Family & Relationships

Maybe you’re just unlucky. Maybe it’s the city, your circle, your age. Maybe. But in my practice this is one of the most common stories. The people who tell it know everything about themselves. It doesn’t help.

And there’s one more detail they all describe the same way. With the calm, reliable, right-on-paper ones, they’re bored. The wrong ones? Fireworks.

It’s not a lack of understanding, bad taste, or bad luck. The body’s sense of “my kind” switches on at familiar cues. Automatically. Even though the mind clearly sees those same cues as red flags. But the body resonates, and fighting that is very hard.

The pull isn’t a conscious decision you can revisit. It’s a tension that recognizes its own and reaches for it. You can control it with common sense, willpower, a solemn vow to take it slow. Control helps. Partly. And at the price of effort and strain. Or you can find the source of that pull in the body, with my hands, and gradually weaken it.

From the outside, the result looks like this: the person doesn’t become more cautious or smarter. Their very sense of “my kind” changes. Calm people stop being boring. The magic pull of fireworks disappears. And the script that repeated itself for years no longer runs.

Maybe you just haven’t met your person yet. Maybe freedom really is what you value, not a front. Maybe. Living alone by your own choice is fine.

But in my practice I often meet people who are weighed down by their loneliness rather than enjoying their freedom. They don’t run from something bad. Quite the opposite: when the person is right, when everything clicks, when the relationship grows closer and closer, that’s exactly when it becomes unbearable.

It’s not character, and it’s not fate. Closeness has a threshold. What sets it is the boundary of personal space wired into the body’s patterns by earlier experience, when crossing that boundary brought pain. As long as the relationship doesn’t cross it, nothing stands in the way of attraction. But past that point the body switches on a danger signal whose real source stayed behind in the past, long ago.

You can control it: keep your distance, negotiate personal space, choose people who live far away. Control helps. Partly. And the price is that closeness remains a contract. Or you can find, with my hands, the tension that won’t let anyone get closer, and gradually release it.

The change isn’t that the person became different or learned to endure. The threshold moves outward. The morning after an intimate evening no longer makes you want to run. And then staying or leaving becomes a choice, not obedience to sensations conditioned by the past.

Maybe the child was acting up too much. Or maybe you’re simply at your limit: sleep deprivation, work, the daily grind. Maybe. Parenthood is a chronic energy deficit, and everyone loses it sometimes.

But in my practice, people often mention that they decided back in childhood: my child will never hear this. The outburst comes instantly, before you have time to think. The trigger is usually something trivial: toys left on the floor, the endless “five more minutes.” That makes the reaction out of all proportion. It’s obvious even as it happens, and still impossible to stop. Then the child’s face. And the vow to never lose it like that again. And nothing changes.

And the more you love your child, the more you regret snapping. You remember what it felt like when your parents yelled at you. You don’t want this for your child. Snapping at them was never your decision either. But as long as the memory of it lives in your body, the body will keep reproducing that reaction against your will. Just in the other role.

You can try to control it: count to ten, leave the room, breathe, say the right words. At the price of constant tension, which the child picks up even when you stay silent. No question, that’s better than losing it. But you don’t have to fight this problem. It can be undone. I can find, with my hands, the tension this voice comes out of, and gradually release it.

The change isn’t that you become a perfect parent. The reaction stops being a reflex and becomes a response. The voice no longer comes out on its own. And you no longer need to feel guilty and vow “never again.”