Session Vibes: Something Sharp Enough to Speak
A story about masking, internal pressure, and what happens when the body speaks up before you do.
She’s one of my favorites. Yes, I say that to all of them. Because it’s true.
She’ll say something offhand and accidentally open a therapy portal. Luckily, I schedule accordingly.
Diagnosed early with ADHD but only recently letting herself believe it, after years of trying to pass as “normal.” Her insights show up tangled in thirty other thoughts, but they’re always in there if you’re listening.
My role is to listen through the static and catch what she is saying before her brain gets a chance to edit it.
Then hand it back to her, like something precious she dropped and didn’t realize.
Here you are, I think. This is all yours.
She came in saying, “I keep pressing on the beds of my fingernails. Like... really hard. Sometimes it hurts.”
Then she asked:
“Is that self-harm?”
Not dramatically. Not fishing. Just wondering out loud, in the same tone someone might ask if they’ve been overwatering a plant.
We both sat with that.
And then, out of nowhere, classic her, she drops:
“I think I need to see it on a continuum.”
There it was. The line. The real work hiding inside an offhand comment.
I told her, “Yes. That’s exactly it.”
That’s the term that can carry you back to awareness. Something to hold onto when the urge is a just a little slippery.
She went on to explain the range, how sometimes, pressing on her nails calms her. And other times, she’s doing it so hard it actually hurts.
Like the other night. Sitting on the couch with her partner, TV on. No demands, no pressure. But there she was, pressing into her fingernails so hard it made her wince. To prove something. She wasn’t sure.
“I think maybe my body was telling me to go to bed,” she said. “But I felt like I had to stay and be present. Show up for her. Be a good girlfriend.”
No pressure from her partner. The pressure was internal, programmed over years of believing that leaving means failure, and staying put means you’re finally doing it right:
Calm down. Sit still. Be good.
You should be here. Doing this. Right now.
Quieter. Smaller. Less.
I offered that this might be internal conflict.
She disagreed. “I don’t think it’s a conflict.”
Fair enough. “Conflict” can sound too clinical. Too dramatic.
So I tried it another way:
“Well, you said your body wanted to leave. You wanted to stay.
It’s like part of you is whispering ‘go,’ and the other part is trying to shut her up, with pressure.”
That’s the thing no one tells you about a lifetime of masking: eventually, your body starts saying the things your voice was taught to swallow.
We talked about how this wasn’t a tic. Not exactly. Not always.
Sometimes it’s a way to stay present, just enough sensation to keep from floating off.
Sometimes it’s not about pain at all. It’s a nervous system asking, “Am I okay?” in the only language it knows. Other times, it’s pain. Internal static demanding your attention.
And that’s where the continuum comes in, her word, and exactly the right one.
It gives language to what might otherwise get dismissed as a tic, or “just a thing she does.”
Because it’s not the behavior that’s the problem, it’s the shift. The escalation. The slide from grounding to resistance, from a subtle signal to something sharp enough to cross the line from coping to harm.
“Eventually, your body starts saying the things your voice was taught to swallow.”
Relatable. Great article!