Category Archives: Relationships

Flow vs. Force – The Test I Passed

*Tidal Rock (Gwithian Beach, St Ives Bay) – Photograph by Lara Just*

by Lara Just, May 2025.

Learning to Trust the Body’s Truth and Hold a Boundary with Grace.

In this post I look at my personal reflections focusing on boundary-setting, inner truth, emotional clarity, and the contrast between manipulation and flow. Recently, I found myself in a difficult situation that looked simple on the surface — a favour, a small commitment — but gradually became more complex and revealed deeper layers. What unfolded showed me, in real time, the difference between flow and force — and the freedom that comes when we trust the body’s quiet wisdom over external pressure.

The Test: A Subtle Kind of Manipulation

It started with a simple offer to help — a housesit for someone that was in a pinch. Clear terms, a start and end date. But once I stepped into the space, the edges of the arrangement began to blur. New expectations were slipped in. My role quietly shifted. Emotional pressure replaced mutuality.

When I attempted to clarify or gently push back, I wasn’t met with direct aggression — but with something slipperier. Deflection. Guilt. Shifting expectations, vague messages, and emotional pressure disguised as understanding, gratitude or confusion. Messages that evoked things like:

“I thought you’d already said yes.”
“I wouldn’t ask if I had other options.”
“You’re the only one I can really rely on.”

It wasn’t a conversation; it was a slow erosion of choice. A pattern emerged — not true collaboration, but control cloaked in vulnerability, need.

And yet… my body knew.

Where I Once Collapsed, I Now Stood

In the past, I might have absorbed that discomfort and made excuses — for them, for the situation, even for my own reactions. I would have twisted myself into something more accommodating, overriding the quiet internal signals telling me that something wasn’t right.

But this time, I paused. I breathed. I got still. And I listened — not to the noise of obligation or the pressure to be liked, but to the unmistakable feedback of my own body.

Tight chest. Solar Plexus tension. Elevated heart rate. Loss of focus. Disrupted sleep. Racing thoughts. A sense of being subtly trapped, emotionally obligated, out of alignment. I felt this with every new interaction. That is information. That is truth.

This wasn’t just anxiety or overthinking. This was clarity — not loud, but steady.

Force is the Old Story — Flow is the New Path

Here’s what I’ve learned through this experience:

Force says: keep giving, even when it costs you peace.
Force says: don’t upset anyone, don’t walk away, don’t draw the line.

Force comes from fear, of rejection and conflict often applied through pressure, urgency
Force can be masked itself as “helping,” but it often erases your choice.
It feels like bracing, flinching, contracting.

Flow, by contrast, is honest. It doesn’t rush or smooth over.
Flow respects mutuality. It doesn’t abandon clarity.
Flow is rooted in calm and listens to the body before listening to guilt.
It feels like relief, expansion, openness, groundedness.

Flow is where boundaries live — not as hard walls, but as clear waters. And in this situation, I chose flow. I didn’t explode or blame. I didn’t need to explain myself into exhaustion. I simply honoured it and ended the arrangement. I didn’t need to prove I was right. I just needed to choose peace.

The Body’s Truth Is Quiet — But Unshakable

The more I listened inward, the louder the truth became. Every time I entertained bending my boundary, my nervous system pushed back: anxiety, tension, resentment. Every time I honoured my own line, I felt more whole, expanded, rooted, more alive.

That’s when I understood — the body is always telling the truth. Not in abstract concepts, but in very real, physical signals. When something is off, the body whispers, then it tightens, then it yells.

This time, I didn’t wait until I was in burnout. I caught it early. I trusted the whisper.

I trusted the whisper and the knowing: this isn’t aligned anymore.

That’s the kind of power no one can take from you. It’s not reactive. It’s rooted. It doesn’t need to justify or explain itself endlessly.

Lessons from the Threshold

This wasn’t just about a misaligned favour. It was a threshold moment. A crossing from old programming — people-pleasing, shape-shifting, self-erasure — into something far steadier: self-trust.

I learned:

I don’t need a dramatic reason to step away.
I can honour discomfort as truth, not a problem to fix.
I can disappoint someone and still be deeply kind.
I am not responsible for managing another adult’s reactions.
My body will never lie to me, even when my mind is tangled.

These aren’t small lessons. They’re hard-won. They require courage, especially when the manipulation is subtle and comes from someone who sees themselves as vulnerable or well-meaning.

But emotional pressure — even when soft — is still pressure. And clarity is still kindness, even when it’s not received that way.

If You’re Reading This and Nodding…

Maybe you’ve felt this too. The flinch. The squeeze in your chest when a boundary is crossed in slow motion. The guilt that rises when you try to hold your line. The confusion that sets in when your generosity is met with expectation instead of appreciation.

Let this be your reminder: you’re not imagining it. Your discomfort is not a flaw. It’s a signal. And you’re allowed to listen.

You can end the interaction. You can stop explaining. You can choose peace, even if someone else calls it selfish. Especially then.

Because when you begin to honour the wisdom of your own body, everything changes. You move from force to flow. From flinching to expansion – rootedness. From hypervigilance to ease.

And the test? You pass it not by winning the argument, but by walking away with your integrity intact. Which can regain your peace.

Journal Prompt (optional):

Where in my life am I still choosing force over flow?
What might shift if I trusted my body as deeply as I trust my logic?

Relationships – are they for a season a reason or a lifetime?

Written by Lara Just – May 2018…

We may have heard of the saying that relationships come into our lives for a season, a reason or a lifetime. But what does this actually mean? This blog article explores if there is any learning for us in this for our relationships, and for what purpose they may enter our lives.

Relationships can mean friendships, romantic relationships, or relationships with colleagues, family members or even when we meet strangers. Here, I want to particularly look at those that have a deep or lasting impact on us. Some people might call these soul mate connections. Relationships or soulmate relationships can come in many different forms. It can be helpful to see them as what they are, as well as that can carry unique reasons for us to learn more about ourselves and grow. They may enter our lives in different forms, at different times and for different lengths of time.

Looking at this in a more holistic and ‘spiritual’ way, can bring some comfort and understanding especially when feelings within a relationship or the relationship itself changes or comes to an unexpected end.

For example, when people come into our lives for a season, it may be for us to experience great joy, peace or they can make us laugh. Maybe they teach us something that we didn’t know before. This unbelievable amount of enjoyment feels real (and it is!) – but only for a season.

Lifetime friendships or relationships teach us lifetime lessons and help us create and build solid emotional foundations. Our job is to learn what these lessons are, accept them and utilise them in other relationships and areas of our lives.

How can we understand the concept of meeting someone for a reason? We know in psychology that there are often unconscious needs involved, to be met for each other. For example, someone comes into our life to provide us guidance or support, perhaps to help us through tough times, overcome certain hurdles or a persistent issue or personal blockage that we cannot solve alone. They may aid us on an emotional, physical or spiritual level. They may encourage us to consider new career opportunities, change or end existing unhealthy relationships, re-locate and make a new home or a new start. They are there for the reason you need them to be at that point in time.

Then unexpectedly or at an inconvenient time, perhaps without warning or any known wrongdoing on our part, that person does something or says something to bring the relationship to an end. Sometimes they just walk away or act out and we feel forced to make this decision – or sometimes they die.

Their work is done, and our need has been met. However, this may be difficult to realise at that time when we are in the initial shock or our pride and ego has been hurt or old wounds come to the surface as a result. Sometimes we are the one that changes, or we suddenly want to walk away and end the relationship – it works both ways.

Looking at this in a different way, we may come to understand that perhaps all relationships can have some reasons for being part of our journeys, regardless of how long. Even those with our family members can have different reasons for our ‘soul’ journeys to learn certain ‘lessons’ in our lifetime. At times it may feel unfair or unreasonable, or we don’t know what those reasons should be and what we are supposed to learn from them.

However, it can become clearer the more we look at themes and recurring patterns in our relationships. When we have learnt what we needed to learn, the pattern often disappears; we will have learnt our lesson. We can perhaps move on feeling happier, more joyful and peaceful in our lives.

But how do we know what these lessons are supposed to be for us? Unfortunately, there is no black and white answer. We don’t know, we often can’t know, and first and foremost we can’t control it. We can only be in the moment and trust that whatever is happening at each moment in time is happening as it feels real and make moment by moment choices (does it ‘feel’ right or doesn’t it and how can be communicate this or act on it or be with it). ‘Trusting’ may be challenging in itself for some of us. However, it can give a different sense of perspective and perhaps some relief, if we can make it not so much about the other person, but about the ‘process’ that it is there for a reason or the purpose to help us grow and become more of who we are meant to be. And of course, we can often only tell and understand more when looking back.

Each of our relationships (if for a season, a reason or a lifetime) can have a distinctive feeling about them and we just ‘know’ that something within us changed the moment we met – or left them, often leaving a deep impact on us.

Some people like to call this perhaps encounters with ‘soulmate connections’. When we feel someone is our soulmate, what’s is actually happening is that we experience them like mirrors that reflect back to us our deepest fears, insecurities, flaws and where our unhealed wounds lie. But they also reflect back to us our true uniqueness, strengths and beauty. They can teach us to love more deeply and without expectations. Soulmates can wake each other up by bringing specific challenges to the relationship, which require learning about and resolving. They can push us to emotional extremes; or they can also feel like a ‘home’, where we can find each other ‘on the same wave length’ without effort. We may instantly click with someone and these feelings can be very intense, they can awake new desires and passions – to learn something about ourselves.

But other times they can also raise fears – at the possibility of loving someone thoroughly or being loved in ways that we were unfamiliar with. We may even be terrified to fall for someone too much and then losing it all. Shame and needs being unleashed that may feel unsafe. This can make us act out in unconscious and self-destructive ways, and end a relationship before it has begun or could go deeper, as we unconsciously and wrongly believe that we are unworthy of this type of love or the other person’s affections in this way.

No matter how long a relationship with a person will last, it can help us to open up more to our challenges, while also making peace with the fact that not everyone that comes our way is meant to stay, however intense and ‘real’ it may have felt during its time.

This doesn’t mean that endings and changes to any kind of relationships are not painful. Especially when the other person chooses to exit a relationship quite sharply, and by someone who we have imagined being happy with for a long period of time. It is hard to release and let go in these moments. And even if there is a deeper sense knowing that it is the right thing, it may often be more our attachment to the ‘idea’ of an imagined future.

It can be important to focus on what is happening in our lives currently at this moment. It can give clues about why something may be happening. It is learning to let go of focussing sorrowfully on the future or the past and instead to appreciate the moments we shared.

Again, this can feel very difficult if we can’t yet see beyond the hurt of being unfairly treated, disrespected or still hold anger, resentment or other pain. But when we start to explore the reasons for this relationship to form and blossom at the time, how we changed and what else changed in our lives throughout, and who we feel we are now, can help us discover and perhaps even understand some of the lessons. Even if it seems hard to get back to ourselves and the ‘now’, is it even possible for us to ‘trust the universe’ for having given us quite a clear and unmistakable message, that our path has changed or needs changing to be able to go forward.

Regardless if someone stays for ‘a season, a reason or a lifetime’ – is a lover, a friend, family member, or a stranger that we have only met for a few moments, the exchange and their essence can leave a lasting impression and we can feel this often intensely. When we understand the reasons why certain people show up (or disappear) at particular times in our lives, we can begin to learn about their significance they have on us as a person, our ‘soul journeys’ and our future relationships.

If we are willing to look at our relationships in a different way, it can provide us with new clarity, hope and opportunities. Opportunities to learn more about ourselves, for new forgiveness, compassion and different ways to love more intimately – not just others but especially also ourselves. And to be reminded again and again to finding a way back to ourselves and be ourselves and be true to ourselves, aligned to our own values, as much as we can. To be more of ourselves within current existing or future relationships and friendships. And if we feel we can’t – to consider that ‘change’ (with all its possible grief and pain) is a necessary part of the process to allow the continuation of our life journey.

For more on similar themes, have a look also at our other blog at The Walking Therapist.

If you have any questions or comments, or would like to consider some support in what you are going through right now, feel free to contact me!

Emotional agility and being able to move on

Written by Lara Just – March 2018…

I have chosen the quote in the image below for this blog out of two reasons. First, we cannot control how other people may treat us or how other people react to us, even when we think we have shown our best intentions. Second, we can only control how we react to others and how we chose to feel about it.

As psychologist Susan David says so aptly in her talk about emotional agility (see our eNews on Emotional Agility): ‘we own our emotions, they don’t own us’. Well that sounds easier said than done – doesn’t it!

Sometimes it may feel that ‘we just can’t help it’ and we are in fact controlled by them. However, we do have a choice to breathe, stop and feel, and then make a more conscious decision about how to react.

Sometimes it may be better to walk away and let it go when we feel that there is no meeting point – to agree to disagree. Other times it feels somewhat important to assert ourselves, to put our point across, to stake out our territory, and to want to prevent any potential perceived ‘boundary’ invasions. Sometimes it is perhaps just let go of steam than anything else. We are all human after all.

Emotional agility is about emotional ‘truth’, our own reality or congruence and being authentic with our emotions. Even if this is anger, rage, sadness, envy, jealousy – these emotions that are often labelled as ‘bad’ and not acceptable culturally or by our society. But any feeling – is just a feeling – is just a feeling – is just a feeling! It is just information.

We are human, not machines and a range of emotions are part of our human experience. How come we label some emotions as good and others as bad? We tend to repress some and not others (or all of them). It is so important to even first notice them, to acknowledge them honestly, to be with them and to ‘feel’ them. Sometimes there can be just ‘numbness’ (‘feeling nothing) it may be so unacknowledged.

It requires often learning and practice – of how to become aware and accept these emotions without denying them or dismissing them.

If we are dismissing or ignoring them to make someone else feel better, we are denying ourselves our true feelings. We pretend its ok when it’s not. We easily make this mistake though – as a society and culture as a whole. We want to make things feel more positive and comfortable for us.

We may have encountered a number of friends and colleagues, that when sharing some personally challenging, possibly painful, experiences may have been quick to reply: “Oh but you will be fine, won’t you, it’s a new chapter, a new beginning – it will be great!”.

Now what could this do? It can shut down any further communication. Any further exploration or for the person to voice anything that they felt they may have liked to voice. Instead they could easily be shut it down, swallow it down, bottle it up, move on for now. Equally we may already pre-empt this, and unwittingly encourage this response when with a beaming smile on our face we keep exclaiming that we are ‘fine’, whilst crumbling to pieces inside.

But it is quite a natural response for most of us as we can see (believe me even for trained therapists amongst colleagues and friends). We are perhaps naturally quick to wanting to ‘fix’, to make it better for the other person, help them move along swiftly, to make them feel better or make them see the positive. But is it perhaps also about our inability to stay with pain and discomfort? Our inability to give the gift of time, of ‘presence’, of patience, acceptance and non-judgement, to meet where our friend is at?

Winston Churchill (and others I believe) have said: “The only way out is through”. This is apt for our emotions. If we can’t, won’t or are unable to ‘feel’ them – maybe because it’s impractical, inconvenient, no time, not the right time, or we are not able to – they will be hidden in our physical bodies somewhere. This lack of ability to ‘feel emotions’, can lead to discomfort – either manifesting as physical symptoms or recurring emotional pain and psychological challenges.

Dismissing or emotions and feelings in this way can be more dangerous than helpful. Even if short terms it seems the easier option. They can fester until one day they will ‘need out’ being triggered by a minor event in an overreactive, out of character way. Often creating more destruction than intended.

Instead perhaps we can imagine that to ‘be’ with our emotions, is just like holding a small bird: not too tight – not to crush it, not too lose – for it not to fly away.

Having a friend that can just ‘be’ with our pain and just listen, not feeling the need to have to give advice, opinions or a task list, keep talking continuously to fill the void, can be much more healing than we may think. Often this is hard to find amongst friends and family, perhaps due to our cultural and societal programming. (Which is why this aspect is one of the most important parts of the training of good therapists and counsellors!)

The fact is that getting ‘through’ it, and then letting go and being able to move on is no easy feat.

Those emotions we may call ‘bad’ or those that feel heavier which are hard to address are often linked to deeper older wounds. In this case it may not be the case of a simple short acknowledgment and release of energy or emotion. It may be a bigger piece or part that is linked to the emotions. And something or a part of us has to literally ‘die’ first, to be reborn anew again – differently.

For example, emotions linked to loss (or ‘death’) of one thing (a situation, job, person, dream, hope or a relationship) will be a deeply painful and complex process. But it is a necessary evil to feel all the emotions and be honest and express them and feel them – to be able to move on. It is necessary to be able to start afresh and anew and for us to eventually open up again to see things differently and gain new perspectives on the situation.

In fact, any ‘change process’ could be seen as a grieving process. Grieving for the loss of the old before anything new can form and be reborn. A grieving process, like in any loss, needs its own time. This will be different for each person and each situation.

I thought this was fitting with the Easter theme of death and resurrection – to something new or different than expected. It doesn’t matter if you are religious, believe in the universe, unicorns and fairies or are an atheist.

It may just be helpful to see it as a metaphor, a symbolic representation. Emotions and feelings need to be ‘digested’ energetically, similar to how our digestive tract digests food.

For that we need to create space, and time for being with them and reflection. For connecting with ourselves and connecting with good supportive friends that are able to encourage this process, not trying to fix it or put their opinions on us. And overall, to have courage to ‘risk to feel’.