Caretaking Energy

There is an energy that I’ve found in myself, over and over again, that I want to try to describe here. While I have no idea how much it applies to others, I’ve been impressed with its consistency in my own makeup, and I’ve never heard someone else describe it this way.

There are two different frames that I use for the energy:

• Fear-guilt, interlocked. If I relate to it / feel it as just fear or just guilt I’ll miss it

• The urgent energy of taking responsibility for someone else’s emotional state / okayness, which we could call “caretaking”

I find these two frames to be functionally equivalent in myself, but one framing is sometimes more useful than the other.

This post comes from an Instagram post I did for Inktober 2023.