On Freestyling, Vulnerability, & the Risk of Being Seen: What Hip Hop Taught Me About Therapy
What does freestyle rap have to do with therapy? As it turns out, quite a lot. In this post, I reflect on how hip hop, spontaneity, and the courage to be vulnerable have shaped my work as a therapist—and my own healing journey.
I’m not a rapper by trade, but I love to freestyle. Not too long ago, I had a group of old college friends gathered in my living room—a reunion of sorts. Many years removed from our Friday night ciphers, we gathered around, freestyle rapping, and in between, talking beats, rhymes, and life.
One friend reflected on how freestyling is, at its core, an act of vulnerability. When you’re freestyling, you don’t know what’s going to come out of your mouth next. You’re improvising, going off the dome. You could say anything. It could be dope, it could be hilarious, it could be embarrassing–but whatever it is, it will have come from you.
What Freestyle Rap & Therapy Have in Common
That conversation stayed with me and sparked a deeper reflection on what freestyling has meant to me—and how it mirrors the work I do as a therapist.
Like I said, I’m not a rapper. But I love hip hop. I fell in love with it—especially improvisational rap—when I met my freshman year roommate in college, a gifted hip hop producer. He introduced me to beat-making, and we’d spend hours creating beats and freestyling over them.
I loved how exciting, unpredictable, and playful it felt when we were freestyling. We created this intimate space where we could say whatever we wanted. It was okay to mess up. We’d crack up when something unexpectedly hilarious came out.
Finding My Flow and the Power of Vulnerability in Freestyling
Over those college years, freestyling became one of my favorite things to do. I did it with more people in different spaces. In some circles, it stayed playful. In others, there was more pressure to perform, to say something clever, surprising, or sharp enough to earn a reaction.
Even in those more performative spaces, there was still a sense of rhythmic synchrony. Shared vulnerability and a respect for what that meant. Heads bobbing to the beat. The ongoing movement around the cipher. And if you lost the rhythm, stumbled, or said something weird? We didn’t dwell on it. We just kept the flow going.
I didn’t think too much about freestyling back then—I just did it. But lately, especially since my friend’s comment about freestyling as an act of vulnerability, I’ve been fascinated by its connections to attunement, spontaneity, and being fully present.
Freestyling as a Practice of Emotional Risk & Authenticity
When you’re really freestyling—not reciting pre-written bars, not calling it a “freestyle” just because there’s no hook—but actually going off the dome, improvising in real time, it’s a wildly enlivening blend of excitement, terror, and freedom.
You’re completely in the moment (you have to be, or you’ll lose the flow), riding the beat and allowing the words and ideas to flow out. And that’s the vulnerable part—because you don’t know what’s coming next. You’re letting something emerge in real time, without filtering or rehearsing.
That’s the risk.
That’s also the beauty.
How Hip Hop Taught Me to Be a Better Therapist
Recently, I’ve started thinking more deeply about the parallels between freestyling and therapy. When we’re in a session, it’s a lot like jazz. It’s improvisational. We don’t go in with a script or rigid plan.
It’s not aimless. We’re unpacking narratives, tracing themes, connecting dots, and experiencing new ways of showing up. In that way, it’s intentional, but it’s still spontaneous and unpredictable.
And it’s not just the improvisational aspect that therapy shares with freestyling. The same things I have felt when I’m in a good cipher—vulnerability, spontaneity, playfulness, attunement, authenticity, synchrony—these are the essential ingredients of therapy.
Freestyling, Therapy, & the Risk of Being Seen
Therapy becomes a space to practice showing up differently. To say something real and unrehearsed. To risk not being polished and still be met with presence and care.
Think of how it feels to speak fully from the heart, no defenses, and to share that with someone else. It’s so profoundly therapeutic and connecting to feel seen in that way when we show up, fully as we are, in all of our messy humanness, when the person receiving us holds nonjudgmental space and care.
And it’s also low-key terrifying. What if you judge me? Reject me? Shame me? Then I’ll remember why I put those defenses up in the first place.
But that’s the thing–no risk, no reward. It takes courage to be vulnerably authentic, because without those defenses up, you could really hurt me. But if I lower them for a moment and take the risk of being seen, it opens the potential for a radically healing and transformative relational experience.
The Risk of Being Seen in Therapy & in Life
Being vulnerable in that way has been challenging for much of my life. I have a lot of stuff that gets in the way: feelings of defectiveness, a harsh inner critic, fears of not being enough or being unlovable. Before therapy, freestyling was a vehicle for practicing vulnerable authenticity, being spontaneous and playful when it feels risky. Showing up in this unfiltered way—without editing or preparing—helped me to feel a greater degree of acceptance for myself, particularly when I discovered that I could be my full, messy self and still be seen and appreciated.
Why Defenses Exist—and What Happens When We Drop Them
It’s not easy though. We have these defenses and barriers to showing up fully as ourselves. We have internalized critical voices and narratives about our worth, or the extent to which we can trust people, telling us that we have to be careful about what we share or how we present ourselves. As a result, we grow more comfortable in the costumes we’ve learned to wear, losing touch with what comes most naturally and spontaneously.
And I get it—performing and presenting a certain version of myself seems like a good way to receive acceptance and care. It’s a wholesome, though misguided, effort to connect with you, hoping that if I don’t show you the parts I feel ashamed of, then you’ll be my friend, and you won’t reject me or judge me like others have.
Authentic Connection Is Worth the Vulnerability
But again, when we lower the risk, we lessen the possibility of having a meaningful relational experience. If I show you my costume, and you tell me you love what you see, do you love me or the costume?
Flowing Toward Authentic Connection—Creating Spaces for Spontaneity, Connection, & Healing
That’s where freestyling and therapy can be so radically healing. We get caught in the act of being ourselves, and we are pleasantly surprised when that discovery does not turn the other person away from us, but instead brings them closer.
There’s something healing about being in a space where you can mess up, pause, start again—and still be met with synchrony, presence, and care. No judgment. Whether in a cipher or the therapy room, we practice the radical act of being ourselves, and realizing that is enough.
Flowing Together: Co-Creation in the Therapy Room
One of the ways I know therapy is going well is when it starts to feel like we’re freestyling together. Not because we’re rapping (though I wouldn’t be mad about that), but because there’s a shared flow—a mutual presence and rhythm to our interaction. We’re co-creating something in real time, improvising with whatever is happening in the moment, not from a rehearsed script, polished character, or careful performance.
What Happens When You Freestyle Your Truth?
My hope is that, over time, my clients can feel increasingly safe, supported, and inspired to show up more fully as themselves.
Discovering That Your Unfiltered Self Is Enough
To step into that space with the courage to take risks—to speak the unscripted, to trust their instincts, to follow the thread of their thoughts and emotions out loud. To flow. Because that’s where the most powerful and healing work often happens: in the vulnerable, unfiltered places where we risk being seen and discover we’re still held.
So I ask, what would it be like if you allowed yourself to freestyle more often?
Where in your life do you feel most free to be unfiltered, spontaneous, and fully yourself?
And what might be possible if you had more spaces like that?
Jesse Romo, AMFT, is a multi-racial associate marriage and family therapist who aims to break intergenerational cycles of addictions, abuse, and trauma while also revising narratives of distress and well-being. Creating music, taking rides on his motorcycle, and and hanging out with his cats (Sakura and Amma-chi) is how Jesse likes to connect with life.
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