I woke at four in the morning with my whole core shaking.
I’d had a dream where I was trying to help people, but I couldn’t settle into the work or give anyone my full attention. I woke feeling unsettled, anxious, almost as if the ground beneath me had disappeared. I got up, went to the toilet, came back to bed and stayed with the feeling.
The day before, I’d been tapping on whether it was safe for me to earn $10,000 a month, whether I was worthy and deserving of it. When I added the word myself, I tapped on, “It is safe for me to earn $10,000 a month myself.” As I said it, I felt a strange tremor in my diaphragm, on the right side, around my liver. The next morning, the sensation seemed to have spread through my whole core, from my heart down to my solar plexus.
Lying there, I began to wonder what I was frightened of. At first, I could only hear the thought: I don’t believe in myself. I don’t believe I can do this.
That was hard to sit with. I stayed curious and tried to listen beneath the words, rather than talk myself out of them. What was this fear trying to show me?
I began to see how often I’d tried to carry the burdens of people I love. I could worry, anticipate, step in, try to help them make the right choice, and feel responsible for whether they’d be okay. I’d understood this through a lens of caring deeply, doing the right thing, even sacrificing myself for other people. But there was another layer underneath that. Carrying someone else could help me feel safe.
However much I carried for them, I could never carry the whole burden. There was always a part of their life I couldn’t live for them: their choices, and the consequences they would have to face. I could carry so much of the way with someone, but I couldn’t take that final part from them. I wouldn’t be the one living their life.
My subconscious may have known that. In its own way, carrying other people may have been keeping me from feeling the full weight of carrying my own life. I could stay focused on what someone else needed, and not have to look as closely at what I wanted, what I believed, or what I was afraid to do.
Turning towards my own life felt different. I would have to live with the choices I made. I would have to stand behind my work, my decisions and what I wanted, without hiding behind someone else’s needs or telling myself I had to look after them first. That felt like real vulnerability. There was nowhere to hide, and no one to carry that final part for me. I would be visible. I would have to trust myself.
No wonder my body felt so shaky.
When someone we love is upset or struggling, we can feel as if we can’t be okay until they are. We try to fix it, soften their disappointment, change our decision or keep explaining, hoping we can get back to a place where everyone feels settled. It can come from genuine care. But sometimes, beneath the care, there may be something we’re not yet ready to feel in ourselves.
I don’t want to judge myself for finding it easier to focus on other people. That pattern was trying to protect me. It may have kept me in familiar territory, away from the fear of being seen and having to trust myself. I can have compassion for why I learned to carry, and still become curious about what it’s costing me now.
The Unburdened Method™ is the work I’ve been developing around this kind of listening: noticing what’s happening in the body, getting curious about what it may be responding to, and exploring what might be underneath the reaction. For a long time, I thought some of my beliefs were just part of my personality. Now I can pause and ask, Where might this be coming from? What is this feeling trying to show me?
That morning, I didn’t have to make the fear disappear or decide it meant I couldn’t move forward. I could let it be information. As I listened, I saw the belief underneath it: I don’t believe in myself. And then, with more kindness, I could begin to look for what else was true.
I could see the changes I’ve lived through, and the things I do now that once would have sent me running back to the familiar, smaller version of my life. I could see that I’m still taking steps towards work I believe in, even while I feel uncertain. The fear hadn’t erased that evidence. It had shown me a deeper place where I needed to listen and offer myself care.
In the past, a fear this big would have frozen me. I might have stopped taking action and retreated to what I knew. This time, I could stay with the feeling without treating it as a command to turn back. I didn’t have to leap off the cliff or make the fear disappear. I could take the next small step while it was still there.
I’m still learning how to care without carrying. I haven’t got it all sorted, but I’m learning that an uncomfortable feeling doesn’t have to be a reason to run. Sometimes it’s a place to pause, listen with compassion, and discover what we’re ready to see. What might your own feelings be trying to show you, if you could meet them with curiosity instead of judgment?