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July 31, 2025

Curiosity

Curiosity is a surprisingly important tool in self care.

We like to find things out as humans, and curiosity tends to come without the overtones of blame or finding fault. It's about discovery and exploration.

It's also a part of courageous care, the type of care I want to embody as a counsellor. Part of my job is not shying away from difficult things, and sometimes that means offering curiosity where a client doesn't want to look, or is trying to avoid.

It's also important to have curiosity without assumptions. I'm so used to being anxious that I've not really ever explored that anxiety. I know why I'm anxious, I carry it with me, so why do I need to spend time on it?

The thing is, I've never really spent time with my anxiety. I've acknowledged my anxiety and let myself be anxious with acceptance, but then I moved on when I'd decided I'd done enough, or when I felt I had to move on to do an action. And action is a counter to anxiety, but often it's a distraction, or a sense of achievement to push back against anxious thoughts, but sometimes it's only a plaster over the injury.

The goal is to get to know myself, with courage and curiosity.

I've realised over the course of the past few weeks that I've been flippant with my feelings. I've acknowledged and accepted, but I've not really sat with them without any assumptions or outcomes in mind. It's more than my family ever gave me, and I assumed it was enough, but it's not.

I've been less anxious overall the past few weeks. I'm still anxious a lot of the time, but I'm sitting with that discomfort. I'm more aware of the anxiety because I'm not accepting it as business as normal, but instead as something to be curious about.

What does this anxiety feel like? Where am I feeling it? What does it remind me of?


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The journey feels like taking down boxes that I've filed away and labelled, but this time really looking at what I'm storing. What am I carrying and why? The goal isn't to sort things out, or throw things away, but more to just get an idea of what I've got going on.

The goal is the act of feeling my feelings and exploring the connections. It's reminding myself that it's safe to do so, and that I can handle whatever it is I'm feeling. I have to be able to trust myself, and trusting myself with my own feelings is the first step.

It's about being courageous enough to open the boxes and look inside them, pull them out and sit with them. Things that I've not looked at for a long time, things that are distressing, and things I'd rather leave forgotten. But I'm still carrying them, moving them with me constantly, and I deserve a review of that.

There are things I am learning to let go of, definitely (currently working on my anxiety around disappointing people and being a burden/needing help in a work or school setting specifically), but that's not the goal.

The goal is to get to know myself, with courage and curiosity.

Read more:

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