The Noise of Constant Awareness
There’s a point in healing where awareness becomes noise.
Where every emotion carries a footnote. Every conversation becomes a potential excavation site. Every silence is loaded with what it might mean—what it could be teaching, where it might trace back to.
At first, it feels like emotional intelligence. Like growth.
You can track your feelings. You can name your triggers. You can locate the pattern and trace its origin.
But at some point, what starts as clarity turns into hypervigilance.
And when every moment becomes something to process, you stop being able to live inside any of it.
Self-awareness can so easily become a full-time job. One that takes over your ability to just be.
When Insight Becomes Control in Disguise
There was a time when I believed I had to interpret everything I felt in real time.
That the more I could understand it, the more I could stay ahead of it.
Especially as someone who has studied psychology, trained in therapy, and knows the terrain of trauma inside and out—it felt like a superpower to always be “on.”
But that kind of constant tracking is a form of emotional control.
It’s the nervous system saying: If I can name this, I can manage it. If I can analyze it, I won’t have to feel it fully. If I can stay in my head, I won’t have to be in my body.
And that’s where I caught myself—doing the very thing I swore I was healing from.
Avoiding embodiment by living in interpretation.
Swapping dissociation for deep thought.
Still hiding. Still trying to protect myself—just in prettier, more educated ways.
Letting the Moment Be What It Is
The question I ask myself now is simple, but hard:
Can I let this be what it is—without assigning it meaning yet?
That moment of quiet? Maybe it’s just quiet.
That tension in my chest? Maybe it’s just a passing feeling, not a buried memory.
That ache I felt after the conversation? Maybe I don’t need to journal through it this second.
It’s not that the insight isn’t helpful. But I’ve learned that insight with urgency is just another trauma response.
If I can’t sit in the present moment without dissecting it, I’m not present. I’m managing. I’m performing wellness. I’m scanning my life like it’s an emotional spreadsheet.
I don’t want that kind of relationship with myself anymore.
I Was Never Meant to Be a Walking Analysis
Especially when your work involves guiding others, there’s this quiet pressure to always “be with it.”
To model the right response. To understand your triggers fast. To stay ahead of your ego, your patterns, your past.
But I’ve realized that constantly performing internal safety is not the same as actually feeling it.
And I don’t want to be known for my ability to make pain digestible.
I want to be known for how honestly I lived.
Even if that meant not having the words in the moment. Even if that meant saying, I don’t know what this is yet, but I’m here.
There is so much power in not knowing.
In sitting in the middle of the mess without forcing it into meaning.
Because sometimes, that’s when real integration starts—not when you can name it, but when you can feel it fully without language.
Integration Doesn’t Need a Deadline
I’ve had to unlearn my obsession with immediate clarity.
Not everything needs to be figured out right away.
Not every conflict needs to become a life lesson.
Not every heartbreak needs to yield a transformation right now.
Sometimes I’m just tired.
Sometimes I’m just lonely.
Sometimes I’m just in it—and there’s nothing poetic about that.
And even when the lesson does come, it usually lands after I’ve stopped trying to force it.
After I’ve lived through it.
After I’ve allowed myself to be human, not just a healer.
Presence Isn’t Passive—It’s a Practice
When I say “be present,” I don’t mean disconnect.
I mean reconnect—to breath, to body, to simplicity.
Now when I feel something rise up, I ask myself:
- Do I need to name this right now, or can I just notice it?
- Is this the time to go inward, or is it okay to be here—raw, unrehearsed, real?
- Can this moment exist without becoming content, curriculum, or closure?
Most of the time, it can.
And when it can’t, I trust myself to return.
The healing will be there. The insight will wait.
But the moment? It won’t.
And I don’t want to miss the life I’m working so hard to understand.
I Want a Life I Can Feel, Not Just Explain
I want to cry in real time, not just write about it later.
I want to laugh without turning it into a metaphor.
I want to sit in silence without wondering what it’s mirroring.
I want to be fully in this body. This hour. This conversation.
Not just observing it from a spiritual balcony.
I’m not abandoning my insight.
I’m just not letting it lead anymore.
Because you can’t be present if you’re always processing.