About Last Week…
This last week was a doozy for me in a variety of different ways, and I can’t really explain why simply, so here we are with another blog post!
To try and put my experience of this last week into words, It felt a bit like emotional whiplash, but also like leveling up.
How?
Well, several things I’ve been working on and thinking about finally clicked in my mind. And not just clicked like I gained an explanation, or I understood the next step. But these seemingly disparate puzzle pieces all finally clicked - together. I had been working on these separate things and they all came together in one beautiful picture.
Because of this, I was able to better identify some hidden and shadow aspects of those different elements that I wasn’t aware of before. The frustration of my freelance work was funneling pent up emotion from my inner child work. My professional and financial worries were causing some misunderstandings in my familial relationships. The change and shift of my friend group was causing unnecessary strife around loss and loneliness, further impacting the worry around a future move. And all of this shifted into place and became abundantly clear that one thing was holding back all of my forward momentum: fear.
So often, we do things a certain way because of how others will perceive them. Even if they’re things we actually want to do, (like start a podcast cough cough) they will be done with the audience, and their judgment, in mind. This, at least personally, keeps me from showing up with the real authenticity and energy of that project fully manifesting. Even when it comes to outfits we wear; how many times have you talked yourself out of wearing something because of how someone else might respond to it?
Please don’t let me project my own work onto you, dear reader, but truly, so much of my leveling up this past week centered around letting go of the fear of not being good enough, and settling into the trust of the universe and her plan for me.
How was this able to happen? Simple. It wasn’t simple. Lots of these things are a long time coming and so much of my awareness about them has come from so many years in therapy. So on Tuesday, when I went in for my usual therapy appointment, I wasn’t expecting a simple session about my week to become about my fears surrounding conversations with my parents or friends, or hyper-vigilance about others’ reactions to me to spawn a conversation about my deep-rooted fear of approval. And how this fear, even though I’ve always been aware of it, is what comes in between me and truly going for it. While this may seem obvious in retrospect and reflection, it’s much harder to be aware of in the “day in, day out,” of life's habits. We say taking chances and chasing dreams comes down to a matter of time, or convenience, or finances, but truly all of these excuses boil down to fear, and holding yourself back. This session allowed me to understand that my fear of acceptance, stemming from inner child stuff, wasn’t just affecting my relationships or my anxious social behavior, it was also affecting my drive and passion.
Once this was unlocked I realized how much this in turn affected my anxiety about another layer of success, and of what people think - finances and textbook “success.” While I’m, holding myself back because of what people think, which is keeping me from showing up fully, I’m also afraid that if I don’t succeed and make money and become wildly successful I’ll also garner judgment, when the fear of judgment is what’s keeping me from that success in the first place! (Note: This whole conversation is ignoring the nuance behind “success,” but hopefully you understand the multidimensional effects of a term and construct like, “success.”)
Unlocking this in therapy on Tuesday gave me a full day on Wednesday to process these new feelings and realizations, and lock in to a download I have been receiving for months now. The download? Why am I doing for everybody else what I should be doing for myself?
This initially taped into my professional life and working for other people’s businesses and for other people’s dreams, but now I understood that the reason this download resonated so strongly is because yes, it impacted my career, but it was rooted in the fear of rejection if I disappoint others. The fear of not being useful, or helpful, or worthy in someone else’s eyes. And how doing for others what I should be doing for myself always comes back to “put your own mask on first.” You can’t pour from an empty cup. The most altruistic thing we can do for the world is deeply love, adore, honor, and care for ourselves. And yet. It is truly the hardest thing to do.
On Thursday, I had a beautifully serendipitous astrology coaching and planning session with my dear friend Kelly Kasle. In this session, I knew that I wanted to explore these recent revelations and the timing for next steps. I think we’ve all been experiencing a shift, and the feeling that something big is on the horizon, but what does that shift look like for me? What do I need to do to set myself up for success in the coming months so that I can authentically do for myself what I have so often done for others.
It was in this session that Kelly asked me the beautiful question, “What is it that you truly want to connect with?” and the answer was simple: people. I want to connect with their stories, their experiences, their hearts. And through that make the world a better place. It wasn’t until this question that I realized an even deeper intermingling between my personal self-love journey and my deepest dream. I’ve always wanted Cohere to be a true Collective. Not about me, not about who I am, but about who we are. And Kelly wisely advised me that, in order to create a Collective where people come, and feel safe to share their story, you must own your own story. And there it is again. Centering someone else’s narrative over my own.
The fear here was self-evident to me, because it’s one that I’ve thought about frequently throughout Cohere’s lifespan. I’m afraid that if I were to post about my life, my story, who I am, if people thought I was trying to be an “influencer” or thought that my life was so interesting, I would push people away. Or I would be pushed away. And these misconceptions terrified me, because I believed that if a viewer believed me to be self-centered, narcissistic, or in any way putting myself above another member of the Collective, it would crumble Cohere from its foundation. And yet, keeping myself from creating things, even from a mindset of wanting what’s best for Cohere, is still choosing to hold myself back from showing up authentically. It is still acting out of fear.
I truly believe that the universe brings us exactly what we need. Never has that been more apparent to me than now. The next day after my session with Kelly I had a difficult experience that caused me a lot of anxiety and turmoil within some of my friendships. I was afraid that I had done something that wasn’t good enough and guilt quickly began bubbling to the surface. My fear came out to play and all of the ugly thoughts reared their heads: I had fallen short. I’m a bad friend. I’m a bad person. I’ll always be alone. And cue the panic attack.
After I had caught my breath and began reflecting on the experience, why everything came on so suddenly, I once again realized how powerful this week had been for me. While I was doing this work and focusing on how my personal story related to my career, here I was reminded of how it related to my relationships, in real time. And the fact remained: when faced with difficulty my mind jumped to guilt, fear, and abandonment. I felt as though I had to do just about everything possible in order to make up for the massive failure that I had committed. In this moment I was able to take a step back, see the situation playing out, and bring myself out of a place of fear and into a place of observation. Not only was this a huge realization of an important piece of my “fear” puzzle that I had been solving through the week, but it was also a triumph of my growth in therapy. CBT works y’all!
Once I had regained myself and took a minute to process this discovery, a dear friend, Savi Davidson, realizing that I was overwhelmed and in flux, offered me a reiki session. If you are unfamiliar with reiki I highly suggest you check it out, but in short, it is energetic healing through the universal energy of love. During this reiki session, I felt so many of the week’s realizations pop up. While working on my throat chakra I felt the need to swallow my words, the fear of opening my mouth. This fear is very specific as well, anyone will tell you I can talk your ear off, but the fear here applied to true honesty, speaking my mind even when it won’t be the popular opinion, even when it’s something deeply personal and important to me.
Working on my solar plexus I realized how much my inner child was still afraid, and I got this overwhelming vision of how afraid I used to be to sleep at night. When I was little, not even little little but old enough to know to be afraid, I needed someone in the room for me to be able to go to sleep until I was 13 years old. And what was the fear? Vampires. Even though I know they’re “not real,” the idea of someone taking my blood away, my life force away, taking my spirit away, making me something unalive, was deeply terrifying. And how did it manifest? I wanted the time and attention of my parents, my most trusted friends. The ones who I knew loved me unconditionally. During this vision I realized that the fear was still under my chakra. I was blocking the fear instead of allowing it to flow through me and leave. I didn’t want to be afraid of something so “silly” - or what the world around me would think of as silly. Once again, facing the feat revolved around rejection and external reactions. So I buried it.
But during the session, when that fear of abandonment rose up, I felt myself automatically move to wrap little Reese up in my arms, and tell her there was no need to be afraid anymore. Because now, I could stay awake with her. She didn't need to worry about inconveniencing mom and dad, because she had me now. She didn’t need to worry about rejection, or abandonment, or judgment because there is always someone who would never reject her and who will always be on the front row waiting with open arms at the end of the day.
Savi’s healing energy allowed me to fully feel and let go in that moment, and after, I felt like I was able to truly integrate some of the things I had been learning throughout the week.
On Saturday, the growth continued at a beautiful event at Le Sol house here in Dallas. Kelly, my dear friend the astrologer, did spot readings and there was a flower bar, pop up shops, flash tattoos, and a coffee bar. I was able to sit and chat with my friend Ale about my week and learned that she’s been experiencing some similar things. During this conversation, Ale truly made me feel so seen. And in that moment I realized how abundance can flow when you remove your own fear. The connection in our conversation likely wouldn’t have happened if I was still scared to bring up certain topics, or talk about myself too much, but Ale and I went there, and were able to connect about the fear of rejection we both experience in social settings, especially when it comes to our spirituality and spiritual practices.
And of course, the work continued on Sunday when I recorded a podcast with the wonderful Raine Nox. In our conversation, Raine and I covered a plethora of topics, and I am thrilled to release this episode next Tuesday. During our conversation, one piece really resonated with the lessons of the week: the truth about altruism. but the aspect that stuck out to me in my own journey was the importance of altruism. Altruism is the notion that we can serve others truly selflessly, without any reward on our part. Historically, altruism has been difficult, borderline impossible, to defend because of the fact that anytime we do something kind for someone else, you can always claim that you at least get a little boost from having done some good.
Most religions, spiritualities, and philosophies consider the individual to be a piece of a larger whole. If this is true, then the larger whole is also linked to us as an individual, and every single either individual, therefore linking us to everyone else as well. If we continue down this line of reasoning, we can understand how there is a piece of everyone within us, and a piece of us in everyone else. If this is true, then when we see someone else suffering, we see ourselves suffer. And when we suffer, we are truly causing those around us to suffer. If all of this is true, then isn’t taking care of others automatically taking care of yourself, and taking care of yourself automatically altruistic?
Perhaps the purest form of altruism is taking bold and bright and radical care of yourself. Isn’t the best, most intentional way to love your neighbor is to love yourself loudly? Altruism has long been something I’ve grappled with as a student of philosophy. Intuitively I wanted, almost needed, it to be possible. But it’s pretty much impossible to prove within philosophical argumentation. But just like most truisms about our human experience, the concept of altruism is a paradox. While sure, altruism cannot be separate from selfishness, and therefore doesn’t exist, selfishness can’t be separated from altruism, and also doesn’t exist. Our human nature of jealousy and self-preservation is, at its root, an instinct to love one another.
As you can tell, I have had a lot of moving puzzle pieces in my mind this week. And while not all of the pieces have fully found their home yet, the picture is taking shape: there is no space for fear in a life filled with love. In light of all of my experiences, how is it possible for me to retain a logical sense of fear of rejection? Fear of abandonment? Fear of betrayal or judgment? Any of those things would truly be judging, abandoning, rejecting myself. The little Reese that I just told I would always be there for.
So, the emotional turmoil of leveling up. This has been a hard week. An exhausting week. But one of the most awake weeks I’ve ever experienced. I truly feel like sitting here, writing this, I am coming into a new state of who I AM. And I couldn’t be more proud. Of the years of work I’ve done in therapy, the days of fear that have taught me why I never want someone to feel as lonely or rejected as I have, of my bravery and newfound commitment to radical self love. We all deserve a big love. A big dream. And I AM my biggest love. I AM my biggest dream. And I’m done being afraid of that.
Until next time, so much love!
Smack!
XX Reese
Founder, The Cohere Collective
