When you are used to doing everything yourself, accepting care can take practice.
Someone offers to help, and you hear yourself say, “No, it’s fine. I’ve got it.”
Perhaps you do have it. You are capable, and you have managed things on your own before. But the answer may arrive so quickly that there is barely time to consider whether you would welcome some help.
I have been a single mum for a long time. I do everything myself, and I am used to doing everything myself. If I don’t do it, it doesn’t get done. There is a practical reality to that. When the responsibility rests with you, you get on with what needs doing. Over time, doing it all yourself becomes familiar. Having someone offer to share the responsibility can be less familiar.
That is the context in which I have been learning to receive. One of the most significant things TRE® has taught me is how to allow someone else’s care and attention to reach me.
Why can it be hard to accept help and care?
Giving can provide a familiar place in a relationship. You know what to do. You can listen, anticipate, organise or offer comfort. You have a contribution to make, and you can see that it matters.
Receiving may leave you less sure of your place. What is expected of you now? Is the other person comfortable? Have you taken too much of their time? Should you already be giving something back?
If care has previously come with conditions, an offer of help may prompt questions about what will follow. If being useful has been an important way of finding your place, allowing someone to attend to you can feel unfamiliar. You may simply have had very little practice. You can be capable and independent and still welcome care. Knowing that, and allowing yourself to experience it, can be different parts of the journey.
Difficulty receiving affection
Something similar can happen with affection. You might want someone to listen but shorten the story because you are worried about taking up their time. A compliment becomes something to explain away. A welcome hug brings a question about what is expected next.
If your attention is occupied with the other person’s comfort, there may be little room to notice what their care feels like to you.
Learning to receive includes discovering what you actually welcome. You may want a different kind of support, or prefer to manage something yourself. Your preferences belong in the exchange.
Learning to receive within TRE®
TRE®, or Tension and Trauma Releasing Exercises, uses exercises to invite involuntary shaking or tremoring. During a supported session, a provider accompanies you as you become familiar with movement, sensation and your own responses.
Part of what you receive is their steady attention and attunement: someone closely following your experience and responding to what you need.
You do not have to look after the Provider, produce a ‘particular release’ or reassure them that the session has worked. There can be quietness, uncertainty, questions and pauses. The client can ask for something different.
As a Provider, I often find that learning it is okay to receive is a crucial part of the work. For some clients and students, this appears to be the first time they have been invited to receive attention in this way. We take time with it. Receiving cannot become another task someone must perform well.
Receiving care without immediately repaying it
Relationships include giving and receiving over time. We may care deeply about offering something back.
But when repayment becomes immediate and compulsory, it can interrupt the experience. Someone begins caring for us and we are already working out how to restore the balance. A friend can listen while you finish what you wanted to say. Someone can bring you a cup of tea and you can enjoy it. The reciprocity of a relationship has room to unfold across more than one moment.
In a professional session, you are there to receive the practitioner’s care and skill. Your experience does not need to become a source of reassurance for them.
What has changed for me
Learning to receive through TRE® has expanded into my experience of all intimacy, including sexual intimacy. My body has softened and expanded. I can find more presence, more openness and my body and mind have more room for pleasure – from a look, a touch or the voice of my lover.
These changes have developed gradually. I cannot promise someone else the same journey, but I can speak about the significance it has had in my own life. You might begin by noticing what happens when someone offers something you want. Is there an impulse to refuse, explain or give something back before you have had time to enjoy it?
You can take time to decide. And when you welcome the offer, there may be room to let the moment last. For me, learning to receive has become part of being more fully present in relationship. I can allow more of what I welcome to reach me.
Next: Being seen without judgement: TRE® and feeling safe in intimacy.
If you would like to explore TRE® for yourself, Module 1: Embodied Mastery is a stand-alone weekend for developing your own practice. You can attend without committing to professional training.
You can also read more about individual TRE® sessions with me in London, Kent and online.
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