1 — When nothing comes, and you find yourself reaching for comfort

Q: I go blank. I ask the questions — is there any condition under which you would let me connect — and still nothing registers. And then I notice I am already planning how I will soothe myself. I have decided I am going to eat the whole bar of chocolate. Is that the moment?

A: Yes. That is exactly the moment.

The reach for the thing that soothes — the food, the phone, the next distraction — is itself the doorway. It is showing you that something inside is in pain right now, and it is trying to make the pain go away the fastest way it knows. Eating to forget the pain is not a weakness. It is a response to pain, and everyone has their own version of it.

So you catch it there, in the moment, not afterwards. And remember that the blank is usually not an empty room. It is a closed door — nothing came because the right question had not yet been asked. Ask the one holding it: under what condition would you let me come closer? And then: what do I need to do so that you will be with me? It will name something. You do it. That is an agreement, and it is how the door starts to open.

2 — When staying busy with healing becomes a way of not feeling

Q: I sign up for every course, every seminar, every workshop. I know it is one of the ways I avoid. But if I stopped, I would just be at work — and at work I feel completely blocked. Do I have to give it all up and do nothing?

A: No. You do not stop everything. Your system would simply refuse, and it would be right to — that is its way out of the pain, and taking it away all at once feels like danger.

You scale down, and you do it by agreement with the one that takes you away. Something like: I understand you take me there so that I do not have to feel this pain. We will keep doing some of it. But can we start to be here more as well? That is a negotiation, not a battle.

I know this one from the inside. There was a time when I was going to a workshop almost every month. I did sixteen certifications. I used to call myself a workshop junkie. And at some of those courses I would sleep through the meditations — hours of them — and my life did not change at all. I did not stop all at once. I went from ten or twelve a year to five or six, and it took a year or two. Now I go to one educational event in a year, if that.

And what happened is that the rest of life came back. Because one of the things about going away — however we do it — is that we miss life. The time you get back when you are not there is time that goes to yourself.

The only useful question is the one you ask yourself: when I am there, am I really there?

3 — When the safe place turns into a lookout

Q: In the meditation, the safe place that came to me was my own home. But I kept looking out of the window, checking whether someone was coming. It connects to something frightening from a very long time ago that I never really processed. I feel like it is all still in my body.

A: It is — and that is the good news in what just happened. Something that happened decades ago is still alive in your system. Your body remembers it. Which means it has now shown you exactly where to go.

When you do not feel safe in your body, safety drives everything. A great many decisions and compromises get made from that place — not by you, consciously, but by your system, to keep you safe. So this is worth attending to.

The first move is permission. Ask it directly: Thank you for bringing this up. I have felt unsafe for a long time since then, and I still carry it. Would you be willing to let me go back there, so I can help release what I am holding and do not have to carry it any longer?

If the answer is yes, you can use the inner child practice. And remember that the inner child is not only the child. It is any age younger than you are now — including the person you were thirty years ago.

4 — When other people’s anger makes you leave

Q: I can hold space for someone’s sadness or loneliness all day long. But the moment someone gets angry, I am gone. And when I do step in to protect myself, afterwards I feel terrible about it rather than relieved. Is there something I am not seeing?

A: Here is the first thing to see. You are not reacting to the person in front of you. You are reacting to something that is familiar to a younger you — a time when being around someone dysregulated had a real cost. Your body is remembering that, not this.

Then look at the conflict inside you honestly. One voice carries "I don’t matter," and lets it happen. Another comes in to protect you. And then the one who protected gets judged for protecting — so it shies away in guilt and shame, even though it did something good for you. That mismatch is the bad feeling afterwards.

So bring them all to the table, and give each of them equal weight. The one who protected you deserves to be understood by the rest of you, not punished.

And notice one more voice: the one that desperately wants other people to stop being dysregulated. That is often a very young strategy — if I can fix them, I will be safe. Sometimes simply understanding why you do it is enough to begin. And next time someone’s anger arrives, use what we practised: feet down, push, come back into your body. "I see you. I am here." It will not take you over in the same way.

5 — "I can’t give her love, because it was never given to me"

Q: I finally felt the wounded younger one, and for the first time the barrier came down. But I don’t know how to love her. Love was not given to me, so how can I give it?

A: You have it. It is there. The moment you really see her, it will come.

What matters now is to keep going back. Every day if you can — ten days, fifteen days. It does not matter what time, and it does not matter what form. Just you and her. You can miss a day; that is fine. Only two questions: What do you want me to know today? And, what can I do for you? Some days she will tell you a great deal. Some days nothing, and nothing is fine.

Here is why the returning matters so much. Someone left her, and never came back. Now you are back — and she needs to find out that you will not do what was done to her. If you get a breakthrough and then do not return, after a few days she goes back to the same place.

Go to her from the place where there is no judgment at all. Just love. And the things she asks you to do for her will turn out to be things for yourself.

6 — Forgiveness that is not pretending

Q: How do I forgive a parent for what they did?

A: Let’s be clear first about what forgiveness is not. It is not agreeing that what was done was right. Wrong is wrong, and nothing here asks you to overlook it.

What forgiveness is about is the bond. Because the bond with that person is still there — and a bond held in pain and anger keeps bleeding you, in many quiet ways.

Somewhere in your healing, it can help to see whether they did wrong because they meant to, or because of their own circumstances — which happens far more often. That understanding creates a little space. Enough to say: what you did was wrong, and I no longer hold it. That changes the quality of the bond, so that it stops bleeding you.

You do this for yourself. If the other person is freed by it too, that is a consequence — not the reason.

7 — When a question about someone else is really about you

Q: I want to recommend one of these recorded sessions to someone I work with who is going through a very hard time. But I’m worried it could open something difficult for them — and, to be honest, worried about the responsibility if it did.

A: The sessions themselves are designed to create awareness, not crisis. Permission is asked at every step, and a system that is not ready to go somewhere simply will not go — people leave, or nothing opens. Trust that.

But notice something in the way the question arrived. The first thing that came out was the fear — of what might happen, of being held responsible. The care came second. And very often, the question we ask about someone else is quietly a question about us.

So it is worth asking yourself: where does this fear come from? And what does it limit in the rest of my life? Sometimes the answer is: nothing — it is simply how I take care of my work. And sometimes it opens a door you did not know was there.