Draw a circle around you in which you feel safe, stay in your power, and let people see who you really are. Keep those you don’t like at a distance and invite people you value and resonate with into your inner circle.

Well, much of that is true. Boundaries are indeed an excellent tool in so many regards. But like with everything, they don’t work for every situation, and they sometimes do fail.

Shocking news?

Not really.

I’m not going to debunk anything here. Rather, I will share with you some experiences and give you an idea of where you may need to adjust your strategy, especially when it comes to dealing with difficult people.

Let’s start with the easier parts first.

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Innocent Pushback

When you begin setting firmer boundaries, you will experience pushback. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it will be unexpected, no matter how much you tried to prepare for it.

So instead of overthinking to the max before setting your boundary, take a few deep breaths to stay calm for what will be coming.

A few weeks ago, my neighbours invited me to their annual meet-up. I joined the last two years. They had a great time, while I felt like the odd one out. It’s not that I am shy of talking or having nothing to say. There was simply hardly any opportunity for me to say something, although I tried.

To cut a long story short. The whole event felt like a duty. And since I was a bit stressed out, I had no intention to join this year. So when asked whether I would join this year, I replied with a polite no.

Guess what happened...

My neighbours wanted to know the reason why. The first neighbour asked once. I shrugged and softly said that somehow I don’t want.

Neighbour accepted. Easy one...

A few days later, the next neighbour came with the same question. Not so easy this time. This time, shrugging and looking confused didn’t help.

"Somehow things are a bit too much for me currently, “ I mumbled.

It came rather spontaneously out of my mouth and was luckily accepted.

So in the end, nothing tragic here. However, when you start with setting boundaries, such moments can feel challenging. It may even seem that initially setting your boundary failed to work.

Kindly staying with your no and explaining that you don’t feel well with something usually is a reason enough for others.

Testing the Boundary

The next step up is when your boundaries are actually challenged.

Some people don’t accept a no easily.

Think of charity workers who collect money for a good cause they really believe in.

They know some tricks how to guilt-trip you a little, make you explain yourself, and make you no softer and softer...

There is no bad intention behind that. In other words, there is nothing personal about it.

You don’t have to play the game. You stay with your no and kindly ask to accept that. No more discussions... just standing your ground.

People do respect that. And from experience, I can tell you that this even works with street touts in India.

Of course, if you want, you can briefly explain why you (now) have that boundary. Just make sure you don’t get caught in a spiral of self-justification.

Entitled Or Manipulative Pushback

Now we get to the level where setting boundaries doesn’t work and can even backfire big time.

Boundaries are there to create clarity. However, in unhealthy relationships, they create conflict.

Some people will never respect you for who you are. They are only interested in what you can do for them and how they can keep you under their control.

That doesn’t sound healthy and of course isn’t.

Naturally, you don’t want to be in such settings. But sometimes you cannot always walk away from a job, a family system, or a partner you currently depend on.

Trying to set boundaries would directly collide with the control those people want to have over you. They will use every trick in the book to get you back on course.

All you can do is to stay calm, offer no friction or angle of attack, withdraw as much as possible, and avoid getting their attention on you.

Of course, that’s not a long-term strategy. It’s more of a coping mechanism until you have found a place where your boundaries are generally respected.

Almost Last But Not Least

A few weeks ago, I created a boundary test. 21 of you followed my invitation and took the test. The results were interesting in many ways.

I don't want to bore you with a long analysis.

But… yes, I really love that word, I’d like to share with you the following highlights.

Feel free to draw your own conclusions and share them in the comments if you like.

On saying no

On feelings, emotions, and self-doubt

Leave a comment

Before You Go…

If you haven't taken the boundary test yet, don't worry.

You don't need to explain that to me, feel guilty, or feel bad for missing out.

I decided to keep it active for you, as a subscriber here.

If you aren't a subscriber yet, no worries either. I placed another blue button below.

One click. Doesn't hurt. Makes me happy. And it will give you access to reflections you might welcome on your healing journey.

So here you go… —> Link to Personal Boundary Test

We are tired of people taking advantage of us, treating us with disrespect, and rarely seeing us for who we really are.

We want to be who we really are. And with boundaries, we draw a line for what is okay for us and feels safe, and what we would rather keep at a distance.

This all sounds fine. From my own experience, I can tell you that setting boundaries is a wonderful medicine.

But yes, there is a catch… medicines come with side effects and tend to taste bitter the more effective they are.

No different with boundaries.

Let’s start with the more challenging part first, so that at the end, you know what it’s all worth.

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You Start Feeling Guilty

I remember when my 74-year-old neighbour broke her leg. She asked me for help. I was glad to support her since it was little things.

But then she asked for more and more, and even messaged me at midnight for something that was not urgent at all.

That’s when it dawned on me that I need to keep her a bit at a distance. Because otherwise, she would take more and more advantage of me.

In my head, this logic made total sense. But when she called me again for help, I instantly felt under pressure. How could I say no to a poor old person who desperately needs my help?

I was really torn. First, I couldn’t say no and just told her that later I would care about things when I am less busy.

Well, she found someone else to help her. After all, she wasn’t as poor and helpless as a tiny but persistent little voice in my head wanted me to believe.

In a way, the feeling of guilt we carry in us is like a demon that we have to get out of its shadow to take its power away.

You Might Face Massive Resistance

Setting boundaries with my family was one of the hardest and most painful things I have tried in my life. It didn’t work as I had hoped, and in the end, the only option left for me was to walk away.

If you want to know more, I shared my story here:

In dysfunctional family systems, every child has an assigned role. Once you set boundaries and thus claim to have your own life, you will face severe backlash from the system.

For me, it was hard to understand that once I refused to play my role, the family system was about to break apart. Not because of my power, but because my role as the family scapegoat was needed to stabilise the family.

They needed someone to put their shame and guilt on, as they couldn’t deal with themselves.

The following saying makes pretty much sense in that regard:

The only people who get upset about you setting boundaries are the ones who were benefiting from you having none.

You Will Lose Some People Along The Way

The new problem you will have when you start setting boundaries is that they only work when you set consequences.

So if someone oversteps your boundaries several times, you keep more distance from them, become less available, and share less with them.

Often, there are no hard feelings involved. It’s more like you find out that you don’t want to have those people close to you.

Some relationships then can get a little colder as if the other person is more of a remote stranger.

Of course, it doesn’t always have to be like this. In the end, it’s more about who aligns with the changes you are going through and who becomes a person you used to walk the path with in the past.

You See People More Clearly For Who They Are

It’s fascinating how people will deal with the boundaries you start setting.

Some will take it surprisingly well. They might even congratulate you for finally learning to say no. They welcome the clarity that comes with setting your boundaries.

And then of course there are others who don’t appreciate that too much. That’s when you get a taste of how some try to manipulate or gain control over you.

It doesn’t always have to be that serious. Just take charity collectors as an example. They know how well guilt tripping works to make you donate money for a good cause…

Some people may play an indirect game and use other people to put pressure on you in a subtle way. Flying monkeys fall into that category…

Often, you only see those games for what they are once you offer some friction and don’t easily go along with expectations that do not feel right to you.

People Will Respect You More

Now, let’s come to the positive aspects of setting boundaries, which you often may experience pretty soon.

In a somewhat healthy environment, most people will have exactly zero problem with you having boundaries.

Take cats, for example. They know pretty well what they like and don’t like. They communicate that clearly and rarely compromise. It’s often even difficult to bribe them with delicious treats.

But all that is what cats are so much loved for. There is no second-guessing. When a cat loves you, she shows it. And when she doesn’t, you’ll be happy not being too close to her.

By setting boundaries, you show people who you are.

And somehow this tends to also work with strangers. I don’t know how to put this in words, but it’s a bit like they sense that you started to respect yourself and somehow mirror that to you.

Maybe it’s rather a matter of perception. Because once you feel safe within your boundaries, you naturally only let those people come close to you who respect you. And that’s who you end up seeing more of.

You Have More Energy And Peace

You have no idea how draining some people can be unless you start setting boundaries and by doing so protecting your energy.

Even when in the beginning you may feel guilty to say no to something you don’t want, you will find out what the cost of having said yes would have been.

For me, it was quite a surprise how much more peaceful life started to feel. In the beginning, this can feel a bit empty or boring. But let me tell you that these are just withdrawal symptoms from the chaos you endured for so long.

Once you have tasted the sweet honey of peace, you will actually become quite allergic to chaos.

You Begin To Understand Who You Are

Setting boundaries usually starts with small things first.

You quickly learn that saying no and choosing who you let closer to you doesn’t hurt and actually improves your life.

You become more sensitive to where your boundaries really are and set them accordingly.

The amazing thing is that by doing so, you get more of an idea of who you really are.

In a way, setting boundaries is a journey to yourself.

Before You Go…

At what point in life did you realise that you needed to set firmer boundaries?

If you feel comfortable sharing, I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

Leave a comment

This part is about the foundation. It’s meant to help you reflect on your boundaries and get a better understanding of them.

If I succeed, you will have a clearer idea of what healthy boundaries are and where you want to draw your personal lines.

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Walls Are Not Boundaries

Many people confuse walls with boundaries. I was one of them.

Boundaries are meant to protect the space in which you feel safe.

When someone has deeply hurt you, or you grew up in an unsafe environment, you want to make sure that nobody can hurt you again. So you build a solid concrete wall that keeps everybody at a distance.

It's a bit like building a fortress around you. The walls are so thick that nobody can get through them.

People who might give it a try quickly find out that even with the biggest battering ram, there is no getting through to you.

And that's exactly where the problem is.

Walls keep everybody out. Or in other words, they kinda keep you in your own prison.

Yes, the prison feels safe. But the longer you spend time in it, the more you will feel disconnected from the world around you.

It can then look as if you can only choose between getting hurt or feeling empty.

What a sad life…

But there is hope.

The moment you learn that you can keep different people at different distances, your walls can begin to turn into boundaries.

That's when the warmth of the sunlight can get through to you again.

Knowing What Feels Safe For You

There is no general recipe for boundaries. Every person has their own personal boundaries. Of course, within a given cultural context, these boundaries can be very similar.

Physical boundaries are a good example of that.

In some Latin countries, people have no problem with physical contact, even when it's with a person they hardly know. In a way, it's part of the culture.

The story is totally different in some Scandinavian countries, where social distancing never had to be taught. It's what's natural to them.

Boundaries are also not a fixed thing. They are more like circles.

Some people, like close friends, loved family members, and your partner, are part of your inner circle. You allow them to come very close to you. That's because you feel safe with them, and it feels good to connect with some people on a very deep level.

There is a wider circle for people you know and are okay with. But you may still feel uncomfortable with them touching you, for example.

And then you have an even wider circle for all other people you either barely know or don't resonate with.

The circles I'm talking about here are not only about physical distance. They also apply to how you allow them to talk with you, how much of your time you allow them, share resources with them, and so on.

Where You End and Other People Begin

An important part of healthy boundaries is learning where you, with all that you regard as part of being you, end.

Physical boundaries are the easy part. You can draw a line around your body. But even without that, you have a very solid idea of where your body ends.

For empaths, the story can be very different. They often do not clearly know whether the emotions and feelings they experience are their own or those of others.

For instance, when a friend is very angry, they may feel responsible for that anger and question what they might have done wrong.

To establish healthy boundaries, empaths need to learn what is really theirs and what they are not responsible for.

That sounds more complicated than it is. All an empath needs to do is become aware of what's going on in their head. When they suddenly feel bad, guilty, drained, or low for no clear reason, it's time to dig a bit deeper.

Finding Yourself Beneath the Conditioning

Whether you are an empath or not, it makes sense to reflect on who you really are.

We are conditioned in so many ways and often forced into roles that do not really align with our true selves.

Often, we only find that out when our lives fall apart or when we get the sense that we are not really living our own lives. That is when we start to question ourselves. And when we do this in a constructive way, it can be quite a transformative process.

In a way, you learn to see yourself from a distance, as if you were your own observer.

You do not need a life crisis for this. Meditation or spending time in unfamiliar environments that are very different from your own can help bring these insights.

It could also help to use a wild animal as a reference. A lion remains a lion. Of course, you can teach it some tricks and make it behave differently. But that does not stop it from eventually returning to its wild nature.

So ask yourself who you are if you strip away everything that was given to you: material things, education, social status, and so on.

What remains?

That is where you find the answer to who you truly are and what boundaries you want to have in order to protect that authentic self.

Healthy Boundaries Need Consequences

A boundary cannot protect you if everyone can simply step over it.

Healthy boundaries only work when they come with consequences.

Often, a simple but firm warning is enough. A clear no. A calm “Don’t do that again.” And meaning it.

There is no need to explain your boundary. A person who values you for who you are will also respect your boundaries.

There are no hard feelings involved. Sometimes we just don't know what is okay or not for someone. So when they tell us, it helps everybody involved.

Of course, if your boundaries are still not respected after you have made them clear, you keep that person at a distance. That could mean you give them less access to you or simply walk away when necessary.

These consequences are not meant as a punishment. They are meant to protect your self-respect and make sure you don't have to neglect yourself.

Before You Go…

I know many of you have been reading my Substack for quite a while now.

What I often don't know is which parts resonate with you, what you like to read more of, and what is of less interest.

I would really appreciate it if you could help me improve this newsletter with your feedback.

Just drop a comment below. It won’t hurt, I promise.

Leave a comment

It feels like an almost impossible task.

Even when you manage to say no, a moment later you feel inner pressure rising and you find yourself explaining and softening your words. It's an attempt to make your boundaries somewhat acceptable.

No matter how hard you try, it's often not enough.

Sometimes you might be lucky, and the boundary you set is accepted, at least for that day. But later things go back to the old draining dynamics. It's a bit like Sisyphus rolling the rock up the mountain just another time…

So what makes setting boundaries with family so damn hard?

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The Old Roles Are Still There

As children, we had to obey our parents. Depending on how strict they were, not following the rules meant consequences or even punishment.

Once we learned to stand on our own two feet, we were no longer dependent on our parents. We may even live far away from them and have built our own life.

However, that does not automatically mean the old hierarchy is gone.

In some family systems, your status as a child will never be updated to that of an adult. So you are never seen as an adult in your own right. In other words, they never see you on their level and still believe they are above you.

Cultural conditioning doesn't make this any easier. We are told to honor, respect, and follow our parents.

There is nothing wrong with this if our parents treat us with dignity and respect and want to see us thrive. It's a different story, though, when you are seen as someone who owes unquestioning loyalty to the family just because they brought you into this world.

This can make dealing with your family deeply confusing, especially when family itself is treated as something sacred.

They Know Your Weak Points

If your parents never really respected your boundaries, there is little reason for them to change. Especially in dysfunctional families, you are often expected to keep playing your role whether you like it or not. What matters is that the family system stays stable.

When you begin setting firmer boundaries, the resistance will not necessarily be shown openly. Instead, your family might remind you of everything they have done for you. They call you cold, selfish, ungrateful, or dramatic.

In other words, they try everything to make you feel guilty or regain control over you. And the sad part is, they often know your weak spots so much better than anyone else. They know exactly what button to push. That's how they kept you in your role for so long.

It's not a fair dynamic.

Without allies in the family or the ability to follow through with real consequences, there is often little chance that a rigid family system will accept your boundaries.

Families do not have to be dysfunctional to be difficult. But then the game has to be fair. They may struggle with your boundaries, but they should stop using guilt, shame, or emotional pressure to drag you back into your old role once you make your boundaries clear.

That still won't be easy, especially if you are not used to speaking for yourself clearly and firmly.

You Are Afraid of Losing Them

Setting boundaries with other people can feel more straightforward. If they don't accept your boundaries, you can reduce contact and keep them at a distance.

Friends are people you choose. Some of them come and go.

With family, it's different.

In an ideal sense, family is supposed to be the one place that remains even when everything else in your life falls apart. A safe harbor you can rely on, no matter what happens in your life.

Even if you can clearly see the toxicity in your family and see each member for who they truly are, there is a part of you that still hopes that one day everything will be fine. One day they will see you, accept you, or even love you…

As long as you carry that hope, you don't want to lose them.

So you try to set boundaries again, maybe a little softer, maybe with a bit more patience, maybe with even more carefully phrased words.

You hope that one day you may find the right approach, as if you just didn't know how to set boundaries with your family correctly. The simple logic is that if you do it right, they will respect your boundaries.

But sometimes the truth is much harder to accept. That logic only works in a family system that is willing to accept you for who you are…

Before You Go…

Two weeks ago, I mentioned that I was working on a boundary-setting test.

It's now finished and has been tested by a group of volunteers. The feedback was very positive, and I'm happy to share it now with all of you.

To find out how strong your boundaries are, click the button below, answer 16 questions, and get your results.

It takes less than three minutes

Take the test

If You Are Still With Me…

This is the third part of my boundary-setting series.

I have already worked out a few more pieces that will be published every Tuesday at the same time.

But I also want to give more space to the topics that matter most to you.

So if there is anything around boundaries that you would like me to explore, just leave a comment below.

Leave a comment

Of course, this can only work when we notice that our boundaries have been crossed right when that happens. Only then can we protect them and stop a situation from going too far. Otherwise, we would replay everything in our heads, which probably wouldn't change much.

This episode is about how to notice potential boundary crossings early.

The good thing is, we don't need to know our boundaries in detail before we start. In most cases, our body reacts before the mind fully understands what is happening.

In simple terms, you can imagine boundaries as a fence around your house. Inside that fence is your home, the place where you feel safe.

You only let people on your property whom you trust and feel safe with.

If a stranger tries to enter, you naturally become alert and feel less safe. That's direct signals coming from your body. Your brain kicks in after that and tries to make sense of the situation.

It’s very similar when our boundaries are crossed. Our bodies often notice it first.

If we learned as children to suppress our feelings, those signals do not fully reach our awareness. They are rather silent voices. But they are there. All we need to hear them is to pay a little more attention to what is going on inside us.

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Something Is Off

In the aftermath, the red flags people have raised for us are clear. We wonder how on Earth we could have missed the very obvious.

But if we're honest, we often didn't miss them completely. We noticed that something was strange. Our brain couldn't explain it, so we decided to push it away.

This is basically how intuition speaks to us.

It often doesn't use words but gives us a tight feeling in the stomach, interrupts our thoughts, or just makes us wonder why we can't make sense of the current moment. It's a bit like a sudden cut in the movie we are watching before the scene gets back to normal. A short flicker, as if reality had some kind of glitch…

You don't need to make sense of these sensations. All you need is to listen and be open to the signals. So instead of pushing them away, take a short note or reflect on them in your diary. This way you bring more attention to your body. And by doing so, you will recognise these signals more and more clearly.

So in case something feels off, allow yourself more space and go more slowly. We often understand the signals we were getting better once we feel completely safe again.

You Feel the Need to Explain Yourself

With some people, conversations are very difficult. You feel as if they misunderstand you all the time. And no matter how much you try to explain yourself, things don't get better.

But then it's also the question of why there is a need to explain yourself. If a person would accept you for who you are, they would listen to your points. They might not like or agree to all your points. But that's still different from questioning you as a person.

You don't need to explain who you are and justify your boundaries. Nobody would ask why you have a fence around your property, either. Because you simply have those boundaries to show this is me, or this is my property. No need to explain why it's your property or personal boundary. Such discussions usually do not lead anywhere.

So, if you feel that your boundaries are being questioned, you already have the idea that someone is about to cross them.

Pause for a moment. Allow yourself more space, go more slowly until you feel calmer and in your power again.

You Feel Guilty, Angry, or Drained

My grandfather never could say no when his neighbors asked him to repair something for them. The pattern was always the same. When he packed his tools and was about to go to the neighbor, he was already slightly angry. And after he came back from the repair, he was furious about how ungrateful his neighbor was, or that they showed no respect to him.

With my grandfather, I could see the pattern clearly. I wondered why he did not see it himself.

And then I had a very similar experience. My neighbor broke her leg. In the beginning, she asked me for small things, and I was glad to help. But then her requests got bigger and bigger. I still wanted to be a good person and help someone in need.

Helping her slowly turned into an unspoken obligation. When she called me for help, I almost felt reluctant. And after I got back, I felt the anger rising in me.

Funny how that pattern goes…

Suddenly, I understood my grandfather and decided not to keep that story ongoing. Instead, I took my anger as a lesson and made sure I reduced the contact with my neighbor as much as possible.

The same goes when you suddenly feel guilty, although you have done nothing wrong. Like when you have to say no to somebody.

There is no problem with feeling guilty. After all, it's a signal. And when someone makes you feel guilty for protecting yourself, it should ring your alarm bells and make you aware of a possible boundary crossing.

The same goes when you feel drained in your interactions with others. You may not know where it is coming from. But it's a signal that you are losing energy and that your boundaries might be leaking.

Rationalising or Overthinking a Situation

When we feel safe, life is easier and lighter. We don't need to watch our guard all the time as if we are in survival mode.

However, if we don't feel safe, our brain is doing its best to protect us. It analyses everything around and classifies information. If it finds potential dangers, it will run simulations of what might happen in the worst case and how we could react.

That's basically what overthinking is. It only stops when we are either tired or feel safe again.

This also means that when we notice ourselves overthinking or overly rationalising things, something is off balance.

Time to pause for a moment and ask whether we still feel safe within our boundaries. If not, it can be a clear sign that they were either overstepped or severely violated.

So basically, when you notice that you are no longer connected to your feelings and are only in your mind, it may be a sign that one of your boundaries has been crossed.

Before You Go…

As announced in the previous newsletter, I am currently working on a test to help people better understand how strong or weak their boundaries are.

Quite a few lovely readers have shown interest and said they would like to try it.

The test should be ready by the end of this week.

If you’d also like to join the pilot group and haven’t told me yet, just leave me a comment below.

Leave a comment

I thought I knew who I was. I could say no, but usually only when I was really upset, but still often felt drained, taken advantage of, and not really connected to the world, as if I was mainly functioning and not really living in my power.

From all the comments I got on my boundary-setting memes, I know that many of you are facing similar struggles. So I decided to make this a focus topic for the next few weeks.

Today's episode is about understanding why we have weak boundaries. Once you understand this, you will also understand how strong boundaries develop.

After all, weak boundaries are not a character flaw. They are the result of adaptations made in childhood. And those patterns can be changed.

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A Lack Of Healthy References

Many of us with weak boundaries have no idea what healthy boundaries really are. Of course, we can read a ton of books about it. We can learn the definition by heart and try to follow a manual.

But that's a bit like watching movies about love. To understand real love, you need real experiences. No Hollywood movie can do that, not even those that make you cry like a river with all the triggered romantic feelings. You might think you understood love, but your heart is still craving for the real thing.

If you grew up in an environment where healthy boundaries didn't exist and where you were not allowed to establish any of your own, then you simply have no inner reference point.

And this can easily become your blind spot, as we often don't know what we are missing. So we keep searching for the puzzle piece that fills the void in us…

Having No Idea Who We Really Are

To set boundaries, we need to have an idea of where we begin and where we end.

This may sound too simple. But for many people, it really isn't.

Of course, we know our name and what we look like. We also know our education, our history, what we have achieved in life, and the identity we have built around these things.

But if we take all of that away, what remains besides our bodies?

The answer is: Our essence, our true inner core.

The reason why we don't know who we really are deep inside is often that we were never allowed to be who we truly are.

When you are born into a dysfunctional family system, you are often pushed into a role. This starts so early that we are usually not even aware of it. We grow into the role and then assume that's simply who we are.

As humans, we are highly adaptive and can function even in very adverse environments. Of course, we don't just want to function in a survival-like state. We want to live and thrive.

Some of us tried to rebel against the family system or softly tried to question the dynamics. But we learned that any attempt to do this was punished harshly. And since our survival depended on the family system, we backed down and kept on functioning until it became second nature.

Pushing Away Our Feelings

Many of us who grew up in dysfunctional families learned that feelings can be overwhelming and that we had to regulate them all on our own. Often, nobody was there to give us a heartfelt hug, let us vent, or accept that our feelings were valid.

Instead, some were even punished for expressing their feelings as if something was deeply wrong with us.

So we learned that feelings were something undesirable.

One way out of this is letting the brain take over and rationalise our experiences.

The mind checks whether our feelings make sense. It also asks whether we are overreacting, making things up, or are too sensitive. In a way, our intellect takes over our inner world. It helps us to function and survive in our family system without creating too much friction.

At one point, this strategy feels normal. We may actually find it quite useful, especially in societies where people are praised for their intellect and cool minds.

The downside is that we become kind of tone deaf to our emotional needs.

We hardly notice when something feels wrong. We may notice it for a split second, but the signal is so weak that we brush it off like a random thought that makes no sense.

This is one of the reasons boundary violations can slip past us so easily. Not because they are harmless, but because we have learned not to fully register them.

And boundaries that are not noticed, named, or defended cannot become strong.

A False Sense of Loyalty and Duties

Often, when we want to say no, we feel terrible about it.

This tends to happen when we feel something is our duty or we owe it to people. It's when we are torn between what we want deep inside and what role we were trained to play.

It's also the point when our inner voice speaks up loud and tells us:

• You have to do this; otherwise, you are a bad person

• It's your family, you owe them. Without them, you would be nothing.

• If you were in their shoes, you would understand how much they need your help.

The thing is that even when we have learned to suppress our emotions, we can feel the suffering of others all the deeper.

We sense the suffering of others, but we confuse it with our own emotional world. This even amplifies our felt duty to help others.

But the question is, what are our real duties, and to whom do we have to be loyal?

There is nothing wrong with helping others. Actually, it's a good thing when we choose to do so of our free will and not because of a role we think we need to play.

We also don't owe anything to our family. I know this may sound harsh.

The point is that you are not born as a slave who must play an assigned role in the family system. Of course, for your own good, you might have been forced to comply and adapt. But once you can stand on your own two feet, you can decide who you want to be close with and who you keep at a distance.

In a loving and healthy family system, you wouldn't think of loyalty as a duty or something you owe. You wouldn't even feel guilty for saying no.

Your family would respect that. You would be loyal to your family without even thinking about it. You want your family in your inner circle. Because with your loved ones around you, you feel safer than anywhere else.

This all may sound a bit romantic. But it's probably the contrast you need to have to see the quality of your own family system more clearly.

Awareness Is the First Step

Having weak boundaries is nothing to feel ashamed of.

We all have different starting points in life. And it's not that you chose to have weak boundaries. You were not allowed to shine in your true colors and be who you really are.

But these patterns were formed in the past.

Now that you brought awareness to this topic, you have something to work with. It's never too late to get an idea of who you are and what your boundaries are.

Once you know who you are and what your boundaries are, your environment will see that clearly, too. Of course, that may push people who don't resonate with you away.

But on the other hand, strong boundaries help to attract the right people in your life. Because people will feel that you are no longer abandoning yourself.

Before You Go…

I want to share something I am currently working on.

Currently, I am developing a test to help people better understand how strong or weak their boundaries are.

If this sounds interesting to you and you would love to test it, leave me a comment below so I can contact you once it goes live.

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All these situations have in common that they feel as if our whole world is collapsing. And out of nowhere, we find ourselves standing in the middle of chaos.

In this reflection, I want to share what has helped me most in getting through such phases and how I found stability again.

When more of the same isn’t working anymore

A large part of our lives runs on autopilot. To some extent, this is a good thing. Because it makes life easier to live and also easier to achieve more. When we know the formula of life, we just have to increase the input to get more output, or tweak things a little here and there.

But when life suddenly falls apart, doing more of the same and increasing the input doesn’t work anymore. And that's exactly the point where we fear losing control.

The sooner we accept that the old mechanics aren't working anymore, the more we open up to finding new paths for us.

Of course, that means we need to face changes that might be very uncomfortable.

Starting with the basics

Chaos is often so overwhelming because we don’t know which of all the fires around us we should extinguish first. They are all urgent and are painfully hot.

Our minds go into spiralling thoughts, and it's easy to lose the last bit of orientation we thought we had, almost like we are losing ourselves.

But as every journey begins with a first step, there are also a few simple things that can help us manage chaos a little better.

Healthy food

There's a reason people say that without health, everything is nothing.

In difficult times, many of us try to numb ourselves with food, alcohol, or just any kind of distraction the world has to offer. All those things can work pretty well in the moment, but they don't improve anything. In many cases, these escape routes come at a very high price.

I found that health begins with what we put in our bodies. The older I get, the more clearly this becomes. These days, a big cup of ice cream almost gives me instant regret after I have finished it. When I was younger, I still would have smiled the next day… but when I had too many ice creams in too short a period of time, I would have eventually felt low.

The thing is that a well-nourished body can handle stress and chaos so much better. Of course, there are limits for everything. But even then, a healthy diet helps you recover much faster.

Good sleep

Good sleep comes right after good nutrition. Unfortunately, it is not quite as simple.

We usually know what healthy food looks like. But when it comes to sleep, many of us feel desperate to find something that directly helps.

Although there is no formula for the short term, there are still a few things you can do to support better sleep.

For me, reducing caffeine and sugar made a noticeable difference. It also helps to stop doing mentally challenging things about two hours before going to bed.

Of course, that is not always easy when your mind is full of worry. But whenever you are too much in your head, it helps to come back into the body.

Moving your body

Your body wants to be moved. You're not made for sitting on a cheap office chair staring at a display for most of the day.

You don't need a gym subscription or any fancy exercises. A simple 30-min walk often can do wonders. Do that every day and you will be surprised what it does for you. Make sure you walk in fresh air and lots of nature around you, if possible.

And when things feel really bad, it can help to spend a whole weekend doing something active. Go hiking. Ride your bicycle. Find a nice place for a day trip and just keep moving until you are so exhausted that you fall into bed like an innocent child.

And when that happens, you get an idea of how badly you actually needed to move your body.

Trying one thing at a time

This may be the most important rule when it comes to bringing order into chaos.

We humans are not good at multitasking. Of course, for things we can do on autopilot, it may work well enough. But whenever we face something new, and there is something to learn, it is usually better to focus on one thing at a time.

If you managed to have a healthier diet, you can start reducing your caffeine intake as the next step. Once that feels stable, you can focus on moving more.

Trying to fix all those things at the same time may work for a few days. But then you get a taste of how overwhelming too many things at the same time can be. That's when you give up and fall back into your old routines that are not really serving you.

When trying new things, we sooner or later reach areas where fear shows up. Like when we have to write a job application and suddenly notice how we start feeling like a loser, not good enough, and doomed to live in misery for the rest of our lives.

Anxiety is a messenger

One thing that helped me a lot was seeing anxiety as a messenger.

Of course, dealing with anxiety was never a walk in the park. At times, it felt so uncomfortable that I just wanted to get out of my body to escape the suffering it brought me.

But I noticed that once you allow yourself to feel these very intense sensations, they will start to fade. Knowing this is gold whenever anxiety pays you an uninvited visit again.

I also realized that anxiety has shown me the challenges I needed to face. After I wrote my first dozen applications, I noticed how I started feeling better. The rejections still hurt, but I kept writing applications for a while since I learned to do this more or less on automatic mode.

It's the unknown that we fear. And that's actually a good mechanism. Because whenever we step into new territory, we should keep our eyes open to spot unknown dangers. That's how we stay safe.

The message of anxiety is not to freeze and avoid everything new. All it’s telling us is to take small steps at the beginning and test new ground until it feels safe.

Cats probably don’t know much about anxiety. Maybe that's why they say: Curiosity killed the cat. But we humans are smarter and have a lot of fun when we handle our curiosity wisely.

Don’t forget to rest

I have often underestimated how much energy it takes to adjust to new environments.

Maybe that is also one reason why children are often tired. Their brains have so much to learn and so many new connections to build.

As adults, we often try to push this tiredness away with caffeine or nowadays energy drinks. We all know the pendulum will swing back.

It would be far better if we allowed our bodies more of the rest they crave. And that might be way more than we'd like to believe.

Often, we only notice this once we have a few days off and are no longer exposed to the same level of stress. Then suddenly we feel completely flat. At the latest, that is the moment to take our body seriously.

And there is nothing wrong with doing absolutely nothing for a few days, as long as we do it consciously for recovery and not as another form of avoidance.

Chaos settles once you find your way

In a way, the whole world is chaotic.

Whenever I traveled to exotic countries, I wondered how people could survive in such chaos. But after a few weeks, I got used to the new environment and learned how to move through it.

We humans are excellent at recognizing patterns. The more we allow ourselves to engage with our surroundings, the better we become at it.

Of course, our body and nervous system need time to adapt. They also need rest when there is a lot to process and learn. But if we respect those needs, we usually find our way sooner or later, even if the path feels rough for a while.

That's when the newly built automatisms begin to kick in. Life starts to feel easier again, until the next changes come.

We learn that this rising and falling is part of life. With every change, a certain calmness begins to grow in us.

We are made for this life and carry the strength to master our lives. It's often in times of crisis that we come into contact with our true core.

In that sense, every crisis and every phase of chaos also carries the chance to discover a new and beautiful path in life.

Quote of the week:

Sometimes strength looks like crying, resting, and trying again tomorrow.

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Often, these moments carry simple insights that let us understand our lives a little bit better.

That is what today’s reflection is about.

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Under The Surface

It was a mild summer day. I was sitting on a bench by the city lake with my laptop, finally trying to finish my blog post. Instead, I distracted myself by looking at pictures from my journey through Latin America.

After a while, an older woman politely asked if she could sit down next to me. She was neatly dressed and had a quiet presence about her.

I noticed her looking at my screen with curiosity.

“Where was that photo taken?” she asked.

I told her a bit about my journey, and I noticed how slowly she grew excited.

“I went to Cuba about 40 years ago,” she said.

She continued with a story about her Cuban tour guide. He once brought her back to her hotel and insisted on bringing her all the way to her room.

“And when we were in the elevator, what had to happen happened. He pulled me close like only a real man can, and kissed me deeply,” she said.

Her hands were trembling. She brushed her hair back with a soft and youthful smile.

She told me more about her life. About all the problems with her family, about always being pushed down, and about the loneliness she had carried all these years.

It seemed that this tour guide had awakened something in her that she could never fully bring to life afterwards. But he had given her this sweet moment.

I’ve noticed that many people carry stories like this within them.

From the outside, we see neither the pain nor the beautiful moments a person has lived through.

But when someone opens up, it can reveal far more than we might imagine.

Feeling Inadequate

We all have different starting points in life. Some people have a tough childhood. Others grow up in loving environments. Later in life, they face their own losses and crises.

There may be a few people who glide smoothly through their whole life. These days, I believe they are very rare.

In the past, I thought that everyone else had figured out life and that there was something wrong with me, that I was not good enough, or that I did not fit into this world.

Back then, I did not know the stories other people were carrying.

It is not at all about comparing ourselves with others. Rather, the point is that such life stories show us we are actually closer and more similar to one another than we are often aware of.

Who walks through life with their wounds fully visible to the outside world? Especially if they learned early on that showing feelings only leads to more pain.

When we share our stories, we make it easier for others to recognize themselves in them. And that can create an invisible bond between people.

Of course, this only works when there is trust. Sometimes a simple bench on a summer day at the lake is all it takes…

Quote of The Week

Don’t offer a lecture to a person who needs a hug.

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A must-do this, a should-do that, a promise to keep, and all the expectations we want to meet. Some of those are not even ours, but standards or expectations from the environment we live in.

But sometimes, when we can hardly cope with all the stress, we ask ourselves:

When exactly are we planning to start living?

For some people, retirement is the best time for that. That's a bit like having to earn your life first.

The problem is that our bodies often don't support that approach. Years of stress have their price. And you cannot buy back your youth or your health with all the money in your savings accounts.

This post is not meant to criticize society or the system.

Instead, I will share things that helped me stop my life from being a constant chase.

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Some Problems Can Wait

This may sound like one of those simple truths older people like to share. And maybe I'm now old enough to follow all my ancestors who carried that wisdom…

In the end, it comes down to two things.

The first is to estimate the actual size of a problem. Not all problems are as huge as we may believe, especially when we are totally stressed out.

For this, it helps to ask a very simple question:

What really happens if I don’t deal with this right now?

In many cases, you can be a daredevil and find out what happens when you don't react. Being totally stressed out is a valid excuse if you use it only once.

Of course, you don't want to try this approach with health-related issues.

Whenever we get sick, we quickly realize how many other things suddenly stop being important. That helps us understand what the real big problems in life are.

The reason we tend to make problems bigger than they are is the fear of consequences. As children, we learned what it meant when we didn't do our duties, like doing our homework, cleaning our rooms, or unloading the dishwasher.

But now we are adults, and we can decide what truly requires our immediate action.

And that brings me to the second point.

What we define as a problem is often connected to our boundaries.

We don't have to pick up every obligation life throws at us. Sometimes the healthiest answer is a simple no.

Yes, it doesn't have to be complicated. Whenever anything is not a clear yes, it's a no. And when you are in doubt, you can tone it down with a soft maybe later. That gives you space to think about it without any pressure.

And if someone tries to put you under pressure, a firm no can be so liberating.

Going the Opposite Direction

Of course, you cannot avoid every problem. Some insist on being solved. And if you refuse to deal with them, they get bigger and create intense pressure.

But sometimes, no matter how hard you try, nothing changes.

That's when things get dark. What starts with frustration and anger can turn into a crisis. Life starts to become hopeless.

I remember situations when I was close to giving up.

But before that happened, my attitude became something like this:

Fine. If all this effort changes nothing, I might as well try the opposite approach.

In a way, it was a bit like showing life my extended middle finger.

Strangely enough, that worked out pretty well.

I remember an important exam that I failed in university despite putting my all into it for months. There was nothing I could have done more, really nothing. So for my second try, I didn't prepare for it anymore. Instead, I decided to approach the exam with an “I don’t care anymore” attitude.

It worked. And I even scored a good grade.

I’ve had similar experiences in other areas of life, and luckily, they were not all that dramatic.

During marathon training, I once realized that running much slower actually improved my performance.

Now I understand where this saying comes from:

Walk slowly if you are in a hurry.

Of course, doing the opposite isn't that easy. It makes a big difference whether you do it consciously or just as an impulsive reaction.

For example, my father was a very strict man who punished me hard for even the smallest deviations from his expectations.

I hated that and didn't want to become like him.

Life tested me later when I became a manager with a team of ten people.

Most of the time, my relaxed approach worked quite well. But some younger employees struggled to take responsibility. I tried patience and encouragement, hoping things would improve.

They didn’t.

Eventually, I had to become much stricter with them than I wanted, as I saw no other way out. In those moments, I felt terrible as I basically had become a bit like my father.

Over time, I realized that being strict is not all bad when applied in the right dosage.

I learned this lesson by avoiding strictness first. And it's basically the same with everything that you try to approach from the opposite direction.

You will not magically get a solution by just doing the opposite. But you will get very different outcomes. And that's data you can use to compare results and then fine-tune.

The thing is that by consciously doing the opposite, you open the channel of curiosity.

Do it in a playful and explorative way. You might be far more relaxed, especially once you have decided that you are close to giving up anyway.

When there is nothing left to lose, and we approach things with an open mind, that’s often when magic finds its way back into our lives.

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I like these walks. They inspire my brain with thoughts that I would not have when sitting at my desk. Our environment influences us more than we realize. Sometimes a simple change of scenery rearranges something inside.

As I stood there watching the water move, my inner voice asked me:

Why don't I do more things that feel like the natural flow of the water?

Things that come lightly and don't need me to force them or put pressure on myself?

And that's how I remembered the Notes to Myself series. Writing it was always fun and came easily. And what a surprise, it's also what resonates with you the most.

So here we go again…

From today on, I will publish a new Notes to Myself every Tuesday.

I have plenty of ideas about how to keep them fresh and thoughtful.

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Life Is Allowed to Feel Light

Every morning, I admire the red squirrels that come to my balcony. To me, they are symbols of lived lightness.

If they cannot get a nut, they go on to their next food source. After a few minutes, they come back and try to get the nut with another approach. This can go for many rounds. But there is never any drama, frustration, or hard feelings.

I grew up with a different mindset.

My family only valued very hard-working people, and of course, only when they were successful… only then was it deserved. Those who achieved things easily were called lazy, and my family just waited for the moment their lucky streak would finally end.

Hard work was not all wrong. But at some point in my professional life, I noticed that my biggest achievements came rather easily, like when I did not have to force myself and mainly did things out of joy or curiosity.

If you constantly hit resistance and your energy keeps draining, it could be a sign to stop pushing harder. The obstacle could be there for a reason.

Of course, when you try new things, there is often an initial friction, as if we first have to show that we really want it. But after that, there should be some kind of fulfillment.

Life is not meant to turn us into permanent cogs in a wheel. We only have this one life and want to live and experience it beyond just survival.

Healing Often Works In Mysterious Ways

In the past, I attended all kinds of courses I hoped would help me fill the emptiness inside. Somehow, I did not really feel connected. I wanted to belong and be accepted by those around me.

Reiki, Yoga, and different forms of energy work were all pleasant. I kept on practising each for a few months after. But somehow I did not notice any changes. So I gave up and moved to the next course until this felt somehow pointless.

Meditation was similar. It actually helped in the moment. It helped me calm down after work. I kept practicing for several years until I switched to short naps, which basically calmed me down as much.

And yet, years later, I became aware of what had changed.

All those practises helped me to reintegrate my emotional world. It happened so smoothly that I didn't recognize it as healing. There was no single breakthrough. Just one small opening leading to another.

Meditation helped me become more aware of my thoughts in daily life. I now notice when I drift off, slip into old patterns, or when I start over-explaining myself. Often, I can even interrupt that and change my direction.

All this reminds me of a key moment on my one-year journey through Latin America.

After a few months of traveling, I overheard a couple at the next table discussing happiness. I realized that I hadn't thought about happiness in ages. And the simple reason was that I was happy. Nothing was missing in my life, nothing that I wanted to be different. I just lived my life. I was in the flow.

Healing seems to work in a similar way.

When the weight of the past becomes lighter, we do not necessarily celebrate it. We simply live. We move. We stop negotiating with old ghosts.

Like the squirrel that jumps from tree to tree and somehow manages to receive nuts from humans with a hypnotic look.

It does not question whether it deserves them.

It just lives.

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In this video, I look at what generational trauma really means, how it shapes us beneath the surface, and how breaking the cycle is less about blame and more about awareness.

Please turn the sound on. I haven’t integrated my own voice yet. I’m still looking for a good solution, so give it a little time.

What you’ll learn

• What generational trauma actually means

• How trauma can travel through families like an echo

• Why inherited pain isn’t about blame

• The psychological, social, and biological pathways of transmission

• How hypervigilance, codependency, and attachment patterns develop

• Why anger toward parents can be a healthy signal

• The three stages of healing: recognize, repair, rebuild

• What forgiveness really means — and what it doesn’t

• Why breaking the cycle is an act of conscious adulthood

Read more

We do the work, face our shadows, and reflect on our lives. We want to understand why we carry patterns that make our lives miserable and full of suffering.

But the deeper we go, the darker our healing journey gets.

Old painful memories come to the surface. Our minds spiral like gyroscopes that never come to a standstill. Although we are exhausted, we can hardly find sleep.

At some point, it can feel like you’re living under a gigantic dark cloud. Almost as if your life before was an illusion, and you are now living a dreadful reality that has always been there.

And the more you think about all that, the worse it gets…

But there are ways out of this. Today, I share what worked for me.

The mind wants answers that don’t really exist

The core problem is that we try to escape our suffering by understanding our past and making sense of it.

That’s an entirely mind-based approach.

We replay our childhoods, analyse our parents, and search for explanations and some kind of logic. Making sense of things would be such a big relief.

But the sad truth is that often there is no valid explanation. Yes, your parents may have carried their own trauma. But that did not give them the right to unload it on your back, no matter how unaware they were of their trauma.

There was nothing wrong with you. Nothing could have justified the dynamics in your family system.

But yet your mind wants answers.... so it keeps working harder.

The small interruption I didn’t expect

While my mind spiralled like crazy, I was interrupted by something small.

I heard a knocking noise on my balcony that I couldn’t explain.

A cute red squirrel in fluffy, thick winter fur tried to reach seeds that slipped under a feeding plate for birds.

We looked at each other. And for a brief moment, I forgot everything around me. It felt as if the squirrel came to brighten up my day, like heaven-sent.

My thought spiral stopped. I wish he had stayed longer because watching this little bugger brought me a kind of inner peace I hadn’t felt for ages.

“How can I make him come again?” was the only question on my mind.

The next day, I bought nuts, placed them directly at my door, and hoped the squirrel would come back.

It did, and from then on, it did almost every day like clockwork.

How curiosity changed something inside me

When spring came, my curiosity took over. I wanted to know how far I could go with my new furry friend. Would the squirrel eat out of my hand?

I tried everything to slowly win its trust.

And… I succeeded. That was a magic moment on its own.

I gave my friend the name Anton. He started to come within a minute when I called him in the morning.

Every encounter with Anton brought back something I hadn’t felt in a long time — a simple, childlike curiosity about the world.

And that curiosity turned out to be more important than any insight I had been searching for.

The hidden trap of deep inner work

When we are doing inner work, our focus turns almost completely inward. We want to understand everything inside us, and in a way, we also want to know who we truly are.

But of course, when our attention is all inward, we lose sight of all the beauty around us. That’s why everything can feel so dark.

At some point, we need to integrate our outside world again to find balance. For this, small things are often enough.

For me, it was the squirrel that helped me shift.

For someone else, it might be noticing the smell of a flower, watching birds closely for the first time, or observing any animal long enough to realize how much we don’t actually know.

These small moments reconnect us with something real, immediate, and alive — something the mind alone cannot provide.

Why childlike curiosity brings lightness back

Childlike curiosity shifts our focus outward in the softest way possible. It’s part of our very nature.

Exploring the world with all its little wonders and miracles is what lights our spirits and what makes us feel alive.

Childlike curiosity is pure lightness. And with this, it is the total opposite of the dark and heavy cloud we may feel above us.

After heavy emotional work, this lightness isn’t optional. It’s part of how we come back into balance with ourselves and with life.

Curiosity doesn’t solve everything.

But it opens space where heaviness can soften.

What to do when life feels unbearably heavy

The simple answer is: Get out of your head.

But we all know how absurd that sounds when we question the whole world and our existence.

Let me give you another perspective.

When we do inner work, we basically want to heal the child in us. We look at all the wounds. What if we asked ourselves what we can do to make this child feel alive and joyful?

And that’s exactly where curiosity chimes in.

What new thing would you like to try just out of curiosity, without any expectations?

Maybe you have always wondered how stripes get into the toothpaste. How about cutting a tube open and finding out?

Maybe you always wanted to know what this Peruvian-Japanese fusion food tastes like. Why not get a recipe and try?

Those are just a few random ideas.

You could also do something more practical, such as taking lessons in drawing, playing a musical instrument, knitting, or whatever comes to mind.

It’s all about trying something new and actively doing things.

Give the child in you something to feel alive.

Sometimes the light is just a small step away

We often believe that healing requires going deeper and deeper within.

Up to a certain point, this is true. We need to look deep inside ourselves to face our shadows and integrate them into our lives.

It’s easy to get lost in that process. That’s when life can feel completely dark. In a way, it’s a sign to adjust the course of your healing journey.

Often it’s the little things that suddenly get our attention. Don’t ask why. Instead, be open to the precious and beautiful moments that appear. Don’t push them away, as they are the keys to bringing your life into balance.

For me, it was a squirrel named Anton. For you, it might be something entirely different.

The important part is allowing curiosity to lead you there. Because even on the darkest days, light rarely returns through force.

It usually finds its way back through the smallest, most unexpected moments.

Before you go…

For those of you who read my bio and wondered how I fell madly in love with red squirrels… now you know.

If you have also experienced one of these magic little moments that brought light back to you, I’d love for you to share it in the comments.

Often, it's exactly such stories that bring hope to those of us on a very bumpy healing journey.

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So this is the beginning of something new.

This post is the first entry in my premium series. You could call it a small premiere.

Please turn the sound on. I haven’t integrated my own voice yet. I’m still looking for a good solution, so give it a little time.

What you’ll learn

• Why going no contact with family starts a real healing journey

• The emotional detox phase after leaving a toxic family

• How childhood trauma and inner voices resurface

• Why relationships and boundaries shift

• How estrangement triggers a return through holidays or messages

• Rebuilding identity, self-trust, and emotional healing

• Why becoming yourself feels like a rebirth

👉 Paid subscribers unlock a concise 6-minute explainer video covering these phases.

Read more

The moment you start your childhood trauma healing journey, something strange happens.

Instead of gaining clarity, we fall into an abyss of darkness. Old painful memories come to the surface, we wake up in the middle of the night, sweating from anxiety or overwhelmed by the intensity of our feelings.

How could things get that bad?

Why have we lost control?

And who are we really, after all?

Thoughts like these made me question my reality. I felt like a total failure, was full of self-doubt, and lost all trust in myself. I had no idea how to turn my life around.

That’s when I was finally ready to let go of a version that was never me.

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When you realize you were living a role

You can only trust yourself when you know who you are. Sounds simple when in fact it isn’t.

When you grew up in a dysfunctional family system, you were never really seen for who you are. Instead, you were forced to fit in and play a role you never chose.

You learned to function, to cope, to read the room. That’s how you survived.

It was an adapted life. Functioning in it may have brought you far in life.

At some point, the lie you were forced to live with collapses.

Then it’s quite natural that you have no idea who you are. How could you, when in the years that shaped you the most, you were not allowed to be yourself?

But what you do know is the price you had to pay for all that.

By this, I mean the emptiness, the disconnection, and the feeling of never really belonging.

How your self-trust was broken

I believe that deep inside, we have some sort of understanding of who we are, no matter how old we are.

If you go back to your childhood, you will find moments when you rebelled against your role or felt that something was deeply wrong. You probably brought your concerns to the table, which just made things worse.

That’s when:

- Your feelings were dismissed

- You were called too sensitive

- You were heavily criticised and made to feel small

- You were punished for speaking up against the family

The lesson you got there was that showing or expressing feelings was dangerous. So you learned to suppress them. And in turn, this made you neglect a big part of who you are.

The real miracle is that you found ways to function despite living against your nature. Or in other words: You have no idea how strong you really are.

Keep this in mind. If you had the strength to function in a role that was never yours, you also have the strength to find your way back to your true self.

The importance of self-soothing

The first step in rebuilding your self-trust is to reconnect with your feelings. That may sound more complicated than it is. In essence, it means allowing yourself to feel your feelings until they fade. No matter how intense they become.

I know that anxiety can feel life-threatening, and all the thoughts that spin around this feeling make it even more real. Telling yourself that “this too shall pass” will sound like an evil cosmic joke — and won’t help at all.

But let’s roll back to what would happen in a healthy family...

You would run to mommy for cover. She holds you tight and makes you feel safe like only a mother can. After a few minutes, you go on with life and finally forget about what scared you.

When you are a little older, your parents will teach you to face your fears directly. It’s a bit like daddy letting you jump into the water to learn to swim, while making sure to give you a hand when needed.

Of course, now you are not a child anymore. Nevertheless, when feelings overwhelm you, and they sure will when you deal with your childhood trauma, you need ways to soothe and calm yourself down. Only then will you find the trust that you can actually hold these feelings and finally process them.

Personally, it helped me a lot to replace my inner voice with that of a loving and caring older brother. So whenever anxiety, worthlessness, or whatever heavy feeling overcame me, I let this older brother speak to me.

You can choose any person or role model you want. The only important point is that you can trust that inner voice. Only then will it help you to calm down.

It can take a while until you have learned to handle your strongest feelings from the past. You will notice that you feel safer overall, are less triggered, and become more at peace with yourself.

At that stage, you can do more things that help you even more to connect with your body (e.g., Yoga, Reiki, breathing exercises, etc.).

Rebuilding trust

Once you have reconnected with your feelings, you will naturally regain a sense of who you are. You will become conscious again of what feels right and wrong.

In other words: You have your inner compass back.

The struggle at this point is that you will be a bit in no-man’s land. You will no longer be in your old assigned role. It can feel unbearable. And if there’s one thing you know for sure, it’s that you never want to go back. You want to live your life the way a tiger demands to be a tiger.

The only problem: You don’t fully know who you are yet.

This stage is also known as the void. It’s the space between your old (false) identity and becoming your real self.

The emptiness you feel in the void is of a different quality. It has a peaceful character. You know you are safe, but you may still have doubts here and there.

You can’t rush this stage. Instead, you can learn to use your compass. By that I mean: try different things and notice how they feel. Walk in a direction of your choice. Take small steps — but keep walking. If something feels wrong, change course.

The magic happens when you realize that you feel connected to the path you are walking. You learn to trust the steps you take — and that finally leads to trusting yourself.

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I met many lovely people. Although they were strangers, they felt more like family than my actual relatives ever did.

For a long time, I had no idea why it was that way. I only wondered why it wasn’t the other way around. Shouldn’t family feel safe...?

Back then, I had already done a lot of healing work. I took Reiki classes, tried Yoga, and all sorts of energy healing. I hoped this would help to fill the emptiness I felt inside.

All these techniques did something for me. However, the effects never really lasted that long.

At one point, I was so frustrated with my life that I decided on the only option that seemed to work. I quit my job, sold almost everything I had, and decided to travel for a year.

Life was great during that year. The real surprise was how much energy distance from home and everything connected to it brought back into my life — an effect that lasted for years.

The journey wasn’t a final cure, but it confirmed what I already knew deep inside:

I needed distance from what drained me to heal.

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Chronic Stress Makes Healing Impossible

We all have a blind spot and often cannot see the obvious. Our modern lifestyle doesn’t make it any easier. We are constantly stressed and under tension. Somehow, we adapt to it — and in the process lose our sense of what is actually draining us.

The belief that you only have to work harder and more efficiently to finally get space doesn’t help much either.

The thing is that you cannot heal under stress and tension. For physical wounds, we know this very well. When you break your leg, you don’t try to run a marathon and allow more space to heal when there’s a better time for it...

Interestingly, mental health issues often become visible once the tension decreases. Like when we take a few days off to relax and wonder why we are so exhausted.

Working hard can almost feel like a drug, including the withdrawal symptoms. It’s quite incredible how much stress can push away things and how long you can function this way.

But it only works for so long. There is probably a reason why people burn out and why it’s not a stigma any longer (at least in some countries).

You Can’t Heal in a Toxic Environment

Stress is one factor that inhibits or slows down healing from trauma. Another big one is the environment you are in. With this, I mainly mean the people you spend time with.

When you’ve never really been loved and accepted for who you are, you never develop a sense of toxicity. For me, this showed up as emptiness and a deep feeling of not belonging anywhere.

Even before my long journey, I met people who were extremely kind and lovely to me. First, I thought there was something suspicious about them. There wasn’t... so I figured they must have been some of these very rare angel-like persons...

They weren’t... because I met more and more of them the farther away from home I was.

That’s basically how my sense for toxicity started to develop.

You need to keep physical wounds clean for them to properly heal. The same goes for wounds from a traumatic childhood.

Which brings me to the next point...

Healing Childhood Trauma Takes Time

Many of us only find out about the true nature of our childhoods in our 40s, 50s, 60s, or even later.

Such wounds go deep, which already tells you that they cannot heal within six weeks like a broken bone.

Nobody can really tell you how long your healing journey will take. However, it’s not a complete walk into the unknown. In my scapegoat healing journey series, for example, I describe which typical steps you’ll walk through.

The more you reduce negative stress and avoid toxicity, the better you will heal. I know this all sounds a bit abstract since you may not be fully aware of what stress and toxicity actually are for you.

In the end, it comes to understanding what you need to feel safe.

For this, ask yourself the following questions:

• What are your physical needs?

• What are your emotional needs?

• What are your biggest worries?

• What help do you need or would like to have to feel better?

• What would you need to have no worries for the next 2 years?

How to Create a Safer Life in Practice

Creating a Stable Foundation

For me, it was very important to have a financial cushion. I learned early in life that I couldn’t rely on my parents’ support. Also, I wanted freedom to leave a job in case it became unbearable.

Taking care of your body is even more important. Nobody wants to get sick. Eat healthy food, move your body, and take good care of it.

In that regard, your brain and eyes also need hygiene. Reduce your news intake. Most of what they present to you is irrelevant drama that has even lower nutritional value than the worst junk food. Try it for a week, and you will see how well you can do without that addictive stuff.

Finding Peace Outside

I don’t know why this is, but whenever I made a long hike or bicycle tour, I always felt at peace with myself and forgot about my worries. Nature is a healer. It's the place where we belong. It's also where we can use all our senses to the fullest and always find something to explore, no matter how small.

Feeling Safe Through Simple Bonds

Sometimes there are no like-minded people around. But there are usually chances to feed cats, ducks, birds, or walk a dog from an animal shelter. You will be surprised by how smart and empathic animals can be. They will easily remember when you treated them well.

I made friends with squirrels, gave them names, and fed them almost every morning. They learned to trust me and even eat out of my hand. It’s a special kind of connection and makes life feel good.

Presence Without Effort

We all have things we can do for hours and lose track of time, like when we were children. For some, it’s playing a musical instrument, writing, or other creative activity. It basically comes down to living in the moment and not questioning it or letting the mind take over control.

Recalibrating Your Sense of Safety With Others

We all have good and bad times. Sometimes people might need your support, other times you might need their support. That’s how healthy relationships work.

When I started my healing journey, I did not really know who drained my energy. I was a people pleaser and naturally gave more than I would have ever dared to receive. In other words, I was used to getting my energy drained.

It helped to ask myself how I felt right after I spent time with family or so-called friends. Often, I couldn’t tell. But that also meant that they didn’t uplift me.

One time, I visited friends and played board games with their young children. The kids are so excited about that. And somehow that excitement spilled over and uplifted me even the day after.

The whole point of this exercise is to recalibrate your sense of what is giving you energy and what might potentially be toxic for you.

Unless you aren't totally sure, rather reduce contact instead of cutting off people too lightly. Real friends will understand that you currently need some „me time“.

All the above is to get a better idea about your energy levels and to increase them. The higher your energy levels, the safer you will feel in life and the better your healing journey will progress.

Your nervous system, including your brain, might take some time to rewire. The first indication that you are actually at a safe place is that you get triggered less, overreact less, and overthink less.

All three of them were mechanisms you needed for survival. But when you feel safe, your nervous system can finally calm down. It doesn’t need to be in high alert mode anymore. And that’s when the tension releases and healing can do even more magical things for you.

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Knowledge, or better said, a deeper understanding of how things work, makes us feel powerful. It gives us control over our environment and promises safety.

In many regards, this is true. Natural catastrophes, predatory animals, and many diseases have indeed far less impact on us these days.

But there are also limits to how far understanding everything is actually beneficial. And that’s what this post is about.

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Why Thinking Everything Through Feels Safe

For most of my life, I was a head-centered person. I wanted to understand everything, including myself. That was all fine up to a certain point.

But as we all know... sometimes life throws shit at us, so bad that we question our reality.

During those dark days, I got a better idea about my childhood and the dysfunctional family dynamics I grew up in.

I read every book I could find just to make sense of my past.

For a while, that actually worked. But then all the feelings I buried deep for such a long time came to the surface again.

• Why am I feeling that bad?

• What’s wrong with me?

Questions like these raced through my mind, and I was spiralling down to darker and darker places.

I not only questioned my past and everything I thought I understood. I questioned myself up to my bare existence.

You know... self-doubt easily turns into a force that eats you from the inside out. That’s when you learn the limits of logic and rationalising things...

All those years before, I never really touched those limits. That’s because I was still able to suppress all my painful feelings. Being in my head made me feel safe enough to function in this world.

But of course it only worked for so long...

Feelings Don’t Need to Make Sense

Feelings do not need to make sense. Actually, we usually have no problem feeling all the positive feelings. Also, we mostly don’t question them.

With negative feelings, that can be a whole other story. The reason for that is that they sometimes can feel life-threatening. Other times, they make us feel like we’re losing control, which, of course, can be a big problem when you have not learned to let go, yet.

One thing all feelings have in common is:

They come and go. No feeling lasts forever.

The more you ruminate about why you have this or that negative feeling, the longer it tends to last. Until you are so exhausted from all the thinking that you either fall asleep or just feel empty.

In a way, the underlying process kinda teaches you to let go of trying to think your way out and instead reconnect with your feelings again.

Once you’ve learned the lesson, life will improve for the better. You upgraded your game from being head-centered to being able to both feel and think.

Understanding Has Its Limits

Rationalising things still makes sense up to some point. Of course, this only works when you don’t use thoughts to push your feelings away. Feeling and thinking want to coexist, peacefully...

Or in other words: We need a healthy balance.

For me, it helped quite a lot to understand how my parents became the way they were. I found the answer in generational trauma that was passed onto them, and that they never really became aware of.

Of course, that didn’t justify their behaviour. But it explained it and let me understand that it was never about me. I just happened to be born into a traumatised family system.

I know I can neither change what happened nor change how my family sees and treats me. This understanding only served to finally find peace with myself.

Healing Comes From Integration

Looking back on my healing journey, allowing myself to feel and making sense of my story to some degree were just pieces of a far greater puzzle.

It’s a bit difficult to explain. But the moment you reconnect to your feelings and allow yourself to feel all of them, your perception of the world changes.

The need to rationalise everything fades so smoothly that you probably will recognise that in hindsight.

The best way to describe it is that you get the lightness of an innocent child back. At the same time, you also use your brain and naturally make use of all your experiences and knowledge without it being a burden.

In a way that leads to integrating everything that happens in and around you. A bit like you are becoming whole again...

Learning to Trust Life

At one point, you will understand that you don’t need to be in control of life. Of course, you still have to brush your teeth, watch the traffic lights, and so on....

What I mean is that you will come to the understanding that life can happen for you and that you do not need to force it in some direction just to be safe.

We all know that life can change every second. Sometimes it’s for the better, and other times things can get worse or even tragic.

The thing is, with letting go of the wish to control and rationalising everything, you open up to life and leave survival and just functioning mode. You start to live life, if that makes sense.

Looking at nature makes this a bit clearer. Every animal is prepared for life, doesn’t need to force things, and just follows the natural flow.

We humans, are very capable of that as well. All it takes is to integrate all our parts.

I know it sounds easy, especially when you had a tough childhood, but it’s possible. The body, mind, and soul can heal miraculously if you step out of the way and let go of the desire to always be in control.

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Anger is one example of that. It’s quite a powerful force that can be used in a constructive but also very destructive way. Society sees mostly the latter aspect. That’s why we often learn from our parents as children that anger is not only undesired but also actively suppressed.

So we swallow that feeling down as best as we can. Gone it is, at least for a while.

And then there are all these deeply unpleasant feelings, like feeling like a failure, too stupid, not worthy, unseen, lonely, etc. Our thoughts tend to amplify these feelings. Some of them feel like a real-life threat.

Of course, there are ways to process these feelings in a healthy way. But we are often stressed out or so overwhelmed that we are looking for a quick solution.

Numbing is one word for that.

It’s more commonplace than you may think. Just have a look at the per capita alcohol consumption, and you get an idea.

Another way is to shut off your feelings. Of course, that doesn’t make them go away, but you push them out of your awareness. It’s called rationalising, and it’s exactly what many people who operate only with their heads do.

It makes them a bit like machines. They often seem very logical from the outside. Only when you know them better can you sense that there is much more below the surface. They may not even know this by themselves, as they often have learned in early childhood to only use their heads. It started as a coping mechanism and became second nature.

Numbing or pushing feelings away wouldn’t be a problem if that worked. But what happens is that all these strategies only bottle up our unwanted feelings and emotions.

When the pressure in the bottle gets too high, the body reacts with diseases (e.g., stomach problems for suppressed anger), or you fall into some sort of depressive state.

We don’t want any of that. Therefore, it makes sense to reestablish the connection to your emotional world and find healthier ways to cope with them.

Allowing yourself to feel again

Let’s forget for a moment all the reasons why you are either pushing away or numbing your feelings. There is a reason why you do that, and you cannot just open the floodgates.

Instead, we need to start with methods that feel safe and only let feelings through that we can handle.

One way is to go the spiritual healing path. With this, I mean things like Reiki, Yoga, and Chi Gong. It’s all techniques to help you bring the focus into your body and feel it more consciously.

In the beginning, it can be quite amazing when you suddenly feel your hands without using them. This makes you naturally curious about what else you can feel in your body. And exactly this curiosity reconnects you softly with your feeling world.

Learning to play a musical instrument can also help you get more in touch with your body. The same goes for any other art for which you need to use your hands consciously and train them to do things they were not used to.

A safer environment

One reason why we had to push or numb our feelings was that we were not at a place that felt safe.

So while all the above will have some effect, your progress will come to a halt when you don’t change your environment.

The simplest change you can make is to spend as much time as you can in nature. It’s the best thing we can do for our bodies. Nature calms us down, gives us fresh air to breathe, and appeals to all our senses.

The next question is what else you can do to feel safer. Maybe you currently have a toxic job, or you fear that you can get fired any second.

It could also be that your financial situation is giving you panic. What can you improve on that? And if facing that issue is too overwhelming, who could help you to give you at least emotional support?

All the above will not directly change your environment, but they will improve how you feel about the place you are in now.

Feelings don’t need to make sense

For a long time, I wondered why I had this or that feeling. Of course, I only asked that for the ones that I regarded as negative or unpleasant. The „positive“ feelings were always invited and needed no reason to enter my life.

The thing is, feelings come and go. There is no particular benefit in understanding your feelings. Allowing them and healthily processing them is a different story, though.

When you are angry, you don’t really need to know the reason. You need to get your anger out in a non-destructive way. You could punch a bag, or yell „fuck you“ in your head, and start actions that will improve the situation you are angry about.

Feeling lonely is more difficult to process. The reason is that being alone would have been life-threatening for you as a baby. We humans are social animals and need connections to others like we need sunlight.

The problem is that this connection can even be missing with lots of people around us.

You don’t need to know the reason why you are lonely. As with all other feelings, the first step is to allow yourself to feel this feeling. And then you observe what it does with you.

How does it feel in your body? What thoughts does it trigger?

Just observe and don’t forget to breathe, and of course, make sure you are at a place that feels safe enough for you.

The magic of allowing yourself to feel this loneliness is that it connects you with your body. It’s a connection you had lost for a while. When you are not in touch with yourself, it’s no wonder that you may feel empty or lonely.

Again, you don’t need to know the reason for the feeling. Just accept that you have feelings that are messengers that want to be seen. Let them show you...

Rollercoaster ride

The more you allow your feelings to get through to you, the more they will show. Sounds easy, but it can be a bit challenging.

The good news is that you will be more aware of positive and negative feelings. In a way, this will enrich your life as it will make you feel more whole.

The challenging part is that the intensity of your feelings will also increase. In other words, it can be a bit of a shaky ride. Knowing this makes it all the easier. Otherwise, you might be taken by surprise when, after several sunny days, very dark nights might show up.

But again... feelings come and go. At this point, you will know this on a rational and bodily level. This means you learned to trust the process of dealing with these feelings until they dissolve and are out of your body.

Your bottled-up emotions will get fewer and fewer. At one point, life doesn’t feel like a burden anymore. That’s when you have left the roller coaster stage.

Life will stabilise more and more from there. Where once there was drama and overwhelm, peace slowly enters your life. There will still be ups and downs. They are the spice of life, but they will feel more like hiccups.

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“What’s in your backpack?" I asked her

She listed countless items. Among them were quite exotic items like a UV sterilisation lamp, water filters, and all sorts of other gear.

I wondered who needed that. After all, we were only on a well-organised 4-day tour to the Lost City in the Colombian Caribbean jungle. It was clearly not a survival tour.

She told me she wanted to be in control and be prepared for the worst case. Somehow, she forgot to think about how to carry all that when the ground became slippery and the path steep.

No judgement here...

The desire to be in control comes in so many forms that most of us fall victim to it in one way or another.

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Controlling other people

Nobody wants to be under someone’s control. Yet many of us like to have control over how the guy in front of us on the highway drives.

Often, we want people to follow our way of understanding. We like to think that we know best what’s right and wrong. At least for the little things in daily life.

But it goes further than that. We have roles in our families, society, and workplaces. Hierarchies naturally come with some sort of control. Of course, it’s a question of how far this control goes.

It also makes quite a difference whether control is open and directly visible, or whether it takes a more subtle form, as is the case with manipulation.

In the latter case, anxiety is the most widely used tool to gain control over people. Governments, religions, and families — they all use it.

Controlling yourself

Being disciplined is one form of self-control. It can be quite beneficial when you don’t overdo it. But that’s not the form I mean here.

By controlling yourself, I mean the voices in your head that „force“ you to do what is expected from you, to comply with a given role, and to follow the path laid out for you.

In other words, being tough with you and making sure you stay on track.

Controlling your environment

This category includes everything non-people-related to make sure life goes your way. No surprises, at least not unwanted ones.

The girl from the introduction is a perfect example of that. In daily life, you see such a need for being in control, having insurance for everything, and being a perfectionist in everything you do.

What’s behind the need to be in control

We all need some sort of control. Even animals check their fur for fleas and lice. Without any sort of control, we would end up in chaos. Imagine a society without a police force. While on a small level, this might work, it for sure means chaos on a higher level.

Yet we often crave more control than the bare minimum. And the reason for this is that we became too attached to a predictable life and certain outcomes.

Going deeper, you’ll see that the real root cause of such control is underlying fear. Sometimes, as in the case of having police, it is well justified. Most of the time, however, it’s the fear of being powerless.

Parents exert control over their adult kids to make sure they’ll never be lonely, especially in the case when they’ll be old and fragile.

That’s just one example. The need to be in control has the underlying fear that you do not have in you what it takes to master life. In other words, without being in control, you feel doomed.

The answer to that is not to have more control over life. It’s questionable if you can ever really be in control. I don’t want to be fatalistic here, but we all know life can change at any second.

So what to do?

A better strategy

Looking back, many wonder how they made it this far in life. And that’s where the key lies.

Somehow, we managed to make it through the storms. Our ships might have been hit by a rock. But we fixed the hole, made it into a safe haven, and got our ships into good condition again.

We learned to master the seas while sailing with our boats. We couldn’t prepare for everything, but we were ready for the challenge. At one point, we discovered that we had everything in us. We don’t have to do it all on our own, asking for help is a skill on its own...

The point is that no matter how weak or strong we were, we found solutions. There is a force in us that we can trust.

It’s the very same force that keeps us alive.

Every second, all sorts of bacteria, viruses, toxins, or whatever try to kill us. Our bodies know what to do and make sure we stay safe. The body also knows how to heal in case we hit the proverbial rock and have a hole.

We have the capacity to live our lives. We don’t need excessive control. Instead, it’s a far better approach to free ourselves from unjustified anxieties and find trust in the magic treasure in us that lets us master life.

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We all know healing doesn’t work this way. We also know that healing is not linear. Even when you manage to feel slightly less miserable, some dark clouds may show up again.

Last year I learned another lesson...

Healing often happens under the surface and can feel like making no progress at all.

My patience was heavily tested in this regard. It turned out to be a lesson on its own and gave me some valuable insights that I can now share with you.

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Having the Wrong Expectations

For most things in life, you do something to get a more or less expected result.

You want to run a marathon? Just follow a training plan and keep track of your progress. You see that the effort you put into your plan results in visible progress.

It’s similar to healing physical wounds. When you break a bone, you have fancy X-ray images in the beginning, and at one point experience that you can walk again. After a few more weeks, you are totally back to normal, and healing is done.

But that’s not how it works with healing childhood trauma we carry with us, such as growing up as a family scapegoat in a dysfunctional family system.

In such cases, you may never have experienced any dynamics that could be regarded as healthy. So there is no before where you lived in a loving and caring environment.

And that’s exactly why you don’t really know what to expect from your healing journey.

Maybe you expect just to be loved and be accepted without having a reference for how that actually feels.

Hollywood movies that make you weep because of the romance you see don’t count. Love and belonging aren’t something you can explain or show. You can only know the true essence by experiencing it yourself.

And maybe the healing you long for isn’t like butterflies in your tummy or other elevated feelings. Maybe it’s just silence and peace, and maybe it’s even something completely different.

Healing takes as much time as it takes

You need a time frame if you want to measure progress.

Let’s say healing takes ten years. You wouldn’t check your progress every day — and if you did, you’d expect very little change.

Expecting everything to be fine within a year only leads to frustration when months pass, and nothing seems different.

But here is the kicker...

Many people become aware of what really happened in their childhood when they are in their thirties, forties, or even later. The thing is that we humans are very good at adjusting to the environments we live in, learn to cope, and somehow functioning.

Your life may feel very normal, as the emotional wounds you carry are just not visible to you. They are like a blind spot, something you learned to push away so well that you couldn’t see it...

Now you do... at least the parts that you either can or no longer want to suppress. Yet you don’t know what else is under the surface.

All you know is that you want to heal and feel whole.

So when you don’t know about the size and depth of the wound, it’s impossible to expect progress in a given time frame.

All you can do is take things step by step and trust the process.

And that can be quite unpleasant because the ego wants control.

But... there will be progress. It may just look very different from what you expect.

What healing looks like

Most of my healing I only recognised in hindsight. That doesn’t mean that it was insignificant. It was more like things got gradually better.

After a few weeks, I noticed that I slept better and that I only woke up at night when I had to go to the toilet and then fell straight into dreamland again.

Triggers were another thing. Of course, I still get out of balance sometimes, but the amplitude is much smaller. Nowadays, I sometimes need just seconds to get back to normal.

Like when I recently got news from the tax office. My heartbeat went up, and anxiety was spreading... I took a few deep breaths and decided how to get that problem solved. No more drama here.

Of course, it wasn’t seconds suddenly. I remember such news threw me off for days in the past... then it became just half days, hours, minutes, and so on.

I also noticed that I am no longer afraid of speaking my truth. In the past, I overexplained myself and invested way too much energy in finding the right words.

Yes, some people were not ready for that, and I fell back into old patterns. But after a while, I found out that by speaking my truth, I attracted more people who could deal with that very well.

In other words, I found myself living more authentically... if that makes sense somehow.

Why nothing seems to happen

Looking back, it’s kind of funny that whenever I made the biggest progress, it felt like standing still.

That’s because I was mainly looking for things on the outside. However, inside wasn’t that different. Although I was at peace with myself, I felt emptier than ever.

Healing felt a lot like self-betrayal at that point, and the only thing that I had achieved was to stay calm and not freak out with all the silence around me.

Later, I learned that in this phase of rest, my nervous system was reorganising. All the change happened under the surface.

It’s really difficult to describe what actually happened. The best analogy I could find was learning to play an instrument like a guitar, for example.

In the beginning, it’s really hard to put your fingers in the right position. It almost feels like you have to break them. You practise for weeks, and your wrist may hurt. And at some point, you understand that you need some breaks in between.

Then all of a sudden, the positions you have practiced so much work automatically. Playing the guitar becomes fun, and you wonder why it couldn’t always be as easy as this.

In the end, it comes down to your body having to learn a new reality. In the beginning, you push all the parts that you no longer keep with you out through inner child and shadow work.

After that, the vessel is empty and needs to be filled with something new. It’s nothing you can control with your mind, heart, or whatever you are conscious of.

Healing is a force of nature. All you can do is not stand in the way and take care of your body. But how healing in general works, nobody knows. Wounds just heal by themselves once you clean them and have a body that is still capable of healing.

There is a beauty in the fact that healing is done for you and that it often works the best when you least notice it. Maybe it has to happen under the surface so that you have no chance to stand in the way. But who doesn’t like cosmic jokes...

When magic finally unfolds

Sometimes life feels like a mirror. But at a closer look, it’s more like my brain makes me see things that I resonate with the most.

We all know this effect. Remember when you went to driving school and suddenly saw driving school cars everywhere you went. Our attention naturally shifts to what is important for us.

Before I started my healing journey, I lived in survival mode. Thus, I tended to be hypervigilant, read the room, and walk on eggshells. That was my coping mechanism for surviving in the environment I grew up in.

I’m only naming the obvious things here. There were so many other things that were fitting to my survival identity, and my brain focused on what was important for me.

The point is that all those things were real for me. They always were real. But they were only a fraction of the reality out there.

Magic kicks in when your inner self has changed so much that your perception suddenly shifts, and you also see all the beauty out there, not just the shadow.

For me, it was a revelation to experience how lovely young mothers cared for their children. Or when I had to talk with a tax officer, and I was deeply surprised that he was open to understanding my position and actually helped me, whereas my old self would have expected punishment.

Yes, it’s all little things. But when many of these little things that make life just a little better day by day... then you truly get to see the results of your healing.

Where life was once a struggle, you slowly start to feel that you belong, that you are here for a reason, and that you are somehow connected with the environment around you.

Magic... trust the healing process and make it happen.

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A time when many of us sit down and set resolutions for the year ahead.

New year, new start, a new chance to get things right…

We may remember that our previous resolutions didn't last long. But hey, this time everything will be different.

I've been there and failed to keep my resolutions and goals more often than I succeeded. And even when I did succeed, the feeling of happiness didn't last long.

After struggling with New Year’s resolutions often enough, I tried a different approach—one that turned out to work better for me.

That's what I want to share with you today, and the picture below serves as a small teaser.

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The Problem With Goals

Goals are a hit or miss; you either achieve them or you don't. Of course, when you fail, you can try again. Or you decide to celebrate partial achievements, but who really wants that?

And then it's the question of what reaching a goal will eventually bring you.

• Will it make you happier, and if so, for how long?

• Will it improve your life?

• Or will there be a new emptiness after reaching your goal that craves to be filled by finding a new goal?

I'm not saying that all goals are useless. Chasing goals can also be a lot of fun; that's basically what sports and competition are often about.

My point is that we tend to put way too much hope in goals to make us happy. We focus on something that is often irrelevant in itself and become blind to what actually matters.

Why Direction Matters More Than Goals

Now let’s come back to the image above.

Imagine you are on the road above, starting on the far left, and you want to drive up the mountain and reach the point on the far right. You have no idea what the road looks like.

As soon as the first curves appear, you get frustrated. Because it becomes clear that reaching your goal might be far more difficult than you assumed.

Things change if you choose the point on the far right as the direction you want to go. It's a bit like saying, “I want to go this way and stay open for what unfolds.”

When you reach the curves, you see them as course corrections. You may even enjoy the outer edge of some curves, as they allow you amazing views into the valley below.

So even if you don’t reach the point on the far right, you still have a chance to enjoy the experience. You wouldn’t feel like a loser, but you’ll remember the path you walked much better—because that’s what counts when you choose a direction.

You can apply the same approach to your goals and resolutions for the New Year.

Instead of declaring, “I want to lose 10kg,”

You say, “I choose to experiment with eating lighter meals and more unprocessed foods.”

Choose a path you want to walk—and let success be a byproduct of the journey. Make it playful and fun so that you gain something with every step you take.

Before You Go…

If this piece resonated with you, I’d love to hear from you—whether that’s a heart or a few words in the comments.

Writing is often a quiet act, and these small interactions remind me that there’s a real person on the other side of the screen.

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