Dear Therapist,
There is a war that lives under my skin. From the outside it doesn’t look like war at all… It looks like polite sentences, careful eye contact, and the kind of smile that knows how to pass. I keep the appointments, I say the words, I sit in the chair. On the surface it looks like engagement, maybe even trust.
But underneath, the ground is loud with marching feet. Protestors line the perimeter of my heart, holding signs scrawled in red ink…
“Don’t let them in.”
“People are dangerous.”
“Love is annihilation.”
They chant until the sound drowns out everything else. They don’t believe you when you say “I’m here” or “You’re safe.” They remember otherwise.
Because this isn’t about you. It’s not even about therapy as a space. It’s about loss so great it burned into my bones. About grief that never finished, grief that keeps echoing. About the particular violence of powerlessness, of being too small to stop what was already breaking.
Love as a Double-Edged Sword
Here’s what you might not see… My heart is full of love. Too full. Overflowing. I am bursting with it. I long for connection, for warmth, for presence. But right in front of that heart is the shield, the barricade.
Love is not safe. To love is to touch the same place where everything broke. To feel warmth is to feel, at the very same time, the absence of warmth when it was needed most. Connection doesn’t just invite joy. It invites memory. It awakens the grief that waits like a fault line under every step.
To let someone in is to risk everything collapsing again. Not just to risk hurt… but to risk being crushed under the same weight of loneliness, alienation, and abandonment that has already rearranged me.
The system… my system… knows this. It built a map… connection = danger, warmth = annihilation.
So when you come close, the shield rises. Not because I don’t want to feel, but because I know too well what happens when feeling is followed by loss.
The Body Remembers
You might think this is intellectual. That I’m telling you a story. But this lives in my body.
Every time you offer warmth, my throat tightens. My chest fills with pressure. Tears threaten, but behind them is something larger… a wave I cannot bear to let crest. It feels like drowning. Like being very small in an enormous silence.
The body remembers being left with no one to turn to. The body remembers calling and hearing nothing back. The body remembers opening and finding emptiness.
When you are kind, my body confuses it for danger. Muscles lock. My gaze flicks away. It is not indifference. It is self-preservation written into my flesh.
The Cycle of Push and Pull
So I push. I pull away. I disconnect.
I say nothing when I want to scream. I go blank when something warm reaches toward me. I let silence cover me because silence at least feels predictable. This mental survival gymnastics is exhausting and torturous.
Then I hate myself for it. Because I know too well what it feels like to be pushed away, and here I am reenacting it. The cruelest paradox… The more I long for closeness, the more fiercely I close the door.
It looks like avoidance, but it’s not about disinterest. It is a form of devotion to survival. Every slammed door is my system’s desperate attempt to keep me alive, to prevent me from falling back into the abyss of grief, that gut-wrenching pain, I’ve already known so intimately..
The Shape of Grief
Grief is not just sadness. It is a whole ecosystem.
It is sticky, clinging to every present moment. It splinters time, dragging the past into the now. Grief whispers… “If you reach, you will lose again. If you open, the ground will fall away.”
It is not clean. It is not finite. It lives in the nervous system, in every reflex, and in every instinct to shut down.
Powerlessness runs alongside it, hand in hand. The memory of being too small, too voiceless, too unseen to make a difference. The sensation that no matter what I did, love still disappeared. That powerlessness lingers, convincing me that no choice I make today will keep me safe if I open again.
What You See vs. What’s True
When you watch me slam the door, you might think I don’t want connection. That I’m resisting care. That I don’t value your presence.
But that’s the lie the shield tells to keep me safe. The truth is this… I want connection so badly it terrifies me.
Under every protest sign is a child who wanted to be held and wasn’t. Under every barricade is a teenager who tried to love and was met with silence. Under these layers, protections from a past that haunts. Under every slammed door is a heart still alive, still reaching.
What Holding Really Means
So what do you do with this? How do you reach someone whose survival instinct is to push you away?
First, respect the protectors. They are not obstacles… they are guardians. They did the work no one else did. If you shame them, they will only dig in deeper.
Second, hold the grief with me. Don’t minimize. Don’t rush me into “reframing.” Don’t try to sand down the edges of what was lost. Sometimes the bravest thing you can do is sit inside the rawness without trying to fix it.
Third, be steady. Presence doesn’t always mean dramatic rescue. Sometimes it means coming back. Again and again. Predictability builds trust where none has lived before.
Fourth, stay curious. Ask without demanding. Invite without interrogating. Curiosity is different from control. Curiosity tells my system it is safe to show up in messy, in pieces, in contradictions.
Finally, believe me. Believe that under the shield, there is still love. Believe that systems can learn new math… that risk and repair can coexist, that grief can be enormous and love still possible, that powerlessness can give way to agency, piece by piece.
The Hard Work of Staying
You will see me push you away again. You will see me disconnect. You will see me say “I’m fine” when I am anything but.
Don’t mistake that for absence. Don’t interpret it as lack of care. See it for what it is… the system trying desperately to guard the tenderest part of me from feeling loss again.
If you can stay… with a steady willingness… you teach me something my body doesn’t know yet… that not every door slam is the end of the story. That sometimes, someone returns.
A Closing Truth
Dear Therapist: I push because I want. I push away because I love.
The shield doesn’t mean there is no heart. The shield exists because the heart is so full, so alive, so raw with memory.
If I let you in, it will hurt. Not just because of trust, but because love means remembering what was lost. And remembering is unbearable.
But still, here I am. Showing up. Even if I slam the door. Even if I retreat. Even if I push.
Because under all the protestors, the barricades, the silences, there is still a system of selves who want to risk believing in something more than grief. Who want to believe love could be possible without annihilation.
And if you’re willing to sit with us in that contradiction… to see both the shield and the longing, to honor both the grief and the love… maybe, over time, the shield will learn to rest.
Your Client (Us)-
If any of this resonates with you… the push, the shield, the grief beneath it all… know that you’re not alone. These patterns don’t make you broken; they speak to how deeply you’ve survived.
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