You know the feeling: someone gets too close, and suddenly, you’re pulling back. Maybe you change the subject. Maybe you make a joke (whoops, guilty). Maybe you disappear altogether. We call it putting up walls, but it’s really a form of protection. And like most protective strategies, it started somewhere meaningful.

I’m finding an interesting thread between psychologists and philosophers studying states of freedom: physically, mentally, and spiritually. All point back to one pivotal point in life.

Childhood.

Vulnerability is one of the most paradoxical experiences we face as humans: it is the thing we most crave, and yet, the thing we most fear. So how do we… I don’t know… get over ourselves?