It isn’t what you think it is.

It isn’t weakness. It isn’t self-destruction. It isn’t evidence that some broken part of you is determined to ruin everything good before you can have it.

Self-sabotage is protection. It is a part of you that often formed early, runs deep, and is encoded below conscious awareness — that learned there’s something dangerous about getting what you want. And it has been working ever since, faithfully and often invisibly, to make sure you never have to find out if that learning is still true.

The tragedy isn’t that this part exists. The tragedy is that we spend so much of our lives fighting it, shaming it, trying to override it — when what it most needs, and what we most need, is to finally understand what it’s been so afraid of. What it is trying to protect us from.

I know this because I lived it. For years, in the most important area of my life, I was the saboteur. And I had absolutely no idea.

The desert

In my early thirties I hit a wall I hadn’t seen coming.

I had always assumed that a long-term relationship would come naturally—even that I was fated to have one, life-long relationship. Throughout my twenties, finding connection felt effortless, though the relationships themselves could be. I’d always known I wanted a life partner. I looked forward to it. It felt as certain as anything in my future.

And then, suddenly, it wasn’t happening.

It wasn’t that I wasn’t trying. I accepted invitations where it seemed likely I’d meet men even when I was exhausted. Friends introduced me to people. I talked about it endlessly in therapy. I thought about it constantly — what was wrong with me, what I was doing wrong, what I needed to change.

I had entered what felt like a desert without any path to water. And the harder I searched, the drier it got.

Then one evening Andy, a peer in my spiritual development community, said something that stopped me cold.

“Maureen,” he said, “I don’t believe you want a relationship.”

I was shocked. Hurt. Angry. How could he so completely not see me? I thought about relationships all the time. I was doing everything I could possibly do.

And yet.

Something about it niggled at me. Quietly, uncomfortably. Could there be something to this?

What I didn’t know I knew

I started, slowly and reluctantly, to look more closely at what Andy had said.

Not at the surface of it. Not the accusation that I didn’t want a relationship, which still stung — but underneath it. At what might be true that I hadn’t been willing to see.

I began recalling scenes from my parents’ marriage. Slowly, unwelcome images surfaced. Dominance and submission. Devaluation and contempt. Invisibility of intelligence, creativity, humanity. Bitterness. Rage. My mother’s anxiety. My father’s anger.

I had spent my adult life certain that my education, my therapy, my self-awareness would protect me from my mother’s fate. I had treated that certainty like armor.

But there was a part of me — one I had never met, never spoken to, never acknowledged — that wasn’t convinced by any of it. A part that had a front-row seat to my parents’ marriage from the very beginning. A part that had drawn a conclusion so large and so frightening that it had quietly organized my entire relational life around it:

A committed relationship means the end of me.

My conscious self wanted a relationship desperately. This other part wanted nothing to do with one. And because I only knew one of them, I had spent years bewildered by my own behavior — trying everything, understanding nothing, wondering what was wrong with me.

Nothing was wrong with me. A part of me was doing exactly what it had learned to do. Protecting me, as fiercely and efficiently as it knew how, from the thing it feared most.

The dream

About six months into sitting with what Andy had said — still struggling, still uncertain, now in a relationship that felt different from anything I’d known but that I wasn’t sure I could trust — I had a dream.

I had a black cat at the time, one of the great loves of my life. In the dream, he had a runny nose — which was also true in waking life — and I took him to the vet. The vet told me gravely that he had sinusitis. That she was sorry, but it was terminal. That it would be kindest to put him down.

I was devastated. I didn’t want to lose my cat. But the vet was the expert. I tearfully agreed and made the arrangements.

When I woke, I lay with the dream for a while. My boyfriend also had allergies. Also had sinusitis. The parallel was impossible to miss.

At first I took the dream at face value. The expert had spoken. The condition was terminal. I should end the relationship, no matter how painful. I held that position for several days — grieving something I hadn’t lost yet, preparing to do the responsible thing.

And then something shifted.

Wait a minute, I thought. Since when is sinusitis terminal?

This expert had it completely wrong. The diagnosis made no sense. I had been so ready to defer to the vet in the dream, to my analyst who had given me that look, to everyone who had sat me down for a serious talk — that I had almost let the experts override something I actually knew in my own body: that this relationship felt different. That something in me was at ease in a way it had never been. That I was more myself in this relationship than I had ever been with anyone.

I stopped listening to the experts. I started listening to myself.

And I stayed. Thirty-two years later, I am so glad I did.

What the saboteur was trying to do

Here is what I understand now that I couldn’t see then.

The part of me that kept me single wasn’t trying to hurt me. It wasn’t broken or irrational or self-destructive. It was doing the most loyal, faithful thing a protective part can do: it was using everything it had learned about what relationships cost to keep me from paying that price again.

It had watched my mother disappear inside her marriage. It had concluded, with the absolute certainty of a child who knows no other world, that this is what committed relationships do — they erase you. And it had spent years making sure I never got close enough to find out if that was still true.

The tragedy was that it couldn’t update. It had learned its lesson in one world and was applying it faithfully in another. It didn’t know that my boyfriend was not my father. It didn’t know that I was not my mother. It didn’t know that I had, over decades of my own work, become someone who could hold her own inside a relationship, someone who could take up space, ask for what she needed, stay herself.

It was protecting me from a danger that no longer existed. And it would have kept doing so indefinitely, if I hadn’t finally turned toward it with enough curiosity to ask what it was so afraid of.

Your version of this

You may not recognize yourself in my story. Your saboteur may not be about relationships at all. It may be about work, money, visibility, success, belonging, or something else entirely.

But I’d be willing to guess that somewhere in your life there is something you genuinely want that keeps not happening. Something you’ve tried for, planned for, maybe even grieved for, and still, the gap between wanting and having remains.

Before you conclude that this is evidence of something wrong with you, I want to invite you to consider another possibility.

What if the part that keeps closing the door isn’t your enemy?

What if it’s the most loyal part of you? The one that learned, a long time ago, in circumstances you may barely remember, that getting what you want comes with a cost you cannot afford to pay.

What if it just needs you to turn toward it — not to fix it, not to override it, but to finally ask what it’s been so afraid of all this time.

That question is where the work begins. And it is, in my experience after 32 years of sitting with people in exactly this place, where the most profound and lasting change becomes possible.

Over the next three weeks I’ll be going deeper into this territory. I’ll dive into the neuroscience of why these protective parts are so hard to shift, into what it actually looks like when they begin to update, and into what becomes possible when they do.

And for those who want to do this work with support and structure — my six-week course, Transform Your Relationship to Self-Sabotage, begins May 13th. We’ll work directly with the parts that have been protecting you from something they learned was dangerous — with curiosity, compassion, and the particular power of doing this alongside others who understand. Paid subscribers receive first access and a discount. Details coming very soon.

If this piece touched something in you — if you recognize the part that has been protecting you from something it learned was dangerous — I’d love to hear from you in the comments. What is your saboteur protecting you from?

A note from me

Writing “The Saboteur Who Loves You” was not easy. Telling that story — about Andy, about the dream, about how close I came to letting the experts override what I actually knew — required me to go back to a place of real vulnerability.

I did it because I believe, with everything I’ve learned in 32 years of this work, that our most transformative moments rarely come from insight alone. They come from the combination of understanding and felt experience, from knowing something in our minds and recognizing it simultaneously in our bodies and our histories.

If you’re finding that this territory feels significant — that there’s something here you want to explore with more support and structure — my six-week course, Transform Your Relationship to Self-Sabotage, begins May 13th.

We’ll work directly with the protective parts that have been closing doors, with the emotional learnings underneath them, and with what becomes possible when those learnings begin to update.

Going deeper: a self-inquiry guide

Companion Journal to “The Saboteur Who Loves You”

For paid subscribers

Thank you for being here. You’re about to encounter 6 prompts to try yourself. These prompts offer you not just understanding of the concept of protective self-sabotage, but a genuine encounter with your own version of it.

Read more

It’s the quiet one. The one that doesn’t rant or thunder but simply states, with flat certainty, what is true about you. Not you’re being too hard on yourself — but no, really. This is just accurate.

When someone comes to me carrying that kind of critic, they don’t usually describe it as a critic at all. They describe it as clarity. As finally seeing themselves without illusion.

What they’re actually describing is one of the most sophisticated things a nervous system can do: take a deeply held fear, dress it in the language of reason, and present it as self-knowledge.

It’s nearly impossible to argue with. And arguing isn’t the point anyway.

When the critic sounds like clarity

Alex came to our first session with the kind of exhaustion that isn’t physical — the exhaustion of someone who has been fighting themselves for a long time and is starting to lose.

For three years, Alex had been telling people — friends, a partner, a previous therapist — about the consulting practice they were going to build. They had the expertise. They had the contacts. They had, by any objective measure, everything they needed.

And they hadn’t built it.

“I know what you’re going to say,” Alex said before I’d said anything at all. “That I’m afraid. That something is holding me back. But I’ve done the work. I know the fears. I’ve journaled about them, talked about them, understood them.” A pause. “And I still don’t do anything. So maybe the critic is right. Maybe I’m just someone who talks and doesn’t act. Maybe that’s simply who I am.”

The voice Alex was describing wasn’t loud. It wasn’t cruel in the way we imagine inner critics to be cruel. It was worse than that — it was reasonable. It had incorporated all the therapy-speak, all the self-awareness, all the years of trying, and turned them into evidence for the prosecution.

You’ve had every chance. You know exactly what’s stopping you. And you still don’t move. What does that tell you?

I didn’t rush to reassure. Reassurance wouldn’t have reached the place this was coming from.

Instead I said: “Something in you really wants to do this — to create this consulting practice. And something in you doesn’t do it, doesn’t want to or can’t. And both are here right now. Would it be okay to acknowledge that both are there inside you?”

Alex went quiet. Something shifted in their posture — a subtle collapse, like a building settling.

“Yeah,” they said slowly. “Yeah, both are definitely there.”

“Can you sense where each one lives in your body?”

A pause. “The one that wants it — that’s in my chest. Forward. Like it’s leaning toward something.” Another pause. “The other one is lower. Heavier. Like it’s sitting on the floor and it’s not getting up.”

“Take a moment to notice both inside, letting each know you are aware of them. Sense if one needs your attention first or most.”

Alex sat quietly for a long moment. Something in their face softened — not resolution, but a kind of recognition.

“The one on the floor,” they said finally. “It’s exhausted. It’s been exhausted for a long time.”

“Let it know you sense that. That you see how tired it is.”

Two parts, one locked system

What emerged over the next several minutes wasn’t one thing. It was two.

There was the part that pushed — relentlessly, critically, cataloguing every failure to act, every wasted weekend, every conversation about the practice that hadn’t become a practice. Do something. You’re running out of time. What is wrong with you?

And there was the part that collapsed under that pressure — exhausted, ashamed, genuinely unable to move. Not unwilling. Unable.

Alex: “It’s like one part keeps yelling at me to get up, and another part just... lies there.”

Me: “And the part that lies there — what is it feeling?”

Alex: “Like it already knows how this ends. Like trying is the most dangerous thing it could do.”

Me: “Dangerous how?”

A long pause.

“If I actually build it — if I really try — and it doesn’t work...” Alex stopped. Started again. “Right now I can still tell myself I could have done it. If I try and fail, I lose that.”

There it was. Hidden beneath three years of procrastination, beneath the exhaustion, beneath the critic’s reasonable-sounding verdict about who Alex simply was — a terror so precise it had organized an entire life around avoiding one specific moment: the moment of finding out.

The pushing part wasn’t cruel. It was desperate. It knew time was passing and it was trying, in the only way it knew, to protect Alex from a future of unlived potential.

The collapsing part wasn’t lazy. It was also protecting — from the particular pain of trying your hardest and discovering it isn’t enough.

Two survival strategies. Both trying to help. Neither able to hear the other. And between them, a person who couldn’t move.

What changes when both parts are seen

I didn’t try to resolve the conflict between these two parts that day. That’s not how this works — and rushing toward resolution is usually just another form of the same pressure that created the deadlock in the first place.

Instead I invited Alex to simply acknowledge both.

“Can you let the pushing part know you hear how worried it is? And can you let the part that wants to give up know you understand what it’s protecting you from?”

Alex sat with that for a long moment.

“The pusher is scared for me,” they said quietly. “And the other one... it’s not lazy. It’s just terrified.”

Something in the room shifted. Not dramatically — no sudden breakthrough, no tears, no resolution. Just a slight loosening. The quality of Alex’s breathing changed. Their shoulders dropped a fraction.

This is what I’ve come to understand after 32 years of sitting with people in exactly this kind of locked place: the system doesn’t unlock through pressure. It doesn’t unlock through insight alone. It unlocks when both parts — the one pushing and the one collapsing — finally feel that someone, somewhere, understands what they’re each trying to do.

That someone, first and foremost, has to be you.

The self-sabotage we don’t recognize

We tend to think of self-sabotage as something dramatic — blowing up a relationship, missing a crucial deadline, making an obviously destructive choice at exactly the wrong moment.

But the self-sabotage I see most often is quieter than that. It’s the practice that never gets built. The direction that never gets taken. The life that stays perpetually almost-started.

It doesn’t feel like sabotage from the inside. It feels like paralysis. Or confusion. Or — as it felt for Alex — simply being someone who talks and doesn’t act.

What’s actually happening is that two deeply held emotional learnings are in direct conflict with each other. One learned that not trying is safe. One learned that standing still is dangerous. And without understanding both — without bringing curiosity to what each part is actually afraid of — no amount of motivation, planning, or self-knowledge will move the needle.

This is the work. Not overriding the parts that hold us back, but understanding them well enough that they no longer need to.

A question to sit with

Is there something you’ve been wanting to build, begin, or become — something you’ve wanted for long enough that you’ve started to wonder if the wanting itself is the problem?

Before you answer with what you think is true about yourself, try this first: notice where that question lands in your body. Is there a tightening, a heaviness, a familiar collapse? A pushing sensation, an urgency, a frustration?

Those sensations are not obstacles to understanding yourself. They are the understanding — if you’re willing to get curious about what they’re carrying.

Over the next few weeks I’ll be going deeper into exactly this territory: the emotional learnings underneath self-sabotage, why willpower alone can’t reach them, and what it actually looks like when they begin to change.

And for those who want to do this in a supported, structured way, Transform Your Relationship to Self-Sabotage begins May 13th.

We’ll work directly with the parts that hold you back, to finally understand what they’ve been trying to protect you from all along.

Alex is a composite of many clients I have worked with over the years.

If this piece touched something in you — if you recognize the pusher, or the part that collapses, or both — I’d love to hear from you in the comments. What does your version of this locked system look like?

There’s a voice many of us carry that doesn’t announce itself as a critic.

It doesn’t thunder. It doesn’t rant. It simply states, in a tone of quiet certainty: You’re not enough. You never follow through. Who do you think you are?

And we believe it, not because we’re gullible, but because it sounds so much like the truth.

This is the inner critic at its most powerful: not when it’s loud, but when it’s indistinguishable from reality.

The critic you don’t know you have

Sometimes the only sign an inner critic is present is a vague, persistent sense that something is wrong with you — not your circumstances, not your choices, but you. You’re unlovable. Inadequate. A fraud.

You might have just received a glowing review at work. A friend told you what you mean to them. Someone praised something you made. And still, something inside quietly dismissed it: They don’t really see you. It’s only a matter of time.

If someone says, “You’re really hard on yourself,” you likely respond: “No — this is just the truth about me.”

That’s how good inner critics are at disguising themselves. They sound like facts.

I know this professionally after 32 years as a psychotherapist, and personally after decades living with a powerful one of my own. My inner critic has shown up in full Evil Queen mode more times than I can count, standing in front of the mirror demanding: Who do you think you are? You don’t know enough to teach anyone. You should just stay quiet.

She’s convincing. And she has roots that go back a long way.

Where the voice actually comes from

Here’s what took me years of clinical work and my own inner journey to understand: the inner critic is not a character flaw. It’s not evidence of weakness or damage. It’s a conclusion — drawn early, stored deep, and still running.

We are wired to learn. From the very beginning of our lives, our nervous systems absorb experiences and convert them into automatic responses — efficient, subcortical, below the level of conscious thought. This is brilliant design. It frees the thinking mind to focus on what it does best — reasoning, planning, deciding — while the deeper brain handles the patterns it has already learned.

But we don’t just automate motor skills. We automate emotional conclusions.

I am too much. I am not enough. It isn’t safe to be seen. Love comes with conditions. These aren’t thoughts we chose. They were absorbed — from how we were treated, what we were told, what we watched, what we survived. They moved out of conscious memory and into the body, becoming action tendencies: the flinch, the shrink, the preemptive apology, the compulsive overachieving.

The thinking mind — the conscious “me” — is often the last to know any of this is happening. It inherits a self already shaped by experience, already running on conclusions it didn’t make.

The inner critic is one of those conclusions. It learned, somewhere along the way, that harsh self-evaluation was protective. That if it judged you first, the world couldn’t hurt you as badly. That staying small was staying safe.

It isn’t your enemy. It’s a frightened protector — doing the only job it ever learned to do.

What it looks like from the inside

Tracy arrived for her session quieter than usual, settling into her chair with the careful stillness of someone trying not to disturb something fragile.

“I did it again,” she said. “The writing. I had two whole hours yesterday — the kids were out, the house was quiet. I sat down and just... couldn’t. I stared at the page for twenty minutes and then cleaned the bathroom instead.”

She laughed, but it didn’t reach her eyes.

“I’ve been working on this project for two years. Two years. And every time I actually have space to do it, I disappear. Something in me just shuts the door.”

I reflected back: “So something in you really wants this — and something else keeps closing it down.”

Tracy’s jaw tightened. “The something else has a lot to say about it. It says I’m deluding myself. That I’m not a real writer. That I’ve been telling people about this project so long it’s become embarrassing — like, who do I think I am?”

“It sounds like it’s working hard to protect you from something.”

“Protect me?” She looked almost offended. “It’s destroying me.”

“As you hear yourself say ‘it’s destroying me’ — can you sense how that’s feeling in your body?”

Tracy paused, turning inward. “My chest. Something just... collapses in there.”

“Let’s stay with that for a moment. That collapsed feeling — can you sense what it might be afraid of?”

A long pause.

“Trying. And it still not being good enough.” Her voice dropped. “Like — what if I actually finish it, and it turns out the critic was right all along?”

“That critic is worried about you... it doesn’t want you to have to experience the pain of being not good enough.”

Tracy was quiet for a long time.

“It’s scared for me,” she said finally. “It would rather I never find out than find out the hard way.”

Something in the room shifted. The critic hadn’t disappeared — but it had become, for the first time, something she could see rather than something she was.

The shift that makes everything possible

What changed for Tracy in that session wasn’t insight. It was relationship.

She moved — just slightly, just enough — from being the critic and being the shame, to being someone who could sense both, with a little distance and a little curiosity.

This is the move that matters: from I am broken to something in me is hurting.

That shift — from identification to relationship — is where healing begins. Not because the critic disappears, but because you are no longer alone inside with it. You become the one who can notice, who can be curious, who can offer the frightened part of you what it has been waiting for, possibly for decades: someone who finally hears it without agreeing with everything it says.

The critic doesn’t need to be silenced. It needs to be understood.

And when you begin to understand it — when you can sense the fear beneath the harshness, the protection beneath the attack — something in the whole system begins, slowly, to change.

Tracy is a composite of many clients I have worked with over the years.

If you recognized yourself anywhere in this piece; if you know that voice, or have caught a glimpse of what it might actually be afraid of, I’d love to hear from you in the comments.

Want to go deeper? This spring I’m offering a 6-week course, Transform Your Relationship to Self-Sabotage, beginning May 13th. We’ll work directly with the parts of you that shut the door — with curiosity, compassion, and the support of a small group.

For paid subscribers:

Your companion self-inquiry guide for this essay is waiting for you below : six somatic journal prompts to take the inner critic work off the page and into your own experience.

Subscribe now

Going deeper: your self-inquiry guide

Companion journal to “The Feeling That Calls Itself the Truth”

Thank you for being here — on this side of the essay, in this quieter space….

What follows is an invitation to take what you read in “The Feeling That Calls Itself the Truth” out of your head and into your actual experience….

Subscribe now

Read more

Most of us assume that when we feel depressed, we are depressed. Low feelings equal depression. And that might be true. But sometimes what we’re calling depression is something else entirely — something with a voice.

That voice says things like: You’re pathetic. I cannot believe you did that. You are ruining everything.

It’s an Inner Critic. And it often goes unrecognized, because we mistake it for the truth.

The Critic You Don’t Know You Have?

Inner Critics can be surprisingly quiet. Sometimes the only sign one is present is a vague, persistent sense that something is wrong with you — not your circumstances, not your choices, but you. You’re unlovable. Inadequate. A fraud.

You might have just received a glowing work review. A friend raved about your painting. Someone told you how much you meant to them. And still, something inside quietly dismissed it: They don’t really see you. It’s only a matter of time.

If someone in your life — or a therapist — says, “You’re really hard on yourself,” you likely respond: “No, this is just the truth about me.”

That’s how good Inner Critics are at disguising themselves. They sound like facts.

I know this professionally — 32 years as a psychotherapist. And personally — many more decades living with a powerful one of my own.

Which Comes First?

There isn’t one pattern. Sometimes something frightening happens, your body goes into freeze, and you feel fear and powerlessness. Your thinking mind tries to make sense of it: You’re feeling crappy — must have done something to deserve this. Oh right, you just are crap.

Other times it goes the other direction: you do something, and a familiar shame response fires — one you may have learned early in life from a family that used guilt to shape behavior, or one passed down through generations, with some original survival logic that has long since outlived its usefulness.

The Inner Critic and the feelings of depression, shame, and low self-worth feed each other. They create a loop — one part of you insulting, another part agreeing — cycling endlessly, keeping you stuck.

Tracy’s Story (Hiding in the Shadows)

Tracy* arrived for their session slouched in their chair, visibly exhausted.

“I don’t know why I even bother to see you. I am completely hopeless. Nothing can help me. Would you believe I forgot to complete my work log again this month? After getting a written warning last month? I’m working like a dog and I can’t complete a stupid log of my hours. I feel like I’m sabotaging myself.”

I reflected back: “After working so hard, it’s the documenting that can’t seem to get done. And it sounds like something inside is criticizing you hard for this.”

Tracy’s eyes narrowed. “It criticizes me because I screw up. It does not understand the stakes. If I lose this job I’ll be out of money in a few months. I could wind up on the street. I’ve got to get it together. And I can’t. I’m impossible.”

For Tracy, the critic wasn’t a worried part — it was a truth-teller, an accurate description of who she was. I could see that if she could slow down and sense these two parts — the one criticizing, and the one being crushed by the criticism — from a place of curiosity rather than judgment, something could begin to shift.

“It sounds like something inside is saying ‘you screwed up’ and something inside is feeling like you screwed up. Both of those are here right now. See if you can sense that.”

Tracy paused. “Yeah... I keep hearing ‘You screwed up again.’ And there’s this scared feeling. Like — oh no, what’s going to happen now?”

“That scared part... it’s really worried for you. Would it be okay to stay with that for a moment? Just sense how it’s feeling inside?”

Tracy inhaled sharply. “Scared. Like little-kid scared. Like a grown-up is going to come and yell at me.”

“It makes so much sense. A little kid inside, afraid of getting in trouble. I wonder — can you let it know you understand how scared it is?”

Tracy nodded. Tears began to fall.

“It doesn’t want me to be humiliated,” she said quietly.

“Maybe let it know you get that. That it’s trying so hard to protect you from that.”

Exiting the Loop Stepping out of the Shadows

When we slow down, we can begin to see what’s actually happening inside: one part shaming, another part absorbing the shame, both trying — in their own way — to protect us. Together, they create the feelings we call depression, low self-worth, powerlessness, chronic fear.

What’s missing from this loop is empathy. Specifically, empathy for the parts of us that are frightened, ashamed, and doing their best.

Exiting the loop doesn’t mean silencing the critic. It means slowing down enough to listen — to both the criticism and the feeling of being criticized — with curiosity and compassion. That’s where healing actually begins.

• Tracy is a composite of many clients I have worked with over the years.

Want to get to know your own Inner Critics?

I’m teaching “Transform Your Relationship to SELF SABOTAGE” this Spring — a 6-week coaching program with lectures, demonstrations, journal prompts, the possibility for 1-1 support and more.

Dates will be announced FIRST to all who are on the waitlist. (Click to hear!)

The format offers you the structure to focus on one key problem you would like to ultimately break free from.

“The volume of my self-criticism has gone way down, almost extinct. And when it does show up, I know exactly what to do - relate, be with (not fix or exile).”

— Past Participant

Before, you’d just give up on that goal for another year or two.

This time?

You’ll dedicate time to understanding what what truly keeps you from what you say you want, and find the path forward.

Emotional pain can be so challenging, and we need an inner space that is big enough to hold all of it.

2026 is still so new, and for many people it is already starting off as a difficult year.

For me, that means a call to my tried-and-true skill set: Somatic Inner Relationship Focusing (SIRF).

Below are the top five areas where SIRF has helped me so far this season:

1. I’m not doing it

2. Reactivity

3. Fear

4. Overwhelm

5. Shutdown

My goal is for you to find something helpful for your inner distress, too. Let’s get into it.

1. I’m not doing it

There are things I want to accomplish. Projects and plans I have for the new year. When I notice that I’m not doing them, I used to wait and see if things would change.

Maybe tomorrow… maybe next week.

Now I know to turn toward my SIRF skillset.

Something in me wants to do the project, and something in me does not. I know that because I’m not doing it. Spending time with both the part that wants to act and the part that doesn’t allows me to hear from more of myself, with cu…

Read more

And then, just as quickly, that energy would turn to fear. And then paralysis. Stuckness. A sense of “I can’t.” I felt so overwhelmed.

Overwhelm is such a strange experience. Overwhelmed by what? By having time?

I got nothing done.

Part of me was dismayed. I’d been looking forward to this time for months. Of course, I hadn’t planned on needing surgery at the beginning of summer to have my gallbladder removed. I understood the fatigue I was feeling was my body’s way of saying “Stay still!” to support my healing from all the …

Read more

Growth always feels hard & messy before it feels good.

There are moments when we feel it: the tightness in the chest, the lurch of hesitation, the sudden quiet in our nervous system before we take a step forward. Whether or not you’re doing inner‑relationship work, you’ve likely felt this before.

That place — that discomfort — may look like resistance, procrastination, paralysis. But often it isn’t sabotage. It’s a growth edge.

And those edges are beautiful gifts.

A “growth edge” is where what you know meets what you’ve yet to learn. It’s the territory before transformation; an unsteady, shifting line between comfort and becoming.

What growth edges look like in everyday life

• You know what you want (change your schedule, deepen a relationship, speak up), and yet something inside slows you.

• You try to breathe through the fear, or push past it with willpowe…

Read more

The organizers asked if I would demonstrate the approach live and offered to find a volunteer willing to be recorded. A young woman raised her hand. She said she had an inner critic she wanted to work with, but there was a problem.

“Everything my critic says is true,” she said, her voice flat with resignation.

“What can you possibly say to an inner critic that’s just telling the truth about you?”

When We Believe the Critic Is Right

This happens so often. Many people don’t recognize their inner critics precisely because they believe what the critic says is true.

Even when the critic predicts a bleak future such as you’ll never succeed or you’ll always be alone, it can sound like a reasonable warning rather than an attack.

This was true for “D,” the young woman at the conference. She heard a voice inside th…

Read more

It’s not even 1pm, and I am so tired. Tired enough to want to cry. I wish I had the energy to complete the projects I’ve started, projects I’m genuinely excited about, but I have so much trouble bringing them to life. Except, perhaps, in my mind.

These days, when I hear myself say “I am…”, I pause. Do I have some time to be with this? If the answer is yes, I turn inward. I sense what this particular “I am” feels like in my body.

Today, I sensed the tired behind my eyes, wanting to close, wanting to cry with exhaustion. In my sides, where something dragged me down.

Once I really got a felt sense of it, I gently said to myself, “Something in me is tired. Really tired.”

Shifting from “I am” to “something in me is” helps me begin to be in relationship with the tiredness, rather than be the tiredness. I’m no longer fully identified with the feeling. That shift opens the possibility of being with tiredness, with empathy and curiosity, instead of collapsing into it. And as that happ…

Read more

Picture this:

A new client to your therapy practice has just walked through the door. They’re eager to get into their issues, but haven’t explored somatics in depth. They’re curious, but skeptical.

You have some introductions and hear what they are hoping to work on with you, then settle in with an initial somatic exploration.

You smile at them reassuringly, and say, “Let’s start by noticing what you’re experiencing in your body”…

Seconds pass and you watch the client shift uncomfortably in their seat…”uhh, sure” they mumble*.* From the look on their face you can just tell what they’re thinking — ‘Great, and next week, can we start in Paris? Or maybe on the moon…because that feels just as doable as starting in my body.’

Read more

May 1st is my anniversary of meeting my husband. I take time off work every year to celebrate this. It’s something to truly celebrate as well as being a turning point in my life. I didn’t know I was taking a big risk when we started dating. I did know I was acting very differently from my usual self by the level of anxiety I felt about it, while at the same time experiencing something I had never felt in a relationship before…comfortable. At 31, I had a huge part of me that was saying “You need to get serious about your choices in relationships. Stop fooling around.” But I also felt like being serious and thoughtful had led to relationships that were just not right for me. I met David and felt immediately drawn to him. Maybe it was time to take chances.

At the same time, part of me was very afraid that my saboteur was making the choice, not the part of me that had my best interests in mind. That part of me was completely freaking out. “You do not have time for this. You are out of time…

Read more

I was wrong.

When I hit my thirties and found myself single, not being in a relationship began to feel like a plague — one of deep suffering, sadness, fear and confusion.

Something that had felt effortless all throughout my 20s was now virtually impossible for me —

Finding and staying in a longterm relationship. And, I had no idea why. I had assumed all my life that I would naturally have a strong long term relationship. I looked forward to it!

I viewed it as essential to my happiness in life. And it felt like I’d entered a desert without any path to water. Sure, friends gave me their guidance. Some introduced me to their friends. I even briefly tried personal ads (if you know me personally, you can ask me for a few funny stories about that!). Nothing I did or they did showed the slightest promise.

I did a lot of other things to enrich my life during this …

Read more

You know, the one from Snow White—dramatic, ruthless, standing in front of the mirror demanding, Who do you think you are? You don’t know enough to teach anyone. You should just stay quiet.

She’s convincing. When she appears, I suddenly find myself fantasizing about curling up under a thick duvet with a book, a cup of cocoa, and the doggies. Avoiding. Retreating. Shutting down.

What is Emotional Learning?

Emotional learning is what happens when our nervous system absorbs experiences so deeply that they become automatic responses—without us realizing it. We think we’re reacting to the present, but often, we’re living out old patterns.

For me, that deep learning of not feeling capable started young.

I am left-handed, and as a kid, when I first learned to write, I wrote from right to left. My first-grade teacher was notamused. She called me by my name backwards—“Neeraum”—in front of the class and s…

Read more

Let’s talk about growth.

It’s the thing we say we want, but when it shows up—messy, uncomfortable, and full of resistance—it’s easy to wonder if we’re even on the right path.

But here’s what I know: resistance isn’t a sign you’re failing. It’s a sign you’re growing.

Read more

Let’s be honest, therapists and healers are basically the emotional equivalent of a spare tire. We’re always lifting people up, getting them on their way, by reminding them of who they are in their essence, at their core. We point them in the direction of their healing.

But here’s the thing—what happens when you’re the one who feels stuck, drained, or just plain heavy?

You need support, too. Not a pep talk or a checklist, but real support—the kind that doesn’t make you feel like you have to hold it all together.

Read more

Let’s play a little game.

Imagine your BODY is a crowded room at a noisy party.

The guest list includes :

Your tense shoulders

your swirling thoughts

Your tight and anxious chest

That tension in your shoulders? — It’s trying to wave you down from across the room.

Your swirling thoughts are standing near the snack table, chatting up some old worries.

And in the corner all alone? That restless tightness in your chest.

Now, here’s the question: which one do you approach first?

Most of us don’t even notice the “guests” in the room with us each day. We’re too busy trying to clean up, look composed, or ignore the noise altogether.

But here’s what I’ve learned: the moment you pause and actually listen, the room begins to settle.

What happens when you pause?

• The tension eases—because it finally feels seen.

• The worry quiets—because it realizes you’re paying attention.

• And suddenly, the wisdom underneath all the noise begins to surface.

This is the power of the pause.

Read more