The English Teachers

When I taught English in Osaka, the Japanese teachers would often correct my grammar. But they'd struggle to ask me how my weekend was.

Many of them had technically perfect English but couldn't hold a conversation. They'd learned the language entirely from a textbook. They knew it intellectually but hadn't embodied it.

Personal change works in a similar way.

I've been in therapy for many years, spent a year researching my own shame patterns, even written a Master's dissertation on it. I understand my life scripts so well I could probably narrate them in real time.

And yet I can still be floored by that feeling in the pit of my stomach when someone criticises me in front of others.

Understanding something doesn't mean you've changed it. Knowing and feeling have to co-exist. And the mind and body often have different timelines.

You can know that you people-please because of childhood patterns. You can trace it, name it, explain the function it once served. And you'll still say "yes" when your manager asks if you can take on a project, even though you're exhausted. Because it hasn't landed in the body yet. It hasn't become a different way of being.

It's a process, and it takes time.

For me, when I experience the trigger, I allow myself to feel it fully rather than override it. I name it. I notice what it's telling me. This can be difficult, especially if it's painful.

But slowly, over repeated iterations, the feeling starts to change. It might not be less painful, but it has a slightly different texture. The time it takes me to return to myself gets shorter. The feeling lasts hours rather than days. I'm in it, but I can still observe it. I haven't "overcome" it. I've just got a little more distance from it.

And then calmness returns. My body starts to regulate itself. Thinking and feeling, working together.