The innies are reminding the outies how to feel. The outies are stepping into the rain and letting it ruin their hair, letting it run down their arms and pool on the insides of their shoes.
Talking to the parts of our self we have only just noticed are real.
When the feelers stay in the room, the room becomes holy.
Last night, I watched the finale of Severance. And, spoiler alert—if you haven't seen it yet, I'm gonna talk about it - but only a little. What I want to talk about even more is the conversation all of us are having right now between our own inner and outer selves. The reserved and the outspoken. The one who goes along to get along, and the one who, right now, is feeling more than a little disturbed.
Earlier in the day, I’d written a post—this post, in fact—but I couldn’t quite send it.
A part of me thought:
Who needs to hear about my feelings right now? We’re all in the soup. People want to feel better.
But then came that final episode of Severance, a show built on the divide between outer self and inner self. The innie and the outie.
The one who lives in the world of surface—errands, email, obligation—and the one trapped beneath, whose every experience is emotional, visceral, surreal. (Which is, the story explains, why the outie agreed to be ‘severed’, cut off from the part of the self that hurts.)
Spoiler alert!!!!
There is a scene (Seriously, spoiler alert . . . This is the moment to jump ahead two paragraphs.) that echoes Gollum arguing with himself in The Lord of the Rings. Mark’s outie leaves a video message for his innie, and what unfolds in this moment of shattering self-recognition is one of the most brilliant moments of screenwriting I’ve seen in a while—two halves of one self, each in love with a different woman, each fighting for autonomy, each trying to preserve the world he believes is real.
I watched, breathless, as the story edged closer to reunion—the collapse of separation. I won’t spoil it any more. I won’t tell you what happens. I will say only this:
This morning, I knew that this post wanted to go out. Because this... this ache that makes us hide our feelings, this fear of being too much—is not separate from the cultural moment we’re living through.
It’s the same story. The walls are thin now. The rooms are merging.
We are edging closer, every day, to reuion.
Yesterday morning, someone unsubscribed.
This is not unusual—people come and go. Some leave add a note. “Clearing my inbox” or “Too much on my plate right now.” But this time, crickets. This time, I felt it. That soft click of departure. And the whisper of doubt that followed:
Did I cause this? Am I sending too many emails? Did I overwhelm or confuse them with my multiplicity of offerings? Am I too much?
The feeling passed. It always does. But I want to speak from it—not pretend it wasn’t real.
Because for those of us who carry many threads—the multidimensional, hyper-creative types who follow my work—there’s a particular ache in being misunderstood... or felt as “too much” when what we really long to offer is wholeness.
And I do worry sometimes that I will overwhelm you.
There’s already so much going on.
With the world as it is, all atilt and a-tumble.
I don’t want to bother anyone.
If anything, I trend toward withholding—too quiet.
But there’s this surging, rising energy that I can no longer ignore.
I feel drawn—more than ever—to speak.
For one thing: I can help.
I have been studying and listening to the patterns of human behavior and connection for years. And there are so many doors I could open right now. Doors that lead down passages of the self (and the world) that we’ve never seen before. Doors that open onto worlds of wonder.
Not to float off the planet into fantasy—but to enter new ways of facing what is happening. To walk together into the deeper layers, and see—not calamity—but invitation. The light behind the door. The green shoots that always emerge from the rubble.
Yesterday, I wrote an entire post about this dual pulse: the self-doubt that silences and the bursting to share. I wrote to feel and understand it - and to share what I discovered with you. But I hesitated. Finger poised over the ‘send’ button.
Feeling uncertain, I waited.
I went to the doctor.
I went to Costco.
I threw together a dinner of leftover casserole and bright green zucchini.
My husband and I watched Severance.
I took my innie and my outie into the bath.
I went to bed.
I woke up this morning feeling all the feels. And I thought:
Big sigh.
I am so weary of holding large chunks of myself back.
And the part of me that’s doing all the holding - that fierce little gatekeeper perfectionist who is so responsible and hard-working, who would never impose and would like nothing more than to hide all of this from view is exhausted.
But since my stroke last June, there’s this other part.
A knowing and increasingly audible voice. A part that feels ancient and wise. She is softer and, paradoxically, stronger that my other parts. And I think that my other parts trust her - including that little gatekeeper.
In my mind’s eye, I see them sitting together:
The little gatekeeper sitting with the strong, capable me. Strong, capable me—encircling her waist with a strong, capable arm.
I’ve got you.
And the little one trusting that.
Internal Family Systems (IFS) calls this inner dialoging parts work. It teaches that we are not one single self with one tidy story, but many selves—each with a voice, a role, a burden, and a longing. Healing begins not by silencing the parts that scare or embarrass us, but by learning to listen. To speak gently to the ones who are afraid. To build inner trust.
In IFS, the compassionate, steady presence who holds these many selves is known as the capital-S Self—the one who encircles the others and says, with quiet assurance, “I’ve got you.”
This presence—the one who listens, who speaks gently, and whom the other parts come to trust—is in all of us. I call it The One Who Blesses.
If we take the model that IFS offers—the many selves held within the loving gaze of the Self—and stretch it outward, we might imagine something even larger: a world in which each of us is a part within a greater Whole. A wider Self who listens, who speaks gently, who holds space for all the parts to belong.
You may call this presence God, Higher Self, Buddhi.
It doesn’t matter what name you use.
You can feel it there, can’t you?
What we need right now isn’t stoicism. We don’t need to “carry on” as if nothing is wrong. We need to stop. We need to soften. We need to see — and recognize one another as real.
We need to realize: I am not the only one with that blooming sense of panic just under the surface. We need to open, to witness, to find the reflection we can only find in another person’s eyes.
We need this like our life depends upon it.
Because it does.
This is real.
You are real.
And we are in it together.
At the same time, we also need to see our own multiplicity. All of the shining (and ugly and brilliant and stupid and willing and lazy and arrogant and generous) selves that we so often repress.
What do we do with all of this clamoring to be heard?
Well, we can start by listening.
This isn’t a post about the history of psychotherapy and the self-help movement but my goodness, from the moment we opened the Pandora’s Box inside our own heads, this has been coming toward us. The ability to witness our own thoughts - and to witness, simultaneously, the result of our actions.
What did we think would happen when we caught them?
The outies, hiding in the dark, repressing their feelings - while their innies sat at desks, trapped on the fourth floor of Lumen (sic: any corporate office) watching meaningless patterns float around on a screen. The innies coping, figuring things out, making friends and then, dealing with outies who suddenly change their ‘minds’, deciding, No wait, I want to feel now.
Yesterday, in the Notes section on Substack, I saw a wave of messages from bloggers and writing teachers saying variations of:
“No one needs to hear about your feelings.”
And I thought . . .
Um, that’s interesting.
Did something happen in the news? Did some something crack open in the world? Did some other something burst into flames?
Or did something happen inside of the teacher? Some hidden part trying to rise. And to silence that eruption they came to Substack and told everyone else not to feel.
I mean, I understand what writing teachers are saying: Good writing is contained and carefully composed. Save the histrionics for your journal.
That said, the best writing always arises from feeling.
At least, that’s the writing I want to read.
So, we DO need to hear about your feelings.
Not melodrama. Not breakdowns.
But quiet specificity.
Images that shimmer with emotional resonance:
The glow of a polished bowl.
The hush of a darkening sky.
The clink of a cup being set down gently on the table.
This kind of writing is how feeling travels between writer and reader.
That’s what metaphor is for.
“Meta”—universal.
“Phor”—from amphora, the Greek vessel used to carry liquid.
A metaphor is a vessel that carries emotion across the space between us.
That’s why poetry touches us so deeply. It carries the unspeakable. We can touch grief, terror, beauty— without having to . . . you know . . . touch it.
I keep remembering this story.
In my twenties, I worked for a New Age company that ran weekend seminars where the founder, a musician and student of mystery, taught people early version of Creative Visualization, Law of Attraction, and pattern-reading bundled under the title: “Technologies for Creating.”
Every morning, he would stroll onto the stage, cradling a cup of Irish Breakfast tea, and look out at 200 eager attendees, and say:
“Who’s feeling good today?”
(Hands up.)
“Who’s feeling bad?”
(More hands.)
Then he’d pause and grin:
“Who cares about your crummy feelings?”
People laughed. Nervously. It was supposed to be about non-attachment.
Don’t be ruled by your emotions. He’d smile, then, “Sometimes you feel like a nut,” he’d say, quoting an Almond Joy ad. “Sometimes you don’t.” It was funny and also, not funny.
Even then, when I was only 26 years old, something in me recoiled.
It felt glib. Rational to a fault. Almost cruel.
Like the spiritual teachings that insist on stillness, silence, or suppression in the name of progress.
It took me years to unlearn that.
To realize that people don’t need their feelings stuffed away in favor of good thoughts.
We don’t need to be tamed.
We need to be seen.
We need warmth.
We need safe rooms where we don’t have to shrink to be welcome.
Because here’s what I know now:
My feelings aren’t “crummy.”
They are my guidance system.
The first layer of my intuition.
They tell me where I am.
They show me what I care about.
And from there, I can move with intention.
Emotion becomes devotion.
That’s the yogic principle of Tapah.
Often translated as “discipline”—
but a teacher once told me its root meaning is devotion.
When you’re devoted to what matters,
you don’t need discipline.
You will keep showing up.
Because you care.
I’ve taken so many workshops where I sat on my hands, holding back what I really wanted to say.
Sometimes that’s wise.
I’m stil smarting from the sharp-tongued “shamanic” teacher who invited us into deep feeling, then snapped the lid shut when it got real:
“Don’t be so emotional!” he barked.
“Tell us what happened—not how you feel about it!”
What a terrible, repressed man.
How much harm he did in one breath.
But it left me with a question I’ve carried ever since:
How do I build spaces where people feel safe to be real?
Where emotion isn’t too much?
Where “you’re not alone” is the truth we live?
Because I know my readers.
You’re sensitive.
You’re observant.
You like to absorb, to reflect, to retreat.
So do I.
You’ve learned to scan the room before you speak.
You’ve learned to hide your depth to avoid misunderstanding.
I remember one student who posted something raw in a Facebook group I was leading.
Moments later, she messaged me privately:
“You can kick me out,” she said.
“Everyone else has.
I understand. I’m too much.”“I will never kick you out,” I told her.
“You, just as you are, are welcome here.”
Then, I asked her to look again at what had happened after she shared.
Her post had sparked a sacred ripple.
Responses bloomed like stars:
“I’m here for you.”
“You are not alone tonight.”
“I felt the same way last week. Hold my hand.”
She cried.
“I hadn’t even noticed,” she said.
“I posted and ran away to hide.”
Shame is a liar.
It chases us from the very light we’ve called into the room.
Light that is responding to us and, often desperately, trying to reach us.
That woman became a pillar in that group. Not because she was all buttoned up. Because she was real.
When the feelers stay in the room, the room becomes holy.
And of course, it’s not just me.
This is the soup we’re cooked in.
We are trained from childhood to behave in ways that make others comfortable.
But the times we’re living in?
They press on all our tender places.
In her latest message, astrologer Lorna Bevan quoted Jeannette LeBlanc:
“No more showing up for breadcrumbs when you’re worthy of a whole damn feast.”
She went on to describe Neptune’s move into Aries:
“Neptune is the tsunami the Saturnian walls cannot stop... It is heralding the collapse of structures—including nations—in order to create new forms… from ego focus to eco focus.”
She calls this a Bonfire of the Vanities—a fire burning away the false, the performative, the image-obsessed.
This week’s eclipse and Neptune’s new placement: it’s not about doing more.
It’s about going deeper. Telling the truth.
Letting what’s been repressed come back into the room.
So yes, I worry I’ll overwhelm you.
But now, I understand:
That worry is guidance trying to peek out from behind repression (my own repression - each time I ask: What will people think?)
Worry reminds me to notice that I’m shrinking.
And to remember I have a choice.
I don’t have to shrink because you’re uncomfortable.
I don’t have to hide to keep you comfortable.
If I overwhelm you—you can leave the room. And if, in your reactivity, you try to silence me - I know where the exit is, too.
That old pattern—the responsible child, the emotional caretaker—
That was a Soul Class. And I learned from it. We all did.
And then, we broke the pattern.
So now what?
Well, watch. Look behind the lens of the message makers on the news.
What else is happening?
As the walls of institutional power shake and fall—
so do the walls I built around my own voice.
The walls collapse out there.
And they collapse in here.
The innie and the outie begin to speak.
The perfectionist leans into the strength of the one who is emerging.
Everything happens at once.
Soul Caller Secret:
It’s all metaphor. It’s archetypal.
The patterns that play out at the macro level mirror the ones in our families, bodies, hearts.
The dams break—
but, also the waters are free.The old world falls away—
but, also a new world is rising.Someone bursts into the room, all messy and emotional—
and we make space.
We learn to welcome the whole damn feast.
And somewhere, quietly,
beneath it all…
The lights go on.
I hear you.
I see you.
You’re not alone.
We will walk this path together.
Here is my hand.
And just this moment, before I really really really hit that 'send' button, this arrives in my email box.
From Maria Popova, at The Marginalian
The morning after a relationship of depth and significance long bending under the weight of its own complexity had finally broken with an exhausted thud, I opened the kiln to discover a month’s worth of pottery shattered — two pieces had exploded, the shrapnel ruining the rest. All that centering, all that glazing, all the hours of pressing letterforms into the wet clay — all of it in shiny shards. And meanwhile spring was breaking outside and a little girl in bright blue rain boots was jumping in a puddle, smashing the reflections of the clouds with savage joy.
And I thought, this is all there is: breaking, breaking apart, breaking open.
Breaking alive.
This is all there is.
We are (always) breaking and breaking and breaking alive.
If this speaks to you, I’ll be exploring these themes more deeply in my next series: The One Who Blesses. It’s part of my ongoing program for paid subscribers: The Reflection Work: Becoming Real Together. You can read program summaries here, in the Index.
And now, with Maria’s remarkable words, the images shimmering between us, I offer this prayer. And then, I will finally press that send button.
I wish you a good week, full of discovery and willingness.
I wish you rest - the kind that is also restoration.
I wish you a multiplicity of friends, those like and unlike you.
And an inner conversation with all the you’s that live inside.The multitudes are singing. The innies are reminding the outies how to feel. The outies are stepping into the rain and letting it ruin their hair, letting it run down their arms and pool on the insides of their shoes. Oh, wait - now they are walking barefoot. They are dancing. The gutters are surging with whitewater. Ahead, there is a cafe with warm food and towels - I will meet you there.
Happy Sunday.
xxoo
Amy
Amy, I have been in your circle for how many years? Maybe 12, 15? And this piece has impacted me in a completely different way- literally an inside-outside way. I’ll be re-reading these words for a long time. Your message rings true and it sends gentle acknowledgment of how I feel. Deepest gratitude for sharing it all. Reflecting back to you the love and care you have given me. 💗
YES.