Highly competent, hyper-independent women are often told to “relax,” “receive,” or “trust the universe,” but that advice ignores why control developed in the first place. If the world has not historically felt safe, surrender does not automatically feel liberating. At the same time, doing everything yourself and refusing support eventually becomes its own limitation. The real question is how to find a middle ground between blind submission and absolute control.
When you have a desire, the mind immediately asks how? because it wants a bridge between where you currently are and the unknown place you want to reach. “How” is not necessarily resistance or overthinking; it is the nervous system attempting to determine whether movement is survivable. The problem begins when you require a complete answer before allowing yourself to move. Sometimes the bridge cannot be fully visible from point A.
How To Let Yourself Be Supported
If you have difficulty trusting that you can be supported, one pathway toward developing a felt sense of trust and safety is taking strategic risks + making calculated moves that give your nervous system opportunities to discover it’s own strength. At the same time, intentionally developing your tolerance for risk teaches your nervous system that uncertainty has a rhythm of its own. You take a risk, something happens, you respond, you adjust, and you keep moving. Eventually, risk stops registering as a giant black hole and becomes a familiar part of movement. The byproduct is a nervous system that understands I can move without having every step ahead of me perfectly planned out.
This is also powerful work to practice with another person. Learning to tolerate risk is easier when you have a space where you can take strategic risks, notice what happens in your body, and build evidence that uncertainty is something you can move through rather than something you have to eliminate before you move. In my one-on-one sessions, we can work together to intentionally train your nervous system’s capacity for risk by expanding what you can tolerate without pushing you beyond what you can actually hold.
