“Stop walking on eggshells. Stomp on them.”

You learned how to read the room and everyone in it before you learned how to read yourself. Now you’d give anything not to have to be in the room at all. 

You are intuitive. You’re independent. People know they can trust you to show up and handle things. Others can lean on you when they need to. They see you come into the room and they exhale in relief.

The role you play in others’ lives has kept you safe for a long time. But you didn’t get to choose that.

Maybe you’ve been told that you’re the problem solver at work. Maybe your friends have even called you the “mom” of the group. You see yourself as a fixer. But something in you worries that if you let yourself relax, you’d find that you hate being seen this way. You dread phone calls from family members, and you don’t have the energy to think about why. You pack your schedule full to avoid being alone with yourself.  People think they know you, but they have never really seen you; and you prefer it that way. You float through the day worried that someone will notice you and then you’ll fall apart.

Your own emotions feel like an inconvenience.

You know how you feel, you just don’t believe you have a right to feel it. You thought you had dealt with everything from your past. You just don’t have the time for this right now. Why is it coming back up now? 

Old patterns are showing up in your life and you’re not sure what to do about them. You want to be taken care of, but you don’t trust that anyone will be able to. Relationships feel confusing because you want to open up to people, but you’re afraid you’ll be too much, or that the conflict will be burdensome. This never used to be so hard.

The same old strategies aren’t working anymore.

Maybe you want to feel strong in your beliefs and be able to trust your gut. You long to build a connection with yourself. Perhaps you’re looking for a way to make your relationships feel stronger. Maybe you’d even like to be able to stop taking responsibility for everyone else’s feelings and emotions all the time.

You don’t have to fix anything this time.

Nothing is actually broken. You’re a human. A good one; and you’re exhausted and hurting. You can soften in a world that has tried to harden you. You can be all that you are and still belong. You do not need to have the answers all the time.

When you are ready, I am here to help you.

I’m Gina Sacino, MS, LCAT. I’m a queer identifying, eldest child, mixed race Licensed Creative Arts Therapist based in Rochester, New York. You can read more about what I do here.