The Guarded Dreamer
Theme: You act like you don’t want things so you don’t get disappointed but your soul is ready to speak!
You are the Guarded Dreamer, someone who senses they’re meant for more, but struggles to fully admit what they want. You dream in flashes. You feel potential stir in your bones. But letting yourself want it? Speak it? Move toward it?
That feels… risky. Your dreams are real, but they feel buried. You’re holding back, not because you lack vision, but because having a vision feels dangerous!
You have an incredible sense of protection over your dreams, ensuring that they are precious and worth nurturing. Your natural instinct to guard your heart and your desires means that you take time to ensure that your dreams are aligned with your authentic self. When you feel safe, your resilience and inner strength allow you to stand confidently in your desires.
As the Guarded Dreamer you’re deeply protective of your vision and dreams, ensuring that what you create is true to your heart. Your caution and discernment allows you to make wise decisions that protect your energy and creativity. You are building the emotional strength and safety to confidently step into your full potential and actually say what you want!!
Your Nervous System Pattern
You live in a protective form of shutdown — a mix of freeze + dissociation.
Your body says: “Don’t want it too much. Don’t try too hard. If you fail, you’ll break.”
It’s really hard to feel motivated when you can’t see the big picture or really express what your heart truly wants. You’re kinda skirting around your own dreams. But it’s not because your dreams are gone; you learned numb desire to avoid disappointment.
You might say:
“I don’t know what I want.”
“Nothing really excites me right now.”
“I used to be passionate, but now I just feel tired.”
When dreaming feels too risky, your system chooses numbness over hope.
This is a protective response, not a lack of ambition.
Perfectionism Type
You do things because you think it’s expected from you, or you were pressured into making decisions in your life because you thought it would impress someone (parents, friends, co-workers, that dummy ex…).
But now, it’s just not working. Your fear of failure keeps you from pursuing what your heart really wants to do, and often you find yourself in relationships you don’t want to be in anymore, but you won’t leave because that means that you failed. You stay in jobs and projects longer than you need to, because otherwise you think that you failed. You do many things in life for too long, because quitting something makes you think you failed.
You’re reluctant to try.
You tip toe around everything and have MAJOR commitment issues to things that you ACTUALLY care about. You probably believe that playing it safe is helping you, but it's hurt you in SO many ways, and it's time to change that. Even though you want to make calculated decisions, you're likely to overthink it to the point where you're paralyzed in making ANY kind of choices. You're so afraid of being wrong, that you rather stay in the same place year after year (and complain about it...) than make a choice!
This fear of failure is your main motivation. And that’s not really healthy.
This type of perfectionism makes you afraid of things you enjoy because you can’t really rationalize doing those things when there is so much to be achieved. This has made you learn how to seek love and acceptance from others, more than from yourself.
Your Drive Your main driver is the fear of vulnerability and disappointment.
Your Loop Procrastination that eventually leads to Shame
Your Emotional Patterns
You navigate a lot of shame. You really want something but you just can’t say it! You have:
Fear of failure or embarrassment
Fear of admitting what you want and not getting it
A tendency to talk others into their dreams but stay quiet about your own
Shame around “not living up to your potential”
You may have stopped dreaming because it started to hurt. You’re afraid to ask for more, because last time you tried and it didn’t go as planned. And your nervous system remembers.
Energy Gates + Strengths
This is a conundrum because your strengths are also where your challenges are. You have a strong solar plexus energy center, which helps you maintain tight control over your world to avoid emotional risk. You can be highly capable, strong, and composed, but usually this comes from having to survive. You lead with “I’ve got this,” but underneath is fear of collapse.
Shadows
You’re so capable, but the shadow of this is being hyper-independent, emotionally dysregulated, and guarded.
Underactive: Heart and Throat
Your most under-active energy centers are your heart and your throat. You don’t speak your truth, or from your heart. The disconnect means that you’re usually skirting around your true desires, evading what your heart really wants. And when you say things you don’t really mean, your expression becomes more inauthentic. That further puts you into procrastination and shame.
Elements Earth
Again, this is a conundrum. Your strongest elemental factor is also what’s working against you. Earth says: stability, truth, connection. But when imbalanced, it’s giving RIDGID and UNROOTED.
Flow State
Your flow state activates when you fall in love with the PROCESS, and not the outcome. Easier said than done because there are so many emotional narratives that are constantly happening for you around your inner worth and true desires. You don’t actually feel SAFE to express, so if the steps you’re taking to your goals are all unenjoyable, you’re going to keep feeling unsafe. Everything is going to feel like a punishment. Instead, work on ritualizing your creativity but falling in love with the process. 100% of it won’t be love and light, but if you can enjoy more of the process than not, you’ll have an easier time staying with in emotionally. It’s like doing exercises you hate because you want a certain outcome, vs doing ones you like - which can give you same and similar results. The pathway to the goal is less discouraging when you make it more enjoyable.