Am I too much for other people?
Today, I’m starting a whole new form of therapy. Something called a ‘listening therapy’.
In practice, it’s pretty simple.
You listen to short bursts of music, a few times a day for a month. It’s just regular music, but filtered in such a way as to stimulate your vagus nerve (so the theory goes).
The claim is, this helps “reset the nervous system and return it to safety”.
As someone with a very nervous system, I am sceptical. I’ve tried so many different things over the years.
Just me?
But my guide on this particular therapy journey, Jo, is a trusted teacher of mine. She says this therapy helped her immensely.
So I say, Sure, how hard can it be?
The first session we do together over Zoom. The rest I’ll do without Jo there.
It all starts innocently enough. I listen to some nice music, I feel kind of light and sparkly afterward.
And that’s when Jo explains the kicker.
‘So the funny thing about this therapy is, it works best when you don’t do it alone,’ Jo says.
‘It’s best to do it with a trusted person in the room with you. Just another warm body.’
Oh no, I think.
Other warm bodies are the main source of my anxieties! That’s the whole reason I’m doing this??
I hold up my alternative “warm body” solution for Jo to see: the little soft toy Koala I’ve been carrying with me for the past few months.
Jo is not convinced.
‘Well look, you might want to experiment,’ she says. ‘Do a session on your own, and a session with other people, and see if it feels different.’
Ha! I think, Not a chance.
Regular stowaway
A day later I’m doing my first listening session. By myself.
Of course.
The booklet says to find a space that’s not too cluttered. That’s not exactly an option in my house just now, but I at least arrange a little corner of my office just so. The sun coming in the windows, a few pillows and a blanket on the ground.
(And my Koala.)
I pop on my headphones and hit play. The light, sparkly feeling from yesterday starts right back up again.
I could get used to this.
I’m supposed to listen for fifteen minutes. I make it through two and a half before I realise I am suddenly feeling really edgy.
Jo said to watch out for this. She said in stimulating the nervous system, the therapy can bring up things. You don’t want to push your system too far too fast.
Yeah, but two and a half minutes?
I try to keep going, worried I’m doing the wrong thing, but also wanting to see if the light, sparkly feeling will return. It doesn’t.
I eventually press stop, and realise there’s more than just edginess here.
I feel really… alone.
And I realise, I don’t want to do this on my own after all.
I drive to my girlfriend Honor’s house. She agrees to take over from my Koala.
I finish the rest of the session with her there, and I have to admit, I far prefer this to doing it alone.
Dammit.
It feels less lonely, for one thing. But more than that, it gives me a clearer reference point for what effect the therapy may actually be having.
At one point while I’m listening, Honor gets up to grab something, and I realise: that movement, that sound of another human simply being there in the room, it would normally bring a spike of fear.
But today it’s just another sound in the room.
Interesting.
The listening session ends. Honor and I are supposed to be doing some work together now, a Big Feels Club planning session.
She starts talking about our agenda for the day, but I’m not really listening. Instead, I realise, I’m feeling profoundly sad.
Then something very unusual happens.
I manage to tell my girlfriend exactly what I’m feeling.
It takes a couple of goes, but I find words to voice the request hidden in this big feeling.
I don’t want to start the work chat yet. I want (and this is news to me in the moment) a cuddle.
Bless her, Honor obliges, holding me on the couch.
Something in me absolutely loves this. It begins to unfold itself, just a little, there in her arms.
And at the same time, something else in me is deeply suspicious.
You can’t just go ASKING for what you need when you need it. Who do you think you are, an actual PERSON??
I manage to let them both be there. The part that’s getting just what it needs, and the part that’s sure the rug’s about to be pulled out from underneath it.
We have music playing (the regular kind now, not therapy music). Honor holds me for one song, then two. Then a third.
She whispers, ‘this is actually a pretty lovely way to start a work meeting.’
I wonder to myself, is this what regular people feel, when they hold their loved ones close? Is this what love is supposed to feel like?
Here is an uncomfortable truth. I am often afraid of the people I love the most. Especially my lovely girlfriend.
That’s why I’m doing this therapy. That’s why I’ve been doing all kinds of other therapies for the past few years.
More specifically, I’m afraid my loved ones are furious with me. For saying or doing the wrong thing. For simply taking up space in the room.
I can ‘know’ that this is unlikely. I can ‘know’ that, even if I have done something to upset them without realising, we’re all adults, we’ll work it out.
But still, I will track their facial expressions and tones of voice and movements relentlessly. As if my life were in their hands.
Two days into the listening therapy, and I suppose you’d say I’m doing pretty well?
I worked out I can’t do it alone, but when I asked for help something wonderful and completely unexpected happened (the glorious cuddle on the couch).
Except, as I head back home after our work session, here is the bind I now find myself in.
Now that I know how good that can feel, having someone there with me, I’m going to have to keep asking for it.
This means, two or three times a day, asking my girlfriend to go out of her way to help me tend to my big feelings.
It means asking for care. From the person I’m closest to in the whole world.
And that.
Is.
TERRIFYING.
This is not the script I have been running for the past nearly-forty years.
Having a big feeling are you? You sort that out yourself mate…
And it doesn’t matter that things worked out well the most recent time I asked.
That part inside, the one that was sure even mid-cuddle that the rug was about to be pulled out from under it, it thinks: well sure THAT went okay, but that’s all the more reason not to push your luck…?
Over the coming days, I realise that the real practice I’ve signed up for isn’t the daily listening at all. It’s the daily asking.
Asking for someone else to help me meet my needs by being there with me while I listen.
Honor and I negotiate. Driving round for a thrice-daily cuddle session isn’t entirely practical, so we go with a mix of some in-person sessions and some where I listen to the protocol with her just there on the phone with me.
I tell Honor, ‘go about your workday, just having you there is really helping.’
But the truth is, I dearly want to recreate that glorious couch cuddle. I even think, Honor might quite like that too?
But it just feels like too much to ask.
This most of all requires tenderness: the part of me that asks why am I like this?
It can get something of an answer (trauma… innate sensitivities…) but never an answer that completely satisfies, or changes how I feel.
Tenderness with the fear and tenderness with the parts that cry out ‘enough! I can’t feel this way anymore!’
Sit with what needs to be sat with, for however long it takes.
(And how long might that be?)
I’m now a week or so into the listening protocol, and I have started to notice I’m reacting to other humans differently.
A jogger approached me from behind on my walk this morning, and I didn’t tense up at the sound of his footfalls.
Honor and I had a small disagreement yesterday. The slight annoyance in her voice would normally narrow my attention radically.
What-have-I-done-how-can-I-fix-it??
But this time that wasn’t all there was. I could hear the annoyance, but I could also hear - it’s hard to put it into words - space? Space for her to be slightly annoyed, and for that not to be the whole story.
This is just what Jo said would happen. She says it’s like I’m training my nervous system to carry more information than it otherwise might. Instead of just the binary positions, ‘threat or no threat’, there’s room for nuance, richness.
Room for your girlfriend to be slightly annoyed about something, and for her to still love you and want to work it out.
Is this the listening therapy rearranging my nervous system? Or is it just the practice I’m getting, asking her for what I need? Do I even really care, if it helps?
The possibilities of all this were astonishing to me.
And then, tonight happened.
I’ve just driven home near midnight from Honor’s house. Today I felt light, open, peaceful, much of the time.
It didn’t last, and this evening, hanging out with Honor and her family, the familiar tension and fear were STRONG.
So strong, even hours later, part of me wants to cry.
I was doing so well…
I feel alone again. All I can think to do is write. I write until well after midnight, capturing whatever comes in one long block of text.
“Fear breaks you open. But first it closes you up. Something deep within you tightens and tenses up so hard, the only way it can see to stay safe. But it still doesn’t feel safe. Safety is opening to something larger. But this can’t be forced. It can’t be ‘done’. It can only be loved. True tenderness is not an action to achieve, it is a relationship to nurture. A relationship of care, of tiny, kind gestures over a lifetime. But how do you keep on doing that, over and over and over and over?”
I text Jo to book another session.
I’m going to tell her the whole thing’s not working. As my mum says, ‘Nice try. Score nil.’
Eventually I get to sleep, my little Koala in my arms.
Jo has time for a chat late afternoon the next day.
First I call my mate Gareth for some patented Gareth-Plus-Walking-By-The-Creek Therapy.
Yes, it’s evidence-based. No, don’t google that.
I tell him how wretched I still feel after last night, like all that tension and fear is striking back with a vengeance, right when I thought I was making progress.
‘It’s that old recovery adage isn’t it?’ Gareth offers. ‘You have to feel it to heal it.’
‘What if I just skip both those steps?’ I ask. ‘Is that an option?’
Gareth knows a bit of what it’s like to feel afraid of the people closest to you. To feel triggered by intimate relationships.
I lament how unfair it is that the very people who most push our buttons are the ones we most need.
‘And yet,’ I realise as I say it, ‘what else are you gonna do?’
I tell Jo everything, how well it was going, how I feel like it’s all come crashing down.
‘I feel like I’m losing heart,’ I say, with more feeling in my voice than I intend.
But Jo hears a very different story in my words.
‘What I’m hearing is, you are asking for what you need, even though that’s really hard to do.’
She reminds me, ‘it’s not like you have to suddenly be good at this. It’s a big change, it’s not going to happen overnight.’
Something releases in me, as I hear these words.
I tell her, with tears in my eyes, ‘there’s something in me that’s just so convinced that I’m really fucked. Beyond help. It’s so sure that the only slim chance I have to make it is to be perfect all the time.’
Jo says, this is the hardest bit.
‘It’s really, really, really important to recognise what’s going well, or you will lose heart.’
Jo helps me work out what I’d ask for from Honor, if I were being completely honest.
I’d ask for more cuddles on the couch. I’d ask, can we do this every day, the listening therapy, then we just hold each other, for a bit?
As I tell Jo this, this ask still feels impossible.
‘It’s an organic path,’ Jo says. It doesn’t have to be a single, straight line of progress.
Why am I afraid of the people closest to me?
Because they’re the ones who see me.
It’s not really that I’m afraid of them. I’m afraid of what they might see, when they get that close.
Because something in me is afraid not just that I’m asking for too much, but that I AM too much.
This is why, to ask for a small-ish thing (a hug, or a quick phone call while I do my listening therapy) can further spike the very fear I’m seeking comfort from.
To ask for care of this kind is to acknowledge this part in me, that needs something from others, and yet is so sure that it is too much for other people to handle.
As I sit and reflect on this, I give myself a little hug and pat my arms. I hold this place in me gently.
‘Yes, I see you there.’
I tell it, in my kindest voice: of course you feel too much sometimes. Doesn’t that just make all the sense in the world, to feel that way?
And something shifts.
Something is tender, still, and yet also tended to.
And in this moment that seems a remarkable combination.
I call Honor for an honest chat.
I tell her how much that cuddle on the couch meant to me. How I’ve been wanting to ask her for more of that, but it’s felt like too much to ask.
We start building it into our schedule for the rest of my listening therapy protocol. Not every day, but when we can.
Our ‘glorious cuddle’ count starts racking up. Some days I can relax more into her holding me. Other days something holds back, stays tight.
(An organic path.)
As our cuddle count grows, so does my confidence at asking for what I actually want, not just what I think I’m allowed to ask for.
I also practise being with the feelings that inevitably come when Honor says no, when she’s busy or just doesn’t feel like a cuddle that day. I notice how scared something in me is of feeling rejected. I do my best to hold it, with love.
Yes, I see you there.
These last few months, Honor’s having her own big stuff she’s working through, her own process that, like mine, has really been going on a lifetime. Lately she’s practising asking for what she needs, just like me.
It feels like we’re learning a new language together, seven years into our relationship. Finding words for those small voices we were sure weren’t allowed to be said out loud.
The listening therapy isn’t done yet, but something has shifted already. It’s like I’m seeing with fresh eyes.
Something in me feels too much for other people. That’s the part that’s always on the lookout for signs of anger or disappointment in others - have they worked it out, that I’m too much? That’s what drives me to be so conscientious. (To be - as one friend put it recently - “the most considerate person I’ve ever met”.)
It’s exhausting.
But I also know, aloneness is not the answer.
Intimate relationships - partners, loved ones - they are the crucible of belonging. They’re what we’re here for.
Belonging requires equal parts give and take, risk and reward, comfort and discomfort. You can’t be tended to if you’re not willing to be tender.
And yes, that is terrifying.
In a sense, it feels like your life is in their hands because it is. Just as theirs is in yours.
I’m learning to turn toward those parts inside, parts that feel too much simply for feeling at all.
I’m learning to give voice to their needs.
And here’s the crucial part. I’m learning to do that in the context of my closest relationships.
Because it’s only in this context that any of it means anything.
It’s only in risking a request for care that we can ever truly feel loved.
There’s this little kookaburra that Honor and I found in our ‘birds’ calendar last month, offering what Honor has dubbed a look of “faithful, unwavering support” to anyone lucky enough to land in its gaze.
I told her it reminds me of her.
This last month, I’ve been texting pics of this guy to Honor every few days, when she needs encouragement, or just to make her laugh.
The joke is, I have to take a new photo of it every time I send it, even though each photo looks identical to the last. Sometimes this means walking all the way downstairs instead of just using one of the dozen pics I already have on my phone.
True rituals require sacrifice.
I like thinking about how this quiet little guru was there this whole time. Just waiting there in the calendar, for the very time we’d need him the most. When our little family was rocked by our big recent health news, there was this little kookaburra.
And there he was again the other night, quietly waiting on the wall when I was up at 1am writing because I didn’t know what else to do with myself.
In sending the picture back and forth with my girlfriend, that little kookaburra has become even more than that, for the two of us. One of so many little private jokes that make up an intimate life. Gestures of love, of playfulness.
The scaffolding of the heart you build together with the ones you love. Not even realising until many years in just what it is you’re making together.
Space.
Space to slowly learn more and more who you are, and if you’re truly lucky, to show that to one another. To know it together.
Intimacy, of any kind, it’s fucking terrifying. It will push every button you’ve got.
But what I’m slowly learning is, that’s not a sign there’s something wrong with you.
It’s simply a sign you’re doing it. Taking the risk of letting others close enough to see what you are only slowly learning how to see even in yourself. The softest parts. The parts most in need of love and care.
And remember, it’s an organic path. We don’t have to be good at this all at once.
We learn it together. And thank god for that.
— Graham x
p.s. A note on the listening therapy, if you’re curious
I’m still not sure exactly what I’ve gotten from the listening therapy itself.
As is often the case, I find it hard to tell what’s the therapy and what’s the context (the guidance of a trusted practitioner, my other relationships, and so on).
Some testimonials from this therapy describe a profound shift in people’s overall state. I’m honestly not sure yet whether or not I’ve experienced that myself. But however that ends up playing out, as I describe in the piece, it has been a significant experience.
If you’re curious, it’s called the Safe and Sound Protocol, developed by Dr Stephen Porges (originator of Polyvagal Theory). I’m doing it through Jo Kennedy, who runs Focusing Australia. Here’s the Focusing Australia page on Safe and Sound.
As ever, I offer all this in the spirit of ‘hey here’s a thing I’m exploring’, not ‘hey here’s an answer.’
