After a week back from Italy, I was standing in the kitchen with my phone in my hand and I couldn’t remember why I had picked it up. My partner was down the hall, I could hear her moving around, and I had that feeling I used to get growing up on Sunday nights, and later as a young adult too, when the weekend was ending and Monday was coming. Nothing was wrong, we were home and we were good, and my mind was already in tomorrow.
We had just spent two weeks in Italy celebrating her birthday. Before we left, I decided to say yes to almost everything. I wanted her to have the smoothest experience possible, and for someone like me who likes to plan every detail, that usually turns into control. If I’m honest, planning is more about control than anything else. It gives me the feeling that everything is perfect, and underneath it there is a kind of fear of missing out, like if I don’t plan it right, we’ll miss something. Instead I said yes to the change of plans, yes to the unexpected right turn walking down the street, yes to slowing down, yes to more intimacy. I let the dialogue between us stay in the present. I was intentional about being kind, open, curious, and not overthinking everything, and I let go of the need to have it all figured out. The result was relief, and more connection.
Then something shifted for me the minute we got to Rome. I was tired, really tired, and I was present anyway. My desire for her came stronger than usual. It was more physical and more spontaneous, and there was no overthinking in it at all.
Since coming back, I’ve fallen back into patterns and I’m more in my head than in my body. I’m on my phone more, even though I’m very mindful about it, and I run worries in my head and keep them to myself. I was next to her and not really there.
The first thing I tried was to think my way back. I told myself I would bring the Italy version of me home, that I would keep saying yes. It didn’t last a week. Then the to do list took over, except I never wrote it down. It was all in my head, the responsibilities, the things to plan, what needed to happen this week, and I kept going over it as if going over it one more time would make me feel in control. It didn’t, and the list in my head was all I could think about.
So now I swing between two places. Either I’m in my head about my responsibilities and everything on the list, or I’m paralyzed. During the day, when I’m less present, I keep busy, with work but really with anything, and being busy feels like I’m doing something. Other times I just sit there and I can’t start. And I know that the minute I decide to take action, I’ll be right back in my head. If you’ve done a lot of work on yourself, you probably know this loop. You know the theory, and you’ve still watched yourself do it anyway.
What surprised me, and honestly amazed me, was that our relationship didn’t follow the same path. With everything going on inside me, we should have drifted. In the past, when I went quiet and inward, my partner felt it, and the distance between us grew in small ways that took time to repair.
This time it was more like an epiphany, about three weeks after we got back. I saw how we are with each other, how we support each other, the loving and the caring, and a few small moments that in the past could have drifted got resolved and repaired very quickly. We were stronger and calmer than usual, almost as if we had stepped up in our relationship, even while I was feeling stuck.
How could I be so far from my body and still so close to her?
I didn’t have an answer for a while. Maybe Italy had left us with some kind of reserve and we were living on it. Maybe it was the phone, or being back in the business. None of that explained why the paralysis was so stubborn, or why everything I tried seemed to make it stronger.
What I finally understood is that the overthinking and the freezing are two sides of the same protection. I had been treating them as two different problems and trying to use one to fix the other.
Most of us believe the only way out of paralysis runs through the head. We think we need a better plan, a clearer list, the right decision, and that the body will follow once the thinking is done. I believed it too. For most of my life, thinking is what got me through. It’s how I made sure nothing fell apart, how I kept things under control, how I made everything feel perfect. So when I froze, I did what I’ve always done and went back into my head to look for the way out. I kept telling myself that once I figured out where to start, I would start. I never did, because the head is where the protection lives. Every time I tried to think my way out of freezing, I was asking the same part of me that froze me to set me free. Understanding it better didn’t help either, because I already understood it. I could have explained all of this to a client, and I was still inside it.
And then I thought of Italy, and I finally saw why the yes had worked. It was action, a lot of it, and it didn’t come from the list in my head. It came from being present and from my body, from taking the turn down the street before my head had a chance to decide if it was a good idea.
There is another way to move toward someone, and it starts in the body, long before the plan.
Once I saw that, what was happening between us made sense. We are both very sensitive to tone of voice. One of us gets annoyed or triggered, wants to be right, the other hears it in the voice before the words even land, and then comes the hurt and the escalation. I know that sequence by heart.
What changed is that one of us softens, and lately it’s mostly me. I don’t plan it. My voice comes down, my body comes down, and from there I have the capacity to validate her experience in the moment, which I could never do while I was busy defending mine. There is more trust between us than there used to be, and regulation is almost part of our relationship now, something we carry together instead of something each of us has to manage alone.
The clearest example was on one of those stuck afternoons. I was in my head about the list, half paralyzed and half planning, and instead of solving anything I went and found her. I talked to her and I hugged her. Touch has always been a regulating mechanism for both of us. I knew that already, the way you know things you’ve read about, and that afternoon I knew it in my arms. Nothing on the list had changed, and I came back to myself anyway.
I’m not going to give you a new plan, because the plan is exactly where the protection goes to hide. What helps me is smaller than that, and it starts in the body.
The next time you hear the tone change between you and your partner, try softening your own voice first, before you try to make your point. Their body will feel the difference before their mind does, and so will yours.
If you notice you’re keeping a worry to yourself, go find your partner and make contact before you try to explain anything. A hug, or a hand on their back as you walk past, is enough to start. You can talk after, or not at all.
And try a few small yeses at home, like the walk you didn’t plan or the slower way back. You don’t need to be on vacation for those. That’s how the body learns it’s allowed to lead.
I’m still in my head more than I’d like. I still pick up my phone without knowing why, and the list is still there every morning. What’s different is that I notice the moment a little sooner, and I know the way back is shorter than my head tells me. Most days it’s the length of a hallway. I don’t always walk it.
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If this speaks to you and you’d like to explore what it looks like in your own relationship, you can book a complimentary Clarity Session with me. We’ll look at where you are right now, and what could help you find your way back to each other.