“Learning to be” Therapy Session with María Ysabel

Stillness is where I feel powerful.

It’s where my creativity flows. It’s where I feel powerful and childlike.

I create things with ease. I don’t “work”. I get the work done, because inspiration flows through me. It’s effortless.

But for years, something kept disrupting my stillness, my empowerment—bosses, institutions, relationships. Every time someone controlled my time, I felt anxious. That anxiousness transformed into anger. That was my emotional blockage which kept me from progressing on my path.

The "real work" is not going to your job. The real work is how much you resolve your traumatic emotional patterns carried on by generations before you, so you & your offspring doesn't have to suffer from your lack of emotional balance and presence.

Years went by and I did things to avoid those circumstances; like signing up as a freelancer in order to control my own time. I kept this anger in. I didn’t express it. I never learned to.

At first, I thought it was just work stress. Or bad luck. But then, at a pivotal point, I saw the pattern. It wasn’t their fault; it wasn’t the circumstances— the fault was on me.

Where did it come from? I was carrying something deeper. A subconscious belief planted in childhood, reinforced by my father, bosses, and even the pandemic.

And when I finally met my seven-year-old self, I understood.

I Hugged my Seven-Year-Old Self

I hugged my seven-year-old self.

I realized something profound.

Together with Maria Ysabel, I had a therapy session. Maria’s Therapy methodology is about Emotional release. It is about learning how to be, to turn off the head and re-connect with your bodily sensations, or in other words your somatic experience.

The session was about anger and anxiety—specifically, the feelings that arise when someone disrupts my stillness. My stillness is something special for me. My stillness is where I feel powerful. It’s the state in which solutions for problems naturally emerge. In stillness, I have time to work, contemplate, organize my thoughts, and plan my actions.

In stillness, or how I like to call it, spiritual hygiene, I feel empowered.

I feel like I can do it all.

Looking back, I see patterns. I was always wondering why my mother even got together with my father. I saw my father as abusive, controlling and unbearable. My parents’ relationship might have started with my mother seeing my father as a prince— I can only guess he was a good lover; her lover. But over time, as he provided security and stability, he became stale, uninteresting and controlling—perhaps he sacrificed too much and got resentful. Then, every time she took too much ‘freedom’, it felt unfair to him and he felt the need to control her. He started controlling resources, how she spent her time, how she worked. I bet that turned her off. He turned himself into a frog in her eyes.

My father was … special. He was dominant. He injected a lot of frustration and guilt into me. I was always anxious and angry when he got home. I wasn’t allowed to play video games anymore. When I wanted to buy LEGO Star Wars, he made me feel guilty, saying I always wanted expensive things whenever I was with him. He made me feel guilty for wanting things at all.

LEGO Star Wars was a representative symbol of freedom for me. Freedom to built, play and develop engineering capabilities. Still now, it holds so much value for me. In these days I catch myself watching lot’s of Youtube videos about LEGO Star Wars; longing back for a childhood that wasn’t so much without troubles.

And then there was my health. I remember him bathing me and constantly complaining about my neurodermitis. It was unbearable. Every weekend, he was talking me into sickness.

Another moment where this same emotional trauma resurfaced was during the pandemic. I was studying Industrial Design in my hometown Berlin and had been accepted for an Erasmus program in the Netherlands. Then, boom, the pandemic and following lockdowns began. Of course, they couldn’t accept me anymore. “This is ridiculous!” I thought. Once again, a bigger authority wasn’t allowing me to have fun.

This pattern repeated in my working relationships. The companies and bosses I worked for always ignited some kind of anxiety within me. I felt like they were robbing me of my creative freedom.

So in conclusion, we wrapped the introspection up and summarized: When someone takes away my creative freedom and my stillness, I feel anxious and angry.

That was the key emotional pattern that Maria Ysabel helped me to identify. Just knowing this, embraced me and led me to build my own key to emotional freedom.

That pattern was my old self, my inner hurt child, still controlling my destiny until today. But I let go of that emotional pattern. I kissed and hugged my inner child, the one who still carried those imprints. I told him he could relax. That I would always ensure we have the stillness and creative freedom we need. That we could buy as much LEGO Star Wars as we wanted. That we could build things.

“The world is our playground!”

Collecting & Connecting the Lost Pieces

But why does stillness equal the fun, creativity, and joy I felt as a kid?

This is a connection that I did not understand at first glance; because stillness is cool. Stillness is calm. And I wasn’t particularly any of those when I was feeling joy as a child.

“But think about it”, said Maria Ysabel, “stillness comes from awareness. From being in your senses. From being present in the moment. Not thinking about tomorrow, or yesterday; but being here now. That’s the state of a child. As children, we weren’t using our heads. And from that place, the place of being, solutions arise naturally.”

And that’s how I understood. When I was still and present, I know what to do in a relaxed, laid-back, and strategic way. And that automatically, led to me feel empowered.

And empowerment leads to joy, very naturally.

I was working on that. I cared about my sovereignty, moved to a tropical island. I had a job with german pay, bought my first car with my own money. Everything felt alright. I felt empowered. I felt joy.

Then, a breakdown came. I lost my job again, moved into a suboptimal place and my car broke down. I was trapped and was in panic again. Stress.

You know why it happened? It was self sabotage. The emotional pattern was still imprinted within me. I haven’t removed the blockage. I would always be redirected to that same old experience.

At that moment I met my girlfriend Valentina, fell in unbelievable love, and our priorities shifted. Now we had a new challenge, because her world was further down the work, with more responsibilities, and even more stress. We needed to tackle problems at their root, and in order to do that, I had to put myself in second order.

I was in a bad financial situation, and she had money to pay me and needed help. We were exchanging services for money and got into a working agreement. But that dynamic became a mirror, showing us what we were doing wrong.

She had already been through burnout, while her nervous system still carrying the traces of that traumatic experience. In other words; she’s was quite the opposite of stillness at that time. We had lot’s of work on our hand, and we keep mastering and rocking it. Thank you for everything Love!

The “Learning to Be” Experience

Now, after solving her problems, I was at the same point like before again. Searching for work. With the same old pattern still within me. I remember being at my favorite Café called “Meia Lua” in Vila Franca de Xira applying for jobs.

This is where I met Maria Ysabel at the first time and she pitched me her idea.

She guided me through a process that felt both structured and intuitive. At first, it was about acknowledging the emotions—the anger, the anxiety, the tightness in my chest when someone disrupted my flow. Then, it was about tracing it back. Not just intellectually, but somatically. Where did it live in my body? What images, sensations, and memories surfaced?

And then, the shift.

Through guided visualization, I met my younger self. The boy who was always on edge, always scanning for the next restriction, the next ‘no,’ the next moment of guilt or shame. I saw him. I felt his frustration. And instead of pushing it away, I embraced him. Literally.

In the visualization, I hugged him, held him tight, and told him what he never heard back then:

“You are allowed to want things. You don’t have to feel guilty for existing. You are free.”

Something in me cracked open. A weight lifted.

Since that session, I’ve noticed the difference. The old triggers still appear, but they don’t grip me the same way. I recognize them, breathe. I noticed that I embrace my stillness and joy more unapologetically. I return to stillness and joy with longing, without the interruption of guilt; just naturally.

And from that stillness, I choose my response—not from old wounds, but from the present moment.

That’s the power of María Ysabel’s work.

If you’ve ever felt trapped in old patterns that repeat themselves and you wonder why, I highly recommend exploring this path. You don’t have to carry the past forever. You can meet your younger self, hold it close, and finally set it free.

This is the real work. Not the grind, not the hustle—but untangling the emotional knots that keep us stuck in cycles of fear, scarcity, and self-sabotage.

When I met María Ysabel, I told her I was searching for work. What I appreciated about her approaching me was that she saw the real problem within a glance. It wasn’t about job applications or skill sets. It was about an emotional blueprint I had inherited—one that told me I didn’t deserve a work agreement that felt good, mutual, and aligned. One that made me subconsciously accept stress, control, and imbalance as the norm.

Her framework, "Aprendiendo a Ser", or "Learning to Be", is about shortening that transition. Not by pushing harder, but by clearing the blockages that make it feel impossible to step into a new reality. Because finding the right work isn’t about doing more—it’s about becoming someone who naturally attracts it.

It reminded me of The Work, one of the most powerful documentaries I’ve ever seen, where prison inmates break through years of repressed emotion.

If you feel stuck—if you sense there’s an invisible force holding you back—maybe it’s time to stop looking outward and start looking within. Check out "Aprendiendo a Ser" and the work of María Ysabel.

You can see her work at her Instagram profile @mymindexploring
https://www.instagram.com/mymindexploring

You might be closer to your breakthrough than you think.

See you next week!
Kiss kiss,
Tarkan