Tree

StockCake

Yes, often an olive wants to be a fish,

An almond often wishes to be a bird

I am pretty well accustomed to being like this now

Just a while ago I changed into human form

For a few minutes

My supple soft skin, my bones and the flesh wrapping around them

They all felt eerie to me

But in a while when I revert to being a tree

How fondly I will reminisce

About the human body I have now

My fingers, nails, and joints

How marvelous!

I have bones; I have muscles to pull my bones,

And skin covers all

My blood is coursing on and on

I can move myself, like this, any way I want to

I can point at the sky

I can stroke my hair!

Grasses, leaves, fruit or branches cannot do what I can –

They stretch their branches, turn their leaves

Lazily toward the light,

Yes, really, “lazily” as you’d say in human tongue

But when I was a tree, it did not feel so lazy

Rather, it was more like securely

Rather, it was more like steadily

What is this fury inside the human body?

It makes me dizzy

Look

Bones and muscles shed their old selves

To make new bones and muscles

Much has changed between now and just a while ago

When I first met you

So this is what aging means, isn’t it?

Uh,

Your two manly hands

Like rough palm leaves

Rest on my two shoulders

What is this numbing warmth your hands convey

To my muscles and bones?

To speak

We trees don’t have words

Time is running out

Once the time comes, I won’t ever be

A human like this, forever

Tell me

How else are humans different from trees?

What is this?

What is this mysterious warmth

That comes to me through your fingers?

Tell me,

Something I missed doing

Not much time left

Yes –

What a pleasant thing to do, to respond.

Please, tell me.

As I place my hand here like so

The sound of your blood rushing in your chest

Grows so fast

Time is running out. Please, please tell me

What is the biggest thing I missed doing.

I feel as if there is something I should do, something fervent

Something I’d move my muscles for

Something I’d violently rub my joints for

To chat

Isn’t there something else that is more important?

What is it?

What is this something humans do to be wholly human?

Just a while back

When you placed your manly hands on my womanly shoulders

My female muscles and bones felt a certain

Fulfillment and warmth

Doesn’t that have much to do with

What I have yet to do?

Am I not missing something

Something violent

That goes well with the fury of metabolism

In this human body that holds bones and muscles?

But maybe I am wrong

Am I just babbling human words

While thinking like a tree?

What?

Are you saying I’ve missed doing something?

Tell me

Please

Why do you hesitate?

So you are saying, aren’t you, it is different from

Talking,

Pointing,

Jumping,

Counting numbers and the like?

Goodness, how pained you look!

I thought humans had a wonderful thing called words

Which allow you

To convey, to inform or to express anything you want to,

But there are things that words can’t help –

Ah, there’s no time left

I want to know

What it is that I missed doing

With no words,

This

Is what you can tell me, isn’t it?

As you clasp my shoulder as you are doing now

With your five fingers wrapped around my shoulder

Your thumb

Your forefinger

Your middle finger

Your ring finger

And your little finger

Five shocks run through me

Hurry! Time is running out!

Hiroshi Kawasaki

Why Japan Listens to Rain

 

Japan Does Not See Nature the Way the West Does

In many parts of the world, nature is something to overcome.

You build walls against it.

Control it.

Conquer it.

But Japan developed differently.

Because Japan lost that battle long ago.

This is a country where the ground itself moves without warning.

Earthquakes

Typhoons

Tsunamis

Volcanoes

For most of Japanese history, humans were never fully in control here. And when a civilization spends thousands of years living beside overwhelming natural forces, its psychology changes.

Instead of domination, Japan developed coexistence.

That difference still shapes everyday life in ways foreigners immediately feel — even if they cannot explain it.

Take rain, for example.

In many countries, rain is treated as an inconvenience. Something that ruins plans.

In Japan, rain has moods.

There are dozens of words for different kinds of rain. 

Spring rain. 

Sudden evening rain. 

Cold winter rain. 

Quiet rain that falls softly enough to almost disappear into the air.

And Japanese people notice these differences emotionally.

Not intellectually. Emotionally.

You can feel it in anime scenes where nothing “happens,” yet rain transforms the atmosphere completely.

You can hear it in the silence of a Kyoto alley during drizzle.

You can even see it in convenience stores, where seasonal umbrellas appear almost before the clouds arrive.

To many foreigners, this sensitivity feels poetic.

But it is not simply poetry.

It is survival memory.

The Jomon World Never Fully Disappeared

Long before samurai existed, Japan was shaped by people now called the Jomon.（縄文）

The Jomon period lasted for thousands of years — unusually long for an ancient culture — and much of life remained deeply tied to forests, rivers, mountains, and seasonal cycles.

Unlike civilizations built around massive conquest empires, Jomon society developed inside dense nature.

And when people live closely with nature for generations, they begin to feel something unusual:

Nature is not “separate.”

It becomes alive.

This feeling later evolved into what became Shinto — not a religion centered around a single god, but a worldview where spirits can exist anywhere.

In rocks.

Trees.

Waterfalls.

Wind.

Even today, many Japanese people who are not religious in a Western sense still instinctively respond to places spiritually.

A giant old tree wrapped with sacred rope.

A quiet shrine hidden inside the city.

A mountain path covered in mist.

There is often an unspoken feeling that certain spaces contain presence.

Not metaphorically.

Emotionally.

This is one reason Japan often feels spiritually “quiet” rather than aggressively religious.

The sacred is not separated from ordinary life.

It is woven into it.

“In Japan, nature is rarely just scenery. It is atmosphere.”

That emotional relationship changes how people see themselves too.

Humans are not standing above nature.

They are inside it.

And that creates a very different personality from societies built around controlling environments.

Why Japanese People Notice Tiny Seasonal Changes

One of the most fascinating things in Japan is how obsessed people are with tiny shifts in season.

Not just weather.

Tiny emotional transitions.

Cherry blossom forecasts appear on national television.

People discuss the exact moment leaves begin changing color.

Convenience stores redesign products constantly around seasonal moods.

Even food changes subtly every few weeks.

Foreigners often joke that Japan has “limited edition culture.”

But underneath that is something deeper:

An emotional attachment to impermanence.

Japanese culture trains people to notice fleeting moments before they disappear.

The first cicada sound of summer.

The smell of rain on hot pavement.

The first cold wind in autumn.

These moments matter because they are temporary.

This sensitivity is difficult to fully translate into English because many Western societies prioritize permanence, achievement, and stability.

Japan became emotionally attached to transition itself.

That is why so many Japanese aesthetics revolve around things that do not last:

Cherry blossoms.

Snow.

Mist.

Fading light.

Old wood.

Beauty becomes more powerful precisely because it disappears.

And this mindset affects communication too.

Japanese conversations often avoid rigid certainty.

Emotions are implied rather than declared.

Meaning drifts gently instead of arriving sharply.

To outsiders, this can feel frustratingly vague.

But culturally, ambiguity sometimes feels more natural than absolute clarity.

Because nature itself is ambiguous.

Rain changes.

Seasons shift.

Nothing stays fixed.

So why should emotions?

The Emotional Climate of Japan

Climate shapes culture more than many people realize.

Japan is humid.

Very humid.

And strangely enough, humidity changes emotional behavior.

In dry climates, boundaries feel sharper.

Buildings separate inside from outside more aggressively.

But Japanese summers blur everything.

Air feels heavy.

Sound carries differently.

Clothes cling to skin.

Cicadas scream endlessly from trees.

The environment constantly presses itself onto human awareness.

You are never fully separated from the atmosphere around you.

Some scholars believe this environmental closeness influenced Japan’s highly contextual communication style.

People learn to “sense” situations rather than define them directly.

This is part of why silence functions differently in Japan.

In many Western cultures, silence can feel awkward.

In Japan, silence often carries information.

It allows emotional space.

Room for intuition.

Room for reading the atmosphere.

This can create extraordinary subtlety.

But it can also create emotional exhaustion.

Because when communication depends heavily on sensing unstated feelings, people can become deeply anxious about disrupting harmony.

Japan’s beauty and pressure often come from the same source.

Japan’s Real Secret May Not Be Technology

Foreigners often arrive in Japan expecting the future.

And yes — they find neon cities, bullet trains, and vending machines selling hot coffee.

But eventually, many visitors notice something stranger beneath the modern surface.

Japan does not emotionally behave like a futuristic civilization.

In many ways, it behaves like an ancient nature culture wearing modern clothes.

A society still listening carefully to rain.

Still organizing life around seasons.

Still emotionally responding to silence, mist, shadows, and passing beauty.

And perhaps this is why Japan feels strangely calming to so many foreigners.

Not because life here is easy.

But because Japan still allows people to feel connected to impermanence.

To smallness.

To atmosphere.

But the deepest layer of Japanese culture goes even further than nature.

Because eventually, Japan transformed emotion itself into an art form.

A civilization where beauty was found not in saying everything —

but in leaving something unsaid.

And that story begins in the Heian period.

Question for Readers

What is the smallest moment you remember from Japan?

Not the biggest tourist attraction — but the tiny detail that somehow stayed in your memory.

KOTONOHA JAPAN

Phase One

Alexander Krivitskiy

For leaving the fridge open

last night, I forgive you.

For conjuring white curtains

instead of living your life.

For the seedlings that wilt, now,

in tiny pots, I forgive you.

For saying no first

but yes as an afterthought.

I forgive you for hideous visions

after childbirth, brought on by loss

of sleep. And when the baby woke

repeatedly, for your silent rebuke

in the dark, “What’s your beef?”

I forgive your letting vines

overtake the garden. For fearing

your own propensity to love.

For losing, again, your bag

en route from San Francisco;

for the equally heedless drive back

on the caffeine-fueled return.

I forgive you for leaving

windows open in rain

and soaking library books

again. For putting forth

only revisions of yourself,

with punctuation worked over,

instead of the disordered truth,

I forgive you. For singing mostly

when the shower drowns

your voice. For so admiring

the drummer you failed to hear

the drum. In forgotten tin cans,

may forgiveness gather. Pooling

in gutters. Gushing from pipes.

A great steady rain of olives

from branches, relieved

of cruelty and petty meanness.

With it, a flurry of wings, thirteen

gray pigeons. Ointment reserved

for healers and prophets. I forgive you.

I forgive you. For feeling awkward

and nervous without reason.

For bearing Keats’s empty vessel

with such calm you worried

you had, perhaps, no moral

center at all. For treating your mother

with contempt when she deserved

compassion. I forgive you. I forgive

you. I forgive you. For growing

a capacity for love that is great

but matched only, perhaps,

by your loneliness. For being unable

to forgive yourself first so you

could then forgive others and

at last find a way to become

the love that you want in this world.

 Dilruba Ahmed

 

The Body Remembers. Can It Forgive?

Krm Carmen

The body remembers 

what the mind cannot. 

On forgiving our own parts, 

forgiveness before justice, and 

what hoʻoponopono and lōkahi teach 

about restoring balance.

Remembering is the healing

We have been handed a mechanic’s idea of healing. 

Something broke. Find the part. Fix it. 

Return to how you were before.

Twenty-five years of sitting with people at the edge of what they could bear has taught me a different story. 

Healing begins with remembering — with the mind when it can, and with the body, which kept the record when the mind could not.

Then comes troost — that beautiful Dutch word for ‘comfort’ that English never quite holds. 

A troost-ing hug. 

A troost-ing warm room, blanked or cuppa tea. 

Someone who stays.

Then grief — for what happened, and for everything that never got to happen.

Then forgiveness.

And then the quiet, unglamorous courage of standing exactly where you are — scarred, softened, a little wiser — and taking the next step from here. You walk on as the one you have become.

The body remembers

Some memories arrive as stories. Others arrive as a tightening throat, a sudden chill, a heart that races when someone raises their voice in the next room. 

No words. Just the body, saying this again.

Psychology calls this implicit memory.

The amygdala — the brain’s early-warning centre — matures long before the hippocampus, which files our experiences into time and narrative. So what happened to us before we had language, or in moments too overwhelming to process, is often stored as sensation and reflex.

Stress hormones press those imprints in deeper. 

Years later, a smell or a tone of voice opens the file, and the thinking brain quietly goes offline while the body prepares to fight, flee or freeze.

This is what Bessel van der Kolk meant when he wrote that the body keeps the score. 

It is why Peter Levine, Pat Ogden and so many somatic clinicians ad workers, including myself — work with sensation and movement too, rather than words alone. 

Talking about the wound matters. The body also needs to finish the gesture it was never allowed to complete — and to learn, slowly, that the danger has passed.

The Hawaiian teachers and elders I am learning from would not find any of this surprising. In their tradition, thought and feeling both rise from the naʻau — the gut, the viscera. Truth is something you feel right there. 

And when a body falls ill while a family carries unspoken conflict, the illness is read as a message that something between people, ancestors and land has fallen out of balance.

Forgiving the body

Here is something I hear in my practice frequently: 

‘How do I connect to my body, and — trust my body again?’ 

or something like: 

‘My body betrayed me…’

It froze when it should have run. 

It went numb. 

It left myself. 

It said YES when everything in you meant NO. 

It got sick, gained weight, stopped bleeding, stopped sleeping, kept shaking long after the danger was gone.

And so we turn away from the very home we live in — unconsiously, for years. 

We punish it, override it, ignore its signals, treat it as the accomplice to what was done to us, oftentimes without consciously realizing or choosing to do this.

Polyvagal theory gives us a gentle explaination. 

Freeze and collapse are ancient survival intelligence — the nervous system choosing the response most likely to keep you alive when fighting or fleeing was impossible.

Your body did what it could.

It got you here.

Forgiving the body is an embodied act.

It happens below thought for example:

• Place your hand where the old story still lives — throat, belly, chest, jaw…

• Invite the breath to that place without needing it to change.

• Say to yourself, softly: ‘You did what you could. You kept me alive’.

• Allow whatever wants to move — trembling, warmth, tears, a long exhale. This is grief finding its way out through the tissues.

• Stay until something softens, even slightly. Then stop.

In IFS language, we are thanking the protectors — the parts that braced, numbed and froze — and releasing them from a job they took on far too young. Something unwinds when the body is no longer held as the culprit. Often, that is when the deeper forgiveness becomes possible at all.

An unpopular opinion: forgiveness before justice

I will say it plainly, knowing it may sting. For healing, justice matters less than we think.

Boundaries — yes. Absolutely, fiercely, yes. Protection from people who harm you, and from those who would harm others — yes. 

Courts, accountability, consequences — these belong in a just society, and some of us will rightly spend years fighting for them.

And still. When our healing waits for the other person to admit, apologise, pay, or finally be seen for what they did, we hand them the key to our own recovery. The hunger to be proven right — the Dutch have a good word for wanting to get even, terugpakken — keeps the nervous system in fight mode. It keeps the story alive and the body braced. We stay tied to the one who hurt us, often for decades, or even generations.

Forgiveness asks nothing of them. 

They never have to know, and you never have to let them back in.

A caution, because I have seen forgiveness used as a weapon: it cannot be forced, and it cannot be rushed. Forgiveness that are only words, that skips remembering, feelings and grief is a bypass — and the body will know. In the tradition I turn to next, 

forgiveness only counts when it comes from the heart. 

The order matters. 

1. Remember. 
2. Comfort. 
3. Grieve. 
4. Then forgive.

Hoʻoponopono — making things right

I want to be careful here, because this is not my tradition. 

What follows is what I am learning from Native Hawaiian elders and authors — above all from my teacher, Kumu Kawika Forster, a 51st-generation teacher from Molokaʻi, and from the teachings of Mary Kawena Pukui, known with love as Tūtū Pukui, recorded in Nānā i ke Kumu (”Look to the Source”) with Dr. E.W. Haertig and Catherine Lee in 1972, and carried forward by the Liliʻuokalani Trust, Aunty Malia Craver, and Aunty Lynette and Uncle Likeke Paglinawan. 

The authors of the third volume are clear: any teaching of hoʻoponopono that is not grounded first in Hawaiian culture, through a Hawaiian practitioner, is misappropriation. 

I honour that. I share this as a student, to point you toward the source.

Hoʻoponopono means, roughly, to set right. 

Traditionally it is a family conference, guided by a respected elder or practitioner — the haku — and held when conflict, illness or unspoken hurt has disturbed the household. 

It came close to disappearing after missionaries branded it heathen; 

Tūtū Pukui spent decades bringing it back.

The stages she described unfold roughly like this:

1. Pule — an opening prayer, asking God and the ancestors to guide everyone present. 

 

2. Kūkulu kumuhana — pooling the family’s strength toward a shared purpose, and naming the problem. Everyone must truly agree to take part. 

 

3. Mahiki — peeling back the layers, like bark from a tree or the skins of an onion, until the real hurt is reached. 

 

4. Hoʻomalu — silence, called by the haku whenever tempers flare or people need to turn inward. 

 

5. Self-scrutiny and discussion — each person looking honestly at their own part, guided by the haku’s questions. 

 

6. Mihi, kala and ʻoki — repenting, forgiving and releasing, and cutting the entanglement loose. 

 

7. Pule hoʻopau — a closing prayer. 

 

8. Pani — sharing food together, in a spirit cleared of grudges.

What strikes me most is how mutual it is. 

In the case story the Paglinawans tell, a young woman’s swollen eye leads her family into hoʻoponopono. The relatives who had been dodging their share of the household work apologise. So do her parents, for not speaking up. And so does she — for letting resentment harden into a grudge. Everyone owns their thread of the knot. Then everyone releases everyone, and the hurt is sent, in Aunty Lynette’s image, into the deep blue ocean, never to rise again.

Truth sits at the centre. The Hawaiian word ʻoiaʻiʻo means the flesh of truth — truth you feel in the naʻau. It must be told fully, and without any wish to wound.

And notice ʻoki. Tūtū Pukui describes how, when a relationship truly could not be restored, a formal and clean break was made. 

Boundaries were never foreign to this tradition. Release can mean reconciliation. It can also mean a clear, held, respectful ending.

The lōkahi triangle, adapted from Kaʻiulani Duponte (2010), 

as presented in Nānā i ke Kumu, Volume III (Liliʻuokalani Trust).

Lōkahi — the triangle of balance

At the heart of the Hawaiian worldview sits lōkahi — unity, harmony, balance. 

It is drawn as a triangle. 

At its peak, Akua and nā ʻaumākua: God, the gods, the ancestral guardians. 

At one corner of its base, kānaka — humankind. 

At the other, ʻāina, moana and lani — land, sea and sky. 

Lōkahi lives in the centre, holding all three in relationship.

On the most isolated inhabited islands on earth, there was nowhere to run from a conflict and no margin for waste. The ancestors replanted what they harvested. They netted only the fish the family needed and shared the catch. When gathering feathers for a coat, they plucked only what was needed and let the bird fly free. Harmony with people, ancestors and land was survival/ living itself.

A person whose naʻau, mind and body are aligned is pono — in right relationship. 

Hurt, grief, stress, or failing to carry one’s part leaves a person out of balance, and that imbalance ripples outward — into the family, toward the ancestors, into the community and the land.

This is why I keep lōkahi. (Fun fact: this is a word I tattood on my arm).

Most Western trauma work tends one corner of the triangle — the individual, sometimes the family. 

Lōkahi reminds us that a wound is also a rupture with the sacred and with the earth, and the mending has to reach there too. A hand in the soil. Salt water. A prayer to those who came before. These are medicine for the other two corners. This is at the heart of Terrapy, the name I gave my ways of working, now you may start to understand more and more why.

Why you won’t find the four phrases here

I am sorry

Please forgive me

Thank you

I love you

If you have searched ‘hoʻoponopono’ online, you have met the four-line mantra — four short phrases of apology, forgiveness, gratitude and love, repeated silently to clean the subconscious. It is everywhere: on YouTube, on Instagram, in self-help courses that promise a ‘frequency reset.’ 

I have chosen to leave it out of this article, and I want to tell you why.

Here is why:

• It comes from a different lineage. The mantra grew out of a modern, individualised adaptation of hoʻoponopono, developed in the late twentieth century and spread worldwide through Ihaleakala Hew Len and Joe Vitale’s 2007 book Zero Limits. It has its own history. It is a long way from the family practice Tūtū Pukui documented, with its haku, its circle, its prayers and its shared meal.

• The keepers of the tradition have asked us to stop. The elders writing in Nānā i ke Kumu name teaching of hoʻoponopono cut loose from Hawaiian culture as misappropriation and exploitation. My own kumu, Kawika Forster, is just as clear about this. Tūtū Pukui herself grieved how the practice had come back in fragments and grafted-on inventions. When a people tell us how they want their sacred practice handled, listening is the least we can do.

• It skips the hard middle. The traditional process asks for truth told in full, layers peeled back, each person owning their part, silence when needed — and only then, release. A mantra repeated alone in your room can leap straight to love and gratitude while the anger and grief are still waiting at the door. Tūtū Pukui warned that without sincerity from the heart, the ritual becomes form without substance.

• For trauma survivors, it can wound. Asking someone who was harmed to apologise, again and again, for the pain they carry risks folding self-blame back into the very place we are trying to heal. And there is something my kumu taught me that I keep returning to. Once the pōhaku — the stone — has been released, we stop speaking of it. That need not mean it can never be mentioned again. It does warn against reciting the same words over the same wound, day after day — a habit that keeps hauling the stone back up from the deep blue ocean. Mantra japa, the devotional repetition of sacred sound, has its own place and purpose, and I will write about it separately. It is a very different practice, held for a very different reason.

So I offer you the tradition’s essence — truth, mutual accountability, release, restored relationship — and an invitation to learn it from the people who carry it, like kumu Kawika Forster 

Standing where you are

I am not Hawaiian, and I will not teach you hoʻoponopono, my teacher will. 

What it has taught me is that, 

we heal in relationship — with each other, with those who came before us (the ancestors), and with the land that holds us. 

We heal by telling the truth, owning our part, and letting go of what we were never meant to carry forever.

 

Some questions to sit with, slowly, perhaps with a hand on your belly:

Where in my body do I still hold the case against myself?

Whose apology am I still waiting for — and what does the waiting cost me? (Such a common topic in therapy!)

What part of this knot is mine to own?

Which grief have I not yet allowed?

Who, in my life, could hold a circle of truth with me?

What would one small step look like, from exactly here?

And some for the harder middle — truth and kuleana. 

A gentle word first: 

owning your part never means carrying what was done to you. That weight was never yours.

What is the truth I have not yet said out loud — even to myself?

Where have I told the story in a way that keeps me safe from my own part in it?

If my naʻau (gut) could speak, what would it say about this?

What did I do, or leave undone, that added to the hurt?

What would it ask of me to say I’m sorry — and mean it all the way down?

What promise have I broken, to someone else or to myself?

What am I still holding onto because letting go would mean admitting I was part of it?

Go gently. If the old story is heavy, do this work with someone beside you — a therapist, a trusted elder, a circle. Healing was never meant to happen alone.

1. Remember. 
2. Find comfort. 
3. Grieve. 
4. Forgive — the body first. 

Accept where you stand. 

And then, with whatever courage you have today, move.

Anneke Sips

in, Wisdom of Psychosis

The Shape of Silence

R.R. Leone

It never begins loudly.

No slammed doors.

No thunder of words.

Just a pause

that lasts

longer than it should.

At first you tell yourself

they just need space.

Everyone needs space.

So you wait.

But the quiet stretches.

Minutes become hours.

Hours become something heavier.

You replay the last conversation

like a physician studying scans,

searching for the fracture

you might have missed.

Was it that sentence?

That question?

The look on your face when you spoke?

The mind becomes a detective

in a crime scene of memory.

Meanwhile the room fills

with a silence that has weight.

The phone stays dark.

No message. No explanation.

Just absence.

And the strange part is

how silence changes the body.

Your breath grows shallow.

Thoughts circle faster.

The nervous system begins to signal

something it cannot name.

Not anger. Not grief.

Something closer to panic.

Like slipping beneath water

and realizing

no one else noticed.

At first you tread carefully.

You assume air will come back.

A word. A message. A sign of life.

But the surface keeps moving farther away.

And the quiet grows deeper.

You begin to understand something

no one ever teaches you about love.

Connection is oxygen.

And when it disappears suddenly,

the mind does what bodies do underwater:

it fights.

It searches.

It reaches upward for something

that isn't there.

Eventually the conversation returns.

Or it doesn't.

But by then something has changed.

Because silence, once introduced,

leaves a mark.

Not a wound you can see.

Just the memory

of how long you held your breath

before realizing

you were swimming alone.

R.R. Leone

 

Self-Accountability in Relationships. Own your part in the story. Honor your reality

kieferpix/iStock

How do you own your part without letting go of what you know to be true?

Owning your part is an act of humility, and that gesture opens the door for your partner to reciprocate, to meet you in an honest place.

Every story comes with multiple storytellers. 

And yet, not every narrator has an equally large share of the story to tell. 

Couples claim one of two roles—the sinner or the saint. 

One arrives with a long list of transgressions to share, the other absorbs the blame.

One partner becomes the storyteller, the one who gives the history: how they met, how it used to be, and how they ended up in this office. 

The other will sit, reluctantly listening to the balance sheet of their mistakes and shortcomings.

‍For this person, therapy can feel like a punishment for their actions and their last shot to fix things. They’ll sit there and take it or occasionally interject to correct the record. But mostly, the therapist will witness the dynamic they’ve seen hundreds of times before. 

In couples, it’s the sinner and the saint. 

In polycules, it’s the weak link in the chain and everyone else pulling weight. 

The deep issues that bring clients into therapy, however, rarely lie at the feet of one person alone.

‍Relationship dynamics go beyond the binary of perpetrator and victim, powerful and powerless, betrayed and betrayer—the accountant and the accountable. 

Recognizing that all parties are a piece of the pie does not mean that everyone’s slice is the same size and made up of the same ingredients. But owning your part is essential to breaking through impasses.

The other side of that breakthrough begins when each person freely shares what they are doing differently with the intention to improve things, rather than doggedly focusing on the change they need from their partner. 

This is how therapists know they’re getting somewhere. 

Their job is not to act as judge, jury, and executioner. 

It’s to help the clients navigate how people in love can behave in unloving ways—and how they can carve a new path.

But the issues that bring people into the room rarely sit at one person’s feet. 

And in recognizing what your own part consists of, big or small, you also open the door for conversation and connection. It’s often hard to do, it requires humility. But when you show up in this way, you invite the other person to meet you with similar honesty and reflection.

This does not mean that you have to refute your version of what you know to be true. 

Owning your part does not require rejecting your experience of events. Rather the two can be held together: 

I take ownership of this element of the dynamic. And what happened to me, what I felt was real.

You can be honest about your share in a story without handing over the pen. 

This goes for romantic relationships, as well as ones with friends, family members, and colleagues. Listen to what you know to be true and practice grace—for yourself, maybe for another. 

In that can be the foundation for healing.

Own your part in the story. Honor your reality

You do everything you can think of to make it work: 

You craft every text perfectly. 

You aren’t too eager or too distant. 

You read the self-help books. 

You work on yourself. 

Still, here you are thinking, 

“Why am I giving so much and getting so little?”

If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. 

I often hear from people who feel like it’s their responsibility to make a relationship last beyond the first few dates or even last a lifetime. They tie themselves in knots to make it work. And if it doesn’t, they blame themselves for not doing (or being) enough.

But in relationships, this self-blame doesn’t lead to greater satisfaction or happiness. 

Self-accountability, however, does. 

By taking responsibility for your own feelings, experiences, and expectations, you make it easier to invite another person to do the same—and increase the likelihood that you both get what you desire.

Here’s what this might look like in practice:

1. Instead of doing things you don’t love, you say: “I’m not a big sports fan. Why don’t you watch the game with friends tonight and I’ll do my own thing? I’d love to watch that movie I’ve had on my list with you tomorrow. I think we’ll both like it!”
2. Instead of waiting to know where you stand, you ask: “Hi! I had a great time on our date and I’d love to see you again next week. Since you haven’t texted back, I’m hoping you can let me know if you just don’t feel the same. It’s better to know than to wonder, and easy communication is really important to me. Thanks!”
3. Instead of hoping they’ll read your mind, you share: “I love when you bring me little gifts from your work trips. It lets me know you’re thinking of me even when we’re apart. What’s something that makes you feel thought of?”

When you engage in self-accountability, you release the urge to control how the other person will respond. Instead, you’re owning your experience, then making an invitation. 

You’re saying, 

“This is where I am. Where are you?” 

It’s possible they won’t accept it or reciprocate, but by practicing self-accountability, you’re opening the door for both of you to move forward in honest conversation—together.

Now let’s turn the lens on you:

1. What’s one feeling, experience, or expectation you might not be fully owning?
2. If you were to practice self-accountability and share this truth, what invitation might you make with it? 

If you’re not used to owning your part so directly, this might feel intimidating. 

But whether or not you decide to share your answers, responding to these questions truthfully is the first step toward greater self-accountability.

Your Partner Will Practice Self-Accountability When You Do

Owning your part is an act of humility, and that gesture opens the door for your partner to reciprocate, to meet you in an honest place. Your apology lessens the shame on the other to do the same. And while you may feel that your missteps pale in comparison to those of your partner’s, they might not feel the same way. 

Taking accountability for yourself does not excuse the other person. 

It helps them see that apologizing for their mistake doesn’t mean that they are a mistake. 

If you can do it, perhaps they can, too. ‍

‍If you have been wounded by your partner time and time again, accepting any kind of responsibility can feel like losing ground in an endless battle to prove you deserve better. But even the phrase “can’t you see how you’re hurting me?” is likely to trigger a defensive response that throws the responsibility back on you. “Yes, but I never would have slept with them if you had shown any interest in me whatsoever.” ‍

If you say to your partner “you never thank me,” you are all but ensuring that future thank-yous will become obligatory rather than heartfelt and sincere. 

Instead, consider saying 

“I love supporting you and your gratitude is really important to me.”‍

If you are aghast at how your typically responsible mate lost your shared money, have you asked if 

1. They felt financial pressure to take care of you? 
2. Did the desire to give the children a successful start empty the bank account? 
3. What’s the larger context? 
4. And what is your part in it? 

This is not victim blaming; this is acknowledging the inherent complexities of what it means to be responsible in your relationship. 

Practices for Self-Accountability

Try one or more…

• Own your experience. You can describe your experience as a consequence of the other’s actions, but pay attention to the language you use. Trade out “you made me feel” for “you did not acknowledge me and then I felt rejected.” 

• Stop punishing. Do you want to hurt them or do you want both of you to be able to learn from this and move on in your relationship together?

• Make a choice: if you want to continue the relationship, make that choice. 

• Prioritize clarity and expectation setting. As the PREP program teaches, be specific about what happened and how you felt using X, Y, Z statements: “when you did X in situation Y, I felt Z.”  ex: “When you thank everybody for helping you with this big project, and you don’t mention me at all, it makes me feel that you don’t recognize my contributions or value—staying home with the kids, taking care of the house, while you did your thing.”

• Practice differentiation. It involves identifying and clarifying your thoughts, feelings, and desires while being open and curious about your partner’s. It’s the ability to simultaneously experience connection and autonomy and not personalize their autonomy as a rejection of you.

• Ask them about their experience. Be curious about the context of their behavior. Demonstrate empathy. 

• Separate the behavior from the person. “We both know what you did was bad but I don’t view you as a bad person.”

• Beware of “Fundamental Attribution Error.” In stressed relationships, we tend to see our behavior as circumstantial and their behavior as characterological. We’re black and white about others and nuanced about ourselves. 

• When we’re in a bad mood, it’s because we had a bad day. When they’re in a bad mood, it’s because they’re not a nice person. 

• Use humor. If you find the right tone, humor can be helpful for owning your part and diffusing tension. 

• Practice grace. You can be so mad at your partner or so mad at yourself. It doesn’t mean the whole house has to come down. Practicing grace is the acknowledgement that you don’t condone what has happened but you keep room for redemption and healing. 

Esther Perel