From Adapting to Living from the Heart
I can get along with someone living on the streets just as easily as with a bank director. Put me in another country, among different people with different customs, and I’ll usually find my way.
I speak a few languages, look around and soon get a feel for how things work.
I’m proud of that. I love having come to know so many different worlds. When someone says, “But surely that’s just how things are done?”, my first thought is: well, that depends on where you are.
It took me much longer to ask myself another question.
What do I actually think about this? And how does it feel to me?
Getting good at adapting
As a child, I moved a lot. Different homes, different schools, different countries. Each time, I arrived somewhere people already knew one another, while I still had to work out how things worked.
Who are these people? What matters to them? How do I find my place here?
I had already learned to adapt at home. My childhood felt unsafe. A lot happened, and there was little room to notice what I needed. Being easy-going, asking for little attention and getting on with things was appreciated.
Until I couldn’t do that anymore.
As I grew older, the things I had experienced affected me more deeply. I needed more attention, became more defiant and was no longer the easy-going girl I had been. I found myself having to manage on my own from an early age.
What I enjoyed or felt comfortable with had never been an obvious starting point. My attention went towards whatever was needed around me.
I recognise this in some of my clients who grew up between countries and cultures, particularly when home offered little stability. Being able to understand different perspectives. Finding your way in all sorts of company.
And still feeling that you don’t quite belong anywhere.
Belonging can bring something very practical: friendship, help, support, protection. When you haven’t had much of that, being welcomed and having your company appreciated can mean a great deal.
So when the connection isn’t quite there, you take another look.
Should I be more relaxed? A little quieter? Have I misunderstood what matters to these people?
That doesn’t necessarily feel like insecurity. You’re good at adapting, and you trust yourself to work it out. You’ve started again so many times before.
Those experiences helped me develop a sensitivity to different people and ways of living. That is something I also draw on in my work.
But whether I felt comfortable myself could take much longer to register. Sometimes I only noticed once I was exhausted.
Underneath that was another question, one I found rather frightening.
If I stopped doing so much of the adapting, would the other person see me too? Would there be room for what I needed?
What does “normal” even mean?
When I moved to Amsterdam at around twenty-four, the city felt like a breath of fresh air.
Surinamese neighbours on one side, Moroccan neighbours on the other. A neighbour from Iran, others from Nigeria and Ghana. Dutch people too, of course. And within every background, another whole world of differences.
Everyone was different.
Wonderful.
I had already travelled a lot and was working as a flight attendant for KLM. Being surrounded by different backgrounds felt familiar. There seemed to be less pressure to fit one particular idea of how a person should be.
“Just be normal.”
Well, what was normal supposed to mean here?
I enjoyed that same freedom abroad. I liked being a stranger. Nobody immediately expected me to know every custom or understand every unwritten rule. People were curious about who I was and what I brought with me.
I had known for a long time that I felt safe in that role.
What I understood later was how much effort social contact could sometimes take as people got to know me and expectations grew. I would start trying harder to get things right.
More watching. More picking up on things. More taking other people into account.
I could get along with all sorts of people. But who could I relax with, without constantly thinking about what they needed?
I had been so used to doing this that it barely occurred to me there might be another way.
When willpower does most of the work
Meanwhile, a great deal was happening in my life.
My marriage ended after seventeen years. I had fought hard to make it work. When your own childhood has been unsafe, you can be fiercely determined to do things differently. I was focused on doing the right thing, often without asking what I needed to feel happy or well.
During my marriage and separation, my wellbeing was not given the consideration it needed. I kept looking for what I could do to improve things. Looking back, I understand how automatic it was for me to adapt, and how difficult I found it to take my own needs seriously when there was little room for them.
Eventually, leaving became necessary to protect myself.
Because of the housing shortage and practical circumstances, my children couldn’t move with me. I couldn’t continue sharing everyday life with them in the way I had wanted.
They were such a natural part of my life, part of the few roots I felt I had. I experienced that period as traumatic and profoundly lonely.
During those years, I also completed my training and expanded my private practice. Alongside that, I worked in crisis care and with families affected by domestic violence.
My professional life was developing. I did meaningful work, used my knowledge and experience, and continued learning. Yet alongside all those responsibilities, there was little room to rebuild the foundations of my own private life.
I worked, studied, cared for people and organised whatever needed organising.
During the pandemic, I lived alone in my new home. Strangely, knowing that so many other people were also experiencing isolation made it feel a little less lonely. My close friends were spread across Europe. Strong, loyal friendships, but nobody who could simply pop round.
Then my father became ill.
He was a man of habits who had stayed in the same place. That could irritate me at times, but after so much change in my own life, his familiarity was also my anchor.
He died after a short, intense illness. I had cared for him alongside my work. Despite the sadness, I cherish those months when we saw each other every day. There was closeness and love, and I’m grateful we had that time together. Losing him hurt deeply.
A little over a year later, I had an accident, falling hard onto my head and face. For months, I struggled to function and spent much of my time alone at home.
That enforced stillness eventually brought insights I still value. At the time, though, it was difficult.
I had been trying to feel better for so long. Yet one thing kept following another, and almost everything seemed to require willpower.
What if I could change the way I was living?
My knowledge helped me understand a great deal. Still, I kept trying to function better within the circumstances I was in.
Adapting to what was there. Again.
Until I began to look at the circumstances themselves.
I had always seen adaptability as a strength. Now I noticed a blind spot: I was so focused on adjusting that I sometimes overlooked the possibility of changing something.
What had helped me through so much was also keeping me in situations that wore me out.
How much of my day was taken up by things I had to do? What still gave me pleasure? What did I look forward to? And what could I change, with the choices available to me?
I asked myself:
What if more is possible than I think? What would make me happy?
I thought about the things I had loved as a child. The woods where I grew up, my imagination, the fairy tales I adored. How much a beautiful place can stir something in me.
Nature, the sea, animals, plants, flowers. A slower pace. Time to stop and chat with the neighbours.
I thought about southern Italy and Greece, where I had lived and worked. I had still been a foreigner there, but in many ways life had felt easier.
And I thought about travelling.
I had always loved that.
By then, I could do much of my work online. My practice could continue to develop while I lived elsewhere for part of the year. There was a practical way to organise my work differently and make more room for myself.
So I decided to go.
More room to live, more strength to cope
Of course, I couldn’t create everything I longed for. A loving partner, my children nearby, a close family around me: I couldn’t simply arrange those things.
I couldn’t bring my father back. My history came with me.
But I could pay more attention to my own preferences. Where I stayed, how I spent my days, what I did in my free time.
There was room for curiosity, beauty, adventure and enjoyment.
And I noticed that working through earlier grief became easier.
Memories, longing and pain came to the surface, sometimes in the most beautiful places. There were also experiences that gave me energy. I recognised my enthusiasm again, my curiosity, my old pleasure in discovering things.
I felt proud of myself for taking my needs seriously. For trying things. For getting to know and appreciate the person I was now.
The unknown began to feel exciting again. I recognised something of the girl I had once been, absorbed in whatever caught her imagination.
That gave me more strength to face the difficult things that remained.
My training and experience as a therapist helped me understand what was happening. Living through it deepened that understanding. I could see more clearly which circumstances drained me and which choices supported my recovery.
For a long time, I had thought I needed to feel better before I could fully live again.
Gradually, I discovered how much it helped to start making room for a life that suited me.
What would help you recover?
This understanding is part of what I bring to my work with people who have carried a great deal, become used to putting others first, or found themselves caught in painful relationships and family patterns.
Together, we look at what you have experienced and at the everyday life in which healing needs to happen.
Who are you now? What matters to you? Is there room to catch your breath? Which relationships require constant effort? Where do you find enjoyment, connection or peace?
And what could change, even if some things are outside your control?
For me, it meant finding a different way to live. For someone else, it might begin with a different weekly routine, making time for an interest, taking discomfort in a relationship seriously, or considering a change of career.
There is no single path that works for everyone.
In my practice, we explore what helps you feel more supported and better able to cope. That includes finding ways to live with what you cannot change, while recognising where you do have a choice.
Perhaps you know exactly what other people need, but find yourself searching when it comes to your own needs.
Then this might be a question worth sitting with:
What would feel good for me right now—and how much room is there for it in my life?
That was where something began to change for me.
I’ll share more about what I encountered along the way in my next blog.
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