Maybe It’s Time To Stay Over The Fire

Recently, I stopped a couple in the middle of session.

I asked, “Do you feel that pull?” as I slowly tugged my fists away from one another to show what I meant (I would consider talking with my hands a primary personality trait at this point). They both looked at me for a moment, eyebrows raised. I’d managed to grab their attention, so I explained.

The pull is tugging you, asking you to go back to the way you’ve always done this. To interrupt. To defend. To explain. To continue expressing just how much you’ve been hurt. At this point, it feels almost tangible in the room for me.

I told them, “This is the tension we’re looking for. This is the tension I’d like you to carry home with you.”

Not the tension between the two of you, but the tension between what’s familiar and what might actually move you somewhere different. The more I’ve sat with that moment, the more I’ve realized it wasn’t only true for them.

I see that same pull all the time.

I see it when someone starts setting boundaries after years of people-pleasing. When someone wants to be vulnerable again after being hurt. When someone attempts to pause before reacting, speak directly instead of hinting, or stay with an uncomfortable emotion instead of trying to make it disappear.

Our nervous systems are remarkably efficient. They learn patterns that help us survive difficult moments, and over time those patterns become automatic—even when they stop working. Familiarity has a way of masquerading as safety. So when we begin doing something different, it often feels awkward. It feels dissatisfying. Sometimes it even feels wrong or unsafe. We second-guess ourselves. We wonder if we should go back, explain more, defend ourselves better, or return to what we know.

The tension isn’t always evidence that you’re doing it wrong. Sometimes it’s evidence that you’re stepping outside a pattern your mind and body have relied on for years. A pattern that feels safe not because it’s healthy, but because it’s known and predictable.

I think that’s one of the hardest parts of therapy. Most people eventually have some sense of what they want to do differently. The harder part is staying with the discomfort long enough to discover that it isn’t always asking you to go back. Sometimes it’s asking you to keep going.

I once had a professor who called this staying over the fire.

That phrase has stayed with me (partially because I picture a small stick figure being held against their will above a cauldron), but also because I’ve found it to be true in so many parts of my own life. As a therapist. As a partner. As a daughter. As a sister. Even as the owner of the most wonderfully stubborn corgi I’ve ever met.

The older I get, the more I wonder if transformation has less to do with knowing the right answer and more to do with increasing our capacity to stay over the fire. To stay with the uncertainty. To resist the pull toward what is familiar. To trust that something different can begin before it feels natural.

Maybe that’s what growth asks of us—not certainty, but the willingness to remain with the tension long enough for something new to emerge.

**Long enough that it begins to feel like maybe you’re doing it wrong.

And then...just a little longer.**

~ Raelynn