Where does it hurt?

Recently I went through friend-break-ups and a reshuffling of my close social circle, and if I’m being honest, that really twisted me up inside.

As much as repair is my first choice when it comes to navigating conflict I was faced with the somber reality that relational repair and the closure that I desire from it may not always be accessible.

I may not get to the closeness and intimacy that I deeply desire - the kind that I dream of as the perfect ending to a tumultuous period when someone I love and I got lost in our own emotionally-charged-narrative-storms about each other. At least not now, or maybe not ever, and it actually fucking sucks.

Because it really hurts.

When this happens with women it really rubs up on early wounding with the feminine that still lingers in my body. Post-FGC in infancy (check out my article about it), life handed me the card of being an older sister at 3 years old, and little me had to adapt to sharing the resource of my mother’s loving attention. I remember a consistent desire to be seen by her and be close to her, but often I got told to go play with my older brothers or be a “good” big sister instead.

Cutting off, or distancing myself from a feminine connection where I could once be really vulnerable, can still be really challenging for me. In short, it triggers a reflex of: “Oh shit, I’m going to lose the love in my life and die,” automatically. Dramatic, yes, but thats a 3yr old version of me stuck in my body that I’m still guiding.

Truth is, I didn’t arrive at the grief first. I didn’t want to see that part. I caught myself spiraling through frustration after frustration. There was a burning heat in my chest that wouldn’t go away unless I said something, advocating for myself. Sometimes it was helpful, but other times it showed up in a prickly energetic force field I created around me so I’d stop getting triggered by others actions and behaviors… at the cost of my intentions getting buried underneath. I didn’t like that.

For someone conditioned to silence her honest desires, righteous rage became intoxicating. It felt powerful even. I wore the notion “anger is the part of you that says you matter” like a shield. I wanted to matter! There is nothing wrong with that. But after a while, I noticed that my body had been holding on to tension in a way that was depleting my life force, my creative spirit. I was using my precious energy on these spirals and I didn’t want this to be the thing that keeps me from my creative projects waiting on my to do list.

The thing is, anger became a protective mechanism for me. I sat back and watched my mind race through a mixture of arguments and talking sh*t, and practiced staying steady as I witnessed the ugly, nasty, even cruel things my mind was spitting, without acting on the impulse of, “I shouldn’t be saying that,” and silencing myself again.

I let that part of me speak until she had enough, and then I found the grief underneath, hiding quietly behind the skirt of the angry one who finally stopped yelling.

There she was. There’s the hurt under all of this. That’s where I began directing my nurturing to, and with a little bit of patience even the angry part of me stopped lashing out.

See, I used to oscillate through these denser emotions like I was stuck in a loop that would go for months on end, breaking the spiral only if my body forced me to, through injuries or getting so sick I had no choice but to be with my body.

Nowadays I’m practiced at navigating the terrain of emotional stickiness in my internal ecosystem through a blend of shadow EFT and IFS parts work I take myself through regularly when I get caught in an emotional storm. The biggest gift that this modality provides me is the choice to get curious.

I doubt I would’ve known that metabolizing these dense emotions in order to create the by product of actual nourishment for me was even possible, had I remained stuck on figuring things out with my mind and letting my defenses take over. I needed to sit with my body, and the uncomfortable emotions that came with what I was experiencing.

Part of the grief I was feeling then, was also the realization that curiosity was the missing piece in the conflict I was messily stumbling through repair for. I knew how to get curious with myself and others by now, but I wasn’t prepared for the grief of that curiosity not being reciprocated.

In actuality, this happens all the time. Perhaps, this dull ache in the back of my heart around this is just something I get to live with as a price I pay for holding on to my human nature, maybe I am supposed to “feel”, period, maybe it doesn’t have to go away.

Plato’s Cave and the price of trading curiosity for certainty

When I think about curiosity I think about how natural and low-in-resistance it is for children, and then it gets tampered down in us in environments that pedestalize linear growth and binary thinking of right vs wrong and good vs bad.

Curiosity disappears when we insist that WE KNOW, and this comes at the cost of diminishing a whole other world of possibilities beyond what we think we know.

This is where knowledge can become a blind spot.

There’s an old story I stumbled upon while listening to a podcast by Ram Dass one morning. It was like this part of my soul reached out of the center of my chest to reach for that particular episode to listen to Plato’s allegory of the Cave because it was a mirror to what I was working with.

Picture prisoners chained since birth in a cave, facing a wall, unable to even turn their necks. Behind them a fire burns, and between the fire and their backs, people carry shapes and figures that cast shadows on the wall in front of the prisoners. The shadows are all the prisoners have ever seen. So the shadows become their reality. Someone yells, and they hear the echo bounce off the wall and assume the shadow itself is speaking. Their whole certainty, their whole knowing, is built on flickering shapes cast by a fire they’ve never seen.

That’s what an emotionally charged narrative-storm is. That’s righteous rage masking as certainty.

It’s the… “I know exactly what she meant by that. I know exactly what he was thinking.”

I sit there, chained facing the wall of my own nervous system, watching the shadows I’ve cast from my own wounding flicker across another person’s face, and I call it truth.

Curiosity is the turning of the neck. It’s the first small, unbearable movement toward the fire. And in Plato’s telling, it’s not gentle. The prisoner who turns around is in pain, the light burns, his eyes ache, and his first instinct is to turn back to the shadows because they’re familiar and they don’t hurt.

Every time I’ve chosen curiosity over the comfort of my own certainty, some part of me has wanted to spin back around and keep believing the easier story. This is because the nervous system doesn’t reward the fire. It rewards the wall. New choices are not your nervous system’s first choice.

Then there’s a part of the allegory that lands hardest for me right now: the prisoner who makes it all the way out, who sees the actual sun, who comes back down into the cave to tell the others what’s out there, but they don’t want to hear it. They think he’s ruined by the light. They’d rather keep facing the wall with him than climb out themselves. Some accounts even have them wanting to kill him for trying to drag them toward something they didn’t ask to see.

That’s the grief I named earlier, given its proper shape. I climbed toward the fire. I turned my aching neck toward my own shadow and did the best i could to metabolize them instead of casting them onto someone else. Then I came back wanting to offer that same turning to the people I love, and found out that reciprocity isn’t guaranteed just because I did my part. Some people are going to stay facing the wall. Not because they’re bad or broken, but because the wall is what they know, and the fire is genuinely disorienting, and nobody is required to want the burn of their own liberation on my timeline.

The price we pay

When curiosity disappears in the realm of relating, relationships lose their expansive and evolutionary potential. The ecosystem becomes sticky, restrictive, even viscous - it can become increasingly challenging to discern what needs aren’t being met and the actions needed to tend to it in a way that provides nourishment instead of depletion.

Staying stuck on narratives supercharged with emotions like resentment or grief, although valid, suck the life out of our own creative life force, and now we’re subconsciously trading expansion for contraction. Then there’s very little space for individuals within it to stretch, expand, reach beyond their own unique wounds. (We all have them)

Relationships that lose this space to expand are the ones that feel like there’s only room for one person to grow at a time. It becomes less like a natural ripple of loving expansion, and more like a minefield they need to manage themselves in, constantly on alert so as not to step on eggshells and cause an unwanted reaction. They end up deciding that their wants and needs are either wrong, bad, or unimportant. No one really wins.

So here’s where I am, at least for now. I don’t think curiosity is a technique. It’s a practice of staying in relationship with not-knowing, over and over, even after it’s cost me something. Even after I’ve turned toward the fire and come back down to a cave full of people who’d rather I hadn’t. The turning itself is the medicine, not the guarantee that anyone follows me out.

Curiosity is expansive because it keeps a door open that certainty slams shut.

It’s healing because it makes it possible for me to tend and befriend the shadow instead of mistaking it for the whole of a person. It’s necessary for growth because the alternative of staying chained, facing the wall, calling the flicker the whole truth, does the opposite by keeping me small. I’d rather bear the pain of an aching neck than the numbness of a body that’s stopped turning toward the light altogether.

The friendships I grieved might not come back. The closure I wanted might never arrive.

AND the curiosity that wasn’t reciprocated in this story doesn’t mean it won’t lead to a result like closure and deeper connection. I get to keep practicing it, with the next person, the next storm, the next flicker on the wall I mistake for the whole truth.

That’s the part that’s actually still mine to choose.

Thank you for being here.

PS: I have openings for 1:1 Shadow EFT sessions to guide you through the process of turning around towards the fire, to help you get out of the cave. Shoot me a message.

The beginning of the end of dishonesty as a personality trait

I was away on a trip with friends, while my boyfriend was back home, when I met Eric. We hooked up. We hit it off in an almost scary synchronistic way, and I felt like I could be myself with this misfit in a way I never allowed myself to before.

A few days later, over text, he asked:

“Are you still with your boyfriend?”

Promptly and a bit confused,

“Yes,” I typed. “But I thought you knew that.” I didn’t think I was giving off committed-relationship energy.

I remember watching the three dots appear. Disappear. Appear again.

“No, I thought you visited without him because you were broken up. I’m curious - are you being honest with yourself?”

Something in me lit up as if I was being found out. It was the feeling of being caught red-handed, except nobody had accused me of anything. He’d just asked a question and let me catch myself.

What struck me almost as much as the question itself was that anyone would bother asking it. Most people who’d gotten this far with me wouldn’t have cared enough to look any closer, which I preferred. He did anyway.

Some part of me that had been avoiding my own heart for a while, was actually relieved to receive an invitation to look within finally, even if it meant sacrificing the chill, easy going image I was trying to present.

I replied, “No, I haven’t been in a long time. I’ve felt like I was cursed to live like this forever.”

Somehow I couldn’t go back to ignoring the truth laying dormant in my body anymore. I didn’t know how to have healthy relationships without having one foot out of the door, and I realised all the ways I was living within my own carefully constructed lies that continued to drain my energy and kept me isolated.

I told my boyfriend the truth, we broke up, and following that crumbled every structure I had built on top of the false image of myself I presented to everyone. That fucking sucked, but at least I was finally telling myself the truth now.

RIP, cold hearted bitch

This was the beginning of the end my self proclaimed “cold hearted bitch” era.

Early protective behaviors shielded me from real intimacy with anybody for almost a decade by this point. I became really good at checking out while still being in relationship, performing and playing the role of the girlfriend I didn’t actually want to be. A kind of self-silencing that gave me access to men’s resources but came at the cost of my integrity.

I secretly prided myself over how much I could get away with my charm. Presenting myself as someone who didn’t care to go deeper in relating didn’t feel like lying, it felt authentic even, but I wasn’t telling the truth either.

The truth was terrifying to me, because I knew it would change everything I tried to hold up about myself.

Eric didn’t buy any of that, and that’s what snapped me out of this decade long daydream. He didn’t argue with my answer, make me wrong for it, or asked me to explain it. For the first time I was given the invitation to take an honest look at myself, and I was ready for it.

I knew pulling on the thread where I wasn’t being honest with myself in my relationship with my ex boyfriend would unravel every area of my life where I had been hiding too, but I had to risk it.

Fuck it, no takesies backsies.

That part of me needed to die and I finally let it.

Rebirth, Relapse, Recovery, Renewal

I was quite the rebellious emo in my teenage years, and I loved following Tumblrs from creators who wrote and shared poetry. It was as if that was an outlet for my emotional expression that didn’t have anywhere to go in my relationships. I remember coming across a quote from Rumi that stuck to me like velcro;

“Run from what’s comfortable. Forget safety. Live where you fear to live. Destroy your reputation. Be notorious. I have tried prudent planning long enough. From now on I’ll be mad.”

― Rumi

I don’t know why, but at the time I decided to commit to getting honest with myself this quote became a mantra for me. I had been living too long in the comfort of hiding behind an easy-to digest image of myself to get my needs met, I saw that I wasn’t actually living the life I really wanted, and I finally had enough of my own bullshit.

My cheeks burned with shame when I revealed my untruths to people in my life. For the first time I could see the way my actions harmed others. It was like I was set on fire alive. At the same time, I somehow felt lighter. I no longer had to manage multiple images of myself, I was just me.

With less energetic capacity spent managing and maintaining an image of myself, I started gaining awareness to where I would be pulled to hide or lie to myself. I realised it wasn’t just in relationships, it rippled everywhere.

It was in the “im fine”, “it’s cool”, “it’s not a big deal”, reflexes where I was minimizing what I actually wanted or felt, so I could stay the chilled, laid back, low maintenance version of myself some part of me still thought I had to be.

I won’t get into the intimate details of the unraveling that happened across years of continuing this work, but I’ll share this. After a few months following that decision, Eric and I grew closer. I moved to Thailand where he was living and we had the most magical first year of being with each other in a partnership rooted in mutual honesty. When the novelty wore off, and intimacy grew deeper, I noticed an impulse returning.

The thing is, I felt the most free when I told myself the truth and was witnessed by others in it. And still, there were many times where familiar comforts seduced me into hiding again… even though I was sure I’d found the love of my life. Love wasn’t enough? That felt like a slap in the face.

Awareness is a like a lightbulb that illuminates places within you in a way that you can’t undo - I knew I couldn’t hide even if I tried. Eric could call my bluff, and now I can too. This eventually led me to my own rock bottom, then 12 step meetings for sex and love addiction recovery (which I identified with at the time), and further work around codependency recovery, emotional intelligence trainings, and various healing modalities, and building community centered on getting honest with ourselves, which all ended up saving my life.

My relationships got better, even though that doesn’t mean easier. Eric and I continued being mirrors to each other, knowing that sometimes a bit of polishing is needed for the both of us. I learnt how to stay when things got uncomfortable, and developed skills to navigate conflict and repair. I could stay in my integrity even in a room with people with different views. I could handle more people being people because I was giving myself that space too.

Rinse & Repeat

It’s been 9 years since Eric’s question, and I still continue to find newer truths about myself. I still check myself with it often, especially when I notice frustration or agitation building within me.

We’re going to be married for 7 years in less than a month, and orienting towards self honesty has been a solid pillar for our relationship - in our personal evolution, and as we cycled through various transitions of our lives. Getting honest became a place we keep finding our way back to, over and over, every time the comfort of hiding starts pulling our attention again. In that place we find each other.

Self honesty is less like a destination I “arrive” to and more like a practice I choose to take on for myself to clearly see myself, on a regular basis because navigating life means inevitably kicking up dirt and noise that may cloud my actual desires or fears. The more I want to expand myself, the more I uncover deep seated beliefs that no longer fit me, and the more I get to advocate for myself, my fmaily, and my community in a way that suits me better.

It doesn’t always come with praise and applause from others, which always stings a little, but I do it anyway. I know now what the alternative costs, and i’m no longer willing to pay that price.

Self-honesty is how I return home to myself, again and again.

Thank you for reading,

Azimah

There’s a hint of pride in her reminiscing my ability to sense my environment before normal developmental milestones. “You didn’t open up to people easily,” she’d say. I would shrug, it’s just another ‘me’ thing. There’s an image I’ve carried in my head for years of infant me - curled up in a ball, fists to match, eyes scrunched shut, body bracing, whenever that came up.

It wasn’t until 5 years ago that I started getting curious about what all that was about.

I was neck-deep in a 4th step inventory process in my 12th step program for Codependents Anonymous which had me reflecting on different time periods of my life. The first section of the timeline was “Infancy to 5 years old” and it stumped me. I had access to just a few early childhood memories, but there was this gnawing, heavy, feeling like something big happened and was buried in my subconscious. I said, “God, help me see.” I decided I’d come back to it another day.

A few weeks later on Instagram I came across a preview of a docuseries episode of VICE, on the practice of Female Genital Cutting, or sunat perempuan, in Singapore. I couldn’t help seeing myself in the faces of little brown girls crying in the video, the fear in their eyes. I was deeply moved, and sent the link to my younger sister, telling her how glad I am that our mother didn’t take us through that. Minutes later a notification popped up on my phone screen with her reply, “but we did go through that.”

My heart sank, but it felt like a long lost truth in my body finally coming to light.

That discovery, more like remembering, cracked my body open and out flowed long buried grief and rage I thought I didn’t have access to but I was just numb to.

That’s when I realised numbness wasn’t my default way of being, it was a response.

It took me months to process this new, old truth. And then some more months to even bring up the topic to my mother, only to learn that it’s a multigenerational traditional ritual within our culture that all girls get to go through, as “it’s always been done this way.”

With a new thirst for information on a topic so buried, I searched and realised that its roots are woven into my lineage as guardrails against a woman’s sexual desire - serving to tame her wildness. Done young enough, there’s no memory, no consent, no ritual marking. What is left behind is silence and a body that doesn’t know why it flinches.

When I share this with friends here in the US, they are often shocked to learn that such a thing exists. Unlike male circumcision that is normalised, and in the Malay culture I grew up in, given a celebratory kenduri, FGC is done quietly and stays invisible even within families.

There’s no standard methodology for this procedure for female circumcision as it varies across cultures and traditions globally across generations, but in my case, a small part of my clitoral hood was severed.

The clitoris is an organ built for over ten thousand points of sensation, and mine was altered before I had the language for the cutting, or even the pleasure it was capable of. Did anyone have the language for it?

Before I could speak, my body learnt that someone else got to decide what I can do with my body. I learnt that I wasn’t allowed to feel pleasure, to soften, and be heard. Don’t question things if I want to belong. I’m safe only if my pussy is a certain way. The blade cut off more than soft tissue, it severed my voice, my sensuality, sense of safety, and sovereignty.

I strived to be “good” in girlhood and held my tongue from speaking about anything that I perceived as “bad” even if it harmed me. I became really good at hiding pain, which also came with hiding what I wanted so I could just be “easygoing”.

I can’t tell if there’s an actual scar, but when I started becoming sexually curious around puberty at 13, I started carrying armor around my heart to hide my shame. Sex and pleasure was never talked about at home, so I swallowed my tongue around every curiosity, discovery, and even violation I’ve experienced when I was searching for meaning around my sexuality that felt like this strange, forbidden world.

In adolescence my body became a vehicle to get me what I wanted - love, attention, praise, and applause. I’d work it like a machine until it broke down, relationships were transactional instead of collaborative - if you do X for me I’ll do Y. I tucked away my inner world because showing a strong, unbothered exterior was much safer.

These relational patterns around my autonomy, sovereignty, desire, pleasure, receivership, nurture, and leadership echoed similarly to the lived experiences in the women before me.

My mother said it’s always been done this way, and I believed her. She believed it too. This was a wound we share, so I don’t blame her. She was told I was too young to feel it. A lie that cost more than either of us knew, that I’m choosing to tend to now.

Trauma and scarring was not part of our vocabulary. Not hers. Not her mother’s. You cannot interrupt what you don’t have language for. Her body. Her mother’s. Hers before that. Mine, mirroring all of them, adapted the only way it knew how.

I decided it’s time to rewrite the story in our bodies.

—

For me it wasn’t a single event that changed everything, it was years accumulating micro moments where I heard my body’s whispers. And over time it became a practice I repeated imperfectly, but consistently.

Gaining somatic literacy and tending to my womb and pussy taught my body that sensations are safe to feel- that even pain is a signal, not a threat. Over time, I learnt that grief and anger were energy that needed to move through me.

Brazilian jiujitsu expanded my nervous system. My body now knows that it’s safe to assert myself and fight back when I need to. I know that collapsing, freezing, and fawning are not the only responses to the threat of aggression. That I can be in the presence of potential danger and remain calm.

Training in integrative pelvic bodywork taught me consent as a practice, not a concept. Teaching me that our bodies deserve care and safety as a baseline - I know what it costs to override it.

—

Earning my Black Belt last year after a decade of training, as the first woman in my lineage to do it, has shifted the trajectory of the women who will come after me. Even beyond jiujitsu I know I’ll always be a student, learning and relearning the language of my own nervous system when I watch the patterns of my body and how it responds to my environment. When I notice bracing, I practice softening. Where I notice pain, I tend to it with my full attention. Every day I remind my body what it’s like to live without being in survival mode.

Here I begin reclaiming the wisdom laying dormant in my body passed down through my lineage, that they never had the luxury to slow down enough to discover. My ability to say yes or no as it pleases me, switching outdated beliefs I no longer subscribe to. The joy of creating beautiful work and nourishment with my hands, moving, and adorning my body in ways that expand my spirit. Recognizing the autonomy of another woman and calling her forth to reclaim her own.

My body was never really mine. Now it is.

Thank you for being here.

Azimah Azmi

I saw her hiding as weakness, her collapse as staying small.

I got frustrated because this happens a lot, and if I could have it my way I would want her joyful and free. I want her to be adventurous and creative, I don’t like seeing her shrink.

In my discontent, figuring out in my head a more appropriate way for her to be that would make everything better in my world, something deeper in my belly began to stir.

Then I closed my eyes and I could see, the reason she bothered me was because it mirrored something in me.

She mirrored a version of me hiding underneath my grandmother’s dining table when people’s voices got too loud. The one that would tremble in fear when left alone in the dark. She’s about 8 years old, but her stride looks heavy like she’s carrying burdens too big for her small body to carry.

She thinks she needs to do everything “right” to receive love, validation, affection, and security. A million and one ways she “should” be and yet her legs stayed frozen. She thinks she’s messing up because of it, that no-one would see her when she isn’t striving - the curse of being an imperfect little girl.

There was no other adult in the room but me. I caught her eye peeking out at me, I winked, and crawled under the table to sit with her. No one’s ever sat with her like that before.

I told her I’m here for her just because, and that I see her and understand why she wants to hide. I told her I’ve seen the way she tries, and falling short doesn’t mean failure. Her body relaxed a little and she rested her head on my lap.

I asked her, if she didn’t need to be afraid of losing love, what would she do? She said she’d keep trying to do hard things and learn to be brave.

So I smiled at her and told her she’d never lose my love, that I’d gladly take her hand and guide her through those hard things. After all, life looks a lot different now.

I opened my eyes and thought of my friend again. My frustration with her was never about her. It was the echo of the part of me that learned long ago that shrinking was dangerous and striving was safer.

What I was trying to change in her was the place in me that needed love.

We don’t heal by erasing the parts of us that learned to hide. We heal by turning toward them, slowly, gently, and letting them know the danger has passed.

As I did, the charge in my chest toward my friend dissolved into something softer. I sent her the same love I had just offered that little girl.

Then somewhere inside, a soft voice whispered:
“She’s learning to be brave too.”

-

This is the kind of inner listening I believe changes everything.

If you want to explore it more deeply, you can find my work on shadow integration and emotional sovereignty through INTEGRATE.

I noticed I was oscillating regularly between hyper-vigilant anxious and collapsed states, and the stories I told myself about my relationships and the world often mirrored whichever state I was in.

It was a call to come back to my body.

Synchronistically, I learned in STREAM with Ellen Heed PhD that when scar tissue develops, it inhibits the free movement of fluids carrying nutrients and waste in and out of our organs and tissues — disrupting homeostasis, or balance. And yet, scar tissue isn’t all “bad.” It’s the body’s built-in defense, designed to protect us from further harm.

Around the same time, I began noticing the gap between what my body was doing reactively and how I actually wanted to show up in relationship.

My emotional reactions started to feel like a kind of emotional scar tissue - protective, but limiting my capacity to connect beyond my triggers.

A question lingered: Who could I become if I had the capacity to respond differently?

Trying to get rid of my triggers became frustrating, like rearranging furniture in a jail cell. I set that strategy aside and leaned into something simpler: taking care of my body, and therefore my nervous system.

I began creating an intimate relationship with my dysregulated states, the sensations that come with anxiety, and the ones that come with collapse. I noticed each state asked for something different.

Anxiety wanted contact. Movement. To feel myself breathing and engaged long enough to register: I’m here. I can do something. Sometimes that looked like jiujitsu or pole practice. Sometimes it was hours of chores or cooking.

Collapse wanted permission to retreat and soften. To be held by the surface beneath me or by my environment. Sometimes that meant laying in the grass at the park with friends. Sometimes it was resting on my couch, doing nothing at all.

As I learned to stay with sensation without rushing it to change, my body began to shift slowly. A little more space in my chest. A little less bracing in my belly. Micro-moments where I didn’t leave myself in pursuit of more, better, different.

From that place, relational triggers began to feel different.

My nervous system had more room to metabolize what was happening. I could feel activation move through me without immediately turning it into a story about the other person or what I needed to do next.

I still experience triggers. I still feel my default reactions rise to protect me. But they no longer define the limits of intimacy I can experience.

What I’ve come to trust is that my reactivity was never a problem, but protection.

Scar tissue doesn’t just disappear. It becomes more supple. Less rigid. Less limiting.

I still get activated. My body still remembers.

The coolest part of this is that the activation no longer automatically becomes a story about my partner or a reaction I can’t walk back from. I can feel it as sensation first, without making it mean something about who they are or what this relationship is.

That shift has changed how close I can be.

I can stay present with my partner while my body is activated. I can name what’s happening without identifying with it or acting it out. I can tell the difference between what’s old and what’s actually happening between us now.

I didn’t need to be less reactive or more “regulated.”

I got to expand my capacity to stay in contact, with myself, and with him, even when my defenses arise.

The scar tissue is still there.
It just no longer defines the limits of intimacy I can experience.

with Love,

Azimah Azmi

This looping thought that repeats itself subconsciously, that I’m not smart enough, nor am I accomplished, pretty enough, sexy enough, badass enough…

To be accepted, appreciated, celebrated, honoured, valued.

I’ve already traced its roots a million times, but this time I see how this default assumption had become a friend I’ve hid behind for so long. A friend I’m beginning to part ways with, and it’s an excruciating process.

Excruciating because in many ways, being right about not being liked became so familiar that it shaped my reality and the world as I know it - and parting ways would mean I step into an entirely new world where hiding isn’t an option.

I sat quietly, opening to the deeper truth underneath this and discovered: I didn’t fear rejection, I was addicted to it. The more evidence I could find of my unworthiness, the more righteous I became about my smallness. It’s like digging my heels into the dirt saying “this is all I’m going to get so I better get used to it.”

But what if I let people like me, love me, without needing the struggle to prove my worthiness for it? Without needing to prove in material, stature, or performance? In my realness, in my rawness… Where I am afraid, where I’m still healing, and where I’m still learning?

The truth is, it’s terrifying. Opening in mind, body, and spirit to the vulnerability of keeping my heart open with love feels counterintuitive to the hard wired protective mechanisms I’ve developed over the years. It defies any logic I’ve used to strategize avoiding the softness of my heart.

So I’ve been practicing opening, while allowing the part of me that insists on being right about closing to be present too.

Holding the hand of the part of me that isn’t quite ready to let go on one side, and on the other, the part of me that wants to experience love beyond my fears.

These things can coexist. It actually feels more spacious too.

And I like to think the more I can be honest about where I still cut myself off from love, the more other people can see we’re not that different, and maybe without these self imposed barriers, getting along as a collective could come with more ease. I’m curious about where this leads.

Right now this makes the most sense to me.

Anyway - thanks for being here.

Love,

Azimah Azmi

Blessing, because we’re both jiujitsu nerds, black belts, and can talk endlessly about technique and strategy.

Curse, because when he coaches me, our relational wounds surface. Feedback from him always feels extra personal, as though he’s using my vulnerabilities against me. In my head, I imagine he expects perfection as his wife, and that failing him means disappointing him.

I hate disappointing coaches—always have. Probably tied to childhood neglect, and the way praise from authority figures lights me up. But with him, the stakes feel even higher.

That day, I was frustrated with a technique and wanted to workshop it. He showed me a solution, but because his positioning wasn’t exactly like what I had in mind, I dismissed it. I felt unheard. My face went cold. He read this as defiance and ungratefulness. He said we could do this another time.

My nervous system spiraled. Suddenly, eight-year-old me was in the driver’s seat, convinced I was being criticized in front of everyone. I wanted to storm out. Instead, I went to the bathroom, splashed water on my face, and tried something different.

I put my hands on my chest and belly, closed my eyes, and let the fear, embarrassment, and frustration move through. I pictured that younger version of me, spoke to her gently, reminded her we’ve done hard things before, and asked if we could try again.

When I returned to the mats, I carried her with me as I applied his feedback. It worked—I broke through the problem and even repeated it across rounds.

“Damn,” I thought, “he really knew what he was talking about.”

Later, when we debriefed, I saw his side clearly: he holds a high standard with every student, no exceptions. That’s one of the qualities that first drew me to him—his directness, his refusal to coddle, his commitment to bring out the best in people.

And I realized: I actually love being coached that way. Stern, tough love cuts through my self-doubt and grounds me in the mission.

So where’s the misalignment?

I wanted to be led, but I wasn’t allowing it.

In trying to control how he coached me, I was trying to lead him. And when I do that, there’s no room left for me to be coached.

Getting out of my own way looked like softening my grip—trusting that being receptive, even when uncomfortable, is the path to growth.

A valuable lesson that came out of this is;

Sometimes the hardest technique master isn’t on the mat—it’s getting out of my own way.

…

Since then, I’ve been holding this in my awareness in every training session lately and feel like I’ve been retaining so much more, all while having so much fun.

So here’s something to ponder on -

What would open up if you let yourself be coachable—even in the places that sting?

Til next time,

Azimah Azmi

Some of my favorite people to work with are the analytical, intellect-forward types, who spend a lot of time figuring things out and solving problems in their heads when they encounter some kind of relational or internal conflict.

It used to annoy the sh*t out of me and then I realised they mirrored a part of me I had a hard time with too - when my mind is dead set on trying to find logical solutions to spiritual or emotional problems… it works sometimes, but isn’t sustainable.

For me I tend to power my way through an issue with logical reasoning, managing my emotions with a stack of tasks on my to do list, often to the point of overwhelm, then my nervous system crashes, and THEN emotions burst out of me like a volcanic eruption or raging river.

I don’t recommend this, at all, but it’s also a thing I feel we need to do over and over until some part inside us whispers - “yo, can we try something different? I’m tired of getting to burnout and accidentally setting things on fire all the time.”

Cool thing about this stuff when I work with others is that I get to interrupt this pattern for them a lot quicker than them getting to it on their own. Just like myself, we don’t know what we don’t know.

I’m not saying analytical skills and intellectual reasoning are bad or wrong, but there’s another kind of intelligence where the thinking mind is actually secondary part of a resolution process, where the mind can be utilized to support the body instead- emotional intelligence.

The more I inquire into this pattern, the more I discover that overthinking, being hyper critical/analytical is a way some of us adapted to life, when feeling feelings weren’t perceived as valuable, or is tied to some negative consequence.

On an energetic level, energy moves to the mind, distracting them from the physical sensations and emotions tied to them.

Although pretty draining, this is what their nervous systems are well trained for… In fact, they’re really good at it.

This is what is mapped out in there: Conflict > figure it out in mind > avoid facing scary feelings that may mean more trouble.

I say it’s like a super jacked muscle from decades repetitions of the “think to fix” movement.

On the other hand, there’s an opportunity here to develop another muscle that has long atrophied from subconscious neglect - time to practice more reps of “owning your emotions”.

This is what I guide people to do:

I get them to tune in to the physical sensations present in their bodies as they tell me about the issue they can’t seem to solve in their minds.

Sometimes the mind tries to rescue them from the act of feeling with explaining, story telling, or numbness, and in that case I ask them -

What emotion are you not wanting to feel right now?

Their response informs me exactly what sensations their nervous systems haven’t recognized as “safe to feel” yet.

I remind them that their emotions are welcome and that the contents of our session will not leave the container, that what we’re doing is learning to meet the emotion gently instead of thinking out of it.

And then they practice just feeling it.

Letting the physical sensations arise in their bodies, and the mind’s only job is to witness, perhaps anchoring to breathing in and out as a focus if it tends to wander.

After a few minutes of letting an emotional wave pass like letting tides wash over them, a palpable change sets in both internally and externally on their physical bodies.

Tension melts, heaviness lifts, tears stop coming. The fog transforms to a little more clarity.

An “owning their emotions” rep complete. Building blocks towards an expanded capacity in their nervous system to feel the things that used to be difficult before.

The more someone does this, the more emotionally literate they become for themselves, and I like to think, for others too.

I think this is probably one of the most valuable skills to hone these days.

I like to imagine a world where people are attuned to how they really feel when they’re listening or watching someone/something, and can experience someone else have an emotional experience without these two worlds clashing or cancelling each other out.

TLDR; you’ll suck at holding space for another if you suck at doing that for yourself

Til next time,

Azimah Azmi

I hate this place. Nothing fun lives here. The ground is swampy and unsteady. It’s dark and damp, the air is dense, and it’s hard to breathe. Secret dreams covered in muck, hidden away before they ever had a chance to spring to life. Past versions of me, undeveloped, sent to exile and forgotten. The longer I linger, the further away I feel from all the gangsta sh*t I’ve done in present day.

Here, I’ve found the bones of performer dreams I buried when I was eight, after my dance teacher joked in front of the class about how robotic I looked. I never showed up to class again. Who was I to think I would dance gracefully? Foolish girl.

She isn’t the only one I’ve discovered here.

In Shame-land, there are countless versions of my past selves, frozen in time—convinced they were too much, too selfish, too dangerous, too broken to be loved or celebrated.

When these parts get banished, I forget that at some point I longed to explore, play, create. Shame-land dampens desire to the point of amnesia, leaving me whispering: “I don’t know what I want.”

A purposeful forgetting.

Because if I can cast away the “uncool” parts of me, I don’t have to feel the terror of vulnerability. I can live another day without risking heartbreak.

Shame, I’ve learned, is also a shield.

But the strange thing about Shame-land is that nothing really dies there.

Exiling those dreams came with a price. The ones that refuse to rest rear their heads as irritability, longing, envy, and dissatisfaction. Symptoms that something’s amiss. It seems there’s still a pulse, some force beneath the soil, despite its burial.

What if Shame-land isn’t the end of the road? What if it’s a compost heap?

So my earlier statement can be rewritten:

Shame-land is where dreams go to die… and also resurrect.

If shame is a shield meant to protect, there must be something worth protecting. Like ribs around vital organs, shame surrounds what matters most. Could it be that even buried dreams still hold potential for more life?

Even sitting with that question feels like cracking open a door I thought I’d slammed shut. Curiosity shifts the whole landscape.

I get on my hands and knees and dig. Suspending judgment, breathing through the cringe, I search for why these ghosts keep showing up. Dirt under my nails, knees raw, I eventually find something: beneath the ruins are seeds, patiently waiting for nurture.

I don’t stay in the bog. I take the seeds with me. Though long buried, I can feel the buzzing life inside, waiting to be expressed. A miracle. They may look a little funny from all that time underground—but I’m okay with that.

Then came the realization: I am my harshest, most relentless critic. Shame-land was my own doing. I was its keeper, the one deciding what got exiled. For years, I didn’t see how accustomed I’d become to rejecting my own earliest dreams and desires.

So I had to find out what would happen if I related to this place differently. Instead of denial—welcoming.

That’s shadow integration in a nutshell: naming the parts we’ve cast out, reclaiming them as worthy, giving them permission to exist imperfectly, and tending them until a new relationship can grow.

It’s one of the most rewarding healing modalities I’ve ever immersed myself in (shout out to Jeff and The Sanctum). Since training in this work a year ago, I’ve seen so many leaps in my personal growth—simply by knowing how to visit Shame-land and breathe life into the seeds I’ve rediscovered. Being able to show others the way feels just as fulfilling.

These days, when I wander back into Shame-land, I don’t just see ruins. I see seeds—fragile, awkward, still dripping in muck—but alive.

Shame-land has become my teacher. It reminds me that what I exiled wasn’t dead, only waiting for me to return with curiosity instead of judgment.

And so the graveyard becomes a garden.

If shame is a shield, then the dreams it guards must be precious. Maybe the question isn’t what’s wrong with me—but what inside me is still worth protecting, still worth resurrecting?

Perhaps the thing you thought was gone forever is only waiting, patient in the soil of your own Shame-land, for you to kneel down and bring it into the light.

Love,

Azimah

Just stop.

Especially when I feel complete… or really when I’m over it, as in, I find myself no longer wanting to pour my energy into it.

Rick Rubin talks about Finishing in the creative process, suggesting that “finishing a creative project requires a commitment to letting go of the idea that it can always be better, as this pursuit of perfection can lead to endless tinkering and prevent completion.”

Honestly I’m committing to this practice because I have quite a hard time with it, especially when it comes to making art and sharing it with the world.

On the flip side with athletic pursuits the finish line is really clear. Being competitive in bodybuilding, powerlifting, and jiujitsu within the past decade or so the common thread of it all is that there’s a clear date where the work poured into preparatory training gets to come full circle, competition day.

I compare creative vs athletic pursuits because for a really long time, these two things felt like separate paths. The highs of completion and relief of letting go seemed to come easier for athletic pursuits rather than for creativity.

I get judged on performance, score points, or complete lifts. Results clearly reflect where I have been successful in my preparation or not. Then I decide to run it back with another competition or not. Rinse and repeat.

With creative expression it hits different. Art is open to interpretation, vulnerable to criticism, and unless I set an end date or have a predetermined deadline I could really keep going… and I notice I usually do, driven by a belief that it’s not as good as it could be.

I still have a drawing I started in 2022 that is halfway colored somewhere in my drawing pad - I told myself I’d finish but I still think it could be better. Rubin’s got a point.

By now the watercolor I used is faded in color, and i notice I have resistance in even looking at it. In some ways it feels like energetically anchoring myself to some past version of me, and there’s some shame in the mix as well.

If I’m honest I don’t really want to finish it now, I’m over it. I think I’ll put it to rest and call it complete so I can stop tying my energy to this piece of paper.

It’s not perfect, but it’s done. At least for now. It’s not the story I wanted to tell, but it’s still a story.

I think there’s a possibility that I could recreate my relationship with finishing art, and it’s tied to healing my relationship to the pains of potential criticism and the worst of all feelings for me - rejection. Surprise surprise, the biggest meanest critic who rejects me is me. But I’ll share more on my reflections on pain in writings to come.

As someone who is hyper analytical to the point of paralysis sometimes, I know that taking the risk of imperfect action is what helps me overcome shame-inducing inertia.

This is one of the gifts of training jiujitsu. I’m a black belt now, and sometimes I still notice where I get in my head analyzing my training partner’s moves and strategy that I end up falling out of presence and fail to actually create the actions needed to play my game effectively.

I haven’t competed since 2018, but I see where my best sparring sessions are when I empty my mind of how things “should” look and welcome the chaos and messiness of risk taking and self trust, knowing that my body knows its way.

For now, as part of my practice of finishing I’m writing long form posts like these of the things I think about again. The last time I’ve done this was when I was a teenager on Tumblr, and I want to get into the habit of free writing without necessarily needing to “get somewhere” or promote something or gain client leads.

I want the point to be no point except to start and then complete and then share for the sake of sharing.

So here it goes.

FIN

Love,

Azimah Azmi