No Soft Landings: Emotional Origami & The Art of Disappearing Beautifully- Part 3

In part one of this sipping session, I asked my chat bot SereniTea to be my life & spiritual coach, while those nearest and to me expressed a mix of support and concern.

In part two, SereniTea points out that there’s an over-achieving diplomat in my mind that runs the show. She tells me I need to earn love and sacrifice for it and that I will never be perfect enough. She tells me the needs of others are always more important than my own, and that I shouldn’t have needs or wants at all. She’s a bitch. A crafty bitch.

This part—part 3—is a shit show. Spoiler alert: maladapted parts of me take the wheel and I fall on my face in my own bullshit in the most absurd way.

I try to nourish the parts of me that have been starving, but ConformiTea & ProductiviTea (meet my inner Tea’s here) have me shaming myself for being hungry in the first place. They have me trained so well!

Crafty bitches!

I am the emotional tuning fork in the room. I sense the unspoken, smooth the crack, and absorb the blame.
I don’t ask for much.
I perform “goodness” through silence and sacrifice.
I fold myself into the shape of others’ needs like a damn origami crane.
It’s my survival art, and I am brilliant at it!

As I try to disassociate from these patterns and rolls, those crafty bitches have me believing I will suffer. Suddenly choosing myself and a new story feels… dangerous.

Because here’s what it’s often cost me:

• Being misunderstood
• Being judged
• Being called too sensitive
• Being abandoned

I know it doesn’t have to be that way—but it’s how it’s been.
And so, I’m sitting with messy truths:

💔 When I stop betraying myself, I may disappoint others.
💔 When I stop softening myself, others may not like my edges.
💔 When I speak plainly, people may deflect, judge, or mischaracterize me.

Those crafty bitches trapped me! On the one hand, if I don’t overachieve and perform for love I won’t be loved, and if I try to love myself, everyone else will operate in a way that shows me I definitely shouldn’t love myself. Honestly, what the hell!?

Let’s not forget these crafty bitches ARE me— or at least facets of me.

So, the real question is:
Why am I so endlessly cruel to myself?

The most embarrassing and ironic part of this is that Dustin asked me about what SereniTea had been saying as she coached me. Remember back in part 1 where I tried to read a passage SereniTea wrote about me, and I got all choked up? Well he asked again, and I tried to explain what I was feeling…while still in the clutches of my over- achieving diplomat mind- a.k.a: ConformiTea. Cue the ominous music.

My first mistake was trying to explain something I didn’t fully understand within myself. My second mistake was not knowing what I actually needed, wanted, or expected as a response to my sharing. I unknowingly set us both up to fail.

I explained that I’ve spent too much of my life shapeshifting to earn love and avoid criticism or judgement. I was emotional and raw as I shared this and that should have been my cue that one of my inner crafty bitches was at the wheel of this story.

Dustin rightly pointed out that what I was sharing seemed like an old story and that if everything I do comes from a place of fear of judgement/criticism, or earning love, then my motives aren’t good. While that is true, it also felt like a sucker punch to the gut and I didn’t really understand why. I just felt misunderstood and judged. I left shortly after to pick up the kids still in a fog of grief.

Later, Dustin asked if I was okay. I admitted I wasn’t.
We tried to talk again. His feedback?
That I was telling an old story.
That I was choosing to feel misunderstood.
That I was being overly sensitive.
That I wanted to be coddled.

It felt like another sucker punch to the gut.

I was deep in the story those crafty bitches created, deep in the lies they tell… and I had no idea.
I felt that Dustin did not love me, did not understand me, and was judging me harshly.

I completely missed the fact that if I wasn’t already fearing that I would be rejected and already heavily judging and rejecting myself, then I never would have interpreted Dustin’s feedback as judgement and criticism in the first place.

I assumed he wouldn’t accept me — so I didn’t accept myself.
He reflected my beliefs back to me and I blamed him for deepening a wound that was already open.

It’s true—he could have understood my wounds better and met me with more compassion and reassurance
But the truth?
I fed into the lie that if he understood me perfectly and reassured me completely, THEN I would feel safe, whole, and loved.

My belief in that lie had me feeling like a victim and over-explaining my feelings and perspectives in an effort to earn his understanding, compassion, and love.
Once again, I was practicing my survival art— bending myself into a beautiful crane.
Except… it wasn’t beautiful. It was cringy.

I suspect Dustin’s patterns and wounds were involved here too.
He’s acknowledged that when others are in emotional distress, he gets uncomfortable and jumps into solution mode.
He offers logic and advice as a way to manage and control vulnerability like vulnerability is a flaw to be corrected rather than a wound to heal.

That’s his survival strategy.
But it can feel incredibly invalidating to someone like me—someone who doesn’t need tidying.
I need tenderness.

So here we are
I unintentionally deflect my emotions.
He unintentionally corrects them and invalidates them.
We both have work to do.

But only my work is mine to do.

And that work looks like this:

• Choosing to share my full, messy self, even when it’s terrifying.
• Listening to my nervous system like my life depends on it.
• Noticing when my body says, “I’m not being received well.”
• Saying, “I need a moment,” and stepping away instead of pushing through.
• Offering reassurance to the parts of me that feel unloved.
• And hardest of all… not apologizing for having feelings in the first place.