🌅 Soft Hours: Exposure Therapy in Real Time

Full voiceover + extended commentary available for paid subscribers in the Sanctuary.

** Learning means just try it. I wore the mic for this and I learned not to do that. I also am getting over a cold 😩 .. This was so fun for me but I apologize for the poor audio. I am also learning not to obsesses in perfection. So — exposure therapy is hitting hard for me in this work because in my writing I want it the work to be perfect. Perfection is a trap, a trap I have found myself stuck in this year a lot since starting this work…

This is how I learn about myself. I hope this models something for you.

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I’m sitting here planning how I’m going to batch all my essays and written works and it hits me again—there are people paying for this. I have paid subscribers now. That’s wild to me. Not because I don’t believe I’m worthy of it ( there is an old version of me that would have believed that I was unworthy) but because it still blows my mind that people are showing up. That people are reading. That people are investing in something I created. As I sit with that truth I realize I need to say something that I’ve said before but I think it deserves a real home now. This entire process, this entire world I’ve stepped into? It’s exposure therapy. Not in the cute, trendy way. I mean it literally. I mean it somatically. I mean it in the most vulnerable, skin-peeled-back, nervous system recalibrating way possible.

I’ve always been obsessed with human behavior. I didn’t plan to be in this field. I just ended up here. But the part of me that studies things— the observer, the watcher, the gatherer of patterns. That girl, yeah — she’s been here all along. I’ve always studied myself. Always. Before I had clients, before I had tools, before I had language. I was my first experiment. Now, educating online, sharing this work, doing what people call “content creation”... it’s just another lab. Except this time the variables include strangers on the internet, screen time, spiritual intimacy, visibility, projection, the threat of misinterpretation, the beauty of resonance, and the constant practice of being real while being seen. In a world that thinks authenticity is rare. Is it? Or is it hidden?

I’ve been in and out of executive freeze all day. Mild urgency. Anxiety that stays level at a low buzz, but enough to still feel uncomfortable. That’s the part people don’t talk about. When you’re healing, you’re not suddenly a peaceful forest monk. You still do the same shit sometimes, but now you’re watching yourself do it. Now you’re catching it.

Naming it.

Adjusting it.

That’s what this season has been for me. A mirror. A nervous system safari. A field study I never planned to run, but now that I’m in it. I see everything differently. This is a phenomenon I see regularly when my clients finally see —finally realize they have been walking around the world with the perception of their parents. They have imprisoned themselves into that story. When they finally realize they do in fact have the power to try another story on—regardless of what people feel about it. Sometimes it may be “too late” according to their perception.

What most people don’t realize is that I didn’t even start this account until February 2025. That’s it. That’s when I started. And I only started because my husband deployed and I needed somewhere to put my brain. I needed to create a place to metabolize everything I was carrying because otherwise my mind was going to start turning on itself and my marriage. This work became my medicine. And now, almost 80,000 people on IG later, it’s become a movement for me.

Here’s the thing though, something I’ve noticed and this is across my clinical work, my own relationships, my own spirals, and now this digital world too. A lot of people are tired not because of laziness (eh some are) or broken, but because they’ve only ever known survival. Their bodies are spinning all day and all night and they don’t know how to stop.

Hobbies?

What are those when you’ve never had them? When your inner world is chaos, when you’ve normalized anxiety as fuel for ‘motivation’—you don’t know how to just be. You don’t know how to soften.

So you loop. and loop. and loop.

You perform.

You collect language. Rhetoric, identities.

You gather healing tools like Pokémon cards, shop therapists the way you shop partners. Then, when someone holds a mirror to that, when someone asks, “Hey... are you actually using the tools or just talking about them?” It feels like an attack. So now we’re in a weird era of self-work where people want the performance of healing, the performance of accommodation, without the interruption of their loops. And I get it. I really do. But I also think we have to tell the truth about it. Eventually you just have to— DO.

Start.

Do. The. Thing.

Stop talking about it.

Stop planning it.

Just DO it!

In therapy? Ok, DO the work. Sit with yourself, spend time alone, pause before reacting. Assess where you maybe policing others as a way to avoid yourself, but you must DO.

People have been telling me since 2014 to get online. I’ve always had “the voice.” The “energy.” The “vision.” According to their analysis, But I didn’t think I looked the part. I had insecurities. I still do. But I’ve done so much work over the years to unlearn what was conditioned into me. What I didn’t realize until this year was how much of that conditioning was still living in my body. Many if of us we forget this fact, we think we are healing but for some we really are isolated from anything that creates any nervous system movement. I’ve remembered things through this process, this work. Trauma memories, somatic fear responses that I didn’t even know were there. My inner child has been loud.

My inner teen?

Well… she needs an entire essay. I think majority of us need some time with out inner teenager.

My adult self has been exhausted. And still—I show up. Not because I’m performing. But because this is the first time in my life where I’ve let myself be seen fully. And that’s the most terrifying and liberating thing I’ve ever done. It’s the most rewarding development to witness in my clinets as well.

What no one talks about is what your body does when it’s being seen—even in a positive light. Even when the comments are kind. Even when people are loving and grateful and amazing. When your partner loves you and repair occurs in ways you could never imagine. Or— your family wants repair.

The problem?

Your amygdala doesn’t have eyes. It doesn’t know who’s safe and who’s not. All it knows is that you’re exposed and everybody else? They’re the op.

That’s why even praise can feel scary from certain people.

That’s why “visibility” isn’t a dream for everyone. Healthy relationships? Healthy friendships? For some of us, it’s a trauma trigger. An activator, that comes bearing the gift of intense discomfort. And I’ve had to learn how to stay in the room with that instead of running. How many of you are in family systems that run?

That. Is. Lonely.

This whole thing has changed how I show up in my marriage too. The putting myself out there. You maybe asking how does that relate to your marriage? Well, just like I tell my clients. Skills? They roll over to other areas in your life. For me it rolls over in the feeling of being able to speak my truth more, where I once would suppress for the comfort of others. Allows me to surrender into loving my husband without fear. That subtle tension, or anticipation of the other shoe dropping. A feeling I think many of us feel when we find something that feels to good to be true after years of pain and struggle in relationships.

BUT— do you see how easy it can be to get addicted to the same conflictual cycle almost as a way to keep you in the “looking for love” stage?

Almost as if you are always looking never ready. A safe island if you ask me. That’s how survival strategies develop overtime right under our nose. This rings true even in family therapy. Even when families who have been in dynamics for years, finally make it to family therapy. To show up that alone demonstrates willingness and intention to the family. But the moment the family feels the shock – the static. The higher self wants to do the work, but struggles with being hijacked by the nervous system—it takes over. As soon as it feels that shock of activation—Some scurry away afraid to return. Instead of sitting in that discomfort to alchemize it, train the nervous system raptor that it is safe.

You see, that work is not easy. To be burned and to forgive. You know they say forgiveness is for you yada yada we know this— but what do you do before your consciousness grasps the concept that it really is for you. For you so you can release the grip on the rose you don’t realize has thorns and is cutting you. Blood dripping pain you don’t even realize is self inflicted—and many of us — we engage in this level of self harm. ALL. THE. TIME. (I’m talking to those of you who creep your ex’s social)

Accountability is the prerequisite of healing, but for some reason many seemed to have skipped that important detail. We instead went straight to talking about the healing.

Cognitive challenge:

Almost the same way you or your partner talks about changing or working on improving their/your behaviors.

I’ve realized there were times I wasn’t fully accountable. I was emotionally reactive but felt justified in that reactivity. Especially so because I had come from abuse, been with abusive partners, I had been wounded. But that’s the thing—justification might make you feel right, but it doesn’t make you relational. I had to learn that just because you’re hurt doesn’t mean your partner has to pay the debt for that. Parents— the nuance here can direct at you as well. Some of you are making one child pay for another child’s behavior when they were that age. Instead of admitting your fear of a repeat, you step into control as a means to regulate your own anxiety, grief, guilt, or shame. It’s a spill over effect. What you avoid in skills in your relationship it spills over into your parenting, your relating with peers, coworkers, and friends. Even when we try to. convince ourselves “well it's them, I can do xyz with everyone else.” Pause. Does everyone else challenge you or test you in the way that you partner, your family member, your friend etc does? If not then they are not the same circumstances. We forget if the poison of resentment is present it can sabotage. (Vecna energy) Think of resentment like salt in soup too much of it—well it has to get tossed.

I’ve grown more in the last 9 months through this work. Not because I became someone new. But because I finally made space for her. And now, here she is.

Writing.

Speaking.

Teaching.

Being witnessed.

Still healing in real time. (Because healing is not a destination)

This is exposure therapy. And I’m doing it out loud. It doesn’t need to be perfect, it just needs to be consistent. Consistency is the number one muscle that involves discipline. Many of us get stuck here. Sometimes its not even about going to therapy it’s about making a decision. Sometimes going to therapy is a latch ditch attempt to stall or procrastinate. Sometimes it’s a way the nervous system outsources the blame for the relationships. Either way. Exposure therapy opportunities out out there! Every day is an opportunity to expose yourself. Try a new route to or from work, walk a different direction or in new location. Speak up, you never no unless you try. The word is out there. You never know what can happen.If it’s just a no it’s a no.

That’s it.

A no.

Do you know how many “no’s” the most successful people had to face and still continue to face?

So ask yourself.

If you are sitting with something distressing or even heavy. Take a moment. If you moved forward with what you know deep down. what would happen? It’s scary yeah? But isn’t that what makes it bad ass? To do something that is scary. Imagine the version of you coming out the other side mission complete? Sit with that image in your mind. See if you can feel it in the body. Is it worth it? Does the little you deserve it?

I think so…

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For my Sanctuary members: I’ve added an extended voiceover of this piece, with deeper reflections on visibility trauma, nervous system reactivity, and how performance is sometimes a protector.

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Want More?

📓 🧠 Introducing: Field Notes: Perception Check

Crayons, Capacity, and the Cost of Bypassing Development

The Economy Of Distrust

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Every week I write from the in-between: the quiet space where insight meets embodiment. If you like this style, consider joining the Sanctuary tier to access the full archive and upcoming live Lecture Halls.

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