bring you closer to yourself.