# Feeling the Heaviness

By [jer979](https://paragraph.com/@jer979-2) · 2025-05-14

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It’s kind of like when you try to keep a ball under water.

The ball presses up against your hands and you have to work to keep it below.

The ball is my heart.

When the pang of yearning or regret or sadness, I feel it there.

But my learned response is: keep that ball under water. Don’t let it emerge or you “lose the game.”

It’s a similar experience in my shoulders when I sense or receive criticism, either internal or external.

They tighten. They brace. They feel heavy.

I can tell that these don’t serve me.

But there’s nothing I can “do” to change it. I just need to let it “be” and trust that simply by knowing they are there means that soon they won’t be.

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*Originally published on [jer979](https://paragraph.com/@jer979-2/feeling-the-heaviness)*