A Biography

by Gloria Casanovas

I was born in Buenos Aires, the eldest of three sisters. I am now forty-six years old and live in Italy.

Earliest Memories

I am four or five years old, playing alone. I sense my parents nearby, watching me, commenting, “How cute, how lovely.” I pretend not to notice and play up the act, exaggerating gestures and behaviors that seem “lovely” to them. I’m seeking a little more of what I know is coming: love, mixed with admiration. The more I embody this, the more I sense it within myself, and the more I convince myself that I am adorable; I am filled with an intoxicating inner feeling.

A few years later, we stood at the door of my wealthy aunt and uncle’s house. My mom pinches our cheeks, mine and my sister’s, to make us appear rosier — it hurts. She says, “Make me look good in front of them.” I know exactly what I need to do: be friendly, cheerful, well-mannered but a little rebellious. I understand I have to help Mom prove that living in the suburbs (since we can’t afford to live in the city center) isn’t that bad. We have a garden and a pool my rich cousins don’t have, and we believe we’re freer and happier, despite losing the economic status they still possess.

Each time we leave my aunt and uncle’s house, my mom tells me, “You did very well.” I know precisely what she means: I played the role well, portrayed what needed to be portrayed, and she is genuinely proud. I too feel proud and a bit like a heroine. “I can do exactly what is necessary to keep things in place. I’ve satisfied my mother!”

This occurs during visits to relatives, parties, and outings at the club, while at home, I feel invisible. My dad is preoccupied with his own problems and alcohol; my mom is often distracted, looking out the window or reading while cooking. I call out to them, but they don’t respond.

In the afternoons, I play a game where I pretend to be invisible. I walk around the house doing strange things, testing if they see me — nobody does. They only notice if someone else is around, or at least that’s the impression I get. In those moments, yes, I am important. I feel like an object that can either improve, decorate, or ruin the image my parents wish to project. Only then do they see me, demand from me, and reproach me if I don’t fulfill my role. I almost always comply. It’s an unspoken pact where I understand that with the spinster aunt, I must be the good and studious girl; with my friends from the club, the sporty and carefree one; and with others, I play the strong or pretty one — depending on the occasion.

I go through life at home understanding that whenever I am truly myself, it’s wrong. If I cry when I’m sad, take what I want, or speak my mind, it’s always at the wrong time.

I don’t feel supported by my parents. I sense they don’t know how to deal with pain. They get distressed when I suffer, but I don’t feel comforted. My mom’s arms tremble when she holds me as I cry. I understand it’s better to hide what I feel because when she gets scared, I get even more frightened. Putting on a brave face, showing joy, and saying “nothing’s wrong” calms them and me as well.

“You’re my son,” my dad says with pride when he sees me without fear. “Yes, I am whatever you want: your son, a brave winner if it makes you happy, and you tell me everything is fine, that there’s no danger.”

There’s another game I played with others, but without them knowing I was “playing.” I pretended I was an alien who had accidentally landed in their house, partly to learn about what kind of people they were. I kept a shelf in my closet with various little jars: some were empty, which I imagined were filled with air from my planet, and others held water and sugar, the food from my homeland. I would remember to play at different times of the day, always when the emotional situation became unbearable.

A specific day comes to mind. We’re having dinner with my parents, sisters, and grandmothers. They’re arguing — not shouting, but exchanging sharp words. When the silence comes afterward, the air feels thick enough to cut. I feel unwell, really unwell. I begin to “play.” I look at them as though they were strange beings. I use an excuse to get up and go to my room. As I approach the closet, I walk as if I’m about to faint. I open the jar of air and take a whiff; then I open the jar with water and drink it. I recover: “Thank goodness I have my provisions.” I returned to the dining room refreshed. This game of pretending something is different from what it is brings me relief.

During those years, I only felt spontaneous in front of others when I was overwhelmed. At night, I would cough and cough, a kind of convulsive cough that seemed to come from nowhere. I believe it was the anguish of feeling alone, of realizing that I didn’t truly matter to anyone; what mattered was what I could make people believe about me — the image I could project. I had to make them believe only good things.

At twelve, we played a “game” with my classmates and a catechist: each of us would tell everyone, one by one, what we didn’t like about the others. It was called “cleansing.” Confidently, I thought to myself: “No one will say anything mean to me.” When it was my turn, the barrage of criticisms overwhelmed me. I couldn’t believe it! I clearly saw only two possible reactions: I would either start crying or feign indifference. I looked at everyone. I had to respond to something. It was an internally overwhelming moment I remember vividly. I heard myself say, “I don’t care about anything you just told me.” I felt tough, strong, as though I had a protective metal armor around my body. Internally, though, it felt like there was a trembling white larvae in my gut. I decided that this larva didn’t exist. I shifted my awareness from there, focusing instead on my mind, skin, and muscles. Something in me said it was the perfect solution: deny the unpleasant and invent something better to replace it. I would make both myself and others believe it. I felt no pain, only a newfound, almost exhilarating strength.

Sometimes, when I was alone and feeling bored, I played a game I called “advertising.” I turned whatever I was doing into a commercial. For example, when removing my makeup at night in front of the mirror, wiping a cotton ball with cream around my eyes, I’d think, in a voice-over: “With cream X, your skin will be like silk…” Or, while eating ice cream: “Made

with the best natural ingredients…” My eyes would focus on the ice cream as if they were the camera.

Another game involved imagining I was being filmed while going about my daily activities: I became the protagonist of a movie. Once again, a voice-over narrated what I was doing: “… and she boarded the train, gazing languidly out the window…” and I’d genuinely gaze languidly. At the time, I didn’t question why I did this; it just felt normal. I believe that when I started to connect with something painful, something “formless” that I feared, describing the scene from an external perspective served as a way to distance and soothe myself. It also made for good entertainment.

I spent years hiding what I felt: I denied fear, pain, insecurity, and confusion. I tried to make everything in me about decisiveness, strength, enthusiasm, and success. Always moving upward, toward my head, with my diaphragm contracting and clinging to my ribs. Fear transformed into anger, and anger into control.

For years, I belonged to different groups, and in each one, I played a different, mostly accepted role: bohemian and transgressive with my Fine Arts peers, refined and aristocratic in my parents’ world, intellectual and a little tortured with the Gestalt group, and superficial and materialistic with my office colleagues.

I remember that I couldn’t go to gatherings where people from different groups mixed because I didn’t know how to behave. These spaces remained entirely separate, with no possibility of communication, and I felt comfortable and secure in each. It was enough that they didn’t mix. This was the most natural thing to me, and it never occurred to me to even question it.

With boyfriends and friends, I was possessive and established a kind of alliance. With men, who were always seemingly weaker than me, the issue of attention became vital: “You mustn’t give it to any other woman.” If, by chance, he glanced at someone else at the club or at the cinema, I was capable of making a scene — not entirely understanding why, but I was just that desperate. The gaze of a loved one was synonymous with love. I couldn’t lose it.

I always had an intimate friend to whom I could tell “everything,” and I remember a moment of clarity where I said to myself, “If I don’t tell V. what’s happening to me, it’s as if it didn’t happen.” It felt like a friendship bound by an oath: “I protect you, help you, give you relationship advice, and in return, you look at me, reflect back my positive image, and grant me a sense of existing.” The roles were clear and fixed.

With people, I was the Zelig of their ideals. As Mina sings in her song, “I am as you want me.” Like everyone wants me, even if it has to be in a thousand different ways. During the

day, this satisfied me, as though I were an actress on stage receiving applause. At night, however, I had nightmares, and the most frequent one was that I fell into a void with nothing to hold onto. When I woke up, I forgot it.

At twenty-one, I lived alone, studied, worked, and began therapy—partly because it was trendy, and partly because I felt the need for support. Every night, before going to sleep, I wrote down everything I had done during the day in a detailed list. Remembering each night what I was “capable” of doing gave me the illusion that I could handle life. My father used to tell me that life was a struggle, at least that’s how it felt to me. Doing what I wanted seemed like a way to prevent life from having its way with me—destroying me.

During this period, my body and beauty assumed a prominent role in my life; I felt desired and accepted. As my insecurities surfaced in therapy, my inner self didn’t look as good. On the other hand, my exterior had improved. “What is seen (my body) is better than what is not (emotions and thoughts).” I clung to my external appearance as if it were who I truly was. I began to think of myself only as a body; it was compulsive, but oddly comforting. “If you like what I look like, you like all of me because all of me is what you see.”

Walking down the street was an invigorating experience. I began to notice who turned their head when I passed, and every lingering gaze felt like an internal victory.

At eighteen, I had a nice body, though not as slender as Twiggy, the fashion model. My mom accompanied me to the doctor to help me lose weight, and they prescribed amphetamines. I realized that taking them made me feel happier, more effortlessly vibrant, and the center of attention. I considered these pills my friends and took them, sometimes off schedule, before going out.

At the club, one group caught my eye. They were like the gods of Olympus. I both envied and admired them—blonde girls with straight hair (while I was dark with curls), dark-haired guys with blue eyes. I observed them without being noticed, copying their gestures and mannerisms in the mirror, even mimicking one of the leader's flaws—she walked with her feet turned inward! I longed to be part of their circle, not with my friends, who were more timid, unnoticed, and came from a convent school. I still remember moments when, looking at them, the desire to belong “there” was as intense as rejecting my current place. The exclusion felt like an active rejection, even though they didn’t even know me. In those moments, I made a silent promise to myself that one day, I would be among those who mattered.

M. stood out in the group—handsome, uninhibited, a bit cocky. Every night, I went to bed an hour earlier to “think.” I meticulously constructed a scenario where M. fell in love with me, thinking about it with unwavering consistency and relishing it as if it were true. When I saw

my sister with her eyes closed in bed, I was convinced she was also “thinking” about what she wanted to happen. I thought that everyone did it before sleeping.

Some time passed, and the scene actually took place, similar to the one I had imagined. I decided that I had discovered a new technique: every time I wanted something in the future, I’d think about it, and it would happen. I felt incredibly powerful, like someone capable of mastering anything, a “queen” because M. had chosen me.

We were engaged for several years, in a relationship that had two sides: private and public. In private, I felt natural with him; we loved each other, we fought, we had fun, and we suffered. Sometimes we would gaze at each other in silence, and the ecstasy we experienced was in seeing our wonderful reflections in each other’s eyes. My heart would open, and I felt strength swell in my chest. Now, I call it love.

However, in public, it was the epitome of a show. During that time, my tendency to observe myself from an external perspective intensified, especially in the streets, when I reveled in what I saw when I was with him. M. was ideal for my picture-perfect image. I imagined that everyone regarded us with admiring eyes—even during rugby games! I was posing, just in case.

Five years later, I decided to end the relationship because “together, we weren’t the best.” M. wasn’t studying or working; he continued charming everyone and wandering around. Even though I loved him and understood him, I felt an incredibly strong internal and external pressure to leave him. I couldn’t tolerate “his” failure. It wasn’t until seven years later that I cried for the pain that breakup had caused me—a pain I hadn’t been consciously aware of at the time.

Río Abierto

At twenty-eight, I joined Río Abierto, a school focused on inner development through bodywork. I felt fluid and ready to dance. In the beginning, I imagined approving looks following me, but a new world also opened up: a social landscape where I met diverse people with different values. I was puzzled, unsure of which persona would be accepted. This marked a more conscious phase than before.

At that point, I already felt like a failure, even though I didn’t want to admit it. I had studied Fine Arts with the dream of becoming a great artist, but it wasn’t happening. Most of my childhood friends were already married with children, while I was still single. I could no longer “pretend that everything was fine” so easily.

One of the most liberating aspects of entering Río Abierto was realizing that being married and supported by a man no longer seemed as appealing to me as it once had.

I quickly started gaining weight, eating without restraint, as if swallowing everything I had forbidden myself for the sake of a good figure. My body transformed, and I gained ten kilos. I looked at myself in the mirror and saw a stranger. I hated myself. Severe acne also began. One day, in the height of desperation, I counted the boils on my face: thirty-two.

I started losing teaching jobs at several schools. I could barely afford rent and the training course at Río Abierto, which became the center of my life in the following years. I hardly had enough money for food; my new friends helped me out.

While crying out all the tears I’d bottled up, I came face to face with the fear, insecurity, dependency, and pain I had been hiding. There were long periods where I felt like I was dying.

The people from my “before” days didn’t recognize me. “Where is my Claudia?” lamented my mother, and I was filled with despair. Everything crumbled. It hit me: “I am losing everything.” When María Adela (the director of Río Abierto) told me that I was going through “the dark night of the soul,” it resonated deeply. Everything was slipping through my fingers. I had nothing to hold onto. I was utterly powerless.

One day, during the peak of this inner turmoil, I heard these words during meditation: “Man helps man.” At first, I assumed it was the radio, since I was alone in the room. But again, the phrase echoed in my mind: “Man helps man.” My heart told me it was true—that someone was helping me grow and get through this tough stage. It was the beginning of a newfound trust.

Thus began a phase where I began sensing energy, feeling an inner guide, and having experiences—whether in dreams or while awake—that unveiled a new, expansive, and subtle realm: the transpersonal. I discussed each experience with María Adela, and her guidance became the scaffolding for an internal explosion that I doubt I could have navigated alone.

I remember those four years as ones of loss and discovery. I relinquished, with intense pain, what was dearest to me until then: the pillars that had supported me internally—beauty, wealth, approval, and, above all, the notion, “I am strong, I can handle it, the world is within my grasp. I don’t suffer.”

On the other hand, I welcomed and explored these new planes of consciousness, happiness, and light that I had never before fathomed. In fact, I called it “the new world.”

I started reading psycho-spiritual books, changed my diet, and practiced meditation. I also did a lot of movement work and group therapy. All of it felt like an internal revolution that swept away everything.

I yearned for it with every fiber of my being. Something inside me couldn’t bear the level of falsehood in which I had been living, and I surrendered.

One day, during meditation, I stumbled upon “what I am,” so to speak. And what I am—what we are—transcends the bounds of time and space. That’s my reality.

It was the turning point in my life. From that moment on, even though everything appeared the same on the surface, nothing ever felt the same again. It was like I declared, “I know who I am.” Although at an existential level, I continued to despair, there was another level that always coexisted with the tangible manifestation. At that fundamental level, I was something that eluded visibility; it can only be described as Being.

Life took on a new direction: figuring out how to blend these two levels that seemed so distant from each other.

Then another illusion gripped me: “I’m there, or almost there! The worst is over. From now on, everything will be easy.”

After a period of “grace,” which lasted more than a year following the realization of “being,” the encounter with exclusion, loneliness, and existential anguish stemming from separation became nearly constant for me.

Over the next two years, I lived through the hell of my personality, where the agony of losing the mask that had once “saved” me made the experience of separation even worse. This pain manifested in various forms: the severing of the umbilical cord, the loss of contact with the soul and all that is genuine, internal isolation, and the detachment from everything essential. It seemed to me that this separation was the root cause of all subsequent turmoil—the mask, the self-deception. Indeed, the pain of separation had been so excruciating that I had to dissociate from it to survive and cover it up with something else, regardless of its falseness.

Scenes from my childhood flashed before my eyes: night cough filled with images of evil entities forcing me out of the house, leading me to the conclusion: “It must be because of my wickedness.” I remember the Christmas letter to Santa: to become good. I yearned to be good but couldn’t. There was a moment when I concluded that I could never be “good,” but what I could do was fight to prevent the punishment I believed I deserved from coming.

Let me share a snippet from my diary during those early years at Río Abierto—my revelations:

I can’t figure out “how to be.” I am overtaken by a self that I am not, then another that I’m not either, and so it goes all day. I can’t find something more stable to anchor myself. I feel manipulated by internal forces. And to think, I believed it was me controlling them!

They praise me. For the first time, I realize that being praised or criticized doesn’t change anything about who I am. Another person’s opinion may make me happy or unhappy, but I don’t change. I don’t become better or worse based on what others say!

I seek myself through others. The other person is crucial, not for who they are, but because in their eyes, I find my own reflection. Seeing myself mirrored there validates my existence. If I don’t have two eyes reflecting me, I die.

There’s an impulse to confess what I had previously denied—the most humiliating things, what I never wanted anyone to know. Strangely, now it has become a form of liberation. If they stay with me and love me, it should be for who I am, not because I’ve cut myself into little pieces and shown only the most acceptable parts.

I can’t help but do what the other person wants. It’s frustrating. Today, while talking to R., I noticed she manipulates the conversation so I admire her, praise her. In a moment of pause, I sense her unspoken request, and I hear myself saying, “You were great.”

I revisit a scene where I see my mother’s lack of love. I implore her, “What do I have to do to make you love me?” I feel I’m willing to do anything for it, to be and do whatever she wants, without limits.

My struggle revolves around prestige. Perhaps, when nobody loves me and everyone despises me, I’ll find my center.

The most important thing for me is the connection with the body and movement. The body doesn’t lie. It helps me unmask myself in front of my own eyes. It’s so decisive…finally!

All the old pain resurfaced intensely at first, and then gradually subsided, as if it had exhausted itself. I found myself interested in life outside again; the first cycle of my inner work had been completed.

In Buenos Aires, I met my future husband. With Enzo, I moved to Italy, his home country. There, we opened a Río Abierto center in Naples together.

In the years that followed, I found myself falling into another self-deception, one that shaped itself around a different theme. It was once again linked to a sense of omnipotence—no longer grounded in ideas of beauty and emotional detachment, but in the belief that “I will save the world, I have a mission, I am someone important, special.” This manifestation of vanity and self-importance became more internalized.

Other personality traits began to surface: hyperactivity, efficiency, speed, the ability to sell and market myself, fear of failure, an iron will to succeed, along with anxiety and a need for control

The Enneagram

When I encountered the Enneagram, I had been living in Italy for seven years. The Río Abierto Institute we had founded had expanded significantly; our proposals were widely accepted, and I had more work than I could handle.

Motherhood plunged me into the greatest conflict I had ever faced. On one hand, there was the love for the tangible, my daughter; moments of transcending the self and connecting with her on a profound level. On the other hand, there was the internal pressure to work, to bear the responsibility of my professional creation, to continue succeeding. Here’s an excerpt from my diary from that time:

"Río Abierto is my first child, and Carolina, my second. I hear the cries, the needs of R.A., and I fear it will wither if I don’t nurture it, and that it won’t nourish me anymore. Meanwhile, Carolina wants my presence, milk, and companionship. Sometimes I go back and forth three or four times a day to the institute. I breastfeed, leave her asleep, rush to the institute, give a class, return, breastfeed her, go back to the institute, give a massage, go back home. And so, every day for almost a year. I feel incredibly tired and desperate, but I don’t give up. I tried to juggle both, even at the cost of my other needs, such as peace, rest, friendships, or pleasure."

Undoubtedly, I prioritized work over the relationship. When Enzo demanded my presence, it seemed unjust to me: “Can’t you see I’m at my limit, trying to do everything right?”

Amidst all this, I encountered the Enneagram.

When Claudio Naranjo described the E3 type, I started to feel afraid. I contracted, discreetly scanning the room, frightened. People seemed at ease, occasionally laughing at his descriptions of the traits. I didn’t laugh.

My anxiety intensified; it felt as if he was speaking directly to me, making fun of me. I felt like crying, drowned in intense shame. “It’s true, I’m exactly like that,” I thought to myself. It was as though the entire group knew it was about me, and I wanted to disappear. Logic told me that hardly anyone knew me, but the desire to vanish was overwhelming. My frustration turned to anger at Claudio: “How dare he speak this way? This is a secret; no one should know! My motivations, my deepest desires, shouldn’t be revealed.” I realized

how effectively I had concealed them, even from myself, how I had dressed them up in noble causes and missions.

Before he finished speaking, I felt a pain settle in—a deep one I hadn’t experienced in a long time: the pain of realizing the loss of Self and witnessing the entire structure that had masked its reality.

For me, Self was what I had discovered years ago. But what I had never seen was what I replaced it with in my consciousness: every other self, each with a lowercase "s," unwittingly swapped for the capital “S” Self. While I had glimpsed fragments of this before, they hadn’t connected or formed that living structure—living or dead, if by "dead" I mean the inertia of movement.

When my turn came to speak, I proudly announced, “I’m a Three!” And I felt certain I wasn’t wrong. This certainty elevated me above others, who appeared unsure, offering me consolation in my desolation.

During a discussion among the Threes, the surprise grew. Countless small details of our daily lives coincided, particularly in the inner experiences that accompanied them. It was like encountering beings of the same species and fur, where recognizing identical miseries wasn’t humiliating but rather comforting.

Returning home, I was enthusiastic about what I had discovered, but soon, unexpected effects replaced that enthusiasm. Given the not-so-honorable motivation behind my charitable actions—seeking attention and admiration—they lost all their meaning. If all the efforts spent organizing workshops, trips, and conferences were only to shine, to have an audience that flattered me, not driven by my “will to serve,” what good was that? I felt weak and desireless, apathetic.

Sometimes I found myself sitting on the bed, unable to find a valid reason to do what I once did happily. And it wasn’t because everything was going wrong—because I was fat, ugly, and poor like in my youth—but because I couldn’t identify anything of value that truly moved me. For a while, I felt dull, tired, and disillusioned, especially with myself.

I remember that during this time, Enzo and I grew closer. In our relationship, I felt like I had found something more real. I also felt a greater connection to people and their needs—not as a savior but as a companion in shared misfortune.

A kind of compassion emerged in me, a sense of being in the same boat, which I hadn’t experienced before except in moments of grace. I felt I was getting closer to people.

After a while, energy began to stir again, as if I had assimilated and digested a part of what I had discovered. I continued to scrutinize my behavior in this newfound light. A diary entry from that period:

"Claudio spoke about the E3’s compulsive desire for success and the fear of failure. I see that in my case, this fear is particularly strong, especially the terror that others will perceive my shortcomings. Today, I was about to begin my movement classes. Very few students showed up. I felt anxious, glancing out the classroom window, sensing my significance and value plummeting within me. My attention didn’t dwell on this; it anxiously focused on ensuring that no other instructor ‘realized my class was empty,’ and that passing students from other classes wouldn’t notice."

Deep down, it wasn’t just about failing; it was the fear of others discovering my "failure." The unbearable aspect was the image of being labeled a failure!

I became very critical of my need to be seen and acknowledged. I recognized it as an addiction, a drug without which I darkened and shrank. When showered with compliments, I felt embarrassed, never fully accepting them, feeling guilty for manipulating to receive them, believing I didn’t truly deserve them.

I seduce and regret, ask, receive, and then reject. I feel trapped, unable to escape. Perhaps fully accepting appreciation and recognition, without inventing false modesty at the last moment, is a possible solution.

One day, at the end of a workshop on the topic of the masculine and feminine, people started applauding, and the men decided to lift me up. It had never happened to me before. Something inside told me to just accept it, that I had sought nothing but this in my life, and that it was time to embrace it. It felt like an inner apotheosis, and bursts of happiness flooded my heart. Something was set free, and as they lowered me and my feet touched the ground, I felt a strong sense of rebirth, as if something had normalized within me. For the first time, on one level, I felt content. There was no more emptiness. And this time, without contempt, boredom, or falsehood, I said, “It’s okay; I don’t want more.”

This experience, as the culmination of a process, signified a profound change.

A whole year passed from the first level of the Enneagram to the second. I believe it was during this second encounter, when we delved into subtypes, that I emerged as a Social 3.

Prestige

Claudio assigned us an exercise to do in pairs: to look back in our consciousness, allowing familiar scenes to surface. In my case, scenes where maintaining prestige became burdensome. These would later be "cleansed" with a special technique.

The first scene happened that very day: We were in the dining room, Claudio entered, and I felt joy seeing him, wanting to greet him. I suppressed it, walked past him as if I hadn’t noticed, and sat at a distant table. I chatted with people, but I wasn’t really present; my focus was on Claudio. During the exercise, I realized how much I wanted to cry at that moment.

As I went back in time, the scenes, with variations in place and characters, all resembled each other. They had in common the concealment of my true feelings, especially if it meant descending from an imaginary pedestal to simple joy, common fear, or pain.

I remembered, on the journey back, a moment when I gave up sharing my pain and made an oath about it. I must have been seven or eight years old. I had developed a fear of the end of the world. At night, I couldn’t sleep and couldn’t stop crying. I knew everything was going to end, that we were all going to disappear. I think it was some kind of awareness of impermanence, or something like that. First, my parents tried to console me by telling me it wasn’t as I believed. But I was certain it was! Then they started getting angry and took me outside: "Now cry if you want!" Terrified, I banged on the door, screaming until they relented and let me in. They brought me inside, saying, "What will the neighbors say?"

That night, lying in bed, I vowed to never again reveal my fears because the consequences were atrocious, and no one would endure my pain; I could only expect rejection. I also inferred, recalling the terror it stirred in me, that they had brought me in because "What will the neighbors say?" Otherwise, they might have left me outside all night.

The next aspect of dealing with pain was deciding that, if I couldn’t express it, I shouldn’t acknowledge it either. As a child, I worried that everything “shows on me.” On one hand, my mother didn’t see me, but on the other, it seemed to me that she strongly reacted to my feelings and actions. She would get angry, get depressed, or withdraw. I fantasized that she could read my mind, that she could “guess” what I was going through. I made a conscious effort to conceal anything that could pose a problem and only show triumph, enthusiasm, joy, and even anger—since it was associated with strength and respectability. I think it was the only negative emotion I allowed myself to feel.

Returning to the exercise on prestige and those scenes, the last one, whether symbolic or not, transcends time: I am a woman being stoned to death. Filled with hatred, I don’t ask for forgiveness or mercy, but shout my revenge. Hidden are the underlying feelings of impotence, physical pain, and the desire to plead for clemency. When I cleanse the scene of this burden, I feel a deep sense of peace, freeing me from the obligation to hide behind a

mask. I experience beatitude that arises from forgiveness. After a few minutes, I feel my ovaries begin to throb, as if coming back to life. Faint, yet deep, I feel their rebirth.

The energetic transformation of my ovaries opened the door to a slow process of rediscovering my sexuality—not affirmatively, as a means of transgression or because “it’s good to be passionate,” as before, but more intimately, deeply.

Fear of Life/Control

My parents were dignified and respectable, refined and quite cultured. The house was bright, with a garden; the swimming pool filled with friends in the summer. We, the daughters, were beautiful and vital. Behind this image, which seemed “ideal” to me for many years, there were shadows and pains that took me a long time in therapy to recognize. Even though I had suffered intensely, it was as if I hadn’t realized the suffering.

I remember playing at night when I heard the key turning in the front door. It was my dad, coming home from work. I ran happily to greet him. I had been waiting for him all day because, for a long time, he was the only one who loved me. He was drunk. Mom looked at him with contempt, and the ice set in. I loved him, but now I was also afraid to approach him. Besides, if I did, Mom would hate me even more. I didn’t know what to do. Everything was falling apart. The support I expected didn’t appear; instead, it turned into its opposite. I felt like I was without solid ground beneath my feet.

After repeatedly going through this experience, I remember deciding that there was nothing worse than “being disappointed”—expecting something “good” and it not happening. That being open, calm, and defenseless, only to have a shock in that vulnerable state, was something I needed to avoid.

I began, later on, to look down on him too and freeze when the sound of the key signaled his arrival. If he hadn’t been drinking, everything was joyous; we ate, made jokes, and Mom was happy. I heard them chatting in the kitchen until late. I think they loved each other. But if he was drunk, everything became painful and incomprehensible. My father, who was generally tender and affectionate, reproached us for a thousand things we didn’t understand, and a struggle would ensue where we, the daughters, acted as intermediaries between his desire to keep drinking and my mother’s attempts to prevent it. I learned to be “on guard” as soon as it started to get dark, expecting the worst. And the worst was my father returning drunk. There was nothing I could do about it. I was utterly powerless and at the mercy of it. The only thing I could do was be “prepared” for the blow, so it didn’t hurt me as much. The next day, I knew that my father would apologize to us, and that hurt me. It seemed unfair that he had to humiliate himself before us.

On the other hand, my mother lived oppressed, whether by all the women in my father’s family (we lived with my grandmother and great-grandmother for a while) or by herself. She had respiratory collapses, where she would fall to the ground, purple, with her arms and hands paralyzed. I would run to the nearby hospital to get a doctor, terrified, praying she wouldn’t die. They would give her a sedative injection, and she would relax. There too, the worst part was the unpredictability of the experience. It seemed to me that just a moment before, my mom had been watering her plants peacefully, and everything had been harmonious. The impression was that everything could change from one moment to the next, not only without me having done anything to make it happen but also that I had to be ready to resolve it. My mom always thanked me for “saving” her. And I felt good thinking it was true, proud to have helped her.

I associate this type of experience with the fear of life, and above all, of what happens without my knowledge. I have to know, to follow events so that, at least, I can handle “the catastrophe that will surely come” as best as possible.

In all of this, the one who was spared and always seemed calm was my great-grandmother. An elderly woman with a wise appearance, always surrounded by her books and translations, she would tell me, “Nothing in excess, Claudia. It’s the key to life.” It seemed to me that she was right, that the reason for my parents’ madness was their lack of self-control. I never considered that my father’s excesses with alcohol and my mother’s seizures were merely escape valves or inevitable overflows.

It surprised me when Claudio told me, during the third Enneagram encounter, “You are less controlled.” It was the topic I had paid the least attention to, one I wasn’t ready to confront before. Control had become “meat of my flesh,” and the fear of truly letting myself be free was immense. I had internalized that everything spontaneous, instinctive, and natural was a monster to be locked up. Hence, somatic work and free, expressive movement became like a panacea—something that continues to offer joyful healing.

How has control manifested in my life? One form is always having to know what I want or, at the very least, believing that I do. I’ve spent much of my time trying to achieve this, inventing strategies to keep everything under my “dominion.” I think the powerlessness I felt as a child was so great that I needed to tell myself and believe that I could control everything, that things happened because I planned them and wanted them that way. Of course, this view has been revealed to me as false, but only now am I beginning to fully realize how little depends on me. I’m also learning to discern where the power of action and transformation is real and where it is merely illusory and compensatory. If such power exists!

Fifteen years later

It has been fifteen years since I wrote these lines, and I’d like to briefly describe what has been happening internally during this time: what has changed, what hasn’t, and the path I have walked.

Undoubtedly, the core of my character remains the same. This foundation I described earlier is what stirs when I am afraid. And it is precisely fear that has been calming down.

In a moment of synthesis, I would say that this life has mainly served to work on “trust.” I was born with essential trust, but I lost it. That loss created the desire for reunion and the aspiration to develop it throughout my life. And that trust has always been put to the test. The test was simply trusting life, reaching the point where, “whatever happens”—pleasant or unpleasant, easy or difficult—I would not doubt that life is “good,” that God is good, and that I am.

It seems to me that this “essential goodness” I now perceive, and upon which I can lean, has been a guiding star for me. It is a point toward which my search unknowingly oriented itself. This star attracts me, and at the same time, moves away—a magnetic point that propels my journey. In my case, it relates to trust, which arises from discovering the divine goodness in manifestation.

To discover this goodness, the setbacks I faced over these years served me well. They helped me realize that, despite them, Life has a harmonizing force—a wisdom that orders, creates, dissolves, and pushes toward fulfillment. It’s in my favor, not against me, as I had believed for so long.

What happened in these fifteen years:

At the age of forty-six, I began attending week-long silent retreats with Claudio. These retreats, four in a row, one each year, provided me with an inner impulse for spiritual growth that changed my life once again, in a profound way. On one hand, I had experiences of unknown and essential inner levels during the retreat, encountering the transpersonal in a new way. And then, there was an effect that extended and deepened throughout the year—thanks to daily meditation and the attempt to be present in the moment. This practice has not left me since.

Meditation, prayer, and silence became spiritual practices that grew in space and importance in my life. Initially, they felt like efforts and duties, simply things I thought were “good,” so I tried to implement them. I often appreciated the discipline of sitting and meditating, experiencing moments of happiness, peace, silence, or connection with myself.

During this time, the tenacity, self-control, effort, and obedience of my Enneagram type served me well.

Then, it ceased to be something self-imposed and began to respond to a need: the need to pause. These became the only moments where I stopped being active, where stillness began to feel nourishing rather than a waste of time or a threat.

Later, it evolved into a practice that was no longer just formal, i.e., “sitting to meditate,” but integrated into life itself—a sense of Presence where there once was a feeling of emptiness or anxious absence.

Working with others also changed, focusing more on creating spaces where meditation and our inner, silent presence could be encountered. This has become the most interesting aspect for me. Being alone and in silence during the day also became, not just an imperative need for self-discovery, but the pleasure of savoring another dimension within life itself.

In fact, it was after those retreats, where Claudio accompanied me with profound wisdom and generosity, that I felt, for the first time in my life, the desire to walk alone—accompanied by this trust I’ve spoken of, awakening internally as a guide.

During these years, I faced difficulties again with my body and work—the two areas where I seem to flow best, but also where all obstacles arise for me, more than in personal relationships, for example. Laden with expectations, this is where I strive, demand from myself, and where I tire and get sick.

A few years ago, I decided that the only solution to avoid being consumed by work was to set a limit on the quantity. It was difficult for me, as it felt like rejecting something precious. Having free spaces frightened me, as if they were the prelude to abandonment, emptiness, forgetfulness, and failure.

Along with this reduction in activity, my husband and I moved to the countryside. A small house we had bought for vacations turned out to be the necessary space for this change. During the week, we stay here, and on weekends, I go to work outside—not every weekend!

Nature has become, and still is, my teacher, healer, haven, and fundamental nourishment. Everything is so natural, simple, and honest—without a mask, direct. And there, in nature, I’ve realized that human beings are also “nature”—essentially pure and capable of flowing again like trees, plants, or small animals in the forest.

The feeling of unity, which I thought would be easier to find with humans in intense or loving situations, has been easier for me to find in nature, a place I hadn’t been drawn to before. I realized that alienating myself from nature was also disconnecting me from myself and my body. It’s as if the elements of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water in the body find their harmony in the forest, more than in human groups.

Until a few years ago, a person was incredibly more significant to me than a tree. It still is, but not as much anymore, and the tree, the lizard, the little flower, are starting to become understandable and close to me.

Friendship has taken on greater importance in recent years. Even inner work happens a lot through dialogues and conversations with friends—philosophical elaborations or supporting each other through the difficulties encountered in life.

So, for a few years now, I feel that something inside me has calmed down. I’m not sure if it’s the nervous system, but there’s a sense of descent—a slowing down. Life is pleasant, “it treats me well,” and maybe I’ve learned to listen to it and be a bit gentler with it.

In my love relationship, living alone here is where love has taken up space and flows more easily.

In general, I’m starting to accept character differences in relationships and see them as richness. But this still requires effort.

What else can I say? In all the “good” that has happened, I still feel that what disrupts arises from deep within, and what disturbs me is fear. Always fear. And now, it’s more focused on the “fear of making a mistake.” As if this work with trust were not yet complete, as if there were no surrender to the process that I imagine could happen. And it remains my guiding north.

The difference is that now, in addition to fear, I perceive an open inner space where that fear can dissolve—much like a cloud dissolves in the air. Sometimes it’s harder, sometimes easier, but its consistency has undoubtedly changed. It’s no longer frightening.