Fear of Being Seen

As far as work goes, I’ve worn many hats in my life.

Ice skating instructor. Barista and supervisor. Personal trainer. Fitness and nutrition coach. Copywriter. Coffee brand dude. Marketing agency owner. Writing coach.

I found these roles through varying combinations of interest, experience, and study.

In each, I’m not the best of the best, but consistently capable of excellent work—which I can say with the subtle, soft, stone-like certainty of recognizing truth. 

Everything I did was an extension of an interest I’d, at bare minimum, established competency in for my own purposes. Through gaining experience and focused training, evolving to coach others or offer the services I did was always a natural step.

Aptitude and interest colliding made all those hats easy to wear.

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Now there’s one hat I didn’t mention.

The hat I’ve owned the longest.

The hat I’m most scared to wear.

The hat that’s always felt like home.

The hat I’m most qualified to wear, but convinced myself otherwise. 

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This is the hat I want to wear all the time…

But haven’t for fear of the attention brought.

Not attention like drawing all the eyeballs in a room or having millions of followers, but the quiet attention of being seen in full—even if by only a handful of people.

For fear of allowing my power, truth, and capacity to be seen. 

Of the depth I live at being laid bare.

Of building something from earned authority and embodied experience.

This is the hat I wear when holding space at the edge of someone else’s becoming.

This is the hat I wear when guiding psychedelic experience and mythic self-work.

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I began exploring this realm and learning the ropes in 2014.

I had my first taste of guiding someone else in 2018.

I wore this hat for six months in 2020.

Then, I was in no place to have any business guiding anyone.

Too fractured. Too tired. Too incoherent.

Which is where another chunk of the fear in wearing this hat comes from.

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I wrote about Standards last week.

My standards for doing this work are high.

I have to keep my own integration steady. 

I have to practice what I preach.

I have to tend my own fires.

That’s a lot of responsibility.

To myself, and to anyone who chooses to walk with me.

But…

That’s been my baseline for a year now. Not always perfectly, but certainly with consistency, with persistence, with devotion, vigilance, commitment and care.

I know this to be true with that same subtle, soft, stone-like certainty.

At this point, I’m just delaying the inevitable.

So in my next Whimsie, I’ll share the container I’ve shaped for guiding psychedelic experience and mythic self-work. Finally, the time to claim this capacity has come.

With love from the forest,

~ Alexander

P.S. This is what integration looks like.