The Internal Hostage: Paying the Ransom to Finally be Seen

Moving from the self-abandonment of a survival baseline to redefining the feeling of belonging.

The summer of 2024 was an act of rebellion. It was the moment I finally picked up the shovel to face exiles buried in the graveyard of my own Self-Abandonment.

I was standing in my kitchen negotiating an internal hostage situation, debating saying yes to a twelve-week business intensive program for self-employed therapists.

I wanted to jump out of my skin at the thought of not being smart enough. Failing. Wasting time, energy, money. Except a calm, discerning voice, beneath the chaos of my brain blasting my body with uncertainty, breathed: Just lean in. Just say yes.

I knew it would be life-changing; it was a forced end to my excellent footwork in the dance of avoidance. By saying yes, I was submitting the ransom money to free myself from a life of playing small and limiting my potential.

When I got still, read off the credit card, I felt an emerging sense of freedom within. A lightness in my chest offering hope and possibility. While a manic buzz faintly lingered in my body, whispering: What the hell did I just do?

In any specialized trauma therapy training, there is always a therapist crying in the corner. I am that therapist. We have to practice the techniques we plan to utilize in sessions. I never anticipated the excavation of the deep wounds I’d be facing down when joining a business intensive.

I thought I had done a lot of my work. HA!

The goal of the program was simple: help burnt-out therapists stuck in the sludge of overwhelm. I quickly learned I couldn’t manage a business I was still hiding from in the ways I needed to show up.

This program was manual labor. Every Thursday, the accountability email arrived like fresh orders to return to the trenches. I kept getting triggered cycling through rage, shame, and guilt causing big reactions in my body.

What the hell was happening to me?

I wasn’t expecting callouses from a business course, but unearthing years of self-abandonment is heavy lifting.

You get out what you put in. I was fully invested in discovering what I was capable of. I worked under intense pressure, by choice, re-engineering my business while holding a full caseload.

I dug with both hands, covered in filth, dirt encrusted under my nails. I couldn’t just stand back when the truths were still screaming six feet under. I had to claw my way into the darkness to give them light.

I wanted to understand how the person, the therapist, and the entrepreneur kept colliding, and feel my way through the wreckage. There was pain in the realization of how deeply the need to self-abandon and be invisible impacted all areas of my life.

Apparently, I don’t know how to half-ass anything, not even a business intensive. If there is dirt to be moved, I’m going to find the biggest shovel in the shed.

I had to face why invisibility felt like safety. I lived my life in a perpetual state of dread mixed with the exhaustion of doing it all.

This impacted how I ran my business. It was a tightness in the chest; a constant wait to be called out as an imposter.

I was repeating patterns: pushing beyond my limits, needing to prove my worth, and discovering just how intense my perfectionism was to perform at a level not sustainable. This was my survival baseline.

I was a baby giraffe trying to get her feet under her to walk, trembling under the weight of my own possibility.

This was the summer I learned how to be held up by others and learned it was safe to be vulnerable. It wasn’t weaponized. It was a different experience to relax into my body and not be bracing to be shamed. It’s something I still work through.

Help was there. All I had to do was take the leap in self-trust and ask. Let me tell you, it’s the hardest thing to do when hyper-independent is a qualifier to your existence. And. Still something I continue to maneuver through.

In a collective of women grappling with how their own wounds impacted their business sticking points, I found a safety net of warmth I’d never experienced. It was the most unexpected outcome: beginning to heal the mother wound while learning business strategies.

I had instinctively chosen to stay small to stay ‘good.’ Abuse of power rewired my brain to believe power meant dominance; it convinced me leaning into my potential was arrogance. Every time I tried to redefine it, my chest constricted and I felt myself freeze. It was a pattern of self-abandonment I needed to stay safe.

The Risk to be Seen was a muscle atrophied from years of surviving on breadcrumbs. I paid the ransom to learn a new art: the resonance of showing up for myself.

When the program ended, four of us said “yes” to staying together. It began as a wobbly accountability spin-off. Even then it was hard to be seen. It’s one thing to hold space for a client’s trauma; it’s another to let three other women see your own professional exhaustion and messiness.

We chose supportive collaboration over the isolated grit we were used to. Slowly, those Zoom squares morphed into meetings with roots, wings, and a safety deepened by beautiful friendships. I learned from these three friends how family is truly found.

I didn’t have to hide parts of myself anymore.

Recently, closing in on two years, we all finally met. In Texas. To celebrate a milestone for our friend. Embodying joy while witnessing theirs was a somatic screenshot. It’s a memory I recall the moment I feel myself start to shrink. I can feel my entire being light up with warmth and lightness.

We did a yoga class, the four of us lined up in a row. It was an absolute first — a hot yoga class I didn’t feel fueled by homicidal rage. I’d move to Texas just for this yoga class. Instead, I felt an all consuming love within and surrounded in the energy of the class. I sobbed afterwards because I just got to be me. “Maria, we love you.” I was hugged. “Sometimes, it’s still hard to believe,” I tearfully whispered.

Over a delicious brunch with a mimosa, the irony wasn’t lost on me. I was finally sitting down to a feast after a lifetime of surviving on breadcrumbs. I shared: ‘You all mean so much to me… I’ve never had this…this belonging.”

They accept me for where I am and where I continue to grow. They are there when I stumble. They cheer me on. They also give me honesty when I need to hear it, which is often and usually consists of me needing to slow my rollsince my ideas are bursting at the seams twenty-four seven.

We recently shared our get together with the architect of the intensive, Allison. I had a random “Maria moment,” emailing her about my own benchmarks and then half- jokingly suggested she put us on her podcast, to share life after Limitless, because the ripple effects were reaching farther than the eye could see.

You could have knocked me over with a paperclip when the email came back asking us to join her to talk about our journeys since the intensive.

My initial gut reaction to the podcast invite was a jolt of fear: I did something bad. Hello, old narratives. I was waiting for the fallout of not asking my friends’ permission, still reacting to a mother who isn’t in the room.

Narratives don’t have to make sense to be felt. The body holds the story until we’re ready to unpack it.

These trust-myself muscles are growing. It’s in the self-acknowledgment I’m human. I was never meant to be a machine designed to meet someone else’s expectations.

I’m putting in the reps to build the strength to know I have myself.

I will not abandon myself and instead embrace the versions I continue to become.

Real power is in the deep knowing of my own inherent value.

My power isn’t a utility just to survive anymore. It’s a way of taking up space for myself and showing others how it can be done.

I have moments when old beliefs flare up, but I don’t get sucked into the void anymore. I have more compassion in those moments when I notice them; it’s a daily practice of integration. It helps when you have friends who can lovingly remind you it’s okay.

All of this because I took a wild chance saying YES to a business intensive, on a random sunny weekday afternoon, standing in my kitchen.

Best ransom I ever paid to free my internal hostage stuck in self-abandonment to belonging.