What is it for you to feel free?

For me I feel free when I am able to fully engage in relationship totally as myself. Not in a life and soul of the party sense, but to allow myself to be known in whatever I might be feeling. Free from feeling too much, too loud, too messy or completely contradictorily too little. Free from holding myself to static expectations of myself. I love the pediatrician and psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott’s concept of ‘formless states’, in which we are free from the pressure to even ‘make sense’. I explored these ideas in my MA dissertation, free to make no sense, and free to make sense out of non- sense - but maybe that's another blog.

I also feel free in moments in which I am totally absorbed, in my body, dancing, in my sensual self, in nature, playful light moments in my life. Free in animated, embodied flow. Free in the ritual and solitude of the making and savouring of my morning cup of coffee, waking up to myself.

wonder what your answers were, and whether you too noticed two sets of answers - freedom from, and freedom in? Perhaps I want to add a third freedom for, in which we are driven to fight for freedom for something. I’m reminded of a particularly passionate performance by Nina Simone in Montreux in 1976 of ‘I wish I knew how it would feel to be free’. Look it up if you get a moment, it is incredible. The performance holds and exudes her fight to live the life she wanted to live, and at points in my life inspired me to do similarly.

Even once we get some sense of what freedom means to us, both in my own personal exploration, and in my clinical work with clients, I have come to realise we can not assume freedom is always longed for. Indeed sometimes freedom is feared. Freedom isn’t for us; it is too big, it is too ruleless, it is too unknown, it’s too visible. The converse pull might be for privacy, or to be small as a means of going unnoticed. Here we can still experience freedom, but of a different kind, a quieter freedom, under the radar, in solitude. And there could be a deep peace in this. 

We are all probably familiar with the metaphor of the caged bird, singing on their perch, the cage door open, but they don't fly away. They are safe there, it's familiar. My own pull is to whisper ‘go little bird … there’s a big world out there’, but the bird stays and continues to sing, seemingly unaware of their confinement.

As a relational psychotherapist I guide clients to explore how their past has shaped the way they think and feel, they way they relate to themselves and others, the way they hold, and move their bodies, dis-ease, held in the body impacting physical health, giving rise to auto-immune conditions. 

I am a passionate believer in this work. It offers us freedom from stuck patterns of relating and ways of being which don't serve us, and gives us choice and agency in our current day lives.

This process is frequently not without its opposition. 

Those ways of being in the world, just like the caged bird, are familiar to us, we know what we are dealing with, at one point in our life they served us, and kept us safe. We might long for change, feel frustrated at the intransigeance of patterns of behaviour which we know restrict us; cause us distress and pain. Yet we also fear the very change we seek. 

We have to hold the space for these warring factions, they both have a point of view, because we can only ever truly want freedom when we feel safe. We all have a need, and a right to both freedom and safety, connection and privacy. We all have a right to not be captured in a definition of ourselves, either our own or others, rather the freedom to go on being, continuing to become. 

In a space held by curiosity, not assuming an answer, we can understand our own unique balance and tipping point in the tensions, and the supporting functions of these two opposites - not in the fear led stance of old survival patterns, but in a stance responsive to you, your feelings and your needs. 

Perhaps we feel free when we soften knowing we are safe in the others' response; knowing what we demand of, and for ourselves is just; finding a little more trust in the universe; and in allowing the complimentary balance of privacy and solitude. 

I find myself again calling on the Winnicott quote ‘in life’s sophisticated game of hide and seek, it is a joy to hide, but a disaster not to be found’. Is  freedom granting ourselves permission to enjoy hiding, and the choice to step forth and be known, and seen. For is it not in the element of activity of choice, not in the doing where true freedom lies?