[00:00:00] I wonder if you've ever caught yourself saying, "I'm fine," even when you're not. Or maybe someone has said to you, "You don't let people in very easily." People describe you as independent, strong, capable, resilient, the one who can handle anything. And on the surface, that probably feels true, but underneath, sometimes there's a whole other story.
Hi, I'm Nicki Kuurman, and welcome to The Practical Mystic Podcast, where universal wisdom meets modern life. Over the past couple of weeks, I've been exploring the four alignment patterns. These patterns are what we fall into when we're feeling overwhelmed, stressed, and emotionally dysregulated. Today is the fourth and final alignment pattern that I like to call The Guardian.
The Guardian can sometimes be told that they are cold, hard to [00:01:00] get to know, that they don't feel very warm. They're often quite mysterious. But the guardian isn't somebody who doesn't want love and isn't loving. In fact, quite the opposite. The Guardian often longs for deep connection, for people that they can truly relax with and be themselves, and for relationships where they don't have to be the strong one all the time.
The longing is there. The difficulty is trust. Because at some point in life, trust became expensive. Maybe your heart was broken. Maybe somebody betrayed you. Maybe somebody left. Maybe you learned that vulnerability was not safe. Or perhaps not one event happened at all, it's just years of disappointment, little moments, little hurts, little [00:02:00] betrayals, one after the other, after the other, until one day, without even realizing it, your heart quietly made a decision: never again.
The first thing I noticed about a guardian is the walls that they have put up around them. They will often acknowledge the walls and say, "Yeah, I've built walls. It's not safe not to have them." Sometimes they don't even acknowledge that they are walled in. They just talk about how careful they are and that they've learned not to expect too much, and "I don't need anyone.
I'm happier on my own." And sometimes that is true. Solitude can be deeply nourishing. Quite oftentimes the guardian is an introvert, and it feels really good to have a lot of alone time and fill up their cup. Independence is a beautiful quality, but independence born from freedom feels very different to independence born from [00:03:00] protection.
One expands you, the other isolates you. I often talk about something jokingly, and I call it the F-off wall. It's that moment when your heart just slams shut and the walls go up and they are solid concrete. They are not moving. They are not budging. Sometimes they are not even letting any light in. And the moment that the heart slams shut, it's not because we're cruel and it's not because we don't care, but it's because we've reached the point where feeling open is just too painful, too vulnerable, unsafe.
And honestly, we do it all the time. I've done it. Clients talk about it all the time. My friends talk about it all the time. It's such a human response. It's the kindest thing sometimes we can do to protect ourselves in a volatile situation, is to put that wall up. It makes me think of the Robert Frost quote, "If I was going to build a wall, I'd like to know [00:04:00] what I was walling in and what I was walling out."
The problem isn't the wall. The wall protects us. The problem is it doesn't just protect us from pain, it also protects us from love, from intimacy, from support, from receiving, from being truly seen, and it creates an incongruence in our energy when we say one thing, but people feel that wall, and they, they just don't understand you.
The same wall that keeps the hurt out also keeps life out. There's been times in my life when I realized that I wasn't protecting my peace, I was protecting my fear, and there's a big difference. I told myself I was being discerning, that I was setting boundaries, that I was choosing wisely, and some of that was true.
But if I'm really honest, part of me was just simply afraid to be open [00:05:00] again. Because opening means risk. Opening means uncertainty. Opening means a potential for getting hurt. And that's when I really started to realize that I wasn't protecting my heart, and that my heart isn't always a peaceful heart.
Sometimes it's a lonely one. When we think of protection, we often think of the person that you're protecting yourself from or the situation you're protecting yourself from. But when I ask a client what are they actually protecting, it's nearly always an older part of themself, a younger part, a hurt part, a disappointed part, or part that once believed that if I stay open, this will happen again and again and again.
When we can meet that part of us with compassion instead of judgment, something softens. And [00:06:00] I want to be really clear, this isn't about opening your heart to everyone and having to be vulnerable with every person that you meet and it's not about not having boundaries. It's about trusting yourself to know and have the discernment to open and close those boundaries when it's appropriate for you.
Not just a blanket wall, and not just a blanket, "I have to be really open." It's not about trusting blindly. Healthy boundaries are not walls. They're doors, and the doors can be opened. Doors can close. Doors can allow you to choose. Walls don't choose. Sometimes when I do a visualization process about the wall with a client, they'll want to keep the wall, but maybe only, like, knee height or waist height, so they can see what's coming, just in case they have to put the wall back up [00:07:00] again.
 What if sometimes it can just be made of a different material that you can see through, or perhaps your wall today needs to be able to step over it? But sometimes that wall just needs to go, because it's just a trip hazard.
It's not a fixed place to be, and healing from this doesn't mean it has to be completely open and leave yourself vulnerable. I think healing means trusting yourself to choose what's right for you in every moment. The guardian's gift is extraordinary. They are so discerning and so grounded, loyal, deeply thoughtful about who they let into their world, and they don't offer trust lightly.
When they do, it's incredibly meaningful. Those aren't qualities to lose. I'm not trying to dismantle the guardian or the protector. We're simply making sure that the protection isn't running the whole [00:08:00] show. Maybe this week, just notice the moments you instinctively pull back. When someone offers help, when someone gives you a compliment, you immediately deflect it.
When someone tries to get close to you, to have a, a connection with you, what happens?
Notice when love arrives in small, ordinary ways. Before you automatically step back, just pause, take a breath, and ask yourself, "Am I protecting my peace, or am I protecting my wound?"
That one question can change everything. I want you to know that the guardian is not broken. Just because they are reacting from a past experience doesn't mean there's something [00:09:00] wrong. We all put up walls when we feel unsafe. The guardian has loved so deeply that they know what hurt feels like. I'm not asking you to stop protecting yourself.
I'm simply inviting your heart to discover that not every moment in the past, not every person who has ever loved you wants to hurt you. Not every experience ends the same way. Sometimes the bravest thing we can do isn't building a stronger wall. It's opening the door just a crack to let life back in.
If you're curious about which alignment pattern fits you, I've created a free two-minute quiz, and I'll link it into the show notes. As we've reached the end of these four alignment patterns, I hope you've recognized yourself a little bit along the way, maybe in one pattern or maybe in all four. [00:10:00] Remember, these aren't boxes to put yourself in.
This isn't a personality quiz or a fixed pattern. This is something that's changeable. These patterns bring awareness, and awareness creates choices, and choice creates freedom. Thank you so much for being with me today. If you're watching or listening to this podcast, please subscribe, like, and follow on your favourite platform.
If this has been valuable for you and you know somebody who would like to share in this experience, please share the podcast and the links to the quiz. It's a greater way to understand yourself, the patterns and areas that we're stuck in, and how we can move to be more free, more awake, and more kind to ourselves and to others.
Thanks so much for joining me this week. Remember to shift your state and change your story.
