Intro

Funnily enough I came across the concept of radical acceptance relatively late in my life when I was in my thirties, taking a Mindfulness course and listening, amongst others, to the lovely words of Tara Brach. Until that point, the idea of (radically) accepting everything that comes up in me as "part of me" had not really crossed my mind. Too much had I grown up with the duality of "good" and "bad" and thus, like most of us, I had developed this instinct to automatically suppress these thoughts or reactions in me that came up and would be, under the lens of my cultural upbringing, considered "bad". 

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Only after taking this course and internalising its teachings' did it start to dim on me that there is no such thing as bad or good when we are speaking of our thoughts and more so, if we want to get fully in touch with ourselves, we need to allow all the internal voices to be heard. That doesnt necessarily mean that it is something we want to act upon or that it is something we condone as such, but, in order to understand ourselves well, we cannot ignore something inside of us. Instead we need to embrace it and reach out to it with love, kindness and curiosity and only that way will we be able to resolve it, and, if it is for example an emotional reaction due to some previous trauma, it is only through this process of listening to ourselves that we can eventually surpass these traumas. 

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Until this point in my life, I had tried for 33 years to grow and develop as a human being while ignoring this "negative" part inside of me and I don't want to say it has been futile, but, once I started radically accepting everything in me and be curious about myself, show understanding for the different parts in me, I did make leaps forward in self-awareness and understanding. It has led to more than one conversation with myself, with "this something inside of me" and almost always I have been left with this feeling that some of us might remember from the most honest conversations we had with our friends in a bad-lit bar, around a bonfire or as teenagers, when we felt fully understood and fully seen. More than once did I get a feeling of enlightenment or emancipation that almost made me cry and for that reason, I am sure this is the right way forward. 

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Now, I want to put some disclaimers on that. One thing is, as also said in the Mindfulness course - Our "thoughts are real, but not true". The more I had these "conversations with myself" I realised the extent to which this was true. We have thoughts and reactions to situations and they may feel to us as if they were an absolute truth, like they are facts. But in actuality, they are like another sense, they are subjective, they are affected and biased, they are - not true. We may be affected by all sorts of previous experiences, moods or previous interactions in the day, that affect us and the way we react and we think.

Let's think about it. How many days has everything just flowed in the morning? You started with some good coffee or some exercise or, it is winter, but on the way to work the sun was shining and somehow, just by having a tick of positivity to kickstart your day, the rest of the day, all challenges, all annoying colleagues, seemed to be mastered so much easier? 

Or another example; how often have you said something to friends or people and felt afterwards that you have really hurt or offended that person, you got home, probably reflecting on it in the shower and feeling like you really owe that person an apology? Later you reach out to them, you write or when you meet them again, you are eager to say sorry and you realise they have forgotten all about it and don't know what you are on about?

These are just some examples of how subjective our emotions and thoughts can be and they don't even mention how our insecurities, previous trauma or other things affect how we see the world and may give us even more "subjective" thoughts.

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For me these things clearly show that our thoughts are real (to us), but they are not true. Nonetheless, they do have a tremendous amount of value in that they give us so much material for dig deeper, listen to ourselves and get to know ourselves. But in order to do so, we first need to stop automatically pushing them aside. 

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Accepting this and listening to it, is also a really big part in changing our relationship with ourselves to one that is much more healthy, filled with loving and kindness rather than being our own's worst critique (similarly a relationship I have had with myself the first 33 years without it leading to much improvement - so why not treat yourself like you would a friend or someone in need?).

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Fortunately, I had some very lucky encounters leading up to this "year" and getting me to this point - the 8 Week MBSR course with videos by people like Tara Brach, Jon Kabat-Zinn and as extension thereof also the "compassion for the doubter" by Ann Weiser Cornell, as well as reading the book "Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents", which has helped me tremendously and propelled the level of listening and understanding I have for myself to another level. Of course, starting this dialogue, you notice how much you still suppress your own thoughts instinctively as you just walk through the street or go by your day-to-day activities, so this is really just the start of my journey, but one I am happy to have departed on nonetheless and I would like to share some of these conversations with myself in order to show how much value they hold and in the hope that they inspire more people to start on this self-compassion journey.

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I also want to give a brief disclaimer here - me writing these stories and sharing them does in no way, shape or form mean that I think that my stories are more important than those of anyone else. Nonetheless, as also with my other creative project on this page, I do think that stories and experiences of every individual are exceptional, something worthwhile to listen to and to get inspired by. So while my other project focusses on the stories of other people, in the hope to show the beauty of each and everyone of us, what I am writing here is the same argument and as such, I also think that my "human experience" is hopefully valuable. 

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Another disclaimer I would like to make - is that, although I usually try to stop and jot down the main points whenever I have these honest conversations with myself somewhere in my daily life, they are retrospectively recorded to the best of my memory and subject to the completeness of my notes of the day. This may not always make them 100% accurate as they are depending on my memory, but, as you will see further below, it adds another layer to it, which is that, reviewing is that reviewing these situations and conversations with myself after some time has passed often leads to some further reflections and oftentimes even being able to set them in to context in the bigger picture - this post-comment is marked in cursive. Similarly, I would invite you, if you were to have these conversations with yourself, to journal them up at a later stage as well. Especially once you are able to connect the individual experiences to a bigger picture puzzle of yourself, you unlock another flow of insights in understanding yourself better.

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I wish you a lot of inspiration, joy and at times, maybe a bit of fun also on behalf of the conversations I here share with you.

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Some Important(!) words on the structure of this book (please read!) 

This book is structured relatively easily in that the majority of it consists of individual conversations with myself had at different times during the year. Then there is a very brief introduction to the theory and also some experiences I try to revisit wearing the glasses of radical acceptance. That is pretty much all there is to it. However, during the review of the book a very kind friend (thanks Ale!) inspired me to make this book a more living being that develops over time. After all, my main motivation for sharing these reflections is that I hope it shows the value of this philosophy and motivates someone else to take a break from our normal way of judging and suppressing to one of acceptance and (self) love. For this reason, I think it would be nice if you, as the reader are not only doing this exercise yourself, but also to pass it to the next person, helping us to convince them it is worth a try!

I think this will make it all the more powerful and at the same time, I do not imagine this will be one of these books that you keep on your shelf and revisit or, worse, collects dust. Instead I imagine that once you hear about the concept and decide to try it yourself, you start a self-enforcing cycle that doesn’t need the book anymore. So I believe it will be more the kind of book that you will probably pass on to someone else. Or hopefully you will want to do so, because it would mean it has indeed inspired you!

Once you get to that point of passing the book on, or at any point throughout when you feel inspired, I would therefor think you could help me in my vision of encouraging more people by jotting down a conversation you have had yourself. Like I mentioned at the very start, I think everyone’s experience is valuable and therefor, so will be yours and maybe, with your unique experience, you will help us spread the message and the love and kindness. For this, at the very end of the book there are some blank pages you (and the next reader) can use to become part of this individual book's life.

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06.02.2026 - Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia, Heading to the Geysers on a Tour

In the beginning of February we were on a three day tour through the Salt Flats of Uyuni with our trusted driver and guide, Max. During these many hours without any signal, there was plenty of time for conversations and getting to know each other in the group, but also for thorough introspection. So also on the morning of the second day. We had arrived late to our night lodge the day before and obviously had to leave early in order to make it to the Geysers for the sunrise. So it was that around 5am on this day we were driving up the hills of the salt flat as they were being slowly lit up by the rising sun, towards our first sight of the day. The surroundings as well as the inside of our car were quiet, everyone sleeping apart from our driver and myself. 

I was enjoying the quietness, thinking about a simple idea I had after seen the day before how many of us took pictures at the same place - to collect Whatsapp numbers of everyone, make a group and use it to exchange pictures. It was a super simple idea, but I noticed in myself that I really wanted to be the one to propose it. I had this feeling of needing to beat someone else to propose it or more the threat that maybe someone else would beat me to it. Somehow it was really important for me that I was gonna be the one to bring up this very simple thing. 

So I decided to meet this internal voice with curiosity - why did I want this so much? Why had I so strong emotions connected to this? Often I tell myself that it is not about who suggests something, but more, that we get to a solution. But I noticed I thought I would feel cool if I was the one to bring something that is useful to the group. If I found, albeit a simple solution, to a small problem and if I was taking initiative to solve a problem in this new small group. 
At the same time, it very quickly connected to some of my prior insights from therapy or the book of “Adult Children of emotionally Immature parents” which allowed me to understand my needs in this moment more. 

I realised, by solving the problems, by helping, I wanted to proof my worth. That there was something engrained in me, associating this action with making me worthy of love and to get recognised. Undoubtedly super strong emotions for a very trivial thing leading back to some associations I made in my childhood. It was connected to a very strongly suppressed search for love, recognition and approval / appraisal. Somehow, during my upbringing I had created this logic in myself that these things are something to be earned. Even when speaking about paternal love and recognition, it is something that needs to be earned and consequently, by serving people, by helping, by bringing value to them, this would lead to love and recognition. 
Coming to this realisiation in this moment, from a small insignificant idea to my deeply rooted insecurities about feeling loved and recognised, felt like opening a door or breaking down a wall inside of you to an inner part of you that had been there all the years, but I had just ignored. It was a super strong feeling and I felt seen, by myself.
It also helped me to accept that part of me a bit more. As you may be aware, I am a strong believer in the need to “Let it be” (or accepting) in order to eventually be able to “Let it go” - also in terms of these insecurities or trauma stemming from our childhood. And the feelings I had in that moment, which I just described, really supported this and made me feel like I had really gotten a step closer to unlocking "letting go"!

With this acceptance, and thanks to trying more (self) compassion and kindness, rather than just giving myself shit for things I didn't like, I went on to tell myself that I am only human and that because of that I deserve love, peace and happiness (borrowed from the palouse loving kindness meditation). To be honest, I also felt a bit proud of myself at that part, for getting to this point in my internal conversation, for seeing myself / being seen by myself, but also for the “other” side of this internal need - wanting to service and be the glue in groups. Although there was the “negative” part from my childhood and some insecurities that I would need to work with, there is also a positive part of this that I am really proud of and love myself for. 
At the same time, I told this “something in me” that I / it deserves love naturally. That it is not something I need to earn. Of course it is something that will take some long time to really understand and internalise, but for sure this conversation was a good step. One where instead of just suppressing an internal voice or need, which I had done countless times before, I accepted it, listened to it with curiosity and felt a level of enlightenment or being in touch with myself which the “suppression” would surely have never lead to. 

Ultimately, I still wanted to suggest the little idea, but this inner greed for feeling recognised that I had felt coming up somehow transformed in to a very peaceful feeling. 

A self-reflection from myself as I jot this down on my blog - before starting this year of radical acceptance I am sure I would have went with my normal modus operandi - to suppress it and in turn to feel bad about it and take back my needs. I tended to always feel bad about myself for any sort of idea or contribution or any sort of recognition or compliment this would lead to. I had actaully “demonised” this sense of pride or wanting to be recognised to the level that I disliked it very much when I saw it in other people, but also where I had manipulated myself to live my life thinking and pretending I did not like any of this at all. 

As is often the case with passive or active meditation, you are just a bit more present and sensitive in the hours and day to come, so luckily, I managed to have another short conversation with myself later that day thanks to this very intimate and in depth conversation you have just read. 
I do not remember when exactly it was, but at a point during the day, the other people were already awake and we were busy with the action of the day, a thought just came in and out of my mind pretty much unnoticed, like they do so many times during our days when we are not really present and just rushing from A to B. The thought was just a simple feeling of wanting intimacy. Naturally, my head just went on to the next thought, but it felt like I just managed to grasp the tail of it and be like “hold on, I am not listening to myself and not paying attention”. So I took a short break and started a small conversation with myself, listening with kindness and empathy. As I had learned before in the courses, I first started listening to myself and told this “something in me” that I understood and heart it, without any ifs or buts. I also told it, that I also thought some intimacy would be nice.

It was just a short moment, but a moment nonetheless in which I was not suppressing or ignoring myself, but instead just accepting it. Although I wasn't dwelling on it very much, I still permitted it to be there, i “Let it be” so I could “let it go”. 

This was also the moment the idea for this book struck me so I quickly jotted down the bullet points from this and the conversation with myself from the morning and decided to keep this short journal going forward. 

I was proud of myself for the journey and having gotten to these steps of listening to myself and being present. to change the relationship with myself from one where I was very strict with myself and filtering strongly what was allowed to be there and what shouldn't be there. a process that has not really helped me “letting go” of anything. To one of loving and kindness with myself, where all thoughts and ideas have a right to be there, but that doesn't make them, true. Nonetheless, they carry a lot of value for gaining self-understanding and only this way, by acceptance and self compassion will we eventually get to “let go”. 

A flicker of hope massed my mind, I could feel that this change was already starting to pay dividends and I was just happy with where I had gotten. 

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18.02.26 - driving from Ovalle towards Santiago by Colibri
I was just driving towards Santiago in my car and was listening to my playlist and writing to a friend, asking for some help with some small stuff. Suddenly, without really understanding why a sad feeling overcame me and tears came to my eyes. 
Instead of just going on with the music, I decided to be curious and try the focusing exercise to see what was going on. The first thought that came to my mind was that I was feeling a bit ashamed for when the friend who I was asking for help (and her partner) had visited me in Denmark a few years back and I felt I had gotten a bit tired of them and because of that I maybe wasn't as nice to them as I should / could have been. For not having been more patient with them. 

Afterwards I related this feeling of sadness to my insecurities connected to asking for help, it meaning that you feel weak and that instead we should all be super independent and not be needing help from anyone whatsoever. 

I then related the two to each other - feeling that they had done a lot to help me and I was feeling like I didn't do enough for them. I felt indebted and I also felt shitty as a human being for not having been more patient with them. 

However, the only thing I could do in this moment is accept it. I couldn't really change the past and redo things. At the same time, after having listened to myself, I also tried telling this inner part of me about the other good things I had done for them and tried to balance the scale a bit. Tried to get out of this self-loathing / criticising where you are your own worst critique, where you tell yourself that you are worthless and that you don't deserve of help or friendship because you don't do enough for the other persons. 

This is again an example of just one of these micro-conversations, not as deep or extensive as the first in the morning in the Salar de Uyuni, but nonetheless an example where instead of just brushing past a thought that passed or a feeling I felt to the next one, but rather try to let it be, look at it with curiosity and connect to myself on a deeper level. Not necessarily saying that this thought is true, but understanding where it is coming from, that it, in its own way, makes sense, has its own inherent logic and that suppressing it will simply not get me anywhere. Instead, looking at it and myself with self compassion and loving kindness is how to understand myself better and actually unlock growth.

As I was putting this together for the blog again some other thoughts crossed my mind. For once, it felt very much connected to the very first post about self worth and how being loved and gaining recognition by people in your immediate circle is something I mistakenly feel needs to be “earned”.
It also goes a bit further in to my relationship with help and service being something that is somehow an accounting exercise - where you should aim to have a “positive” balance by not needing help but instead being of service. 
It is also something that reminds me very much of my mother and my grandmother which have always carried themselves outwards as being hyper-independent and strong. No doubt something I caught on to as I was being a child. 
Finally, something I have sometimes noticed in myself is that this very obviously unrealistic expectation of being able to live without help and needing to constantly sacrifice to others is a burden that I at least am not able to shoulder. In actuality, it leads me to being constantly over-burdened and stressed out due to the high expectations that I feel other people have and leads me to do exactly the opposite - burn out and not be able to help anyone.

And then, a bit of reality check comes from this previous year of traveling - help is literally everywhere. One thing is, if you are really living your life, if you are putting yourself out there to experience things, you will need help so so many times (like with my crappy car…). At the same time, you give help so much. However, for me there is this bias where I don't notice when I do something that helps other people and at the same time, the slightest inconvenience from my side, feels like a huge favour to ask. While in reality, most people I have met actually do want to help you and they don't think of helping as this zero sum game where they loose something and you gain something - it sounds ridiculous to be writing “out loud” but I also have to realise that this is how I felt and still feel, no matter how silly it sounds.

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24.03.2026 - Valdivia

While I was in Valdivia in March of this year, I noticed a few days of being particularly horny. I think it is probably natural for men and women that this comes in periods, but here in Valdivia it wasn't just a normal level of that I could feel. Instead, it was a very specific urge. Already before, every now and then I had had this urge to have some quite dominant sex, so again in Valdivia. I also noticed that I had already carried that feeling with me for a few days. I was fantasizing about sex with a younger woman, petit, unexperienced and her being submissive. This phantasy didn’t get better with me being on tinder. This time, my phantasies went wilder, I was imagining bondage and rough sex, I was imagining sleeping with her under a different name and to have sex with her without protection. 

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Now I could have just been stuck in autopilot and just looked at this as me being horny - kept on the surface level, however, over the past few months in which I went from “ignoring” to “radical acceptance”, I had slowly allowed different sexual phantasies to have place inside of me. So as I was in Valdivia and these thoughts came to my mind again, I was finally at a point where I could be curious about it rather than just ignoring it as the taboo it was. 

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My very first thought was just simply that I felt lonely. It had been quite a bit since my previous girlfriend and I had broken up and also the last thing that felt like intimacy had already been more than 4 months behind me. And as it was late in the evening that I had this dialogue, I just left it at that and went to sleep. 
But the next morning (of the 24th) I happened to just stay a bit in bed exploring this thought further. Somehow, I connected more to this and also connected to the inner critique (asshole) inside of me. This something in me (the critical jerk) is part of our family at least since my grandma and when it comes up, I call it that (aka Grandma - Oma). Because whenever I was with her, I noticed her being a grumpy being with the constant need to being critical of other people. She was essentially running through life constantly being displeased with other people and thinking they were not behaving right. I think it is something that has also affected my mother and myself - when we feel bad, we have the tendency to judge other people. The only thing to help you when you feel bad is to pull the people around you down. Rather than making yourself feel better and getting helped up by someone, you just devalue them in the opinion you have of them. If you think about it objectively, it is really not a very good coping mechanism for feeling bad…

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Anyway, to be honest, in this moment, I didn’t at first realise why this thought came up - it felt pretty random, but then again, you cannot always control what the inner voice comes up with, and maybe that's good! I didn’t quite realise how this would connect to the sexual phantasies. Also, I was feeling lonely, not bad. It didn’t then and still now doesn’t feel like the same thing. Then again, it does somehow feel connected. The idea of dominance and submission of somehow making another person smaller I guess is a factor in both things. But I didn’t get the puzzle to make sense entirely. I could just listen to the thoughts something in me came up with as reactions to my curiosity without resistance and see where it would lead me.
One thing it pointed me towards though is that somehow in our family there is a messed up connection to intimacy. I am not quite sure how, but I am certain it is somehow passed down to us from our parents in my family. I know that my mother has not received the emotional care she would have wanted or needed from her parents and I know that this is the same for me. We have somehow (although my mother was almost the opposite of her mother in raising me) passed down the same traumas. 

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I'm really absolutely not sure. But I accept that there is something there and all that is hidden inside. In the hope that I understand myself and can shake off these shadows at a point to also break the cycle of passing down traumas. 

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A reflection came to my mind now noting this down for the block about the sexual phantasies. Maybe this related back to the previous stories about missing confidence and a somehow messed up connection in the head for how we are deserving of love by not needing help / being strong. In that sense, intimacy for us is definitely frightening. It is vulnerability and vulnerability is weakness. In that way, having a domination - submissive sexual interaction allows us to be in the opposite position. There is intimacy - something we crave because we don’t feel we deserve it / haven’t gotten enough of it as a child, but we are not weak in that we are the “dominating” party. 

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25.03.2026 - Valdivia, after falling of the bike in Collico

I was riding through the Collico national park close to Valdivia right after having fallen of the bike quite a bit, with my entire lower back and legs hurting quite a lot. One memory popped in to my head as I was doing so. A memory from my childhood that I had somehow always come up inside of me at the most random of moments. Almost like something you cannot shake.

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The memory itself is nothing special and goes roughly like this - when I was a child and already going to secondary school in another city, I needed to take a train in the morning of about 35 minutes. One day, I remember really not wanting to go to school, so I made the decision to get out in the next little town (about 6km from the village where we lived) and say I was sick. However, I didn’t call my mother who at that point was already at work (she usually left the house before me and we were living alone at that point), but decided I could somehow make the lying about being sick or the skipping school “right”, but walking back home, all of the 6km. Somehow, back then I thought for what I was doing I should “punish” myself by walking home and that way it would all be ok. 

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Normally this memory just popped in and out like a “nothing” without me really paying attention to it. But this day something got me to look at this a bit more thoroughly. This was actually the first time I had listened to this feeling connected to the memory and realised that I was doing this “auto punishment”. I could also feel that somehow, this heightened burden - having to walk home in addition to being sick, would get more some sympathy (or empathy) from my mother. 

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Then I cast my attention on the fact that I didn’t want to go to school - was this normal? In connection to that I remembered something else that had always just been a funny little anecdote for me without carrying any hidden meaning - when I still went to primary school (again my mom was usually already at work when I had to get to school), quite often I stayed at home to watch anime - Sailor Moon, Pokemon, Dragonball, that sort of stuff.
Only this time I thought about it in connection to the other memory and noticed a pattern, so it gave me reason to dig deeper yet again, not brush these memories off this time and instead be curious about them. So for the first time, with both eyes open I tried to remember how it was actually going to school. I always said I had a pretty perfect and relaxed childhood, but this day close to Valdivia in the bike, something got me to shine a light on it.

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Although I never admitted or felt that I was bullied in any school I have plenty of memories where just because I laughed it off, abusive situations were not taken by me as bullying but instead as stupid jokes. Maybe subconsciously all of that still made me want to avoid school and this is how I searched my happy place as a child. My refugee in anime. How I wanted for many years to be in the world of Dragonball and what many years later led to me jumping out of the train and walking 6km home.

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Now where I am editing this for the blog it once again shakes me a bit how crazy it is that we can be so good at controlling how we think we feel about certain things or how we think we felt about something in the past. How I haven’t ever thought about the bad memories from school as such, never questioned whether I was unhappy there or feeling badly treated, or, at the same time, how I never thought about this walking home and “being sick” as a cry for affection from my mother. Nonetheless, as I allowed these feelings to be there and actually listened to what they tried to tell me, I could remember the feeling I had back then as if I was living it and I can now understand this feeling and give the right label to it - that of wanting to get love and affection from your parents.
In all transparency, while I can clearly take myself back to this feeling, it is a bit harder with the possible unhappiness in school. So maybe this is something I need to explore more in the future, while the feeling of having craved more parental love is something which is more clear to me also due to some other conversations with myself that will be presented later in this blog.

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04.05.2026 - Santiago - After buying a Guitar and doubting myself

One day in Santiago my "mission of the day" was to buy a travel guitar for myself to finally start to practice and learn how to play the damn thing. In the store, I thought I had bought a 3/4 guitar, but then, as I was outside and googled a bit more about the model, to my avail, it seemed I had bought a 1/2 guitar and the first voices on the internet were about this probably not being a good travel guitar for a grown up due to just being that little bit smaller than the 1/2 guitar. 

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Immediately, my feeling of accomplishment got washed away with the waves of feeling bad about having made a mistake. I had tried it in the store of course and it had felt alright, but anyway, the voices on the internet somehow affected me and, together with something inside of me, managed to pull me down quite a bit. At first I sat down outside and tried to listen inwards to understand what was going on, how could something so small make me feel so terribly bad about myself? It was a purchase of 50EUR. Unfortunately, nothing came up, no internal voice came up with any theories. At the same time though, I couldn't really shake that feeling. 

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At this point, I had decided to just walk back to the Baquedano metro station all the way from Pedro de Valdivia, if you are not familiar with Santiago, what this meant is that I had more than enough time to explore this feeling. But my usual "meet it with curiosity" still did not lead to any results. However, at that point, something in me just told me to let all the bad things out - it turned out I might not have wanted to listen before, because suddenly, a flip switched and I just hurled a bunch of insults at myself (in my thoughts, not in an outside voice...). These were from a part of me just voicing how it felt about this potentially having bought something out of the spur and having been stupid about it. Things were said such as "worst human in the world", "piece of shit", "Useless" and "not worth any love or sympathy". It got to a point where I did not just want to beat myself up with words, but actually physically so. 

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How crazy was that? I had this absolute self loathing just because I might have spend 50EUR on a guitar that may be a bit too small for me? At the same time, I was still walking and I had tried the thing in the store, so it was only the outlook of potentially having made a small stupid mistake that led to these very strong feelings.
Even as I was walking I could see how silly this was, but I was also happy. Happy that I could be honest with me about this and that something so powerful in me could finally be brought to my attention so I could accept it, I could treat myself with love and kindness and hopefully eventually let go of these voices inside of me that are so much controlled by my insecurities. 

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Now that I am putting this together for the blog, it makes a lot of sense how this came to be. The internal logic I have according to which being weak makes you unworthy of love. How you need to be perfect. This is also why I am a person in general very afraid of failure, I remember many examples where I haven't done things, started something, not shown friends how to do something, afraid of cooking for people, because I somehow always felt I would be ousted as a faker or failure. 

At the same time, I remember being the happiest whenever I live my life without that fear - e.g. the first few weeks on a farm on Temuco when I didn't feel the need to be perfect or to prove myself, I just enjoyed every day thinking it was a new experiment and to try out new stuff - it would be turning out one way or another.
At the same time, I still find it crazy how such a small thing, by triggering my insecurities, can lead to such strong feelings. It is something that very well connects to some insights from previous therapy. When these insecurities are triggered, I am overwhelmed by my emotions and in fact I get emotionally paralysed. Not being able to see anything else. Surely, the book about Adult Children of emotionally Immature parents would find this very coherent with the traumata in our family. 

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October or November 2026 - Jungle of Iquitos, collected in end May and early June in Pichilemu, Chile
Between October and November I was in Iquitos, the jungle city of Peru. I spent my time partially at a local NGO to help children with their homework, living with a local family and my own personal drama of deciding to break up with my then-girlfriend, then first having some One Night Stands thinking I was fine and then realising that this was obviously not helping me to reflect and get over the emotional experience of ending a relationship. However, and while there is most likely some things to explore here as well, during this time I had another very powerful experience that I would like to review now, retrospectively, after all these months have passed. That being the Ayuhasca session I had during a weekend get-away in the actual jungle. Until now, I had not felt like this was something I could really share with someone who hasn’t had an Ayuhasca experience (and in fact I think this is how many people feel, that it is inexplicable to someone who doesnt “know”). But now, whilst reviewing my other conversations with myself, I feel there are some aspects and conclusions of this crazy experience that I can share with you as the reader and will help me put some more puzzle-pieces to the collage that I am assembling with all these little stories to gain a holistic picture of myself. 

That being said, although I am now about to dig out the mental and physical notes I took after the Ayuhasca session and try to set myself back in to this mindset, I am already now quite sure that I will omit a lot of things. Partially, because I still think they cannot be understood by someone who doesn’t have the same experience, but also because these (e.g. some of the different visions) will not add any value for what this book is intended for.

But, let’s not get ahead of ourselves and start from the beginning. 
So, as you already know, I want to reflect, and in the process share with you, the experience from the Ayuhasca session in the Samaipata National Reserve a few hours outside of Iquitos, where we stayed in a lodge for a weekend. One night, my friend and I, together with the Shamana (after some fasting and special diet) were picked up to another, a lot more basic (you could easily say dirty and run down) place. Here, the Shamana started preparing herself and the room while we waited outside. 

At this point I want to mention that leading up to the session we had spent a bit of time preparing ourselves, reflecting on ourselves, but most importantly, to also formulate one or a few questions that we wanted to answer (ourselves) during the session itself. For me, I had felt that at this point I had “settled” more in to the break-up and at the same time, I also felt I had made some significant leeway in understanding myself and the way in which my childhood “trauma” were still affecting me. For that reason, what I really wanted to get out of this experience was some enlightenment about the purpose of my life, nothing major… 
This was of course one of the main reasons why I had started my midlife-crisis trip in the first place and at this point I felt I had already gained a lot of valuable insights and ideas from the first half year of introspection. However, I now wanted to really listen inwards and see whether the ideas I had gained until this point and what I wanted to move forward with, was indeed the right choice. So it was these questions I whispered to the secret potion before swallowing the weird brown-ish liquid. 

And now we come to the point of omittance. The first few things and actaully all the way towards the very end of the session are not really worth mentioning here and I would like to keep to myself in any case. What I would like to mention as the first thing, was a prevalent feeling throughout the entire “experience” of not being able to understand the expectations of some magic creatures and what I was supposed to do in order to “unlock” the next stage or the answer. In fact, I think it was the very last of my visions that was some sort of treasure chest which I ended up not being able to open - leaving me once more feeling like I didn’t know the right thing to do or wasn't ready. Obviously at this point it was mostly frustrating for me, I felt the treasure (my answer) right in front of me, but still couldn’t access it for whatever reason. At the same time, with the reflections over the months that have succeeded this experience, I see a lot of myself in this feeling of being paralysed and not knowing what to do, what other people expect of me in order to “gain something”. 
I have since already conversed with myself and you have read about it as well - about this need of proving myself worthy of love stemming from some weird interpretation that it is something to be “earned”. At the same time, we have already shone a light on the fear of failure that this is connected to and how, my best days in Temuco were those where I could somehow liberate myself of this fear and just try things without being afraid of making someone like me less if I would not do well. 
The very same thing is also something I could observe in myself these previous days here in Pichilemu where we were in a hostel, spending our days with other volunteers and some guests, becoming friends, going surfing together and what not. 
Here again I had days where the fear of failure (especially cooking for other people) has at times kind of paralysed me and made me feel very insecure. And at this point now I remember an incident from yesterday. To set the context a bit - a part inside of me had already been made feel insecure because there were some communications just before it where I wasnt able to understand well what another person was trying to tell me and I had to ask 2-3 times without understanding what was wanted from me. Then we were in front of the reception and I was reminded of a social media post that I still had to make with one of our guests in it and we had saved it as draft to ask their permission first. 
Anyway, at this time in front of the reception, we could ask and he gave us his permission, so we wanted to post the draft saved earlier. At this point, I asked my coworker (same person who’s spanish I hadnt understood earlier) to double check it before posting it. However, she wanted to make a lot of changes (what felt like everything in the moment) so I just left her the phone and went away to the kitchen, the guest (who’s permission we had gotten and who by then was a friend) just asking why I got angry. 
Obviously I spent a bit of time after over-thinking this and rationalising it for myself. I hadn’t gotten angry, but I had certainly gotten annoyed and decided that she (coworker) might as well do the post herself if she wants to change so much. I also thought that it wasn’t an irrational reaction from my side “imagine if someone asks you to do something and then when you do it, they are not satisfied with anything you did?” is what I had already prepared in case my coworker was gonna bring up the topic, so she would understand my perspective. And actually, at this time, leaving with that conclusion and that answer ready, I was already kind of proud of myself, because I had decided that I just wanted to communicate honestly in case it was going to be a topic, rather than just downplay the topic. In this moment it was already something I considered a step forward, but to be honest, there was probably a part inside of me that already told me “you are not entirely honest with yourself” but I somehow didnt want or couldn’t place my finger on it. Now, the next day, sitting in this cafe in Pichilemu and writing these lines it somehow makes sense and fits better into the whole picture. At the same time, I don’t think there is much need to over-complicate it further. It simply fits in to my fear of failure, making mistakes leads me to feel diminished for the association I have with “tough love”. 
This reminds me once more also of this idea that my best days are usually at the very start at a nice place, when I am excited about being there and experiencing it and I do not have this constant fear of failing or disappointing at every single opportunity. The time when I am just fully embracing it and emancipated. Maybe this also explains why I am always excited and motivated to be myself, meditate, stretch and all this in public while I am traveling somewhere new. The first few days I then feel like I can be myself the most, but then as time passes I feel I loose more and more courage to be myself and get more and more in to this passive and reactive role of myself, where I monitor other people and do not like making decisions anymore either.

Note: a second thing that is interesting in all of this, which some of my friends will recognise, is this need to just shut myself down and take myself out of the equation when overwhelmed by my emotions. Similar to walking away from my coworker in front of the reception in Pichilemu and even more extreme e.g. in conflicts had with my previous partners or in friendships I have ended quite easily in the past. I don’t think it is something I really want to get in to right now, but it is something we should anyway “pin” for a future discussion (with myself).

Now after this very big detour, I would like to return to the Ayuhasca session and the other impression from these moments that I want to share with you. As you can imagine, there were many powerful emotions and pictures, many of which led me to feel trapped, helpless, not knowing what to do (as you have already read), like a baby, reborn and so so many more things, of which maybe I myself dont remember them all. However, I remember that one of the moments I felt very helpless I was essentially crying for my mother and in fact this is the second and very powerful impression I would like to share - there came a moment where I myself was depicted as a little child. I think I felt alone and lonely, I felt helpless, I felt sad and the only thing I wanted was to feel safe in the embrace of my mother. It is hard for me to really describe and recollect this level of sadness that showed itself to me in this moment. At the same time, I cannot really explain well in words how conclusive this felt. It was like this was all that mattered. Like all my insecurities, all problems, essentially everything I had been trying to understand and get to light these previous months could all be explained with this little child inside of me that just wanted to be loved by their mother (/parents).
Again, I dont think there is so much more light to be shone on that. It is what it is. At the same time, I must say I felt at first a bit disappointed in the moment. It was something I in essence had already accepted and not a new revelation. After all I had already started working through the book (Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents). But with the passing of time, I think in order to really accept it, I needed to accept the extent of it, I needed this visual and emotional representation to understand how severe this need is, but maybe it also helps me to show compassion towards that inner part of me (that needing child)? I am still not convinced and of course, it was not what I had aimed for as part of the session, but it is what I got, so I have to believe that this was what I needed. 

Now I would like to add some reflections from this moment that I took from the before mentioned book. The first thing is a very important step in moving on - most often, we cannot expect that our parents will change. We need to make our peace with potentially never getting what we want from them. We are tempted to kind of think that if we work on ourselves, if we work through this book, we become better aware of ourselves, that at the end of all of this the reward is that our parents are finally fulfilling our unsatisfied needs. But in actuality what most of us can only hope for us that we learn to make our peace with this not being the case. Which is of course super frustrating. As you know I have this association that love can be earned. So how can it be that I am putting so much work in, I am accepting all my insecurities and weaknesses, spending years on myself, how can it be that after all of this work, I will still not be rewarded with the love I need? It just feels so unfair. But of course what we are doing is, we are not resolving our parent’s trauma, but we are working on our own, we are not changing them to give us what we need, but we are accepting ourselves, the children in us and we are giving them the compassion and love we would have liked to receive from our parents all that many years ago and thereby, the only thing we can hope to do is that these voices will eventually feel at peace inside of us. They will feel safe, at home and loved and they won’t feel the need to show themselves when something triggers what would have previously been an insecurity of ours. 
This is of course very easily said, but feels almost impossible to do (if I ever get to this stage, I will let you know)! 

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I think this is a very sad but important baseline for the dialogue we have with our parents. Of course there are ways in which we can improve all relationships, but in the end, we are only responsible and able to affect our emotions and our role in a relationship. For instance, I remember a few weeks ago when I had a communication with my mother about something and I really had this need to get her input, like I would from a good friend, but she kind of just glossed over and changed the topic immediately. Before I would have just felt frustrated, this time I remember the book and I told her “you can change the topic in a bit if you want, but it is kind of important for me that I get your reaction about what I just said, which is something big for me”. In the end, she didn’t say so much to it, but I still somehow got rid of my frustration by not just swallowing the frustration, but actually voicing my needs. albeit that she in the end still didn’t give me what I wanted. This is probably all we can do - communicate and take a stand on our needs, but also accept that the other person may not want to satisfy this. Nonetheless, this is so much better compared to my previous inner child which would have eaten up their emotions and which feels a lot more unhealthy. 

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Finally, sitting here and writing these last sentences made me realise another feeling that was kinda lingering under the surface the past few weeks, ever since I had told my mother that I was coming home earlier for a while and until now. I had kind of accepted it being there, but again it feels like I needed to write these last lines and make a last step to really pull it from the almost-conscious to the actual conscious mind. What I had felt for these past few weeks is somehow a disappointment. I had told my mom I was coming home earlier and somehow her reaction was underwhelming. Also in the times we had spoken since, she didn’t really seem to care so much. At least not as much as I would have liked. Of course, I could try to take her perspective and try to look at it from her insecurities: 
I know she usually communicated to me that she misses me and she tried to speak to me every few weeks, tell me she loves me. So I know that for the entire period she must have missed me and would have liked for me to be back home again. Then I could think that, her reaction now being less cold is because she herself has a lot of insecurities passed down to her, that give her the issues with sharing emotions with me, especially in a more profound way and of course, if I was going to come back home, this was a lot more “serious” than over distance. A bit like it is always easier for us to write to someone how we feel (in a letter or social media), asking them out, etc. than if we are face to face with them. 
So yes, I could do all of this, kind of excuse not getting the reaction I want and feeling like she withdraws a bit. But if we should really overcome this as we have just discussed, then the only thing I can do is ask her more specifically for a reaction, if she is happy for me to come back and if she is indeed not giving me what I want (or more, if my inner child doesn’t feel satisfied with the response, because it is also not her responsibility how I react), then I can only hope that, as it did before, because I again stood up for myself, I will at least be at peace with it. While now it feels like something constantly lingering under the surface and waiting to be a sensible topic to be triggered later. 

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Other note from now while consolidating all of this - I always felt there was more about this treasure chest that I couldn’t open and now writing about my angst of failure, I think maybe it was not only that this not only led me to not know what to do, I didn’t know the “solution” but in actuality, what might fit much more is me being paralysed at this point, the simple fear of failure prevented me from trying at all and in fact, maybe this stupid treasure chest was unlocked and I just had to push open the lid…

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