“I’m not worried about anything,” she said

 “No, I don’t want to talk about the past.
I’ve done that for years.”

It’s one of the first sentences she said to me.

She’s looking for help with a physical complaint that just won’t go away.
“I’m not worried about anything,” she says.

And yet, her story tells something else.

She worries about a child.
She has a partner who is slowly disappearing.
Many situations where you find yourself on the sidelines, powerless.

She has tried many therapies and other advice.
Sometimes it helped for a while.

What truly touches her, she says, is singing.
Then she can cry.
Then the tension eases.

As she speaks, I feel her.
Her powerlessness. Her confusion.
And above all, her longing for softness and loving attention.

I say very little.

This is not only about now. This is an old story rising to the surface.

How do I survive when I no longer understand what is all going on?
How do I keep control when life feels too big?

Not from who she is today, but from a younger part within her:
a child who once learned to be strong by allowing herself to feel as little as possible.

I gently tell her that her heart is full. Of love.
And also of pain and grief.

“Yes,” she says softly.

And immediately her mind steps in.
The door closes.

What I see is someone who needs safety.
Loving attention.
And time.

Time to slowly dare to open.
Time to allow loss.
Time to let in how complex it is to feel powerless in the face of the pain of those you love.

This is what I do in my work.
I offer space.
I walk alongside you.
I guide, offer direction and insight,

but you are the one who, in your own time, learns to feel again.
And to trust.

I tell her that everything is allowed: talking, crying, writing, not wanting to go ‘there’.
That she may use me as a place to release.
That together we can explore what the body may have been trying to discharge for a long time.

You are welcome.
With big and small questions.
Always.