Liberating Your Essence
Linda MacInnes, LMFT #145910, Exp 3/31/2026
Pessimism:
One of the subtler forces working against our emotional well-being is not our internal world at all—it’s the atmosphere we are surrounded by. In nearly every clinical session I’ve held, clients don’t walk in suffering from their own thoughts alone. They walk in carrying the residue of someone else’s worldview. A pessimistic parent, a fearful partner, a cynical coworker, a chronically negative friend—these energies linger, cling, and seep into the mind in ways we often fail to recognize.
Pessimism doesn’t show up as a dramatic swing of mood. It’s not loud. It’s not theatrical. It is quiet, heavy, and viral. A subtle shifting in the emotional air. A pressure system. A field.
Our essence is not born pessimistic—it is born open.
Which means pessimism is not who we are. It is something that happens to us. Especially when we are surrounded by people who are living from fear instead of presence.
In this work, I often tell clients: “Your rumination isn’t a flaw. It’s a reaction.”
A reaction to emotional environments that constrict the soul rather than support it.
The Subtle Hijacking of the Nervous System
When we’re around pessimistic people, our body knows before our mind does. The nervous system—ever faithful, ever vigilant—tightens, braces, prepares. Even if nothing external is wrong, pessimism creates the feeling that something will be. The shoulders rise. The breath shortens. The imagination shifts from possibility to prediction.
This is the opposite of essence.
Essence is warm, expansive, curious.
Pessimism is cold, contracted, anticipatory.
The body can’t hold both at once for long, so one becomes dominant. And too often, the more practiced field—usually pessimism—takes over.
The Echo of Old Stories
Here’s the part people overlook:
Pessimism is rarely about the present moment. It awakens the past.
A pessimistic comment from a coworker can activate the voice of a parent who once warned, “Don’t get your hopes up.”
A pessimistic partner can stir the memory of an unpredictable childhood where safety felt conditional.
A pessimistic friend can reactivate internal contracts like:
“Something bad is coming.”
“I can’t trust myself.”
“I’m not prepared.”
Pessimism is not just negativity.
It is a portal to old wounds.
This is why rumination often spikes after contact with pessimistic people. The mind isn’t looping because it is broken—it is looping because it is trying to protect an old, frightened part of you.
“Whose voice is this—mine, or someone else’s?”
That question alone pulls them out of inherited fear and back into the truth of who they are.
One of the things I cherish most about human beings is our imagination. In essence, imagination is sacred—our bridge between intuition and inner child, between possibility and becoming. But in the presence of pessimism, imagination becomes weaponized.
Instead of envisioning openness, the mind begins to envision danger.
There is a strange phenomenon in human relationships: pessimism can feel like closeness. Shared cynicism, shared despair, shared hopelessness—these can create a counterfeit intimacy. Venting becomes bonding. Complaining becomes connection.
The Mountain Goat
I climb the way a mountain goat elevates—
quietly, faithfully, without needing to know
where the summit hides.
There is no map in my hands,
no grand declaration,
no rush to arrive.
Just the soft rhythm of my own becoming,
one sure step at a time.
I move with the creatures who trust the earth—
who place their weight on the smallest ledge
and somehow never fall,
not because the path is certain,
but because they are.
This is my process:
a devotion to the next breath,
the next truth,
the next gentle inch of elevation.
I don’t scale the mountain with fury or force.
I don’t demand a view.
I simply listen to what rises beneath my feet
and follow the pull of something older than fear.
Some days the air thins
and I pause—not to quit,
but to remember the quiet courage
that lives inside my ribcage.
Some days the clouds swallow the peak
and I remind myself that ascent
is not about seeing the top—
it’s about trusting the climb.
If you ask how I keep going,
I will tell you this:
I have become the mountain goat—
the one who continues,
the one who doesn’t rush,
the one who honors the slow miracle
of forward motion.
And when I finally reach whatever heaven
waits at the edge of this ridge,
I know I will turn around
and understand:
The real grace was never in the height—
it was in the steady, intentional way
I learned to place my feet
on the trembling earth
and rise anyway.
The Art of Detachment
Detachment is not about indifference or emotional numbness; it’s the practice of loving without clinging, caring without controlling, and remembering your essence even in the presence of surrender, where you no longer let external circumstances, people, or outcomes dictate your inner peace.
When you’re attached, your sense of self becomes entangled with something outside you, a person’s approval, a relationship outcome, a story about how things should have gone. Detachment gently unhooks that energy and brings it back home. It’s a sacred act of returning to your center, to the calm observer within you who can witness life without being consumed by it.
In essence, detachment is love without ownership and presence without expectation.
How it Heals Resentment and Anger
Resentment and anger often arise when our energy is still tied to the past, to unmet expectations, unspoken words, or the belief that someone else holds the key to our peace. Detachment transforms this by:
-Releasing the illusion of control. Anger thrives when we believe someone else should have acted differently. Detachment helps us see that we cannot rewrite another person’s sotry, only our relationship to it.
-Restoring energetic sovereignty. When we detach, we reclaim the energy that’s been scattered into old wounds or narratives. We stop reliving what hurts us and begin re-inhabiting our own wholeness.
-Creating space for compassion. Once you step back from the emotional charge, you can see that everyone, including you, was doing the best they could with the consciousness they had at the time. Compassion can only enter where control has been released.
-Reframing pain as a teacher. Detachment allows us to ask, “What was this trying to show me about myself?” rather than “Why did this happen to me?” That shift in perspective transforms wounds into wisdom.
The Role of Detachment in Remembering Your Essence
Your essence, the soul-self beneath conditioning, is already whole. But attachment to pain, identity, or story clouds that rememberence. Detachment clears the fog. It helps you return to the observer consciousness, the part of you that can hold both love and loss without needing either to define you.
Through detachment, you remember:
-You are not what happened to you.
-You are not the emotions that visit you.
-You are the still, luminous awareness beneath it all, the witness of your becoming.
A Gentle Practice:
When resentment or anger rise, try saying:
“I release the need to rewrite the past.
“I return my energy to the present”
“I bless what has been and make space for what is becoming”
With every breath of detachment, you’re not abandoning what was, you’re liberating your essence from its weight.
Remembering….
We are not here to reinvent ourselves…
We are here to remember. Your essence is the unbroken self you were born with-the one that existed before the wounding, before the roles, before the performance. It is still there, beneath the layers of survival, of striving, of stories you thought you had to carry.
To liberate you essence is to peel back what is not you—the resentment, the regret, the fear of not being enough. It is not about becoming something else. It is about coming home.
Every tear shed, every moment of stillness, every quiet breath is not a breakdown—it is a breakthrough.
It is your soul’s way of saying: I am still here. I have always been here.
Panic is not loud at first.
It begins as a flicker—
a glitch in the chest.
A sudden drop, like missing a step on the stairs.
A moment of Wait—What Was That?
Then the body remembers something the mind can’t control.
Panic is the heart falling through the floor
while the rest of you is still standing.
It’s the rush of adrenaline with nowhere to go.
The sensation that something terrible is about to happen, even when you’re sitting in a quiet room.
Your skin feels too tight.
Your thoughts get too sharp, fast, wild.
There’s a pressure behind your ribs like you haven’t breathed in hours, even though you’re breathing too much.
Your world narrows to one job:
Survive what isn’t actually happening.
You scan your body for danger—
your chest, your pulse, your throat.
You notice every sensation and call it a threat.
Your mind searches for an exit even when there is nothing to escape.
The room is the same,
but it no longer feels safe.
Panic is when fear is the loudest voice in the house.
It speaks with urgency and certainty.
It tells you this moment is life-or-death.
It does not care that you know the difference.
Your logic whispers.
Your fear screams.
And yet—panic is not proof of danger.
It is the body remembering an old story
and sounding the alarm before asking if anything has changed.
Panic is the body wanting to protect you
long after the danger is gone.
Which means panic is not your enemy.
It is your younger self still trying to save your life.
And healing is not silencing it—
but placing a hand on your heart
and whispering back:
I hear you.
I know you’re scared.
But we are not in danger anymore.
