So I spent these years trying to become the person who likes the life she had created. A life I built because I never took the time to find out who I am and what I actually like.

When I was 17, my parents separated. What followed was a war between them with me in the middle. Unsuccessfully trying to prevent the worst…. Clearly not the thing I was supposed to do at that age.

I numbed my pain & overwhelm with alcohol. All I wanted was to be away from them. At the same time there was this guilt. The sense of being responsible for them being ok. Somehow making sure that I won’t disappoint my mum in her pride of me having become an intelligent, pretty & young woman that has her life under control.

So I made sure that I never fuck that up. I never got any tattoos or bold hair cuts. I studied business and made sure I get into the most boring, demanding potentially well paying job: Financial Controlling

I traveled but always with a well set up plan for when I come back. Always an invisible leash that made me come back to the life I was supposed to live.

I enjoyed my experiences. I got to go on many adventures. I saw a lot of the world. But honestly, I never went all in. I never did the thing that my soul wanted. I always compromised. For the job, the relationship, my mum’s sanity.

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So now, finally, I am letting go. I let life take me. I let my intuition guide me.

And it took me a whole year to get there. Why? Because there were reasons that made me stay in a life that wasn’t mine. There were reasons why I always chose other people over myself. A reason why I always felt like I have to ask for permission to do something. A fear of never finding a job again or any other way to make money.

These things drove me literally crazy. Into anxiety, panic attacks, self doubts. Wondering, did I make a huge mistake when I left the golden cage and burned my whole life down.

I didn’t expect that at all. It was scary at times and I didn’t know what to do.

But I just knew that there was no way back. So I need to find the way through & trust that I am going to be ok.

Through somatic coaching, parts work & a lot of self pleasure to heal my nervous system I slowly started to gain that trust. And I started to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

And slowly the realization came. I burned my whole life down for a reason. So I can build something new. Something that is me. I feel like I have been given a second chance at life.

I still wake up some mornings and wonder if I’ve lost my mind.

Then I remember what the golden cage felt like from the inside. And I know I’m not going back.

If this is resonating or touching something inside of you, I’d love to hear about it. And if you’re ready to find your own way to your wildest dreams, that’s the work I do with people, 1:1.

It made both of us cry. Because we never allowed ourselves to feel this.

It was completely safe. Completely beautiful. Two friends, fully seen by each other, nothing more.

Moments like that are rare. Not because they are inappropriate, but because most of us have never learned how to be that open with anyone, even the people we trust most. Opening up like this almost feels forbidden.

I had relationships and friendships with no secrets, plenty of trust. But being fully myself, letting someone see all the way into me, that never happened. I protected myself, always. It wasn’t until I started walking the path of tantra, and began building a real connection to myself, that something shifted.

There was a remembering that human connection can be so much more. And everything I thought was true about it started to crumble. I started to question all the conditioning around never letting anyone close enough to hurt me.

There was more. And I wanted to experience it. With friends, myself and with a romantic partner.

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Then I met a man that touched my soul. And I thought I was ready to go deep with him.

I moved countries for him. No job lined up, no friends there, no plan. Just, he loves me, that will be enough. For a while I told myself it was romantic, brave even. But underneath it I was terrified. If his eyes changed, if he pulled away for a day, my whole sense of grounding disappeared with him. I couldn’t be fully myself around him because some part of me was always managing his reaction. Making sure I didn’t become too much, too needy, too anything that might make him leave.

I made the mistake of outsourcing my safety to him instead of building my own. The constant fear that this dependency triggered in my subconscious blocked me from allowing real intimacy. It became a constant need for reassurance.

That is what happens when you hand your safety to someone else. You stop being able to open your heart. Too much is at stake.

I am still not living with my heart open 24/7. There are still parts of me that don’t trust. That need more time. And that’s ok. But I feel it differently now. I used to push them away, abandon them. Instead, I started to accept them for what they are: They are trying protect me. So when I scan my body, even sitting across from another person. I can feel when I am safe and I can feel where I am still bracing. Still waiting for someone else to tell me I am ok. And then I tell these parts that only I am able to do that.

Nobody can convince you of how lovable you are if you don’t believe it first. There will always be a next person needed to reassure you, and that makes real intimacy, with a friend, with a partner, with yourself, impossible.

You have to become securely attached to yourself before you can be securely attached to anyone else.

That starts with the parts of you that you have been abandoning. The inner child. The teenager. The rebel. The queen. Learning to sit with them the way I sat with my friend that day. In full presence without agenda. Just looking and letting them be seen.

This is the work I am doing in my own life, and the work I now guide other women through.

If this resonates and you feel that pull to go deeper, I work with people 1:1. You are welcome to reach out.

What I learned shortly after turned the life I had just begun to live upside down.

My mother had “fallen” from her balcony. She was in a coma. Nobody knew if she would ever wake up.

I had just started a completely new life. I had moved across the world with no intention of going back any time soon. I was 36 and I finally felt as happy & alive as I had at 19, the last time I let myself be free.

And now this.

For six weeks I had no idea what was going to happen. Did I eventually have to go back? Would she survive this? What would happen if she did? And in that waiting, everything I had refused to feel came rushing up. The emotions I had spent decades turning into thoughts, into analysis, into very reasonable explanations for why my childhood was not that bad.

They were not interested in being reasonable anymore. They wanted to be felt.

First there was rage.

How could she be so stupid? How could she do this to me?

She had always done this. Every time I finally created enough distance from her grip, she would fall apart. And I would come back. Not because I wanted to. But because the guilt was unbearable.

When I was 19 I left home to travel. I was alive in a way I hadn’t been before or since. Sun, freedom, surfing, being no one’s daughter. Just a girl in the world.

Six months in, her fear pulled me home. Fear that I would end up pregnant or dead. Throw away my life. Her fear dressed up as love.

So I came back. And I spent the next 17 years building a life that looked safe. A career, structure, predictability. Everything designed to be approved. To never need rescuing. Everything designed to never be a burden.

And then at 36 I finally left again. The job, the certainty, the golden cage. I was finally feeling what I felt at 19. That aliveness. That sense of belonging to myself.

She had no right to take that away from me again.

Then there was shame.

What kind of daughter leaves? What kind of daughter lets her family carry this alone?

The shame had a very specific weight. It sat in my chest and made it hard to breathe. It told me I was selfish, that my happiness had no business being more important than her pain. That a good daughter would have gone home. Would have seen it coming. Would have stayed small enough to prevent it. Some days I told myself it was my fault.

I know that voice. I have known it my whole life.

Then there was grief.

For six weeks everyone thought she was going to die.

And underneath all the rage and all the shame was this: I loved her. Of course I loved her. She was my mother. The first person I ever loved, before I learned that love came with conditions and confusion and a weight I was never supposed to carry.

Before life taught me that love wasn’t safe.

I grieved the mother I had. I grieved the mother I had wanted. I grieved the little girl who kept trying to earn something that was never going to come in the way she needed it.

I let myself cry in a way I hadn’t cried in years.

Then something shifted.

I could feel her pain.

Not as an excuse for what she did, but as a reality. She was suffering. She had always been suffering. The ways she had hurt me were the ways she had been hurt first.

I could see that her pain did not begin with me.

The ways she had hurt me were often the ways she had been hurt first. Wounds that had traveled through generations of women had landed in both of us.

I didn’t need to carry them anymore.

I allowed myself to feel it. And with this, release it.

So I let her go.

Not out of my life. She woke up. We talk, carefully, with space between us.

But I let go of the version of her I was still waiting to become real. The one who would finally see me, finally choose me, finally love me without the conditions attached.

I let go of the unmet expectations I had dragged behind me for decades.

I let go of being the daughter whose job it was to manage her mother’s pain.

When I did, something in my body unclenched. Something I hadn’t even known was held.

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Then my life started to change in ways I had longed for but didn’t believe was possible.

I started making friends differently. Deep ones. Within days of meeting someone I would feel a soul-level connection I had never let myself have with women before. The fear that had always been there, that I wasn’t good enough, that I would do something wrong, that they wouldn’t like me if they really saw me, it was just gone. I could let someone touch my arm. I could sit in a room full of women and not perform. I was just myself. And that was enough.

The eating disorder I had carried for years quietly left. I started eating when I was hungry. And I loved that my body became more feminine.

I started playing music again. I started singing. I let myself be creative. I allowed myself to start over.

I noticed I was walking differently. Talking differently. Taking up space in conversations without apologizing for it. Believing, for the first time from the bottom of my heart, that I was enough. That I had always been enough.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that all of this came after letting my mother go.

The mother wound isn’t just about your mother. It’s the place where you first learned whether you were worthy of love. Whether you were safe to be yourself. Whether the world would receive you or punish you for existing.

When that wound heals, something in you stops bracing.

And you find out who you actually are when you’re not busy earning your place.

Much love,

Anja

Why are we constantly doing things that are not good for us? Why do we keep going if we are clearly tired? Why do we add another hobby to the list? Why are we dieting to achieve a supermodel body?

I believe it is a desperate attempt to be loved. To finally feel like we are enough.

Once I get promoted, I will be enough. Once I finish an Ironman, I will be enough. Once I lose 5kg, I will be enough. Once I have a partner, I will be enough. Once I have a new bag, I will be enough. Once I live in a beautiful apartment, I will be enough.

Can you relate?

I achieved all of them. None of it made me feel enough. On the contrary. Every achievement left me more tired, more desperate, more disillusioned.

Until my body finally gave up. And all I could do was rest.

This is where the real work started.

I felt like a complete failure for weeks.

Then, with the smallest amount of energy coming back, I started Doing again. I gave up dieting for 20k steps a day. I quit my job, just to start working on my own business the next day. I tried to speed up my healing by going to workshop after workshop, retreat after retreat.

Until one day I realized, nothing had changed. I was still tired all the time. I still wasn’t resting.

Why was that so difficult?

My body knew something I didn’t want to admit.

Resting felt dangerous.

This is why I was still at work in my mind, even at dinner with friends. Why the only door to relaxing was a glass of wine.

Resting equals dying to a part of us. The part that had to perform to be loved. The part that had to try harder to be loved. The part that was not allowed to play. The part that was not allowed to rest when tired. The part that had to earn love by doing.

I used to think these parts had to disappear. Get over it. Move on.

But they don’t want to disappear. They want to be heard. Loved. Accepted. Understood. Have a seat at the table.

This is the work I have done to recover from my own burnout.

I communicate with my inner child that is scared. With the protective parts that keep me small. I look at all the parts of me that thought pushing was the only way to survive.

And I listen to them.

I listen to the knot in my solar plexus that needs more safety after a year without income. I listen to my aching heart, afraid to believe someone could love who I really am. I listen to the ache in my back, afraid of working too much again.

I hear them. This is all they ever wanted.

And slowly, they get quieter. Allowing a grown woman to lead and take care of herself in a whole new way.

Leading her life without burnout.

This is what it takes to really recover. Get to the root of what keeps you pushing.

This is the work I guide my clients through. One part at a time. Gently, at their own pace.

If you are curious about working together you can book a free discovery call here.

She still runs my life sometimes.

When she gets her goodnight kiss, everything is fine. Some attention, some warmth, a smile. She sleeps well. The world feels safe.

But when she doesn’t get it, she panics. She can’t breathe. Can’t sleep. Can’t be herself. She wants daddy’s love. I can’t convince her that my love is enough.

This became obvious to me in an exercise from my VITA Sex, Love & Relationship training where I sat across from my father on a pillow. Not him in person. A version of him I held in my mind. And I heard myself say two things I had never said out loud.

I wish you had protected me from mum and gave me a really long hug whenever I wanted.

That’s what the little girl wants. Still. After all these years. Safety and Love.

We think we leave our childhoods behind. We don’t. We take them into every relationship, our business, every moment someone we love goes quiet and we can’t figure out why our heart is suddenly in our throat.

We often unconsciously select partners that resemble some parts of our caretakers. In the tantric view the purpose of relationships as a way to heal our deepest wounds. Most of them are created in childhood by the people closest to us. So it makes sense that we are choosing someone that challenges us to overcome the patterns that we developed as survival strategy but are holding us back in life.

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The men I’ve been drawn to have either needed to be taken care of the way I once took care of my mother, or they’ve reminded me of my father. Sometimes I even get everything I ask for. And when things are good, I feel it in my whole body. Peace. Safety. Love so solid I could rest inside it.

But underneath that is a terror that it won’t last. This doesn’t belong to me as a 37-year-old woman. It belongs to her. What if it stops? If he changes his mind, if he finds out who I really am and decides it’s not enough, she won’t survive it. That’s what it feels like. In my chest, in my lungs, in the sleepless nights.

No partner can heal this alone. Not even the best and safest one. Not even the one who loves you more than anyone ever has. The right relationship can be the catalyst. It will surface the wound, mirror it back to you, challenge you to grow. But the wound isn't really about them. It was never about them. It was created before you could speak, before you had words for what you needed, when you were small enough to sit on someone's lap and everything was ok in that moment."

The only person who can give that little girl what she’s been waiting for is you.

She will not agree with this. She wants it from someone else, the one she never got it from. But if you can sit with her long enough, hold her without trying to fix her, she might start to open. She might start to accept your love instead.

That’s what reparenting is. Becoming, slowly and imperfectly, the parent you needed.

In the process you learn how to hold yourself when things are difficult. How to calm yourself down. How to give yourself the nourishment and love you were missing as a child.

In the same exercise I met my inner masculine. Not some man that made everything better. Not the perfect partner. An energy inside of me that was there all along.

And suddenly I understood. The love, the protection, the strength, everything I always wanted was right there. It was already mine. It had always been mine.

That is what reparenting builds. Not dependence on someone else to make you feel safe or whole. But the capacity to hold yourself. To trust yourself. To stop outsourcing your own life. And from that place, relationships change. Boundaries become possible. Love becomes something you choose rather than something you desperately need.

But not only this. Our inner child can be afraid of many things. Someone told you you can’t sing or dance when you were young? — You made sure to never try again. Someone laughed at you when you made a presentation in school? — You made sure to avoid being in the spotlight.

With reparenting we can make these things feel safe again. Since I started this work my life has changed in ways I never thought possible.

I’m dancing. Singing. Playing music. Building my own business. Taking risks I never would have taken before. Setting boundaries. Choosing a conscious relationship, even with all the patterns still present.

The little girl is still there. But she’s not running the show alone anymore.

An advice I have heard so many times. When going to a job interview, meeting my boyfriend’s parents, going to networking events, going to a party I don’t know anybody.

Just be yourself.

As if it’s simple. As if I knew who that was.

I was on a long run, training for a triathlon, when I first heard about Human Design. A podcast, playing through my earphones, describing the different energy types.

None of them sounded quite like me. But the explanation of the Projector made me feel something I couldn’t quite grasp. I got so curious now, I had to stop.

I stood there, breathing hard, and looked up my type.

Projector.

My first thought: Fuck; My second thought: No

Projectors are not built for the hustle. Not built for constant output, for initiating, for grinding through exhaustion. They thrive on rest, on being recognised, on waiting for the right invitation. They burn out fast when they try to keep up with everyone else.

My whole body tensed up.

I started running again.

Faster.

I made up all the reasons why this was wrong. I was disciplined. I was strong. I had always out-worked everyone around me. This Projector thing, it didn’t apply to me. I was different.

I forgot about it.

Or I told myself I did.

Meanwhile I kept training. Kept working. Kept performing the version of myself that had been exhausted for years but refused to stop because stopping felt like failing.

Until my body made the decision for me.

Burnout. The kind that doesn’t let you negotiate. Where going for a walk is something you have to recover from. Where the machine that had always kept going just, quietly, stops.

And in that stillness I remembered.

Projector.

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This time I didn’t run. I sat with it. I read everything I could find. And then I did something that was harder than any triathlon I had ever finished. I looked at my own choices, my own life, and I saw the evidence.

I had been living the exact opposite of what I was designed for. Working 12+ hours a day, working out multiple times a day, going to every single party and networking event I could find.

It never felt quite right but I didn’t know any other way.

I had been wearing a mask so long I thought it was my face.

We are told to just be ourselves and we nod along as if we know what that means. But what if you have spent thirty, forty years performing a version of yourself that other people could approve of? What if being yourself, the actual unfiltered version, would have meant not taking that job, not staying in that relationship, not pushing through when everything in you was screaming to stop?

I was so scared to look underneath the mask.

Because what if there was nothing there? What if I took it off and discovered someone who wasn’t enough? Not interesting enough, not strong enough, not lovable enough? What if the only thing that made me worth something was the performance?

I knew I had to rest, recover from my Projector Burnout. But it felt impossible. Simply not doing anything was the scariest thing I ever did. What if I get labeled lazy? Weak? Not enough?

I think a lot of us live in that fear. Projector or not. So we keep the mask on. Keep achieving, keep performing, keep trying to be more outgoing, more serious, more together. We shape ourselves around what is expected and call it growth.

I called it discipline. For decades.

But what I am finding underneath my mask is not nothing. Turns out I actually like myself. Maybe even love myself. Something I didn’t even know was possible.

When I finally rested and stopped doing what I thought everyone wanted me to do I felt strange. It was a good feeling. But very unfamiliar. I think this is what peace feels like. A feeling I never felt before.

Quiet, unfamiliar peace lasting for days. But for a while, some part of me was waiting for the other shoe to drop. Feeling this good, this happy without doing anything to earn it. It almost felt illegal.

Human Design gave me a map to discover an unfamiliar territory. I know that I wasn’t always open to looking at this map. I was running my program out of fear and there was nothing that could convince me to try something radically different. Rest felt impossible and dangerous to my nervous system. I first had to learn that safety and love don’t have to be earned by doing.

Without being open to seeing yourself clearly, to taking off the mask. Human Design is just another mental concept that promises to change your life from the outside.

I still sometimes feel like I don’t deserve it. I still sometimes revert back to doing too much and pushing myself.

But I am learning that that voice in my head, the one that says you have to earn your right to exist, that’s the mask talking. Not me.

The girl underneath the mask doesn’t want to train for a triathlon to prove something. Doesn’t want to network in rooms that drain her. Doesn’t want to entertain a group of strangers.

She wants to be still sometimes. She wants to only share when she has something real to say. She wants to be seen, not for what she can do, but for who she is.

I spent so long being afraid she wasn’t enough.

She was the best thing I ever had. And I’m so happy that being myself doesn’t feel dangerous anymore.

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Being out and busy, working all day and coming home at night too exhausted to do anything than fall asleep. Most importantly — too busy to eat. Because not eating meant being small. And being small meant being ok.

So I made it my life purpose to stay small. I did everything to stay skinny, not take up too much space and never be too loud.

For years, I trained twice a day and ate like a catwalk model.

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Crossfit before work. Triathlon training after. Seven days a week. No rest days. If I had an hour free, I found a way to fill it with movement that burned calories. I trained like a full time athlete preparing to win a race while working 60 hrs a week in my consulting job.

I called it discipline. I called it health. I called it taking care of myself.

For a while I thought this was the answer. I am doing it right.

Skipping lunch on my 6 hour cycling days was the only justification for having a (wholegrain, low fat!) pizza after. I kept my body alive, but never truly nourished it. I never took a break. And I got so used to the feeling of exhaustion that I never even questioned how I felt. In fact, part of me was loving it.

In a way I did achieve what I wanted. I was that woman in her 30s, too busy & exhausted to eat. Slowly disappearing more and more. Ensuring she never saw what she is really capable of.

Being disempowered felt safe. I had no energy to make choices that disappoint people. If I stayed small, nobody would feel threatened by me. If I stayed exhausted, I never had to fully be seen.

I did all of this to not lose love. Somewhere along the way of my upbringing I learned that being magnetic, powerful and strong was not ok. So naturally, the part of me that still believed that to be true made sure to stay small.

But then something happened. My body gave up. Burnout after burnout, a sickness that lasted for months. Going for a walk was an event I had to recover from for two hours. I was forced to stop what I’ve been doing for years. I wasn’t functioning anymore. And not functioning was the only thing that finally made me stop and reconsider what I’ve been doing.

I was dismantling myself. And there was nothing left to dismantle.

So I did the most radical and scary thing I ever did. I stopped. I stopped working out, I stopped dieting, I stopped working, I stopped doing everything for anyone.

And the fear that came with that was real. On a surface level I was afraid of gaining weight. But I soon realized this wasn’t really it. It was deeper than that.

I was afraid that without the discipline, I would just fall apart. That control was the only thing holding me together. That if I loosened my grip even slightly, I would never be able to tighten it again. Losing control of my body meant losing control of my life. And how could I allow that if I believed that this might cost me love?

But I had no choice. I had hit an energy rock bottom. A part of me already had died. I had to let it go.

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And slowly after a few weeks of rest something changed. The fog of tiredness slowly lifted. I felt light. I felt joy. My brain started to work again. I first noticed it at a Yin Yoga Retreat in Italy. Spending so much time connected to my body opened me up to feeling again. And it was a roller coaster. I would break down in heart and hip openers during the classes feeling my emotions for the first time in years. Then I would go to the beach and feel pure bliss staring at the blue, endless ocean.

It was bizarre. I had no idea what was happening but I got curious. How was I feeling suddenly so good? Where did all this energy come from? I knew that it had something to do with my body and with slowing down. I had opened a door inside of myself and I was committed to see what’s there.

There was no way I go back to the life I knew before. I now knew I wasn’t really living. I was surviving. So I went on a journey led by my curiosity about what was that thing that so drastically changed me. How could getting the connection to my body back have such an effect? I soon found myself in tantra workshops and embodiment classes and I felt the connection getting deeper. I loved it but it wasn’t always easy.

I found love, joy, ecstasy. But I also found all of the tears I never cried. The grief of not being fully alive for so long. The grief of what could have been… The anger at whatever made me believe that love needs to be earned… The fear that I threw away a secure life…. Sometimes I wasn’t sure the pain would ever stop.

It is true, it gets worse before it gets better. The pain is real. But I know I have to allow it in order to really heal.

And with allowing everything, the beautiful, the messy, the painful, my body and soul slowly recovered from years of abuse. I started to trust myself again. I am feeling at home in myself and I listen what my body tells me it needs.

Things that I once feared or found weird became my daily medicine: Dancing, punching pillows and self pleasure. They helped me to learn to be with my emotions instead of numbing them with restriction, excessive sports or alcohol. And they opened the door to feel joy, ecstasy, bliss and gratitude. Now they let me feel alive.

Today at 37, I feel more healthy and energised than I felt at 27. I go to the gym and lift weights, I play sports, I dance, and I move whenever I can. But out of love. Not out of hate. I developed genuine compassion for myself and my body, something that seemed impossible a few years ago.

And yes, I have gained weight. 5kg from the time I wasn’t eating and working out 14 - 20 hrs a week. I look like a woman now, I fill out my jeans again and I take up space. And I feel more loved than ever before.

At times I still get scared. What if it never stops? What if I’m too much? What if I have lost control? But I have learned to be with these parts of me that are still scared. They just want to have a seat at the table as well.

Through this journey I have learned that you cannot think, optimise or discipline your way to happiness and fulfilment. It lies in the body. In rest. In feeling. In stopping the war with yourself.

Me, and so many women have been taught to shut off the body. To achieve, to shrink, to perform. To not be too emotional, unpredictable and playful. Qualities that have no value in our society. But how valuable is a life that is only lived for societal expectations?

It wasn’t worth it for me. And if you are done DOING what everyone else is telling you to do and are ready to just BE in your body I would love to read about your story in the comments.

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My boyfriend’s dream house. My mum’s dream of me having a safe job. My friend’s idea of me becoming a yoga teacher. My dad’s dream of me having a family.

I looked at it for a long time.

Waiting to feel the five-senses reality everyone told me to imagine.

But none of it was mine.

I spent years not knowing what I really wanted. And I was really good at hiding it.

I had the perfect answers: I want a promotion. I want to be skinny. I want to complete a half ironman. Everyone approved.

When I occasionally said what I actually wanted, I felt like I disappointed everyone. And my conclusion was that what I really wanted was wrong. So I stopped. I forgot that wanting something that is mine was even a possibility.

Wanting to be a vet? — No, you’re too sensitive for that. Go and study something real.

Wanting to travel the world without any agenda? — No, grow up and get a well-paying job.

Spending money on things that matter to me? — No, you need a fancy apartment and designer clothes.

Wanting to turn your whole life around at 30? — No just become a yoga teacher and teach after work.

On top of that, I was so good at succeeding in the alternatives to my original desires that I forgot they were not mine. The praise felt good.

I couldn’t tell anymore what was real desire and what was conditioning. What I really wanted and what I had learned to want in order to be loved.

Only when I left everything behind did I realize that while I had known for a while I was living someone else’s dream life, I had no idea what I actually wanted.

I blamed myself for being so indecisive, so lost. But underneath that self-blame was something else. Something much quieter.

It was the result of living in survival mode long enough that wanting things had started to feel dangerous. Wanting means risking. Wanting means asking. Wanting means you might not get it, and that gap is too much for a system that’s already overwhelmed. So it quietly stops. Desire doesn’t disappear. It goes underground.

For high achievers especially, this is insidious. We’re so good at living from our heads. Planning, optimizing, pushing. We mistake motion for aliveness. We confuse executing a plan with knowing what we want. And underneath all of that activity, a very quiet disconnection from the only part of us that actually knows.

I called it being complicated. Now I know it was a survival mechanism. I gave away my power in order to be safe.

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What brought it back was not what I expected.

Not a journaling practice. Not a new framework. Not finally getting the quiet time I thought I needed to figure myself out.

It was my body.

I started dancing in the mornings. Alone, in my room, for no reason and no audience. I started singing. I started resting without building a case for why I deserved it. I started saying no to things, even when it made me uncomfortable, even when the old pull to smooth things over was very loud.

At the time, none of it felt like it really mattered. But something was happening underneath.

As part of my VITA coaching training, I also started working with pleasure practice. Deliberately, as a form of nervous system nourishment. The kind that teaches your body, slowly and repeatedly, that it is safe to feel good. That receiving is allowed. That you don’t have to earn the right to be in your own body.

My nervous system slowly recovered. And with it, my sense of safety, belonging and love came back. And slowly, the answers started coming.

Not from my head. From somewhere lower, quieter, more certain. A knowing that didn’t shift depending on who was watching. I noticed it first in small things. I knew whether I wanted to go to the gym or rest, and I didn’t second-guess it. I clearly knew I didn’t want to go to that event and I cancelled without writing three drafts of the message. I knew I wanted to write and I sat down and wrote instead of doing something more productive.

The inner knowing comes back quietly. Not overnight. It builds. You practice it. You choose yourself in one small moment and then another. Until one day you realize you’re not second-guessing yourself anymore.

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A regulated nervous system is not just about feeling calm.

I want to say that again because we keep talking about it like it’s a wellness nice-to-have. Like regulation is about having a slower heart rate or sleeping better.

It is about access.

Access to yourself. To what is actually yours versus what was conditioned into you. To the desire underneath the conditioned desire. To the part of you that knows, without needing to think it through, what you want and what you don’t.

Your nervous system is the bridge to your desire. But it can only tell you what it wants when it feels safe enough to want anything at all. When it’s in survival mode, it will always choose what’s familiar, what’s approved, what’s least likely to cost you something. Not because you’re broken. Because that’s what survival mode does. It keeps you small and certain. It trades aliveness for safety.

Real power is the ability to know what you want and choose it.

I thought I was powerful because I achieved things. I had the results.

But I was managing my life. Not choosing it.

There’s a difference. And the body knows which one you’re doing.

Have you ever experienced not knowing what you want? Let me know in the comments.

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I couldn’t see it exactly. But I knew it was there. I had been screaming at it for ten minutes, ugly words, the kind that don’t make you feel better after. I blamed it for everything.

Then I switched pillows. Embodied the thing I was screaming at. And suddenly something shifted. I understood.

It had been protecting me.

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It showed up when I was young. When I started having opinions, when I started becoming a woman, something in my mother became frightened. She couldn’t hold it. And what that taught me, slowly, without words, was that being fully yourself costs you love. That having your own power, your own will, your own aliveness, makes the person you need most pull away.

So something came. To help me feel loved again. I don’t have a clean word for what it was. A part of me. A presence. Something that arrived before I knew I needed it. And it did what it came to do. It made me small enough to be loved. Quiet enough to be safe. Sick enough to be taken care of.

Not violently. Quietly.

Low energy. Constant sickness. Low appetite. A body that was always almost, but not quite, functioning.

I went along with it for a while. But I was too curious about life. I wanted to take part in it. So I fought it.

I trained for triathlons. I did CrossFit until my hands bled. I worked insane consulting hours and went out drinking after and did it all again the next day. In a way this made me feel alive. The dopamine, the attention, being seen, being strong. I was furious and I had so much to prove. And I directed every bit of it outward, at the world, at my body, at the finish line.

What I didn’t see then: that invisible force was still running me.

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The rebellion wasn’t freedom. It was just a different instruction from the same source. Keep burning energy. Keep proving. Keep moving fast enough that there’s nothing left over to access your real power. Because your real power was the dangerous thing. That’s what it was protecting against.

And all through those years, I was helping it.

Not eating enough for the training I was doing. Smoking. Drinking more than I wanted to. Watching Netflix to fall asleep. No time for making love, writing, creating, even eating. Those things sound like just bad habits and wrong priorities. But I’ve come to understand them as something more deliberate, even if none of it was conscious. Pleasure, joy and embodiment are not optional. They are not a reward for when you’ve earned it. It’s what feeds the nervous system. It’s where real power actually lives. A woman with no pleasure, no creativity, no sexual energy, no physical fuel is a woman who cannot access herself. And that was the point.

I was starving myself of everything that would have made me too much.

Then covid came.

I had left my job. I was supposed to be free, travel, do the things that bring me joy. Instead I was stuck in Zurich with a boyfriend who drank too much and didn’t see me. I was trying to keep up with his energy and I hated it. The triathlons were being canceled. The things I had been using to prove myself, to burn through myself, were disappearing one by one.

And I was done. Not heartbroken. Done. Exhausted of the whole performance of it.

But I didn’t know how to stop. I couldn’t leave the relationship. I couldn’t leave the city. I couldn’t find another race to enter. There was no next thing to pour myself into.

So in that meditation, sitting across from whatever was on the pillow, it told me what I had done.

I called it back.

Not consciously. But I chose it. Because when everything else fell away, when I had no more rebellion left in me, getting sick was the only door I could find. My brain stopped working. A walk around the block was the whole day. And somewhere inside that, a part of me finally stopped fighting to feel alive.

The protection had worked again.

What I started to see in that meditation is that we give our power away quietly, piece by piece, to the parts of us that are afraid. That inner child who learned that being too much loses you love. She doesn’t announce herself. She just makes the choices. And slowly, without noticing, you become someone who doesn’t have enough energy to threaten anyone. Including yourself.

That’s what I had been doing my whole life.

Underneath all of it was the thought I had never let myself finish.

What if I’m actually powerful?

Not in the achieving sense. Not in the proving sense. In the real sense. The kind that doesn’t need a race to justify it. The kind that lives in the body, in the full weight of being here without apology.

That terrified me more than anything.

So I had help making sure it stayed just out of reach.

I told it I didn’t need it anymore. That I could hold myself now.

It said it would go.

I had to say NO to the person I loved most in this world. And YES to myself.

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The gap between what I felt in my body and what I was telling myself had become too big to ignore. I was surrounded by people who had chosen themselves. I knew it was possible. And I couldn’t pretend anymore.

I just had to leave.

We met in our early twenties. When we were both excited about life. Adventurous. Big goals, big dreams. We traveled, we went out, we trusted each other.

I loved our life.

Then we moved in together. And slowly, without either of us noticing, we stopped moving.

He got comfortable. I got restless.

I threw myself into working out, separate friends, long hours at work, partying. Our quality time got less. And honestly, I enjoyed it less too. Getting drunk at a bar again so we would find something new to talk about? Eating at a mediocre restaurant to feel bad from too much food after? Visiting our families to hear about what they thought of our life?

I was bored. Tired. Desperate.

Deep down I knew all of this for years before that moment when I took the decision to finally leave. The first time was quitting my job after a burnout. My body had collapsed from years of overachieving, trying to be perfect for everyone but me. I suddenly had time to connect to myself. Listen to what I actually wanted.

I got into self development, yoga, breathwork. He watched carefully, even got inspired and cheered me on. Sometimes he would dip a toe in as well. But he never quite loved any of it. He would often tell me he is tired of working on himself. I was just getting started.

We grew apart. I was more and more ready to follow my heart. And it was not his version of our life together anymore. It was adventure, growth, life, risks.

I told him.

He said he wanted that too. He just wasn’t ready yet.

Covid, he said. We can’t travel now.

Then no money.

Then he needed more time with his family.

Then he got into new hobbies, making new friends.

Then a work project.

Every time I found a door, he found a reason it was locked.

And I stayed. Five more years.

Because I loved him. Or at least, I loved who I believed he would eventually become.

That’s the thing about projectional love. You’re not loving the person in front of you. You’re loving who they might become.

We both really believed in a future were we could be happy and live our dreams if we just had more money. So we tried to make that happen.

But what I see clearly now, what I could not acknowledge back then, is that our dreams did not align. He wanted stability, close friends, family, a beautiful home. I wanted adventure.

And you can love a person deeply and still a relationship takes more. It takes work, communication, even if that’s scary. Because you might come to the conclusion that you want different things in life.

I couldn’t see it back than. All I needed was to be loved. No matter what. So I became that person he loved. Hoping one day we would do the things that matter to me.

And even though that hope was real. I could not bend myself anymore to get that love. And I did’t want to. There had to be another way. So I started to work on loving myself. Through spending time with myself, reconnecting to my body, doing things fur fun. Just for myself.

And when I finally saw how the only person that unconditionally loves me is myself, I had to leave. It was the most loving thing I ever did.

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Everyone deserves to live a life that brings them joy, excitement, pleasure. And if that aligns with the life path of the person you love this is amazing. But if it’s not, maybe you are still projecting something onto the person that makes you stay.

There’s a transition that’s supposed to happen in relationships. Where the projection breaks and you see the person clearly and you make a choice. Can I love this? Is this the kind of relationship I want?

I never got to make that choice. Because to make it honestly, I would have had to look at who he actually was. Not who he said he wanted to be. Not who he used to be. Not who I needed him to be.

Who he was. And that was too scary for a long time.

Because deep down I knew that who he was, was someone who wasn’t going to go. Who wasn’t ready and possibly didn’t even want to.

What broke my spell was embodiment. Reconnecting to and loving the wisdom inside of me. The part that just knew that this is not right.

It became louder and louder. And to be honest, for a while a part of me was hoping it would shut up again. I didn’t want to hear the truth.

But my body became so full of aliveness that going back started to feel like dying.

I could feel the difference too clearly.

This is what I want.
That is not it.

I couldn’t pretend anymore.

So I left. And I chose a life that finally felt like mine.

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He asked me why.

And I realized I was scared. Scared that if I disturbed him, he would shout at me. Something he had never even come close to doing.

That’s when it started to crack open.

Because if the fear wasn’t about him — where was it coming from?

Our fathers are supposed to teach us safety. How to feel secure in our bodies, safe in connection with others. I learned the opposite: that love is unreliable, that approval must be performed for, and that the person who is supposed to protect you can disappear at any moment.

I didn’t know that for a long time. When I thought of my father, I remembered the good night kiss. The praise when I won horseback riding competitions. The gifts he brought when he came home from a trip. I had built a whole story around those memories — a story of a father who loved me.

What I had completely buried was everything around those moments.

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The good night kiss — I waited hours for it. Lying in bed, eyes open, listening for footsteps. Not knowing if tonight he would come at eight or at midnight or not at all. I learned to stay alert when I should have been learning to rest.

The competitions — I had to hit my horse to make him jump obstacles that terrified us both. I swallowed the guilt, the inner conflict, the pain of forcing something that wasn’t ready. Because my father’s pride was waiting on the other side.

The trips — he was gone for weeks. Leaving me alone with a mother who was anything but safe. His absence was the backdrop of my childhood and I had somehow filed it under normal.

I never questioned any of this. I built my whole adult life around compensating for it. I moved to one of the safest countries in the world. I found a stable job. I created a life so predictable that nothing could surprise me. I thought that was safety.

It wasn’t. It was armor.

I only discovered the difference when I let the armor go — left the job, left the certainty, chose a life that required me to actually feel. And then I fell in love. And everything I thought I had healed came rushing back.

I was scared to disturb him when he worked. My inner child remembered too well how my dad would scream at me for that.

I was scared to sing around him. Remembering how my dad would criticize my voice until I stopped.

I was scared to try new things with him. Remembering how my dad constantly pushed me past my limits.

I was scared to play, to be light, to be free. Something I’d had to beg for as a child.

I was so scared to be myself. Because somewhere deep down I had learned that this girl — the real one, the playful careless one — was not worth loving.

I was living my life through the eyes of a little girl who never felt safe to exist as she was.

The thing is — he never did any of the things I braced myself for. Not even close.

And the moment I truly saw that, something shifted.

I could see her so clearly. That little girl, still gripping the edge of the bed, waiting for footsteps. Still performing, still scanning for danger, still trying to earn what should have been given freely. She had been running my relationships, my choices, my nervous system — all this time.

Once I saw her, she saw me too. And I could finally show her what no one had shown her before — that we are safe now. That I am here. That we are okay no matter what happens. That being playful and soft and careless is not dangerous. And that if someone doesn’t see our worth, we can leave. And we will still be okay.

Tantra taught me that a relationship isn’t meant to be comfortable. It’s meant to crack you open. Your partner becomes a mirror — not for the best version of you, but for all of it. The wounds you haven’t looked at yet. The places where you’re still a child waiting to feel safe. That’s not a flaw in the relationship. That’s the whole point.

I know in my heart that my soul chose this love for exactly this reason. It has been the hardest and most rewarding thing I have ever done. Nothing can compare to love and I am excited to feel more and more of it, even if it’s scary sometimes.

No man, no situation, no fantasy did anything for me.

And I didn’t think much of it. I thought turn on was a distraction. Unnecessary.

Productivity was the only thing that mattered to me. And turn on would certainly not bring me closer to happiness, right?

Life disagreed.

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After burning out for the third time I had to admit to myself that productivity was not my way of life.

The more productive I was, the less I felt alive. The less I felt the sensations of my body and the more I lost track of who I was.

I had a breakdown every day. A deep dissatisfaction with the life I worked so hard to build. And all I felt was tired. There was nothing I could DO anymore.

So I surrendered.

I rested.

I meditated.

I spent time in nature.

And slowly, that vaguely familiar feeling in my pussy that I almost forgot about, came back.

I was excited.

It was subtle at first. Only present in my meditations when I was deeply present and focused on the sensations in my body. Then I felt it when I was sitting by the river. Soon I felt it when I was sipping on my morning tea. And soon I felt it in everyday life when I was doing something that brought me joy.

It reminded me of how I felt like a young girl.

When I was immersed in something fun, I would feel that beautiful, soft, tingling sensation. In total innocence.

Pleasure.

It made me so happy as a child. I was living my life guided by pleasure. Until I shut it up. Believing it was shameful. Useless. Distracting.

And now it was finally back.

And with it my love for life in moments of pure presence.

My excitement for things that I would have labeled as useless.

My curiosity to learn things that really light me up even if they are not high income skills.

I was turned on by my life again.

So this has become an indicator of how aligned my life is. If I’m not turned on, I know I have to change something.

Pleasure and turn on have slowly become my compass for life.

When I haven't felt her in a week, I ask her: what is out of alignment?

And she always tells me. And even if I don’t like what she has to say, I trust her.

And life has taught me. She is always right.

So no matter what anyone else thinks of my choices, I chose to live a life that turns me on. No matter what.

What would your relationship need to look like to guarantee you’re loved?

Which community would make you feel like you truly belong? And could you be completely yourself in it? All of it. The strange parts, the difficult parts, the desires you don’t talk about out loud.

Or would that risk your place in it?

Take a moment with those questions. Really sit with them.

Because I spent a decade building my life around the answers.

I had built my life in a way Maslow would approve of.

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Senior position, good title, salary that made people nod approvingly when I mentioned it. A 10-year relationship, stable and safe. A beautiful apartment in Zurich. The premium health insurance. The retirement plan. The whole architecture of a life that was supposed to mean: you are okay. You are protected. You are loved.

I had been chasing exactly this since childhood. I never felt safe growing up. I didn’t feel loved in the way I needed. I never quite felt like I belonged. So I did what made sense. I went and built those things. Externally, methodically, successfully. I thought I was finally fixing what had always been broken.

By my thirtieth birthday I had checked every box you were supposed to check. And something in me had started to stand a little straighter. I was speaking up in meetings, nailing presentations, walking into rooms like I had every right to be there. My self-esteem, built carefully on top of everything I had constructed, was finally holding.

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I was ready for the last tier. Self-actualization. The feeling that you are doing exactly what you are supposed to do with your life.

But I had never actually asked myself what that was.

And then my external environment answered for me.

Buy a house. Have children.

I got a panic attack every time I thought about it.

This was supposed to be it? I had no interest in having children and putting them in a city daycare while I came home late with barely enough energy to say goodnight to them. And the mortgage. The mortgage felt like the most honest name for everything I had been quietly dreading. A contract binding me to spending a significant portion of my monthly income for the next twenty years. Dependent on a job I didn’t particularly like, that had already burned me out more than once, with no exit possible.

I couldn’t breathe when I imagined it.

So I started to rebel. Quietly, carefully, without blowing anything up. I trained as a yoga teacher on weekends. I started a side hustle so I wasn’t so completely dependent on the job. I took a sabbatical.

But I always went back. To the apartment. To the relationship. To the familiar structure that felt like safety, like love, like belonging.

It took me years to understand why.

Not because I was weak or afraid of change. But because those things were genuinely meeting my needs. Imperfectly, incompletely, but enough. Enough that leaving felt like not just losing a life. It felt like losing the ground under my feet.

That’s the thing about the golden cage. The door isn’t locked. You just can’t figure out how to walk through it without feeling like you’ll die on the other side.

Abraham Maslow spent his career studying not what makes people fall apart, but what allows them to truly thrive. He mapped human needs as a pyramid. At the base, survival. Food, shelter, the physical basics. One layer up, safety. Knowing you’re protected, that things are stable, that you’re not under threat. Above that, love and belonging. Being wanted, connected, part of something. Then self-esteem. And at the very top, what he called self-actualization. The full expression of who you actually are.

His insight was this: you can’t build the upper layers on an unstable foundation. If safety isn’t met, love doesn’t fully land. If love and belonging aren’t met, self-esteem stays fragile. And self-actualization, becoming truly yourself, living from your actual purpose rather than the one society handed you, that remains out of reach.

He was right about all of that.

But I think he was only half right.

Because what he didn’t say clearly enough is this: it matters enormously where those needs come from.

We took his pyramid and we built our entire lives around the external version of it. A stable job is safety. A committed relationship is love. A social circle, a family, a community that accepts you is belonging. And Maslow’s own framework seemed to confirm this. Job security sits right there in the safety tier. It makes sense. It’s not crazy.

So we did what any rational person would do. We went and got those things.

And it works. For a while.

Until you go back to those questions.

How much money would actually make you feel safe? Because I had a good salary and I still panicked. There was always a number slightly higher than what I had that would finally do it. Always one more year of savings away from peace.

What relationship would guarantee love? My partner chose me every day for ten years and I still, underneath it all, didn’t quite believe I was lovable. I was performing. Trying to be the version of myself he’d chosen. Terrified that if he saw the rest, he’d leave.

Which community would let you fully belong? I had friends, colleagues, a whole social world. And I kept parts of myself very carefully hidden. The desires I didn’t talk about. The doubts. The growing sense that I didn’t actually want any of this. Because I knew, somewhere in my body, that those parts of me would cost me my place.

This is the trap of external safety. The goalpost never stops moving. Because the need doesn’t actually live there.

You can have everything on paper and still feel like you’re one wrong move away from losing it all. Because you are. Not because your life is fragile. But because anything external can be taken away.

Jobs end. Relationships fall apart. People die. Communities turn. And when the thing you’ve built your entire inner architecture around disappears, you don’t just face a practical problem.

You face a terror that goes all the way down.

That’s what happened to me when I finally left.

The first months without a paycheck I woke at 2am every night certain I would never earn money again. Not because it was true. I had savings, skills, options. But my body didn’t care about logic. The thing it had been using as proof of safety was gone. And it panicked.

When I was single for the first time in a decade I sought male attention constantly and crossed my own boundaries just to not feel alone. I had to face how little love I had ever actually given myself. I cried for days in the grief of it.

In a Vipassana retreat, alone for the first time in my life, my nervous system went into a panic so deep I couldn’t breathe. I had never discovered how much fear I had been carrying because I had been so careful to never have to face it.

All those years of building external safety had worked perfectly. It kept me from ever having to feel how unsafe I felt inside.

So what’s the other half of Maslow’s pyramid?

It’s this: the foundation has to be internal.

Not instead of the job, the relationship, the community. Those things can still be there. But they have to stop being the source. Because if safety only lives in your job, you will never be free to leave it, even when it’s wrong for you. If love only lives in your relationship, you will contort yourself endlessly to keep it, even when it’s making you small. If belonging only lives in your community, you will hide the parts of yourself that might cost you your place in it.

And from there you can never actually climb the pyramid. Not really. Your self-esteem stays conditional. Your self-actualization stays theoretical. The life you actually want, the one that comes from your real desires and not the ones society gave you, stays just out of reach.

When safety lives inside you, you know you’ll be okay regardless of what’s there or not there. When love starts with you, you stop needing constant confirmation from outside. When you belong to yourself first, you can be fully yourself in any room without calculating the cost.

This is what I had to learn. Slowly, not gracefully, through somatic work and breathwork and sitting with every fear I had spent a decade outsourcing. Teaching my nervous system what actual safety feels like from the inside.

It changed everything. Not because my external life fell apart. But because for the first time, I was in it by choice. Not by fear.

The job you stay in because you want to, not because you’re terrified of what happens without it. The relationship you’re in because it’s alive, not because leaving would mean facing yourself alone. The community where you actually show up, strange parts and all, because your belonging doesn’t depend on their approval.

That’s the foundation Maslow was pointing at. And that’s the only one from which you can actually build something real.

Everything else is borrowed.

And borrowed things get taken back.

Little did I know what challenges this choice is going to bring into my life.

The act of choosing oneself is immensely freeing but it’s not a one-time decision fixing all our problems. It’s a practice. A practice of facing the uncomfortable and the painful with love, surrender and courage.We practice and chose until we love ourselves so much that it’s not a choice anymore. It’s how we operate in life. And this is where true freedom lies.

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I had built a life that allowed me to avoid uncomfortable emotions. They were hidden really well bellow my overworking and constant busyness.
And when I chose myself, they didn’t just appear slowly and gently. They flooded my system. All the unfelt fear, grief & guilt from decades suddenly wanted to be felt. It was intense and sometimes terrifying for my nervous system.

I had to face intense loneliness for the first time in my life.

I had a boyfriend for over 10 years and in the course of our relationship there was not one single day where we didn’t talk. If I could not be with him I was still in an office, sometimes 7 days a week. And when I didn’t do that, I always found another way to be around others.

All of that fell away when I decided to choose myself and radically change my life. I went on a journey all by myself to move to the other side of the world and I felt really alone many times.

It hit me really hard when I went on a Vipassana Meditation Retreat in which you are not allowed to communicate with others for 10 days. I felt the terror of that. The loneliness, the loss of comforting touch. Having to deal with my thoughts all by myself.

It was one of the hardest experiences of my life. I never learned to be with myself. How to soothe myself and regulate my nervous system. The practice of non-attachment that we spent 10 days learning was unexpectedly hard for me.

Despite the intensity of this experience, it changed my life forever. My nervous system perceived this experience as the biggest threat ever. To a degree, I faced my fear of death. A part of me believed that being alone was the most dangerous thing possible.

But I survived and this part of me did not. I managed to calm myself down over and over again. And by the end of it, I learned something that was gonna change my life forever: It it safe to be by myself. And it can even be really great.

In the days after, something in me softened. I stopped running from event to event. I stopped being what everyone wanted me to be just so they like me. I chose meditation in my room over going out. I slowly found my center and a soft, loving part of myself that I didn’t know was there.

I was overwhelmed by the guilt of setting boundaries.

Only one month after I made the decision to leave everything behind, life presented me with an immense challenge.

My mum had an accident that left her in the ICU for many weeks. Everyone expected me to go back and take care of her. But I knew, if I did, I will have to betray myself. I will once again put someone else’s needs before mine. And I was done with that. Her pain was not mine to fix. I tried my whole life.

Members of my family called me. Telling me I am selfish. It was my duty to take care of her. They could not help her without me.

I felt so much guilt. It was painful to say No. At times the guilt was so overwhelming I almost gave in. But I didn’t.

Guilt is a feeling that is so ingrained in us that we sometimes don’t even recognize it. We feel it for a second and then give into whatever helps us to not feel guilty.

But this time I didn’t do that. I chose to sit with my guilt. Let it move through my body. feel it. Embrace it. Accept it. Love it. It has protected me when I was younger. And slowly it softened. I could stand my ground. Knowing that I have my own back.

I learned that the more I chose myself, the more I will love myself. The less I stay small, quiet and obedient.

Setting boundaries is a life skill. It enables us to choose the things that make us happy. Leaves us with the energy to do what we are really meant to do. The things our soul longs for.

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I had to grieve what I was letting go of.

I was feeling it in my chest. In my heart. Something wanted to be seen. The physical pain sometimes scared me, but I noticed, whenever I cried, it went away.

I was holding on to a lot of grief. But I didn’t understand why I was so sad. Nobody died. So why did I have to feel all this grief?

At one point I stopped questioning it. I decided to feel it. And then the emotion took me over. Memories bubbled up. Small things would make me cry. It didn’t stop for days and part of me was afraid it would never stop. But another part got lighter with every tear I cried.

Slowly I started to understand: When we choose ourselves, we have to mourn the version of us who sacrificed everything to be loved. This version was no longer with me. A part of me had died. And it was with me my whole life so of course I needed to grieve it before I could fully let go.

I was terrified by the unknown.

I left a really good, easy and well-paying job. I knew I will get my pay-check every month. I knew that even if I get fired I’ll have my safety-net to fall into. And I left all of this behind.

Once the initial ecstasy of that choice was wearing off, the anxiety came. The fear of never being able to find a job like this again. The fear of never making enough money to live the way I want to. The fear of regretting my choice.

I had many nights where I didn’t sleep. I tried to find confirmation in conversations and in online searches that I will be ok. I was trying to hold onto control.

But it’s impossible. The safety of the Known is an illusion. It is the comfort of the familiar that makes us believe that we are safe. And once we leave the familiarity behind, no matter how painful it was, our nervous system initially goes into a state of fear. It is normal. But we can choose to turn it into courage.

I had to learn to calm myself down. Getting back into my window of tolerance so I could make courageous new choices instead of being stuck in the fear.

This is where I really decided to fully choose this path.

Not just myself. Over and over again. I chose the uncomfortable for good and I started to love it.

I learned somatic work and nervous system regulation techniques in order to create a feeling of inner safety that is always with me now, no matter what. And from that place I can grow.

It wasn’t easy. There were moments I wanted to go back. To choose comfort over truth.

But today I can say that I fully love my life and enjoy what I do. I feel empowered to stand up for myself, learn new things, have my own business and face the difficulties coming my way.

Empowerment and self-love became the foundation of living the life I want. An adventurous nomad life, a fulfilling relationship, a group of friends I call my sisters, and a healthy body that I love.

It took me years until I finally understood the real concept and value of it. My VITA Sex, Love & Relationship training finally helped me connect the dots. And what I’ve learned and practiced since has been deeply life changing.

The first step in experiencing more love is to learn to bring it to yourself.

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Many of us have had experiences in life that led us to close our heart. That made us believe we were not loveable, love must be earned or even that love is dangerous.

We carry these beliefs through our life, never really questioning them. However, they show up in our relationships, our health and our bank accounts.

What I've come to understand, both through my own healing and through my training, is that almost every wound traces back to the same root. A moment where love wasn't there. Or where it felt like it wasn't.

The parts of us we keep pushing away can't heal in the dark. They need to be met. Not fixed. Not improved. Just seen. That's where transformation actually starts. Acceptance first. Then, slowly, compassion. And eventually, love.

This is a practice and a choice.

• Are you able to love yourself enough to prioritise healthy food over ordering a burger and fries because everyone else does?

• Do you love yourself enough to set healthy boundaries instead of constantly trying to please other people?

• Do you love yourself enough to save money instead on spending it on things you don’t care about just because everybody else does that?

We are social creatures, wired to belong, wired for love. And making different choices than the tribe may seem dangerous and lead to a perceived loss of love.

However, true love starts from the inside. Loving yourself enough to live as your most authentic self no matter what is the ultimate expression of freedom in my opinion.

What I've noticed in my own practice is that over time, this changes something at a deeper level. You're not just making better choices. You're rewiring. Love stops being an effort and starts being a default.

It is not a journey of rainbows and unicorns though, parts of you that are hidden, that haven’t been loved, will bubble up within you. These can be shadows, memories, your lost self. And it can be scary. But all they want is to be loved and acknowledged so they can integrate.

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Love in Tantra

One of the most disorienting and healing things I've encountered in my Tantra trainings is this idea: nothing in you is wrong. Not broken, not damaged, not shameful.

Every part of you, including the ugly, confusing, contradictory parts, is an expression of consciousness. This is the opposite of how most of us were raised. And when I first really felt that, not just understood it intellectually, something shifted.

In Tantra, every experience is seen as an expression of goddess consciousness. Of the divine.

Love as the key for effective transformation

A held space of deep love is one of the most effective ways to facilitate transformation. And even modern therapy acknowledges the same thing. Marc Hubble, Barry Duncan and Scott Miller highlight in their book The Heart and Soul of Change that effective transformation is not created by the specific tools used, but by the presence of the space holder.

This is not only true in holding space for others or being in a container where someone holds the space. It is true for our own practice and daily life.

This doesn't mean forcing yourself to feel good about everything. It means something quieter. Can I be with this? Even if it’s really uncomfortable. Can I let this experience exist without fighting or trying to control it? That's what it actually feels like in practice.

And it is important to not always rely on others to hold space for us. Life happens. Conflict happens. Sometimes we don’t have anyone we can lean on. And then being able to give to ourselves what we need is incredibly empowering. This includes essentially two skills:

The first is self-soothing. Being able to bring yourself back to calm when something upsets you. Not by running to someone else to fix it. Not by numbing with food, Netflix or other distractions. By actually having your own back.

The second is self-regulation. When something intense arises, being able to find your way back to yourself without it taking over your whole life.

When we begin to develop this capacity, something shifts. We don't have to rely on others, like our partner, friend or pet, to regulate us in the same way anymore. It is not easy for many people including myself, but it is possible to learn. And it makes our relationships so much safer and gives us the possibility to go deeper and be authentically ourselves.

By practicing this we create a healthy nervous system. And this isn’t one that is constantly calm. It is one that is able to bounce back from being stressed and come back to being regulated in order to assess the situation with clarity and calmness.

In the past it has taken me weeks to even realize that I’m in a deep freeze because something happened that I haven’t fully digested. Now I notice it sooner and sooner and I can use my tools to soothe and regulate myself, complete the stress cycle and come back to my window of tolerance.

It has helped me to stay calm in conflict. To set boundaries and chose myself even if it’s scary.

Some people grow up with this capacity intact. When love was consistent and safe, the nervous system learned to trust itself. But when it wasn’t, the system adapted. It learned to brace. To control. To look outward for safety instead of finding it inside. That’s not a character flaw. That’s a nervous system doing exactly what it was built to do.

Building self-love is, in large part, rebuilding that internal trust.

The question I keep coming back to in my own practice is this: can I meet this with love? Not change it. Not fix it. Just meet it.

Somatic practices can release the pain.

What I’ve learned is that talking about pain doesn’t really release it. The body holds what the mind couldn’t process at the time. An experience that was too big, too sudden, too lonely to digest in the moment, gets locked in. Not as a story you can easily analyze, but as a pattern in the body. A closed chest. A held breath. A numbness you’ve carried so long you stopped noticing it.

This can come from big things. A parent who wasn’t there. A heartbreak. Being excluded from something that mattered. But also from smaller, accumulated moments of not being met the way we deserve it.

These experiences run the show in your life, often without you realizing it. And they can’t be thought away.

The way in is through feeling.

Not just telling the story. What do you actually feel in your body right now? Not what you think about it.

What do you feel in your body when you bring such experiences back into your conscious mind?

The first step to feel love for yourself is to feel at all. And then your system will show you through the felt sense what needs to be met with loving presence.

How far you are in your personal development is how loving and kind you can be towards yourself, not how much pain you’ve moved through.

Notice what happens when you invite an intention of radical self-love into your daily life. Not to change overnight, but to slowly open up more and more to the life you truly desire.

Chest tight. Thoughts racing. I was completely out of my body, somewhere above it, watching myself spiral. Catastrophizing.

And I realized, I was waiting for something or someone from outside me to make it stop.

It didn’t happen. I felt the urge to reach out to someone to rescue me.
I felt the urge to smoke a cigarette even though I stopped more than ten years ago. I wanted a drink. I knew none of this is gonna help. But I had trouble finding any other solution.

I heard this voice in my head. A very familiar companion.

You should just stop crying. You should be different. You should just shut up. This should not happen anymore.

I’ve had that voice for a long time.

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I was spiralling, unable to calm myself down. I have studied all the tools but somehow I could not remember them. I already left the window of tolerance.

This is the moment where most self-help advice stops working.

Another part has taken over: The Victim. The little girl that doesn’t want to feel better but wants someone else to come and fix it. She’s been waiting for that her whole life. And she is very convincing:

“ You need to find someone to rescue you. You can’t do it by yourself. Life is not fair. Nobody ever told you how to self-regulate. We can’t deal with this.”

Part of me remembered what I needed to do. The victim part of me refused.

I sat down anyway.

I created a small ritual space first. A signal to my nervous system that we were entering something. If you’ve read my piece on ritual space, you know why this matters. Your body needs to know it’s safe before it will let you drop in.

Then I started to breathe.

I breathed into my heart. Fast inhale through the nose, relaxed exhale through the mouth. Connected, no pause between them. Over and over.

And something started to happen. I felt the pain in my heart. The protection. The layers of numbness around that. And I just let it be.

Then I let my body move on its own. It knew what it had to do. It remembered what I had forgotten.

I let sounds come out. Tears. Whatever wanted to come. Not controlled, not pretty. Just whatever was in there needing to move.

I was finally back inside myself. Not floating above. Inside.

Then I went into the visualization.

I let myself be held. By something bigger than the situation, bigger than the fear that nobody comes to rescue me, bigger than the voice that said I should be different.

I felt love from the universe moving toward me. And for a few minutes, I let it in.

Maybe you call it prayer.
Maybe you call it imagination.

The nervous system doesn’t care. It only knows what it feels. And what it felt was: Held.

I closed with a breast massage.

Hands on my own chest. Slow circles. Releasing what had been contracted there. Refilling it with something softer.

This is where the somatic shift landed. Not in my head. In my body.

My shoulders dropped. My throat opened. The racing thoughts that had been running for hours, finally slowed.

My life didn’t change when I looked up.

The situation was exactly the same. Nothing was resolved.

But I was back. And from inside myself, I could actually breathe.

With that ritual I let my whole system feel loved. Held. Safe.

This is what it took for me to get back to calmness. The calmness that is necessary to access a situation rationally. Put things into perspective.

Back to the window of tolerance.

Some situations do indeed need immediate fight or flight reactions but they are rare.

Most of the time we’re not in danger. We’re triggered.

Speaking in public?

A fight with your partner?

An unexpected invoice?

Usually these things are not dangerous at all. They are triggers and might put our system into overdrive, making it impossible for us to take rational decisions, have authentic conversations and find solutions.

Learning to go back to regulation is an ongoing process for me but it has already changed my life.

Maybe you’ve been told to just take a deep breath when you’re anxious.

I know people mean well. But it never worked for me.

When your whole system is in alarm. When the voice is screaming you are in danger. When you’ve completely left your body.

A single deep breath is like throwing a drowning person a damaged lifebuoy.
It might keep them afloat for a moment. But it won’t get them back to shore.

You need to reach safety first and then learn how to swim.

Deep nourishing practices are what can do that. Teach you how to rescue yourself and then learn to swim in the currents of life without drowning.

My own hands. My own breath. My own sounds. My own body remembering it knows how to do this. Self regulation has been the most powerful thing I ever learned.

I used to think it was something you either had or you didn’t.

That some people were just naturally calm and I was just naturally chaotic.

But it’s not a personality trait. It’s a skill. And it lives in the body, not the mind.

Unlearning the belief that someone else is supposed to fix you doesn’t happen in two minutes. It happens in longer practices. And then again. And again.

Until one day your shoulders drop a little faster.

Until the voice in your head gets a little quieter.

Until you stop waiting for someone to rescue you.

Because you finally know. You can do it yourself.

I’ll share more about the practices that helped me the most soon. What they are, how to do them, and what they actually change. They are not a quick fix but they might help you come back to yourself too.

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It was a simple practice. Touch your body in a pleasurable way. Notice what you feel.

What I felt was disgust. Deep, visceral disgust. At my belly. At being a woman. At feeling fat.

I have a history with this. Years of hating my body. Controlling it. Punishing it.

But this time I didn’t push the feeling away. I stayed.

And underneath the disgust, I found one of my deepest shadows. The part of me that believes she is not good enough. Not thin enough. Not strong enough. Just not enough.

The disgust I felt was the guardian standing at the door, protecting me from seeing what is actually hidden. A powerful shadow holding me back all my life: The shame of I am not enough.

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Running from the Dark

I knew for a long time that something was running my life from underneath.

A part of me knew I was here to love and be loved. To feel pleasure, ecstasy and joy. But somehow there was always something more important. I kept telling myself I would feel all of that once I achieved X.

I thought when I finally lived with my boyfriend I would feel unconditional love. I thought once I got the promotion I would feel like I’m enough. I thought once I started traveling I would feel free.

I never did.

These feelings were buried under layers of numbness and masks. And a deep fear that something terrible would happen if I allowed myself to go there.

Making the Darkness Conscious

Carl Jung said: “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”

I spent most of my life doing the opposite. Trying to be lighter. Better. Trying to outrun the darkness.

In my VITA Sex, Love and Relationship coaching training, I learned a different way. I learned that many of the patterns in our lives are shaped by what sits in our shadow. The parts of ourselves we’ve rejected, shamed, judged or repressed. They don’t go away. They run things from underneath.

The Four Shadow Selves

When I started to map my shadows, I found four layers.

First, the rejected selves. The parts of me I judged as not acceptable. The girl who blushed in the spotlight. The one who chewed gum all day so she wouldn’t feel her hunger. The deep fear of abandonment that made her stay small.

Then, the lost selves. The parts I had been conditioned out of. The girl who loves nature and slowness. Who feels joy when she sings. Who is intuitive and present. She got shut down as a little girl. So she disappeared.

On top of the lost selves, I built false selves. The masks. The career woman. The high achiever. The skinny girl. The one who doesn’t need anything. The rational woman who never cries.

And underneath it all, the disowned selves. The parts of my false self I was still ashamed of. My coldness. My control.

Layer upon layer. Mask upon mask. All to avoid looking at the original wound: I am not good enough.

The Walls Begin to Crack

The protection I built was strong.

But once I started doing shadow work, the walls began to crack.

First I learned to feel again. I was so numb I had to use catharsis just to get there. Shaking. Screaming. Forcing my system to feel. It was not gentle. If I could do it again I would do it differently.

But I finally faced my shadows.

I was scared. But I was an adult now. I had the capacity to stay.

The Paradox

What I learned is that there are guardian emotions protecting every shadow. Fear. Shame. Guilt. Disgust. These are not the shadows themselves. They are the gatekeepers.

The deeper you can go into your shame, your guilt, your fear, the bigger your capacity becomes for pleasure, joy, bliss and ecstasy. This is the paradox of shadow work.

What we resist persists. What we love and accept becomes integrated.

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A new experience

In my next pleasure embodiment practice, I felt that something had changed.

Same belly. Same hands.

But this time I felt pleasure.

Not because the disgust disappeared. But because I built a bridge.

This is what happens when you use pendulation. You feel the uncomfortable emotion. Then you find a place of safety or pleasure in your body. You move between the two. Back and forth. Until they start to connect.

Over time, your brain stops treating the emotion as a threat. The shadow no longer feels like a wall. It becomes a door.

The disgust didn’t go away. It became a doorway into getting to know and love myself better.

This is the same process that allows people to reconnect with pleasure, intimacy and their bodies. When shame, fear or disgust soften, the body becomes available for aliveness again. For touch. For connection. For feeling good without earning it first.

The Energy Returns

Through this work I didn’t only widen my capacity to feel pleasure, I also increased my energy and sense of aliveness.

All the energy I spent keeping those parts hidden. Controlling them. Denying them.

It takes enormous energy to drag around the parts of yourself you refuse to see. To maintain the whole structure of masks and control and rejection. That takes resources. It makes life feel heavy and rigid.

When you do this work, that energy becomes available again. For aliveness. For joy. For actually living instead of managing.

Integration is power. The more fragmented you are inside, the harder it is to choose what you actually want. When you integrate, you can finally choose.

What’s Different Now

I can touch my belly now and feel pleasure instead of disgust.

I can sing without waiting for permission.

I can take up space without apologizing.

I can love without bracing for abandonment.

The shadows are still there. But they’re not running my life anymore.

They became my teachers.

And the more I bring them into the light, the more of myself I get back.

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Try This

If you want to start connecting to yourself more, keep it simple.

Next time you feel an uncomfortable emotion, don’t push it away. Stay for a moment.

Ask: What is this protecting? What doesn’t want to be seen?

Then find somewhere in your body that feels neutral or good. Your feet on the ground. Your hands. Your breath.

Move your attention between the uncomfortable place and the safe place. Back and forth. Slowly.

The shadows don’t need to be fixed. They need to be met.

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During a deep inhale I closed my eyes. And there she was.

A blond girl in a grey void. Desperately trying to find an exit. Terrified.

It was a very short moment. But it was the first time I really saw her.

When he touched my cervix while looking deep into my eyes, a wave of energy burst through my body. I felt it move through my spine, into my chest. It felt like my heart cracked open. Pain and pleasure at the same time.

I moaned and cried. I had never felt so connected to another human being.

I had kept my heart closed my whole life. Too afraid to be hurt. Convinced I wasn’t lovable. That he would find out sooner or later and abandon me.

And that child inside of me was sure we would not survive that.

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I had tried to meet her before. In meditations. In visualizations. I understood her story, but I had never felt safe enough to actually FEEL her.

My nervous system was still too defended, too protective. But in that moment, being seen, being held, feeling pleasure while looking into his trustworthy eyes, my body finally relaxed enough for her to emerge. Not from my mind trying to find her, but from my body finally feeling safe enough to let her out.

I could finally feel her. And suddenly I had so much compassion for her.

I started to acknowledge her fear. This little girl learned that being visible meant being hurt. That opening her heart meant violation. That trusting meant abandonment. She had frozen herself in that grey void to survive.

I sat with her. Showing her she is not alone. That I’m always here for her.

From that moment on, she was with me.

The next time we made love, I saw her again. She was much calmer. I saw her playing with her toys in the void. Trusting me. Trusting I would make sure we are ok.

And I did. For a couple of months I just made sure of that. Opening to love slowly. Two steps forward, one step back. Still trying to protect us. Still half expecting to be abandoned.

But when I looked closely, she still wasn’t really happy. Never fully immersed in the playing. She still wasn’t sure it was safe. She couldn’t fully let go and just be.

I realized she was still dependent on external things to feel safe. The warm eyes of this man, signalling that everything is ok. His body touching mine, giving me so much pleasure I could forget everything else. The money in my bank account telling me that even if we get abandoned, we will still be ok somehow.

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And then something changed. I learned to create safety for myself.

Through somatic work like breathwork, shaking, allowing emotions to move through my body instead of swallowing them, feeling my feet on the ground, placing my hand on my heart, I taught my nervous system what safety actually feels like.

Emotions started moving through my body like water. No huge waves knocking me over. I learned to accept them. To love them. And they began to lose their power over me.

My inner child watched in curiosity. Not entirely sure yet what was going on.

And one day she came out of the grey void.

I saw her playing at the beach. Singing. Writing. Painting. Actually enjoying what she does.

Soon she started talking to me. Telling me what she likes. What she wants.

And I listen. Even when it feels inconvenient. Even when it scares me.

Sometimes I burst into tears of joy. Sometimes I surprise myself how much I enjoy being in the spotlight.

I’ve never had more fun in my entire life.

She isn’t terrified anymore. And neither am I.

The paradox is, I had spent my whole life making myself small to stay safe. But true safety didn’t come from staying small. It came from finally being BIG enough to hold her. From being present enough to let her be seen. From being alive enough to let her play.

I'd love to know about your relationship with your inner child. Let me know in the comments.

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This is the story of how I learned that what I called pleasure was actually survival.

I was at dinner with a woman I’d just met. When her dessert arrived, she took a bite and moaned. Out loud. In public. Eyes closed, completely unapologetic.

I was stunned. Not embarrassed for her. Amazed by her.

I looked at my own plate and realized: I don’t do that. I’ve never done that. I eat, but I don’t feel it. Food goes in, I move on. There’s no moment of actually tasting, actually enjoying.

And it wasn’t just food. It was everything.

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The High Achiever’s Version of Pleasure

For most of my life, pleasure looked like this: pushing myself in the gym until my legs gave out. Cycling up mountains for hours. Staying in ice baths until I felt like I was on cocaine.

People noticed and were impressed and asked how I do it. My response was that I enjoy it. That it feels amazing. And I meant it. And I was really good at it.

I beat my male friends in a half ironman, my first triathlon ever. I could do more pull-ups than any of my girlfriends. I got attention and recognition for being skinny. People were impressed. My parents were proud. I felt seen. I felt like I was doing things right.

I thought this was pleasure. But in reality it was the only safe way for my nervous system to escape all the things that I didn’t like about my life but was too scared to change.

The Confusion

I truly felt joy in the pain and the absence of the mind chatter. However, what I didn’t understand: that “high” wasn’t pleasure. It was survival chemistry.

When you push your body to extremes (intense exercise, cold exposure, hunger) your brain releases endorphins and dopamine. It’s a stress response. Your body thinks you’re in danger, so it floods you with chemicals to help you cope.

That’s not pleasure. That’s your nervous system managing pain.

Real pleasure requires something else entirely: safety. Your body needs to feel safe enough to let the good in. And mine didn’t. It was always braced, always performing, always ready for the next thing.

You can’t feel pleasure when your nervous system is in survival mode. There’s no space for it. The body is too busy protecting you to enjoy anything.

Where It Started

When I try to remember what I actually enjoyed as a kid, it’s hard to remember.

I played piano in my room. Alone. I used to sing in the car until I realized my dad was just tolerating it. Then I stopped.

I spent hours grooming my horse. Riding it without a saddle or standing on it bare feet. It felt amazing and I remember the waves of pleasure pulsating through my whole body. Being a girl in the moment.

But then the horseback riding became competitions. Sit straight. Perform. The grooming had to be quick so I could get to the lesson. It became something necessary for something else.

Nothing was allowed to just be. Pleasure had to be hidden. Or earned. Or useful.

This is good girl conditioning. We learn that having needs is dangerous. That enjoying something too much might be taken away or used against us. That the safest way to feel good is to suffer first. Then at least you’ve earned it.

And Then There Was Touch

For years, I didn’t understand why people craved physical connection so much. Hugs felt awkward. Intimacy felt like something to get through. Being touched didn’t feel good. It just felt like... nothing. Or something I needed to perform.

Now I understand why.

When your nervous system is in survival mode, it blocks the very thing that makes touch feel good: oxytocin. That’s the hormone released during physical connection. It’s what makes a hug feel warm, what makes skin on skin feel safe, what makes you want to melt into someone.

But oxytocin only flows when you feel safe. When your body is braced, when you’re performing, when you’re not really in your body... touch doesn’t land. It can’t.

I wasn’t broken. I wasn’t cold. My nervous system just never got the memo that closeness was safe.

The Shift

So I started practicing getting back into my body. I wanted to feel what that woman enjoying her dessert felt. Pleasure.

I started by asking myself: how does this feel?

Not “is this productive?” Not “is this healthy?” Not “am I allowed?”

Just: how does this feel?

I put a teaspoon of sugar in my cacao because it actually tastes so much better. I noticed how nourishing it felt to have my feet on wet grass in the morning. I let myself be touched and actually feel it. Pleasure, not fear.

The other day I touched the couch. Just the fabric. And the softness gave me pleasure.

What This Actually Is

This is what’s called embodiment. Coming back into your body after years of living in your head. Learning to feel what’s actually happening instead of thinking about what should be happening.

It sounds simple. It’s not.

When your nervous system spent decades in high alert, it doesn’t trust stillness. It doesn’t trust pleasure. It keeps waiting for the other shoe to drop.

So you have to teach it. Slowly. Gently. You have to show it, again and again: this is safe. You can feel this. Nothing bad will happen if you enjoy something.

What’s Different Now

Now I love and embrace pleasure more and more. But it’s not an overnight fix. Building enough safety to fully be yourself and just be is a process. Sometimes I still feel shame. Or I feel disconnected from my pleasure. But I keep practicing and I keep enjoying the process.

I am so happy I finally feel safe enough to feel the real pleasure. Because I now know I deserve it. And I am so grateful I learned to tune into my body instead of override it.

The things that give me pleasure now? Nobody sees them. There’s no applause for closing my eyes while savouring my cacao. No recognition for feeling the grass under my feet. Nobody is impressed when I notice how soft the couch is.

This pleasure is just for me. It’s not about being seen or doing things right. It’s about loving myself enough to feel good. Without earning it first.

Curious? Try This

Next time you eat something, pause before the first bite.

Ask yourself: how does this actually taste?

Not “should I be eating this?” Not “is this healthy?” Not “I’ll start the diet tomorrow.”

Just: how does this taste? What do I notice?

Let yourself feel it. Even if it’s just for one bite.

That’s the practice. That’s the beginning.

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Remember: Pleasure Is Not Dangerous

That’s what I had to learn. That’s what my nervous system had to learn.

It’s not lazy. It’s not indulgent. It’s not something you earn after the work is done.

It’s just there. In the ordinary moments. Waiting for you to feel it.

If this resonates, let me know in the comments.

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And being the “good girl” I was, I recreated the same life for myself:

Study something solid, get a job, find a nice boyfriend, and live in a safe place.

I studied business at renowned universities, did all the internships that looked good on my CV, got working experience abroad, worked in consulting and lived in places that were known for career boosting.

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My parents were proud and people I met were impressed. On top of that I had a stable relationship and a beautiful body.

I loved this life in my twenties. I got to travel, meet exciting people, learn a lot and spend my money on fancy clothes and restaurants.

But at one point I started replying to all those impressed people “Yeah thanks, I like my golden cage”. It was a joke at first but it became more and more of my truth.

I felt empty, numb, powerless. Was that really it? There must be more to life.

Even though I had a good income I was still more or less living from paycheck to paycheck. My body looked fit and healthy but the constant overtraining and undereating took its toll on my energy levels. My relationship was mostly codependency.

So one day, I let it all go. I left the golden cage.

I quit the job, broke up with my boyfriend and moved to Asia. It was something I had been fantasizing about my whole life and it was very much overdue. But once I did it I realized why I had not done it sooner.

Not because I’m broke now living in terrible conditions or because I would never find anyone who loves me. No, because my nervous system was going crazy. The first months I didn’t receive a paycheck I woke up at 2am every night with a racing heart certain that I will never be able to make money again.

When I was single for the first time in over 10 years I was seeking male attention and constantly crossed my own boundaries so I didn’t feel alone. It forced me to see how little love I had ever given myself. I cried for days in the grief of it.

When I finally had to face the fear of being alone in a Vipassana retreat my nervous system went into a panic so deep I couldn't breathe. I had never truly been alone. I had developed a skill to always find at least one person I could constantly hang out with. I didn’t even know I had such a big fear of abandonment.

But I learned to cope with all of it and even love that scared part of me too.

I started to trust myself and put my own needs first. I loved myself enough to say no, even if it was scary. I stopped abandoning myself when fear appeared.

I used EFT tapping to release the fear of abandonment and the panic around money. I used embodiment practices to move more gently through the emotions that just wanted to be seen.

None of my fears made any rational sense. I had savings, a great education, and I could always return to my family.

But taking this step of leaving the golden cage brought up fears that had been stuck in my system for decades. I had done a great job making sure I never had to face them.

But I am so glad that I finally did. Life is really great outside the golden cage. The freedom I finally decided on didn’t feel safe at first, but now it feels like home. Not because it’s always easy, but because I feel alive and free and I know I have my own back.

If you’re still inside yours, I get it. It took me a long time too.