The part of you you’ve been holding back might be the part that’s been holding you

Why your inner rebel isn’t the problem

We all carry parts of ourselves we’ve learned to keep quiet.

The part that speaks up when others stay polite.
The part that wants rest, not productivity.
The part that gets angry even when you “should” be grateful.

These parts are often labeled too much, too emotional, too disruptive. So we try to manage them. Suppress them. “Grow out of them.”

But here’s something I’ve come to believe through my own lived experience and the work I do with others:
That inner rebel—the one you try to quiet or control—isn’t working against you.
It’s working for you.

It carries the things you still care about.
The instincts that got buried under being “reasonable.”
The truths that don’t fit into tidy expectations.

And when we learn to meet this inner rebel—not as something to fix or fear, but as a part of us that’s simply been waiting to be seen—we start to feel something radical:
Relief.
Wholeness.
A kind of emotional freedom that no amount of perfectionism can ever bring.

I wrote more about this in a new blog post that went live last Monday. It’s not a list of things to do. It’s an invitation to look inward—with gentleness—and ask yourself:

What part of me have I been holding back, and what might shift if I let it breathe?

👉 Read the full post here
“Embracing Your Inner Rebel: How Self-Acceptance Leads to Emotional Freedom”

Be selfgentle,
All love, Femke