Hello!

Thank you so much for providing this space, and I hope you're taking care of your mind and spirit this week. I'm dealing with a tough situation with my separated partner (whose pronouns are they/them). We have been legally married for seven years, and they are still caring for my disabled mother while I attend graduate school in another state. This separation is meant to help us figure out what we want to do next (e.g., if we want to attend marriage counseling or are prepared for a more formal, legal separation), but I honestly don’t know what to do. We’ve had some communication challenges since the start of our marriage. We both value our friendships, but we have distinctly different styles of caring for our friends, and I’ve occasionally felt insecure about how they care for certain friends, especially those with whom they’ve had romantic feelings in the past. We have had conversations about it whenever it comes up, but last year, while I was visiting home during winter break, I found out about a recent connection of theirs, initially from a dream they shared with me about this person (and I’ve heard little about this person during our calls). I didn’t see them much during my month-long visit; instead, they spent quite some time at the person’s home and missed dinners at our home. When I finally raised questions, they were defensive, dismissed my feelings over the person’s feelings, and said to our close circle and me that I was being controlling and abusive in the ways I “dictated” who and how they make friends. It wasn’t until two months later, in early February, that they admitted they had feelings for this person and had been going over to the person’s place for morning coffees, evening dinners, and massages while reading to each other nearly every day, all of which felt like a lot of emotional investment. They’ve continued to tell me and others that they felt hurt by my questions, as my questions felt explosive and interrogating to them, and they felt abandoned when I asked to separate. I also found out that, as they were telling our families, they take care of my mom out of love and would feel insulted to be compensated, they’ve withdrawn more than $17K from my personal and our shared savings accounts over a 10-month period. I will be visiting home again in two weeks to celebrate my mom’s birthday, and I really hope I can develop a set of questions and reminders to help me approach this dynamic. Thank you for reading!

The Cost of the Unspoken: Navigating the “Double Bind”

Dear Writer,

Thank you for writing in and sharing your situation with our Safari members.

Reading your letter, I see a deeply layered entanglement. You are in a tough spot: you are away pursuing your goals while your partner is performing the heavy labor of caring for your mother. This creates a privileged vs. labor dynamic that often breeds a “debt” mindset, making it feel impossible for you to hold them accountable without feeling like the “bad guy.”

But let’s zoom out and look at the hard truths here. The core of this conflict isn’t just “the other person”—it’s the avoidance that came before them.

1. The Trap of Implied Assumptions

When we don’t explicitly define the rules of engagement for friendships—especially those with past romantic ties, we fall into a trap of implied assumptions. You likely assumed “friendship” meant one thing; they assumed it meant morning coffees and massages. Because there was avoidance early on, you are now navigating in the dark.

In Buddhist philosophy, we talk about the “Second Arrow.” The first arrow is the event (your partner has a close friend). The second arrow is the one you shoot into yourself: the meaning-making. “They didn’t tell me about this on our calls,” or “They prioritize them over me.” This meaning-making is what’s causing your body to stay in a state of high activation.

2. Emotional Investment vs. Accountability

What you described, the daily dinners, the reading together, the massages—is a significant emotional investment. It looks like a relationship because, functionally, it is one. Your intrusion knows it. I challenge you here. What is the somatic experience you are carrying when you bring up your questions? Is it possible that somatic experience created undercurrents your partner feels and labels “interrogation?”

When you ask questions and they label it as “interrogating” or “controlling,” that is often a defense mechanism. You are finally showing up as a self lead individual holding them accountable, and they don’t know how to adjust to a version of you that is no longer avoiding the truth.

3. The Financial Contradiction

The $17,000 withdrawal is a massive alarm that contradicts the “martyr” narrative. They told your family they take care of your mom “out of love” and would be “insulted” by pay, yet they’ve accessed a significant amount of your shared and personal security. This is an external locus of control—using the labor of caregiving to shield themselves from financial transparency and any accountability of the emotional relationship with this friend.

Your “Homecoming” Strategy (The Mission)

I want you to try and shift from an external focus (what they are doing) to an internal one (what you need).

The Somatic Check-In

Before you speak, check in with your body:

• Locate the sensation: When you feel the urge to “interrogate,” where is that in your body? (Chest tightness? Heat in your face?)

• Find the origin: What is your earliest memory of feeling that specific sensation?

• Projection check: Is it possible you are projecting a past memory of abandonment onto this situation to make sense of the current “fog”?

Questions to Move Toward Clarity

Instead of questioning, try focusing on Needs and Non-Negotiables:

I will attach the worksheet I give my clients here.

• On Boundaries: We never explicitly defined what ‘friendship’ looks like with past romantic interests. My non-negotiable for emotional safety is transparency. How can we bridge the gap between your need for autonomy and my need for honesty?

• On Finances: “I value the care you give my mother, but I am confused by the $17k in withdrawals. Can we look at the accounts together so I can understand the financial reality of our household?” This is where you may have to speak up or limit access to the bank account.

• On the Separation: “Are we both willing to stop the avoidance and look at the actual impact of our actions, rather than just our intentions?”

A Final Reminder

Before you engage in these tough conversations, remember that seeking clarity is an act of self-respect, it’s not control. It may feel that way for others who have never experienced you in your self-respect frequency. You are allowed to take up space in your own marriage, even when you aren’t the one physically present every day.

Trust the data your body is giving you. If a situation feels “off,” it’s because your boundaries are being signaled. Ground yourself in what you know to be true for you before you step into the “fog” of someone else’s defensiveness. You aren’t “interrogating” you are simply coming home to yourself.🫶🏽

Readers…Now, it’s your turn.

Unfortunately relationships don’t come with a manual, but they do come with unspoken contracts and sometimes, those contracts need to be ripped up and rewritten.

Does this story resonate with you? Have you ever felt like the “villain” for simply asking for transparency? Or have you found yourself in a “double bind” where your partners or even your parent or family members labor made it feel impossible to speak your truth?

The Safari wants to hear from you.

Remember we are all humans on a human experience.

Submit your letter to "Okay, Now What?" here

Till next time Data Collectors

Dear Sav,

My marriage ended following deep betrayal around my future and finances. At the time, I chose to counter-file for divorce from the city where our marital life was built, because accepting a future where my dreams and financial stability were derailed by my partner did not feel survivable to me. That decision came from self-preservation, but the aftermath has been psychologically and somatically destabilising. I’ve experienced suicidal ideation twice in my life — once at 16, and again at 35, in January 2025, during the breakdown of my marriage. I share this not because I am in crisis now, but because it feels important to be transparent about the depth of distress I’ve carried. I have been in long-term therapy and have a strong Buddhist spiritual practice. I genuinely believed I had the tools to handle conflict and emotional intensity. However, over the last year, I’ve come to realise that while I understood things cognitively, I had little awareness of how chronically dysregulated my nervous system was during the three years of my marriage. My responses were not just emotional — they were somatic and survival-based. I am currently trying to make sense of the work I’ve done over the years while also grieving the fact that some guidance I received in previous therapy felt reductive and unrealistic in practice. For example, being told to “not replicate my parents’ marriage and create my own” left me without any real internal template for what a healthy partnership actually looks or feels like, especially when safety and emotional regulation were never consistently modelled. At this stage, I’m trying to understand what I should focus my energies on - attachment, trauma, or nervous system regulation? How does one learn to receive love while navigating relationships and the transition from being independent to interdependent and not becoming codependent? How do I reconcile the years I spent developing insight, spirituality, and independence with the reality that, in intimate partnership, my nervous system defaulted to survival — and how do I now build a felt sense of safety and interdependence when I never had a lived template for receiving love without self-erasure or threat?

Mirsha

Want To Write in? Do So Here

Dear Mirsha,

Wow, First thank you for sharing where you have been and what you have been holding. You make many valid points and I appreciate the asking of such rich, layered question one that so many people quietly carry. This is something therapy often overlooks: the difference between being told what not to do and being given a real, embodied alternative. When someone says, “Don’t replicate your parents’ marriage create your own,” HOW CAN YOU!

I hear it.

It sounds empowering on the surface. But without a lived template for what safety, stability, and emotional presence actually feel like in relationship, that kind of advice becomes not just vague, sometimes it can even feel abandoning. It assumes you already know what “healthy” looks like in the nervous system. It skips over the part where most of us are still learning to identify safety as boring or even untrustworthy because we grew up bracing for disruption. You asked if you should focus on attachment, trauma, or nervous system regulation. But these aren’t separate tracks they’re different layers of the same system. Trauma is what your body learned about threat. Attachment is how that learning plays out in relationships. And nervous system regulation is the mechanism that allows either of those to shift. So instead of choosing between them, the real question is: what sequence supports the body to feel safe enough to receive new relational experiences?

Let’s break it down real quick.

The question isn’t whether to focus on trauma, attachment, or nervous system regulation—they’re not separate tracks. They’re layers of the same system working together.

• Trauma is what your body learned about threat.

  For example: if you were attacked by a dog, your body stores dog = danger. That’s trauma not just the event, but the imprint of threat that gets stored in your nervous system.

  From then on, your system (filtration system) doesn’t need a dog in front of you to react—the sound of barking, the sight of fur, or even a memory is enough to trigger survival responses.

• Attachment is how that learning now plays out between people or in this case the dogs.

  Anytime It see’s or hears a dog, the nervous system responds in the same familiar activation even if that response is not needed because there is not threat. Developeing an insecure attachment around dogs.

  The body is reacting to a past imprint, not a current reality.

And here’s the key:

• Nervous system regulation is what makes either of those things changeable.

  It’s the mechanism that allows your system to update the dog file… or the partner file… or the “asking for help” file. This is when AMIE (The amygdala) becomes regulated, reminded and rewiring the imprint file. Pulling from that memory and cleaning it up. essentially rewiring the neural circuits to adjust to the NEW state of being around dog.

  Regulation doesn’t mean “calm.” It means your system has enough internal space to notice:

  “This moment isn’t the same as the past.”

  That’s what unlocks choice. That’s how healing starts.

You probably already know this so this information is a refresher for you or the viewers who needed it. Now, The first step is learning how to stabilize your system before expecting it to relate differently. This is nervous system work not in the trendy, buzzword sense, but in the real, felt sense of learning how to stay in your body when someone is attuned to you… without immediately trying to overperform, shrink, fix, or flee. You’re not training to be calm; you’re training to stay present in the chaos that disrupts calm. Most people who grew up without consistent emotional regulation learned to become hyper-independent, not because they wanted to, but because it was the safest available option. So it’s no surprise that when intimate partnership enters the picture, our bodies reverts to survival mode because it was use to our isolation.

Attachment work, at this stage, isn’t about labeling yourself as anxious or avoidant. It’s about increasing your capacity to stay intact while being seen (true discomfort for some of us). It means learning how to need without collapsing, how to depend on someone without outsourcing your self, and how to let someone into your emotional world without turning their presence into a threat.

The final piece you asked about—how to tell the difference between codependence and interdependence—is subtle but crucial. Codependence means your regulation depends on the other person’s mood, reactions, or presence. Interdependence means you can be impacted by your partner without being overtaken by them. You still feel, but you don’t fuse. Boundaries don’t mean disconnection. They mean you’re both able to hold your own shape while staying in relationship.

Now here are some actionable steps you can take to start the rewiring process as well as some book recommnedations to start. Fill your mind daily with these teachings and words to help your mind. Continue with the practice daily even if only for 5 minutes. It is still

STEP 1: Enter the Cognitive Gym (Meditative Prep)

You’re going to enter a meditative state not for the sake of “being calm,” but to access the part of your mind where new pathways are built: the subconscious part of the mind.

Options for meditative posture:

• Lay on your bed with pillows under your knees

• Set up a yoga mat and cover yourself with a light blanket

• Sit upright if that helps you stay alert but relaxed

🎧 Suggested audio:

Listen to a Yoga Nidra body scan. This brings your brain into a state between waking and sleeping where it becomes more impressionable. The state we need to unlock the magic

(I’ll link a specific track I use with clients here.) This one is also a personal fave. After a nice warm bath, get cozy in bed, place a pillow behind the knees headphones with noise cancelling if you have them. Just melt into the experience.

STEP 2: What You Don’t Want (Negativity Bias as Entry Point)

Let your mind begin with what it already knows:

What didn’t feel good in past relationships?

What do you know for sure you never want again?

Let it come. Let your system speak.

But don’t stop there. That’s not where we build.

STEP 3: How Do You Want to Feel?

This is the core of the practice. Begin telling your subconscious what to build.

Ask yourself:

“In my ideal relationship… how do I want to feel in my body, in my home, in my presence?”

Some examples:

• I want to feel safe.

  → What does that look like for you?

  Maybe it’s pulling up to your home and feeling glad to be there.

  Maybe it’s walking through the front door and your body doesn’t brace.

• I want to feel chosen.

  → Not just when I’m shiny or helpful but daily, in my humanness.

• I want to feel calm around my partner.

  → Not a high. Not a thrill. Just… safe, soft, okay.

Let the feeling become vivid.

Attach imagery. Scenes. Smells. Tones.

This is imprinting new possibilities onto your nervous system.

STEP 4: Teach Your Brain There’s More Than Your Past

Right now, your hippocampus (memory center) only stores what it’s lived through.

If it never saw secure love, it can’t recall it because it literally doesn’t exist in the file cabinet.

This is why we consciously imagine and rehearse new scenes.

It’s not fake. It’s future memory storage.

You’re now working with the principles from The Power of Your Subconscious Mind ( Joseph Murphy). I’ll link this book if you want to go deeper.

STEP 5: Rewire Through Repetition

We must understand. This is not a one-time visualization.

The nervous system learns through:

• Repetition

• Exposure

• Emotional engagement

You can build this practice in two ways:

1. Internal (Meditation, daily voice notes, future-self journaling)

2. External (Go on low-stakes dates not for romance, but for exposure therapy)

✨ The goal of dating here is not finding “the one.”

It’s giving your system new data so it can learn how to wrangle its inner velociraptors when something unfamiliar (but safe) appears. I will have future videos that demonstrate reparenting work and a exposure therapy experiment.

STEP 6: Audit Your Environment

Your healing isn’t happening in a vacuum.

If you’re trying to grow safety and connection but are constantly surrounded by relationships (friends, family, media) that normalize chaos or disconnection your nervous system stays confused. This is where mental hygiene is important also. What we consume with our minds.

Ask yourself:

“Can my plant survive in this climate?”

If the answer is no, change the light. Change the soil.

This might mean grieving people you’ve outgrown.

It’s okay. You’re not abandoning them, you’re tending to your roots.

STEP 7: Protect Yourself From Self-Abandonment

The fear of losing yourself in love is valid.

Especially for women, this fear often runs beneath the surface:

“If I don’t over-accommodate, will I be left?”

“If I speak my needs, will I be too much?”

“If I become a wife or a mother, who will I be?”

This is where we name the most important rule of all:

You don’t stop being you just because you become a ‘we’.

You must protect your:

• Alone time

• Rituals

• Practices

• Purpose

The version of you who thrived while single is not meant to disappear. She is meant to integrate.

STEP 8: Talk to Your Future Self

Try this:

• Write a letter to your future self

• Record a voice memo for the version of you who may forget

• Set a calendar reminder in 6 months to check back in

This is a time capsule of clarity.

When you’re in love, in the mix, in the fog, you’ll have a message from a wiser you who remembered what mattered.

STEP 9: Rewire or Be Rewired

Remember:

If you don’t create daily rituals to rewire your brain…

…the world will do it for you.

Every scroll, every click, every post trains your nervous system for reactivity.

What trains it for love? For rest? For regulation?

Whatever that is ….start there.

And no, you don’t need hobbies at first.

You just need something that’s yours.

Even if it’s 10 minutes. Even if it’s a walk. Even if it’s this practice.

I hope this is a step in the right direction

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👉🏽📬 Submit your question here.
Your story is safe with me. It might just help someone else too.☺️

I’ve noticed that in my closest relationships, old dynamics often resurface even after I’ve done deep work on myself. Subtle tests, expectations, or attempts to elicit reactions appear long after I thought I had moved beyond these patterns. The same loop repeats across family, friendships, and romantic connections: people respond to the version of me they once knew, not the person I am now. What hurts is feeling the pull to respond or regulate others, even when I know it no longer serves me. I’m learning to hold my own field, remain steady, and observe without collapsing, yet this brings its own fatigue and subtle dissonance in my body. I can see the old roles, both in myself and in others, but I want to engage without performing, without losing my autonomy, and without creating disconnection. I’m trying to understand how to maintain this new level of coherence while staying connected, and how to model autonomy in ways that ripple meaningfully without triggering defensiveness or collapse. My question is: how can I honor my boundaries and personal growth while still being present and influential in complex relational systems? Thank you for holding space for this reflection.

How can I sustain my internal coherence when others are unconsciously testing or expecting the old version of me?

— Onga

Dear Onga,

I have sat with many people struggling with what you describe in your letter. There is a pattern I’m noticing in the undercurrents, and I’m wondering if you see it or even feel it too. The pattern is externalization. Despite the “deep work,” these tests keep showing up. The fatigue you mention makes sense. Why? Imagine we’re at the gym and you’re using the battle ropes. Many of us grip the shit out of those ropes and overexert our arms to make the waves. That’s what we’re doing cognitively and somatically. So yes—fatigue is inevitable, even when we’ve done the work. Over time, other people’s behaviors do begin to roll off us like water-resistant fabric. But there’s a middle phase that’s exhausting. Right now, it sounds like you’re in a simmer state working very hard to stay within your window of tolerance while also resisting the pull to react in old ways. Ways that the people around you may be unconsciously trying to draw you back into.

This stage is often the hardest.

When regulation skills are implemented and old roles are no longer performed, the system gets uncomfortable. Families, friendships, and partnerships are homeostatic systems, they seek familiarity. When one person changes, the system often applies pressure to restore equilibrium. That’s usually when the “pull” begins. This is where we want to let go of the battle roping and begin practicing radical acceptance. Often, our protector parts are still quietly running in the background—anticipating, monitoring, bracing. They siphon mental and nervous system energy, which shows up as exhaustion. Understand, Seeing the roles that you clearly are able to see, that isn’t a failure, regression, or a set back. It’s a gift. A bloody uncomfortable one, yes. It’s a gift nonetheless. You are still in the role of the observer, which signals integration—not regression.

Some questions to consider:

• What does living without performing look and feel like for you?

• What happens in your body when you don’t step in to regulate others?

• What can you do for yourself to sit with that physiological emotion instead of reaching to regulate others, or spiraling in yourself?

A statement you might offer yourself when you feel tested:

“This is not mine to pick up. This is a pull to revert to an old role. That role is no longer me. I can let this be.”

This kind of self-talk reinforces differentiation. Even when the urge appears, you are not actually returning to the role, you’re noticing it and that is a win. That distinction matters. The next layer of the work is redirecting the nervous system when the urge to regulate others arises. That urge exists because of conditioning, because there was once distress or consequence when you didn’t manage others’ emotional states. This is where loop interruption lives. For me, this sometimes looks like physically walking away, placing my attention on something neutral or regulating—a song, a scent, a sound. Sometimes it’s as simple as stepping into the bathroom to reconnect with myself and my body. It’s also important to name this clearly: ego often convinces us that regulation must be externalized, that we are responsible for maintaining harmony.

That’s A trap.

Try not to put pressure on yourself to elicit changed behavior from others. That is a full-time job you don’t get paid for. We focus on what is within our control. Over time, the shift becomes embodied and modeled. This doesn’t guarantee others will change but people do eventually learn that certain behaviors no longer work. And eventually, you realize it wasn’t them who changed. It was you. Your protector part no longer waits, anticipates, or braces for the pull. You already know what the environment is like. This time, you enter it knowing what you’re willing and unwilling to do when you’ve had enough.

🫶🏽

P.S. Just because people expect it doesn’t mean you have to give it to them 😉

—Sav

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All of you.

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Hey Data Collectors,

You know that moment when the dust settles after a breakthrough? When you’ve named the pattern, spotted the wound, decoded the dynamic, and suddenly you’re sitting there—awake, aware, and completely unsure what the hell to do next? That’s the moment this column is for. Many of you have quietly poured your stories into my DMs, looking not just to vent, but to understand. Something dawned on me…

I kept seeing the same ache:
I know what’s happening… I just don’t know what to do now.

This is where your anonymous letter becomes a doorway. Not into therapy. Not into diagnosis. But into clarity, courage, nervous-system literacy, and grounded guidance. And guess what data collectors! Your letter never serves only you.
Every time you speak from the center of your ache, there is someone silently reading who recognizes themselves in your words. Your question becomes the mirror they get to sit with. Your courage becomes their cue.

This column is where we meet in that shared space — the aftermath of awareness

If you’d like to write in, you can do so here:
👉🏽 [Submit your anonymous letter]

Let’s see what unfolds when you stop carrying it alone.

Come as you are, where you are

— Sav