For a long time, I couldn't order a coffee.
Not everywhere, and not always. But if the shop was crowded, or the line was disorganized, or it wasn't clear where you ordered and where you picked up, my head would start to spin. Maybe I'd get my order wrong. Maybe they'd get it wrong. Maybe I was standing in the wrong place. Maybe I'd pick up someone else's cup, or someone would take mine, and then what? The spiral would go around and around until the answer became obvious: just don't get the coffee.
Underneath all of that noise was a quieter belief, one I couldn't have named at the time. I didn't feel like I had the right to be there.
A small, invisible thing
When I first tried to explain this to my practitioner, I reached for an image: a box.
I felt like the world needed me to be small. Even though part of me wanted attention, wanted to be seen, I felt like there was no room for me. And the box wasn't just a cage, it was also a hiding place. Being outside of it terrified me, because outside the box was where rejection lived. So I made myself a tiny, invisible thing, with pressure coming in from every side, and I called that safety.
If you've ever stood in a line rehearsing a two-word order, you know the box. You might picture it differently, but you know it.
What the work actually was
I want to be honest about how this changed, because the honest version is less impressive than the version you'd expect, and more useful.
My journey started with CBT. Cognitive behavioural therapy gave me the concepts. It's probably where I first became aware that the box existed at all, and I'm grateful for that kickstart. But it didn't change anything for me, because I could understand my patterns perfectly well and still not feel any of it in my body. I could describe the box in detail. I just couldn't get out of it.
What changed things was Pantarei, a somatic practice that works with touch, presence, and what's actually happening in your body. And here's the part that surprises people: I never worked on the box directly. I didn't show up and say "I have this box and I want it gone." The work was showing up every week, talking about my feelings, and trying to connect those feelings to my body. Trying to name a feeling when I didn't know what it was. Taking a guess at where it lived in my body, or letting my practitioner put their hands somewhere and finding out.
Sometimes giving a feeling space meant staying quiet, because I noticed that if I described the feeling out loud, it would disappear. That was new to me. It told me this wasn't talking about my life with some bodywork attached. It was something else.
The box got bigger on its own. Not as a project, just as a sensation that changed over time. And when the box was bigger, I could physically move more. I felt more open. I had more capacity, not just for the coffee line, but for all sorts of things.
I won't pretend this work is linear, because it isn't. Some weeks nothing seems to happen. What it asks of you isn't belief, exactly. It's the willingness to not know for a while.
Room to expand
Somewhere along the way, I realized the box wasn't shrinking me anymore. It was making room.
It turned out it was okay for me to take up space. I had the capacity to stand in that line, and I had exactly as much right to a coffee as the next person in it. That realization is where the name of this practice comes from. Not room as in escape, room as in space that belongs to you.
The box, today
Here's the part no one expects. The box didn't disappear. It changed jobs.
Today the box isn't a constriction, it's a boundary. It's the walls of the space I deserve, and I hold them up. And when I need to hold them, I can tap into my anger to do it.
That word makes people nervous, so let me be clear: this anger isn't dangerous, and it isn't pointed at anybody. It's strength, and it's a reminder. Mine comes from two words: never again. Never again will I make myself small. Never again will I stay silent to stay safe.
In practice it looks ordinary. It's telling my partner how I really feel about something, when before I would have been too afraid of the reaction. It's saying what I think at work, even when I know my boss won't like it. It's sitting in a social space that once would have been unbearable, comfortably uncomfortable, and staying.
It's standing in line and ordering a coffee.
If you're still in the small box
Maybe you're reading this from inside the tiny version, mid-spiral, rehearsing your order. I'm not going to promise you anything, and I'm not going to tell you what to do.
I'll just tell you the thing I wish someone had told me.
You are worth doing the work for. You are worthy of your own love. And you can give yourself the gift of presence by just being you. You don't have to be anybody else. You don't have to look like the rest of the people in the line.
You can be just you. And it really, really is enough.