Brunner got into this work from her own personal experiences, which she shares with the group as we start day two. “Trauma work taught me that the patterns running our lives are intentional. They made sense once, usually at a point where a younger version of us needed to survive an environment that felt unsafe or unpredictable.” Those patterns? Perfectionism, people-pleasing, the relentless drive, Brunner explains how they’re all adaptations, and when you know this – and work out your own – something shifts. “The breakthroughs we see come not from confronting these patterns, but from finally meeting them with compassion, often for the very first time,” she says.
But opening up truly is still a struggle for me. Brunner notices when I try to disappear into the background and gently pushes me to contribute during group discussions. When I finally do speak honestly, I become emotional almost immediately, but also try to correct it, and talk myself out of feeling emotional. “We live in a culture where people get locked into a ‘performance trap’ and slowing down feels dangerous and stillness starts to feel like failure. So, we keep scrolling, keep optimising, keep performing, and the distance between who we are and who we’re presenting grows wider and wider, often without us even noticing,” Brunner tells me.
The final day brings one of the retreat’s most unexpectedly emotional moments for me. During a meditation session, Emmy presses down gently on my shoulders as we lie on the floor. I feel hot, wet tears slip down my cheeks onto my yoga mat. They’re from the sudden recognition that I’ve become profoundly touch-starved. I live alone and sometimes entire weeks can pass without meaningful physical affection. A friend recently pointed out that I seem uncomfortable with hugs now, which shocked me because I used to be incredibly tactile. Somewhere along the way, I’d quietly shut that part of myself down, too.
