Last week, I tried something different in my meditation practice.
It’s a framework called Existential Kink, developed by Dr. Carolyn Lovewell (formerly Elliott), that invites you to explore the unconscious pleasure you might secretly be getting from your most painful or persistent patterns. The premise is simple, if a little confronting: what if the very thing you say you don’t want… is something a deeper part of you actually enjoys?
I figured, why not? Let’s see what happens.
The pattern I chose to explore was one I’ve bumped into for most of my life: being underestimated and misunderstood.
My meditation pulled me back through a string of memories that still felt sharp. A former boss calling me “an enigma” in a tone that was more accusation than curiosity. Another boss telling me I was “too quirky” and should try being more like him, as though the solution to his discomfort was for me to disappear into his reflection.
Each moment carried the same undertone: frustration and confusion. A subtle demand that I should shrink or simplify myself to be more palatable. More expected.
And then, something strange happened.
As I sat with the feelings—no spiritual bypassing, no silver linings, just presence—I started to feel… delight. Actual, embodied delight. A quiet laugh bubbled up inside me as I saw the pattern not through the lens of hurt, but of pleasure.
There’s a part of me, I realized, that loves being underestimated.
A part that revels in the moment someone reduces me to a two-dimensional character, then scrambles to recalibrate when they realize I’m something else entirely.
Something more.
There’s a thrill in the surprise. In being uncategorizable. In challenging people’s projections and watching their stories fall apart in real time.
Those once-painful comments? I realized that they were actually some of the best compliments I’d ever received.
They confirmed that I wasn’t what someone expected. That I didn’t fit neatly inside the box they had waiting for me. And that, perhaps, I’m not meant to.
That realization didn’t just change my mind, it shifted something in my body. The ache loosened. The charge dissolved. And in its place came a quiet joy. A full-bodied yes to the complexity of who I am.
And then, at the end of the meditation, this poem arrived:
I am air.
Unable to see,
impossible to grasp.
Elusive, yet
undeniably felt.
Meant to stir
reaction.
For some
a wrecking tornado.
Cracking walls,
splitting foundation.
For others
a seductress.
Caressing skin,
stroking imagination.
Not meant
to go unnoticed.
My presence
leaves nothing
unchanged.
It reminded me that everything we touch is meant to be changed. And that change, by nature, evokes a response.
Some people will celebrate you.
Others will resist you.
Both are signs that you’re here.
That you’re not walking through life invisible.
That you’re leaving footprints.
So if you’ve been shrinking to avoid misunderstanding, or trying to shape-shift your way into acceptance, maybe this is your invitation to stop.
To take up space.
To be a little strange, in the way only you can be.
To let yourself be fully felt, even if that means being misunderstood.
Because you were never meant to go unnoticed.
And the projections others place on you? They say more about their map of the world than about your truth.
Your job isn’t to fit their expectations.
It’s to live into your own expansion.
