Listening to the Heart When Love Is Difficult- A client’s story

My client loves her brother. From the very first Pantarei Approach session we had, it was clear how strong their bond was. She told me that it was always her and him. They grew up with a single mother who suffered from depression, which was not treated at the time. Throughout her upbringing, she and her brother stood together and supported one another.

Her life now holds many beginnings. She has just moved into a new apartment with her girlfriend and her cat, and she is on her way to becoming an art therapist, something she has long dreamed of and finally dared to pursue.

In one of our recent sessions, I asked her about the new apartment and her studies. She soon began to talk about her brother. The atmosphere became heavy, as if we were relating to difficult tasks she could not let go of.

A Love That Feels Like Responsibility

My client’s brother lives hundreds of kilometers away. She visits him every other month, calls him several times per week, and maintains close contact with his children. He is in his early thirties and works in a job he dislikes, repeatedly saying that he is destined to fail, as he believes their mother did.

No matter how much my client encourages him, nothing seems to move. When she talks about him, it often feels as if he is showing her, again and again, that he will not change, as if he is trying to convince her to give up on him.

When Her Own Life Fades Into the Background

When she came to our session, all she wanted to talk about was her brother. When I asked her about her new apartment, the new chapter in her relationship with her girlfriend, or her studies, she could hardly answer.

Her shoulders and back were tense, her concentration low. She told me she feels as if she walks in a cloud, almost as if she embodied how her brother feels.

Logic might suggest she should let go of him, truly give up on trying to change the situation, and allow him to live his own life as the adult that he is.

But we cannot stop loving someone.

And we cannot change someone who does not want to change.

This dilemma became the center of our session.

Giving Space to the Heart

Instead of trying to resolve it, we gave her heart space. As a Pantarei Approach practitioner, I know that struggle can become a door,

I placed my hands on the sides of her ribcage, inviting her heart to take space and to love. At first, what appeared were all the things she felt she needed to do: calling her brother’s children, arranging visits, planning the next train ticket. Concern and responsibility filled the room.

I invited her to breathe and allow herself to love him, not the idea of him she carries, not the child he was, and not the adult she believes he could become.

To feel him.

To let him enter her heart.

The atmosphere changed. Tears came.

Your heart knows how to hold both pain and love, I reminded her. And here we were, my hands offering presence, her heart practicing love and pain at the same time.

Seeing the Heart in Color

Because she loves to paint, it did not surprise me when she began to describe her brother’s heart in color and movement.

She saw it as a purple-and-yellow wave that wants to move with joy. She also saw that these colorful waves were partly obscured by darkness.

We did not try to change the image. We did not correct it. We simply let the colors and the darkness be there.

When I said it sounded like she was painting his heart from the inside, she smiled.

Something settled. The complexity of love could be present.

When Space Returns

And then, without effort, her own life returned. She felt her girlfriend and her cat. The excitement of the new apartment. Gratitude for studying a profession she loves and is good at.

Space appeared, not because concerns for her brother disappeared, but because they were allowed to exist alongside the love she felt.

We cannot choose whom we love, and love alone cannot change others.

But when love becomes heavy, when it sits on the heart like a weight rather than opening it, we may need to trust the heart’s ability to love without immediately trying to fix, convince, or rescue. Only then can we notice where the heart wants to guide us.

What the Heart Can Hold

Giving space to the heart invites love, and it may also invite disappointment, grief, and old wounds. It is worth remembering: the heart is capable of holding all of this.

Through that holding, our hearts find direction, what we want to nourish, where our energy belongs, and how we wish to live.

After the session, my client sent me a photo of a painting she made: purple, yellow, and darkness.

I cannot share it here. But when I received it, I thought how much this image speaks to many situations we all know, and perhaps even more so in these troubling times. So much struggle and despair, and still, color and hope moving underneath.

Our hearts know how to hold it all.

They keep beating.

They keep responding.

They keep recognizing one another.