Day 8: On Uncertainty, Fear, and Being Met

On Uncertainty, Fear, and Being Met

Sometimes I find myself in a really beautiful conversation with a really beautiful man, and I’m trying to better understand the way I communicate with men. Specifically as I understand my own core background around men being men who abandon you and don’t show up.

In a very short amount of time, I feel like I’ve gotten exponentially better at responding to uncertainty. A lot of that has come from listening to the work of Dr. Gabor Maté and learning more about internal family systems. I brought these things into therapy and asked if this was a practice my therapist was familiar with or willing to explore. And we’ve been co-designing the process together.

She lets me bring in the inspirations that are feeding me day to day, and I get to process them with her.

What’s been really interesting is how quickly I’ve been able to take rage, a feeling of deep devastation, and turn it inside out. To understand what small, tender, sensitive thing is actually at the core of such a huge feeling.

Once I can understand that, I can bring in my logical self. My adult self. My healed self. The healed self that is always healed.

Mapping the Moment

I love maps. I love being able to map a process and map back to something because it gives me something to anchor into when my mind goes off to do something else. I don’t have to rebuild from the beginning. I can just ask, what phase of the map am I in?

When we talk about disembodiment around grief, rage, and emotions that make us uncomfortable or make other people uncomfortable, that disembodiment is a misalignment. It’s a not being in view of our highest self, our self connected to source.

That self is never disrupted.

It’s our human experience that keeps us in distress. The work of the human experience is to continue to line up with source, to line up with the energy that is all knowing.

Where This Shows Up With Men

When I talk about men, I’m also talking about my dad. And religion. And presence. And absence.

If there’s anywhere in my life where my dad is most present, it’s in my religious life. Outside of that, there wasn’t a lot of day to day presence. So abandonment and not showing up became a theme.

I was talking to a man recently and realized that a part of me was listening for what wasn’t actually being said. I heard heaviness in his voice. Nervousness about disappointing me.

And I said, “Oh no. I don’t want you to read disappointment. I’m scared.”

That was therapy.

Reaction Time and Fear

There was a moment where I felt a shift. Not because too much time had passed, but because a feeling came up. Monitoring. Wondering if something was wrong. Wondering if I had said something.

I decided to bring it up calmly and clearly.

Even then, it still felt like it wasn’t enough time. And objectively, maybe I could have waited longer. But the issue wasn’t whether I waited or not.

The issue was the feeling underneath it.

That anxious energy. That trembling.

And being able to see that moment clearly — where work could happen — was powerful.

I could say, yes, I can give you more time.

I could also say I was afraid of looking like I was too into him. Too excited. Too much.

Seeing that fear right there was important.

Being Met

I braced for a negative reaction.

“You’re asking for too much.”

“This is too sensitive.”

Instead, he called. 🥹

That mattered.

You can evade a lot by texting. You can keep distance. But he called. That felt like a green flag.

We got to talk. We got to understand what the other person was actually saying.

And being met calmly — not being told you’re too much — is really different.

It was healing.

What I’m speaking to isn’t the logistics of what happened. It’s the feelings that come up when we’re trying to figure out what’s going on in our connections.

That space of uncertainty.

That’s where the work is.