Welcome to this tiny corner of the internet where an off-duty psychotherapist keeps the conversation going on how to make sense of this life thing we’re all doing. If you ever wondered what your therapist does off the clock—which, who among us hasn’t?—this is like that. Think of it as the adult equivalent of seeing your elementary school teacher at the grocery store picking out lemons. 🍋 I typically oscillate between long-form psychoeducation pieces and narrative essays—sometimes I smush them together. I also have a biweekly podcast with my husband & periodically do an advice-esque segment and roundups. Today is a smush.
FADE IN
INT. THERAPIST’S OFFICE
The Kleenex are strategically placed. Hidden out of view, perceptible only by the low-level hum it emits, lies a sound machine. On the side table, there is a Himalayan salt lamp, because of course there is. A blue mid-century modern couch sits against the wall. Adorned with two pillows. One, white and rectangular. The other, a yellow square block with fuzzy tassels. A bookshelf on the periphery–only some of the books have broken spines and highlighted passages. The others, pristine, begging to be devoured in an effort to better understand the project of being human. The only thing separating shrink from client is a long pine-esque IKEA coffee table that vaguely resembles a surfboard.
Our 9am client begins sharing with their therapist…
CLIENT
I don’t know. It’s just every time this happens, it makes me feel insecure. (equivocating, realizing their tactical error) Not that I’m insecure. It’s just that…
FADE OUT
This revealing, then hiding that happens over and over again in the therapy hour is a part of the dance. It’s necessary. It’s also a sign.1
Ah, we’ve found something.
The thing we don’t want to be, but deeply are all the same.
This week’s newsletter crash landed into my lap after catching up on Esther Perel’s podcast, Where Should We Begin.2 For the uninitiated, Esther is a couples therapist. Her podcast typically features a one-time session with real couples. However, the one I stumbled upon was from a series where she has a brief phone call with a listener answering one of their burning questions.
After recently going through a divorce, this particular caller has found himself dating for the first time in a long time. He was lost in how to gauge the other person’s feelings toward him.
Esther proposes,
“... I think it's totally fine to say, ‘I haven't done this in a long time, so I probably need some markers, you know, maybe not everybody needs those markers, but I need them’…it's perfectly okay to say, ‘you know, I lost a chunk of my confidence…or I've come out of my relationship with some confidence bruised.’”
It occurred to me, hearing her lay it out like that, how much confidence it takes to say how little confidence we can feel sometimes. Like one side of a magnet, I can sense my body leaning forward, being drawn to someone when they “admit” something like that. It’s attractive.
Could this be the great connector? Our collective wobbliness.
The caller quickly responds he would feel very uncomfortable saying that.
I understand this caller’s wariness, of course. He’s right, it is uncomfortable. Therein lies it’s infinite power.
She goes on to validate how normal this is. It’s not exclusive to him. It’s vulnerable to articulate, yes, but not an outlier signaling some grand personal failure.
Esther lands the plane by articulating the episode’s namesake, Having Needs Doesn’t Make You Needy and saying “Just because you're not wanting to come across as something, doesn't mean that you're not feeling it. So, one of the better ways you feel not needy in a relationship is when there is a healthy dialogue about your needs and their needs.”
The impulse to shield what we view as weakness, fragility, and undesirables from others typically fails to register as mystery to solve. Most of us have been taught to do this in one way or another. Could have been parents, a coach, a partner, or just society at large. Doesn’t exactly matter what the source material is.3 It’s in us.
But the truth is, when we say it, whatever it is—anxiety, insecurity, lack of confidence, feeling fragile, that we may be wrong about something—it has the ability to transform. It’s often the exact opposite of what we’ve been taught.
For me, there are a few elements of myself I’ve tried to hide throughout my days: general anxiousness, insecurity about my appearance in a variety of ways, selfishness, being unsure, my messes and failures.
One tangible part of myself I’ve tried to conceal is something I’ve had since birth: a genetic skin condition called ichthyosis. My version of it left me with wrinkled hands and a trail of white, dry skin flakes following me wherever I go. It is so great.
I spent many years hiding my hands. Tucking them inside the sleeves of my sweaters, avoiding handshakes and grabbing my to-go coffee as quickly as possible. Wondering at what point on a first date to bring up how my hands look and feel—or maybe, they already noticed? Do you know how hard it is to go about life trying to hide your fucking hands? It’s a challenge, to say the least.
That being said, the one I’ve probably spent the most time and energy trying to outrun is how sensitive I am.
I tried to be stoic, unaffected, brash, cool. Being all those things can be just fine, when they are naturally occurring in my system. But when they come up as a reaction to another more vulnerable feeling, then I’m in trouble. These feeble attempts at being unfazed resulted in me feeling so sensitive I could barely operate. A walking, talking raw nerve. It kept me disconnected from others and from myself.
Once I admitted that I am deeply sensitive, owned that I can be quite bothered, something shifted.
I didn’t magically become less sensitive. After all, there is nothing wrong with being sensitive. It just became less shameful to feel it. To be that sometimes. To inhabit the edges of feeling sensitive. It felt different in my body. It went from this thing that made me unworthy and I needed to fix ASAP, to something I just experience every once in a while (or in some seasons, a lot of the time).
All of a sudden, I could be other things, too. Once I stopped guarding my sensitivity, I was freed up to feel confident, playful, smart, driven, creative, strong, and clear.
If you missed it in the intro or in all my subtle cues since, I’m a psychotherapist.
I’m curious what that evokes in you?
Let’s start by acknowledging it’s just simply the worst name of a profession ever. It’s made up of the words “psycho” and “the rapist.” I mean, truly. What? Why? This is the best they could do? If I didn’t love doing it so much, this could be enough to direct me elsewhere.
Back to what it evokes in you…
If you’ve had meaningful experiences with a therapist, you may be conjuring some warmth and openness.
While I do inhabit those things some of the time. Other times, I can be cold and closed off. (If you’ve had not so great experiences with a therapist, you may have beat me to the punch there.)
This role gives me a glimpse into so many beautiful things. Some of which, I don’t know if I’d be able to experience otherwise. One in particular is that it gives me insight into the fact that all of us–each of you reading these very words–are all the things.
There is no one person that is confident all the time, nor is anyone lacking confidence all the time. No one is funny all the time, nor is anyone never funny. No one is anxious all the time, nor is anyone never anxious. I could go on but, you get it…
We are, indeed, all the things. If we let there be, there is room for that.
I suspect every time you tell someone you love them, you don’t add “I also love other people and have loved other people before you.”
That would be unhinged, right?
To me, this is sort of what it sounds like when we say we have a feeling and then quickly follow it up with, “but that’s not all I feel.”
Yeah, no shit.
Not to mention—I’m about to go all Michelle Tanner on us—how rude!
Let’s give ‘em a minute to shine in all their glory. These feelings–of insecurity or anxiety or that you don’t know what the hell you are doing–are always telling us something. I, for one, don’t want to miss out on what they’re trying to signal. Not to mention, naming these feelings to the people we are around can lead to deeper intimacy for everyone involved.
I see this manifest whenever I meet with a client for an initial session. A question I ask right out of the gate is, “How are you feeling about being here? In therapy? With me?”
Usually some form of nervousness is a part of the soup. I let them know I feel nervous too, because I always do when I meet someone for the first time. I don’t know how it’s gonna go or if/how we’re gonna click. When I say this, clients have literally never shuddered away repulsed by my admission. I often see their shoulders soften and a smile make it’s way across their face. A recognition that we are in this together. Phew, It’s not just me.
Put more simply, I find that there is so little confidence in claiming to always be confident (I can think of a few unfortunate key figures in our world today that I will not name here who demonstrate this truth quite clearly for us), but there is substantial confidence in admitting we’re not always confident.
I can be sensitive, messy, insecure, selfish, blunt, vain, petty, rude, passive-aggressive, thoughtless, envious, and foolish, among a million other things.
All the things, really.
These aren’t identities. Please don’t confuse this for screaming at everyone you come across, “HI!! I’M INSECURE. NICE TO MEET YOU.”
It’s more like the wind passing by and through us. There with us one moment and then gone, as quickly as it came. Just like the wind, we can’t control these emotions.4 We can, at best, channel their unique powers when we feel them breezing in.
I need all those things. To fully live and experience this homework assignment called life we’re all responsible for.
For me, this evokes a certain Meredith Brooks 90’s classic.
She roars, proudly claiming:
-I can’t change
- I’m an angel
-I cry
-I understand
-I don’t envy
- I’m a little bit of everything rolled up into one
-I’m a bitch
-I’m a lover
-I’m a child
-I’m a mother
-I’m a sinner
-I’m a saint
-I’m not ashamed
-I’m your Hell
-I’m your dream
-I’m nothing in between
-I make you nervous
-I go to extremes
-I will change
-I’m a tease
-I’m a goddess
-I’m numb
-I’m revived
—And my favorite,
“Can’t say I’m not alive.”
Couldn’t have said it better myself, Mer.
I feel the most alive when I’m exposed to all the feelings, all the seasons, all the languages, all the crayons in the box, all the spices in my cupboard, all the landscapes. Not all at once, of course, but I want my senses to have the chance to engage with them all.
Similarly, I’m finding it to be increasingly true that if you section off certain states as radioactively bad, something gets lost: the truth of what it feels like to be alive.
Listen, I’m unfortunately well aware I’m not saying anything revolutionary here. I’m basically droning on and on about the power of saying how you feel. In the immortal words of Miranda Priestly, “Groundbreaking.”
That’s me, breaking ground here.
Only kidding. This concept shows up all over different areas of psychology and spiritual traditions. For instance:
In Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) this is called Clean Pain v. Dirty Pain
Internal Family Systems (IFS) has the concept of No Bad Parts
Mindfulness practices call this the Attitude of Non-Judgment
The Gottman Institute explores how the antidote to defensiveness is accepting responsibility
Brene Brown’s The Power of Vulnerability Ted Talk
I believe this is useful for all emotions, but where I’m really honing in on it right now is around the experience confidence and security, their counterparts, and their shared daddy: Fear. Maybe it’s because we are barreling through an election cycle here in the US or that I foolishly watched the remake of Road House last night, not realizing Connor McGregor was in it. Either way, I’m just left screaming to anyone who listen, “JFC. CAN’T WE ALL JUST ADMIT WE ARE SCARED.”
I know very little about UFC and McGregor other than he’s been accused of, in my opinion, immense violence and abuse and I’d really prefer if he wasn’t given such a platform to spew his narcissism. While watching him on screen, at first I see a human wrecking ball, eyes wide like a crazed maniac.5 I feel scared. Then, all I can see is a scared boy. I realize, that sense of fear I have when I first see him is the same feeling he’s holding, but refusing to claim. A boy terrified to be that which he already is, we all already are: vulnerable.
Writing this, watching whatever that movie was last night made me realize even more deeply how important it is to say the thing. Whatever it is. Not just for ourselves, which frankly would be enough of a reason, but for the harm it causes when we don’t. Denial comes at a cost.
Sometimes, I catch myself daydreaming about what it would be like if we all dared to harness enough courage to own our vulnerability.
For now, all I can do is my part in owning and claiming. I hope you’ll join me.
Questions for you:
What is your thing you’ve been afraid to claim?
Have you ever had a moment where you owned it? How’d it go?
Or conversely, have you ever had someone really own their vulnerability in front of you and it startled you? Inspired you?
**Not to be a total tease, although Meredith Brooks said I could be, but we will be sharing lots of these on the pod next week. We’ve got the every day ones and some doozies.
You can find more info and my full disclaimer on my about page here (I just updated it, so check her out and tell me what you think). Abridged version: I’m a therapist, but not your therapist—even if you are a client of mine ~hi, dear one!~ this isn’t a session. dialoguing is an educational and informational newsletter only, not a substitute for mental health treatment.
Also, if you’re interested in submitting a question for the dialogue league, recent example here, please email me at dialoguingsubstack@gmail.com—or if you’re reading this via email you can just hit reply and send me a message. Love hearing from you for any and all reasons!
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This podcast is so damn good. Sometimes, I have to take a break because my ego is so bruised by how deft she is at what she does. She sees it all, takes accountability when she gets it wrong and holds people’s feet to the flame of honesty with warmth and trust. It’s a damn masterclass. Can’t recommend it enough. Every time I get back into it, I have the thought, “Nothing is more important than this right here.”
I mean, of course, it does matter, but and also, exists all the same. Regardless of the source.
If this is news to you, I strongly encourage you watch this video.
I recognize this was just a role he was playing, but it feels like they cast him because of his ability to fully inhabit this state of being. I refuse to learn one more thing about that man to see if/how closely this approximates his real life persona. I got more than enough in that “film.”
Thank you for this, Kaitlyn. Reading this felt like 'a reclaiming, of being our ‘whole-selves’…maybe even being a 'human being' rather than trying to be superhuman!
Wholeheartedly embracing all the dimensions of our emotions seems to be out of fashion (not that it was ever in fashion). Add to the mix different cultural traits, and this becomes a minefield of fragile eggshells of emotions to be avoided! So, thanks for framing the discussion as an invitation to talk more about our insecurities and recognise our whole selves.
Since resigning from work to care for my parents, I’ve experienced a wider amplitude, intensity and impact of emotions than I ever did before (despite some big transitions etc), and it feels like I’ve LIVED more, within the space created by these big pendulum swings.
I’ve also encountered some attitudes where people expect me to be unhappy, envious of others and confined. Some days are like that, but others are acute, simple joy, deep satisfaction, and love. We rant and rave on carer forums (anonymously); there's dark humour and dad jokes. There's no judgment of feeling ..whatever you like because there’s an unspoken acceptance of this full amplitude. Sometimes, I live in tiny moments, and in others, I live big with friends. Different insecurities, confidence and aspects of life. Wholehearted.
You’ve struck some deep resonance with me, I hope others too. Thank you!
This was a great read Kaitlyn. I'm afraid to claim how selfish I can be. And when I say that I'm not looking for the usual, "of course not you are so giving" platitudes I hear back from well meaning folk. I mean I can be really selfish. I do take the bigger slice of pie and it takes work for me to consider if that's fair. I think this edge has served me in motherhood though, where the whole narrative is one of utter selflessness. Hmmm, I can feel a post coming on about this. Thanks!