Releasing the Past: The Clown Finally Sits Down

February 2023. I'd just become a homeowner and, the same week that the sale closed, I was told my contract at the TV company I’d been working with for the past year wasn’t going to be extended. TV, as an industry, was suffering massively after the COVID-19 commissioning boom. It still is. I was trying to enjoy some time off while ignoring the truth that my chosen professional industry was on its knees. My career hung in the balance but I quickly adjusted to the joy of life in a space that was completely mine.

The sweet solitude my flat afforded me and an abundance of free time on my hands, meant my self-development journey became my sole focus.

I filled my time with weekly therapy sessions, emails to producers begging for a job, coffee chats with executives and journalling. Some days I wrote pages, never being able to find the right moment to stop. There was something magical about the way my pen facilitated the release of thoughts in my head onto the page.

It was raw, though. This process was about dragging everything up to the surface uprooting the darkest parts of myself and shining a floodlight onto them. I unearthed parts of myself I didn't know existed. Parts of myself I'd become so detached from. Sometimes they screamed when I shone a light on them, having existed in the darkness for so long. I approached them cautiously. Reassuring and apologetic for having left them neglected. I was fuelled by a desperation to make things right with myself. The emotional burden sometimes felt like a lot when I realised what I'd been through. When I thought about how much pain I'd suppressed. There were days when I felt like I was walking through tar.

But through the pain, I kept going. Trudging forward. Mainly because I had got to the point of no return. I was far enough to see glimmers of change had already happened. I felt different in ways I couldn't verbalise. Far enough to realise I didn't want to go back to who I'd been before.

And then one day, after a morning of journalling about a particularly traumatising event from my past, I took myself out for a walk at lunchtime. I'd got to a familiar stretch of the park when out of nowhere, I felt my chest tighten and my breath became shallow. The feeling of being out of control of my own ability to breathe grew and grew, escalating my breaths until I was teetering on the edge of full-blown panic. Luckily, I'd stopped beside a tree. Instinctively I reached out, and pressed my hand against its rough bark, closing my eyes.

I remembered something I’d heard on a mindfulness podcast a few days earlier—they were talking about box breathing. In for four, hold for four, out for four, and repeat. I took what felt like the biggest intake of breath in my entire life, held it for four seconds, and then released it for four seconds. I repeated the cycle until breathing was automatic again.

I don’t know how long I stood beside that tree, repeating that breath cycle. But when I finally felt comfortable, I opened my eyes, blinking rapidly to readjust to the bright daylight.

Whatever had just happened left me feeling utterly exhausted. And, I would be lying if I said it didn't scare me. From my spot beside the tree, I emailed my therapist and asked for a next-day session. Then, I took myself home and slept for the rest of the afternoon.

The next day, I recounted the events. I eyed my therapist closely, watching her face for signs of worry, I was convinced she was going to tell me that wasn't normal and I needed to see a therapist who works with people who have problems much worse than what she can deal with. But instead, she portrayed no signs of concern. She was casual almost as if she'd expected something like this to happen.

"Sounds like what happened had been a form of release for you." She said.

She was right. The energy from those suppressed emotions, which had been stored up for years, was finally free.

Out of my brain, body and being.

Confronting the pain in my past and reconnecting with neglected pieces of myself had been the emotional equivalent of gorging on figs. My constipated mind was finally unblocked - free from decades of cognitive shit.

Okay, please please please know - you don’t have to have a full-blown panic attack in order to release your pain and trauma.

Healing looks different for everyone.

For me, that moment came out of nowhere.

An unexpected wave, which retrospectively, should have absolutely been expected. I'd been dragging my pain up for months by this point. I was jittery and restless, uncertain about my future. It also likely wasn’t triggered solely by my confrontation with suppressed memories of the past but also by career insecurity and the challenges of adjusting to a new environment. I had a lot going on.

But I look back and see that moment in the park marked a shift. The darkness that had been clouding my mind’s eye for so long seemed to dissipate. The energy I'd built up through suppressing my past had finally moved through me. Freeing itself and me in the process.

And by doing all that, I'd unknowingly done something utterly magical—I’d built a relationship with myself. The most important thing I could ever do, and yet, it happened without me even realising it. There was nothing I didn’t know about who I was anymore. Because amongst all the darkness, I had found the versions of myself that, at some point or another, had been betrayed or neglected. By giving them the comfort, closure and release they needed, there were no more secrets, no suppressed feelings. Nothing locked away in the back of my mind. I was a completely open book with myself, and I welcomed the relief, freedom and rawness that came with that.

Because it is raw. Make no mistake, this process changes you. And one day you'll look back and realise you've crossed a boundary you can never go back on. Because you'll no longer accept people in your life who cause you pain. Heck, you'll no longer accept your own behaviours that cause you pain.

And that in itself can be scary and weird. You can feel the progress in yourself, but things on the outside start to feel slightly off.

Why am I so different? Why does this person I've known for 5 years feel like a stranger to me? Why do I cry all the time?

If you're anything like me, you'll be tense, volatile and fiercely protective of your own time and space when you're straight off the back of your big, energetic breakthrough. But that's only because you're scared of the same thing happening again. Terrified of going back to the person you were before you started all this.

I can tell you one thing: that will never happen.

Because the ball is already rolling towards a calmer, more healed version of you, and, by this point, you'll likely feel that in your soul to the point where nothing will stop you from moving forwards.

So my advice here is - don't care. Cry as much as you want, wherever you want. I've lost count of the number of times I've sobbed on the bus or in the park. Those who can't handle your change will leave, and that's okay. They'll have their reasons, just as you have yours for doing what you're doing. Those who can handle it will stick around, and honestly, it's always the best people that stay. And that is just lovely to anchor yourself onto.

Over time, I realised that by letting everything go, the clown didn’t have anything to worry about anymore, either. There was nothing painful or suppressed for it to warn me about. It could finally rest—no more pacing, no more shouting worst-case scenarios. Just quiet.

By clearing out the past, I was left with a space to rebuild myself completely.

First things first, though—I needed to do some rewiring. Because, even though there were no more buried secrets, and I was finally an open book with myself, my anxiety still lingered. The clown had sat down, yes—it wasn’t constantly on edge, spouting worst-case scenarios and negativity. But from the comfort of its chair, it still offered thoughts riddled with self-doubt and worry. After all, it had been doing so for years. By this point, those thoughts were automatic—a well-worn path my brain had learned to travel down.

I didn't know it at the time, but I was about to start at the very beginning.