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I wouldn’t give my thirty-year-old self advice.

Not because I don’t have any.

Because advice wasn’t what she needed.

What she needed was someone to sit beside her and say almost everything you currently believe about yourself is wrong.

She wouldn’t have believed it.

That’s the thing about wrong beliefs.

They don’t feel wrong while you’re inside them.

They feel like facts.

They feel like the ground you’re standing on.

Birthdays invite lists.

Twenty things I wish I knew. Ten lessons life taught me. Five regrets I carry.

I tried to write something like that.

I kept coming back to one word instead.

Unlearning.

She Was Surviving And That Was the Whole of It.

When I was thirty, I had just moved to a small town I didn’t choose.

No friends. No real job prospects. A degree I’d worked myself into the ground for and was convinced I’d never use again.

My husband was flourishing.

He’d found exactly the life he wanted. I was watching him live it from the inside of something that felt like I was slow disappearing act.

I believed I was going to fade into nothing.

That I wasn’t strong enough to survive the move. That I would never connect with anyone here. That the trauma I was carrying was permanent. Not something that had happened to me, but something that had become me.

Some days I wasn’t sure I wanted to keep living if this was all it was going to be.

I didn’t say that out loud.

I barely admitted it to myself.

But it was there underneath everything.

This quiet certainty that my life had already peaked. That whatever I’d been building toward had already collapsed, and I was simply living in the wreckage.

Spiritually I wasn’t living either.

My beliefs existed safely inside my head, untested and unrooted.

Nothing was embodied.

Nothing had weight.

She was surviving.

That was the whole of it.

What happened next wasn’t a breakthrough.

It was two decades of slowly laying down things I thought I had to carry.

I started looking directly at the trauma instead of walking around it. Feeling what it actually felt like instead of managing it from a distance. Trying to understand it, not to excuse it or blame anyone, but to stop letting it tell me who I was.

It was slow.

Sometimes painfully slow.

You think you’re afraid of what you’ll find in the dark.

You are.

But eventually you discover the fear was often bigger than what was waiting there.

The sexual abuse didn’t disappear.

It simply stopped being the explanation for everything.

Old hurts faded because they no longer fit the person I was becoming. Behaviors that had only existed to survive stopped being necessary. People I had carried for years stopped occupying so much space in my mind.

“Trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness.” — Peter Levine

Without realizing it, I was building a foundation.

I didn’t know yet how much I would need it.

I Was More Afraid of the Shell I Was Becoming

At fifty-two, something shifted that I never saw coming.

Not a crisis.

Not a collapse.

A quiet recognition.

The life I had carefully built, the one that proved thirty-year-old me had survived, wasn’t enough anymore.

It was good.

It was mine.

It wasn’t enough.

Walking away cost more than I expected.

I gave up music lessons because I didn’t have the energy for them anymore. I let go of the version of myself that had learned how to function inside constant pressure.

What frightened me wasn’t the uncertainty of leaving.

It was realizing how small I had become by staying.

Even after I left, my body didn’t believe it was over.

It kept waiting for the next attack that never came.

That’s when I realized the last three and a half years weren’t really about changing my life.

They were about unlearning what my body had accepted as normal.

Not just fear.

But vigilance.

Not just responsibility.

But believing my worth depended on how much I carried.

I used to think those were strengths.

Awareness.

Dedication.

Integrity.

Now I wonder how much of them were simply survival wearing respectable clothes.

The hardest part is that peace doesn’t feel peaceful at first.

It feels unfamiliar.

Sometimes I don’t miss the drama.

My body does.

It still reaches for tomorrow’s problems before today has even begun.

It still wants to carry everyone else’s future.

I’m learning to notice that instead of obeying it.

That may be the hardest unlearning of all.

I Didn’t Learn to Love Myself

Looking back across twenty-six years, I haven’t become someone new.

I’ve mostly stopped believing things that were never true.

I didn’t learn to love myself.

I unlearned everything I hated about myself until there was finally room for love.

That’s the whole of it.

Thirty-year-old me couldn’t have skipped ahead to this part.

She had to walk every mile herself.

“The work of the mature person is to carry grief in one hand and gratitude in the other.” — Francis Weller

At fifty-six I’m beginning to notice something I couldn’t have imagined back then.

I don’t automatically believe every frightening story my mind tells me.

I don’t assume uncertainty is an emergency.

I’m beginning to see my neurodivergent brain as part of how I’m built instead of evidence that something is wrong with me.

I don’t feel finished.

I don’t think I ever will.

But if life asks me to unlearn something else tomorrow, I know now that I can.

Maybe that’s what getting older has really given me.

Not more certainty.

A willingness to keep becoming.

This week in The Back Room, I explore the unexpected downside of personal growth and how healing can quietly become another way of hiding. What began as a simple strengths assessment revealed a deeper pattern: I had spent years treating myself like a project to be fixed instead of a person to be known. I share how shadow work helped me understand my wounds but also trained me to overlook the gifts that had been carrying me all along. Along the way, I unpack the role of being the sidekick in my own life and how focusing on everyone else's strengths made my own nearly invisible. This episode is about the difference between being unfinished and believing you're broken, and what changes when you finally allow yourself to see the whole house instead of just the cracks.

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I became so focused on my weaknesses that I forgot I had strengths.

Not for a short time.

Not once in awhile.

I genuinely forgot.

Recently I took a strengths assessment.

The results weren’t surprising.

History. Learning. Thinking. Seeing patterns. Understanding people.

Nothing on the list made me stop and say, “Wow, I never knew that about myself.”

The shock came from something else.

Seeing those things called strengths.

Reading the list felt a bit like paying someone to tell me I have a nose.

My first reaction wasn’t pride.

It was disappointment.

There should be something more impressive hiding in there. Something unique. Something that would explain why I belonged here.

Instead I got a list of things I had been doing my entire life without noticing.

For years I assumed they were simply parts of my personality. Quirks. Preferences. Things I happened to do.

I never considered them valuable.

That realization exposed a trap I hadn’t seen.

———

I Know My Flaws Better Than My Own Name

When all your attention goes toward what needs fixing, you stop noticing what is working.

There is tremendous value in the work of healing. Much of my life has been transformed because of it.

But there is a danger hidden inside that process.

I know this because I spent years studying my weaknesses.

I could tell you where I overthink. Where I doubt myself. Where I become controlling. Where fear disguises itself as responsibility. Where I become trapped in imaginary conversations defending myself against people who aren’t even present.

I knew all of those places.

What I couldn’t tell you was what I brought into the world. What came easy. What others might value. Where I was already strong.

Not because strengths didn’t exist.

Because I wasn’t looking for them.

What I didn’t know was myself.

At least not completely.

I was busy renovating the haunted house.

———

We Become Caretakers of Our Damage

You know the house.

It’s our inner world.

The one filled with old wounds and unfinished stories. The one where every room contains another thing to heal. Another pattern to understand. Another fear to face.

At first entering that house is necessary.

Many of us spend years avoiding it. Pretending it isn’t there.

Ignoring the noises in the walls.

Ignoring the grief in the basement.

Ignoring the anger locked in the attic.

Eventually we have to walk through those rooms. We have to turn on the lights. We have to clean out what has been neglected.

That work matters.

But at some point many of us make a subtle mistake.

We start believing the house is all there is.

We become caretakers of our damage.

Caretakers of our wounds.

Caretakers of our limitations.

We spend so much time cataloging what hurts that we forget to notice what is beautiful.

The goal shifts.

Instead of living, we are fixing.

Instead of creating, we are healing.

Instead of expressing our gifts, we are managing our flaws.

The work that was supposed to free us becomes the thing we organize our lives around.

That is the trap.

———

Self-Awareness Become a Weapon You Use on Yourself

“Most people are mirrors, reflecting the moods and emotions of the times; precious few are windows, bringing light to bear on the dark corners where troubles fester.” — Sydney J. Harris

The strengths assessment didn’t teach me anything new.

It revealed what I had overlooked.

The things I called ordinary weren’t ordinary. The things I dismissed weren’t insignificant. The things I thought were strange little pieces of my personality had value.

Seeing patterns. Thinking deeply. Making connections. Helping people understand themselves. Learning for the joy of learning.

These weren’t distractions from who I was.

They were expressions of who I was.

For some reason that realization felt more uncomfortable than discovering another weakness.

Weaknesses are familiar.

It is safe in focusing on what needs improvement.

If there is another flaw to fix, then our worth stays somewhere in the future. Somewhere down the road. Somewhere a finish line after enough work has been done.

Strengths ask something different.

They ask to be acknowledged now.

They ask to be used now.

They ask us to stop postponing our own value.

———

Admitting You Have Strengths Is Scarier Than Admitting Another Flaw

That can be terrifying.

Because if a strength is real, then people might see it.

If people see it, then they see us.

Not our wounds.

Not our healing journey.

Not our potential.

Us.

For years I had been comfortable being a project.

Projects are always becoming something.

Projects are always improving.

Projects don’t have to stand fully in the light.

But a person with gifts does.

And somehow that felt far more vulnerable than admitting another flaw.

Because once you admit you have strengths, you can no longer tell yourself you’re just taking up space.

That sentence took me a moment to sit with.

Because I hadn’t realized, until I wrote it, that taking up space was exactly what I had been afraid of.

———

I Celebrate Everyone’s Gifts Except My Own

The strange part is I would never call myself a negative person.

I can often see gifts in others before they see them in themselves. I encourage them. Point them out. Celebrate them.

But when it came to myself, the rules were different.

The wounds counted. The fears counted. The mistakes counted.

The gifts were somehow excluded from the conversation.

And after enough years of that, the inner house gets dark without you noticing. Not dramatically. Not all at once. Just a curtain drawn here. A door left closed there. Until the rooms you actually live in are the ones with no light coming in.

And that starts to feel normal.

Safe, even.

———

My Strengths Weren’t Hidden But My Attention Was.

The assessment felt like someone had opened every curtain in the haunted house.

The cracks were still there. The old rooms still existed. Nothing had disappeared.

But suddenly sunlight was pouring through every window.

For the first time I could see the entire house instead of only the damage.

That changed everything.

The list named things I had been doing my whole life. Thinking in patterns. Learning obsessively. Feeling responsible to the point of exhaustion. Seeing connections other people seemed to miss.

None of it was news.

That was the turn.

The assessment didn’t reveal anything I didn’t already know. It revealed what I had been refusing to count. The strengths were never absent. They were present the entire time — working, contributing, holding things together — while I had my back to them, cataloguing everything that still needed fixing.

My strengths weren’t hidden.

My attention was.

———

Healing Was Never Supposed to Become Your Identity

The strange thing is that the years spent studying weaknesses were not wasted.

I don’t regret them.

They taught me compassion. They taught me humility. They taught me about fear and grief and vulnerability. They taught me what it means to be human.

Those lessons came with me when I stepped into the light.

But now there is something else beside them.

Perspective.

Balance.

The realization that I am more than the list of things I need to work on.

And maybe that is the next stage of growth.

Not abandoning healing. Not pretending wounds don’t exist. Not declaring ourselves finished.

But remembering that healing was never supposed to become our identity.

The purpose of understanding our weaknesses is not to spend the rest of our lives staring at them.

The purpose is to free enough energy to become who we already are.

———

The Next Step Isn’t Another Repair Project

“We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly.” — Anaïs Nin

For years I thought transformation meant fixing every broken thing.

Now I’m beginning to wonder if part of transformation is recognizing what was never broken in the first place.

Maybe our strengths aren’t hidden.

Maybe they are simply overshadowed by our attention.

Maybe we become so accustomed to looking for flaws that we stop seeing gifts.

Maybe we spend so much time studying the darkness that we forget there are windows.

And maybe the next step isn’t another repair project.

Maybe it’s opening the front door.

Walking outside.

Feeling the sun on your face.

And finally allowing yourself to become visible in a world that has been waiting for you all along.

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Most of us call it self protection. We tell ourselves we are defending our honor, holding the line, making sure the record is accurate. But in this episode I go somewhere the article didn't — the part where I had to admit I was enjoying it. Not the pain. The role. We are talking about the Drama Triangle, emotional intensity as addiction, and the uncomfortable truth that some of these internal arguments are not protection at all. They are identity. And letting the trial adjourn means letting go of a version of yourself that has been running the case for a long time.

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I am driving down the road.

No one is in the car with me.

But I am in the middle of a full blown argument anyway.

Presenting evidence. Anticipating responses. Landing the perfect line that finally makes the other person realize they were wrong and I was right the whole time.

I do this more than I want to admit.

That long stretch of highway where your body goes on autopilot and your brain quietly opens the file again.

My jaw tightens. My chest gets hot. The nervous system shifts into fight or flight over a conversation that is not even happening.

There is no enemy in front of me.

Just my mind preparing for one.

And what gets me is how real it feels while it is happening.

The emotions are real. The stress is real. The body response is real.

My nervous system does not stop and politely ask if the danger actually exists before sounding the alarm.

It just reacts.

Then the mind joins in.

Replaying. Preparing. Building the case.

A few months ago accusations started flying around in my family over some old books.

Used fiction books. Cookbooks. Things that had sat untouched in a corner for years.

Suddenly I was a thief.

That word landed harder than I expected.

Not because of the books themselves.

Because of what they represented.

Pieces of childhood. Memories. Little emotional landmarks nobody else knew existed.

Nobody cared about those books before. They sat there for years. No one would have even noticed they were gone.

But the second it was said the courtroom opened in my head.

I started building my defense immediately.

Replaying details. Lining up evidence. Arguing why I was justified. Why they were unfair. Why anyone reasonable would understand exactly why I took them.

Then came the imaginary conversations.

I imagined what they would say next.

Then I countered it.

Then I imagined their response to my counter.

Then I countered that too.

Round and round and round.

Until eventually I won the argument in my head and they looked unreasonable, careless, and stupid for questioning me in the first place.

The strange thing is that winning never actually made me feel better.

It just gave temporary relief.

Like loosening the lid on a pressure cooker for a few seconds before the steam starts building again.

Within an hour the file would reopen.

Same argument. Different angle.

I would go back to the exact moment the accusation landed. The exact words. The exact tone.

Not because I needed clarity anymore. I already knew how I felt.

I kept returning to it the way you press on a bruise just to confirm it still hurts.

And the mind is very good at building evidence once it decides something is a threat.

Every old misunderstanding gets pulled into the courtroom. Every past slight suddenly becomes part of the same case file.

The story grows. The argument grows. The emotional weight grows.

And underneath all of it was something I did not want to admit.

I wanted to hurt them back.

Not just defend myself.

Not just be understood.

I wanted them to feel what I was feeling. The frustration. The accusation. The helplessness of caring about something nobody else thought mattered.

That was the hardest thing to see.

These conversations were not just self protection.

They were retaliation dressed up as self defense.

I have another version of these conversations that I call the “Control of Doom.”

That is the one where nothing has even happened yet but I am already mentally preparing for disaster.

If money feels unstable then I start preparing for collapse.

If conflict feels possible then I start rehearsing conversations that have not even happened yet.

Not one version either.

Five versions. Ten versions. Entire branching timelines of emotional catastrophe.

I script responses. Imagine reactions. Prepare defenses for arguments nobody has even spoken out loud.

And the worst part is that it feels productive while it is happening.

Like I am being responsible. Prepared. Strong.

But really it is just fear with a tool belt on trying to outthink uncertainty.

I can lose entire evenings this way.

Not to things that happened.

To things that might.

After the family situation settled down I started noticing how early the loop actually begins.

Before anything goes wrong. Before anyone says anything hurtful. Before reality even arrives.

The mind is already preparing for impact.

And the preparation itself becomes exhausting.

I spent days preparing for a family phone call that turned out to be completely ordinary.

No explosion. No confrontation. None of the emotional ambushes I had carefully rehearsed for in my head.

By the time the real conversation happened I had already lived through ten darker versions of it.

Arguments from jobs I left years ago. Relationship misunderstandings I replayed long after the other person moved on. Imaginary conversations happening while I drive, shower, wash dishes, or stare at the ceiling trying to sleep.

The conversations feel protective while they are happening.

Necessary even.

Like if I prepare enough then maybe I can avoid pain before it arrives.

But mostly what they steal is presence.

The real conversations get less of me than the imaginary ones do.

I arrive already guarded. Already tired. Already half inside a version of events that never actually happened.

I still catch myself doing it.

Not perfectly. Not every time.

But enough to notice when the courtroom doors are opening before I fully walk inside.

Enough to ask myself what I am trying to control and what it is costing me while I try.

Because the books are still just books.

And the person who called me a thief has probably stopped thinking about it completely.

I am the one who kept the trial running.

Nobody asked me to.

I just did not know how to adjourn the court.

I used to think taking responsibility for everything meant I was dependable. What I didn’t realize was how much of that responsibility was actually fear trying to control outcomes before they could hurt me. In this Back Room conversation, I go deeper into the nervous system underneath over-functioning, perfectionism, and becoming the most emotionally invested person in the room. We explore the strange discomfort of stopping yourself from automatically carrying what other people leave unfinished. Because sometimes responsibility isn’t wisdom at all — it’s survival wearing a disguise.

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There’s a question I don’t ask.

Not usually. Not out loud.

Why would I plant something like this?

I ask it now.

But it took a cup of soil, a Ziploc bag with no label, and a slow-building irritation I couldn’t quite name to get me there.

This is where you usually say yes without thinking

When the little pot was handed to me, it should have fit right into that rhythm.

A simple thing.

A cup of soil. A handful of seeds. Something to start.

But it didn’t land that way.

You already knew something was off — you just didn’t want to say it.

There were supposed to be seeds.

A Ziploc bag. No label. I turned it over, looked at it, couldn’t tell if there was anything inside at all.

I poured it anyway. Or tried to.

Maybe something made it into the soil.

Maybe nothing did.

I genuinely couldn’t tell.

There was no water.

That part kept catching in my mind.

No water. No extra soil. No space to loosen what was already packed in.

Just this is what you get.

I stood there longer than I needed to.

Turning the cup in my hands. Looking at it like something would reveal itself if I paid enough attention.

It didn’t.

What I felt instead was a slow irritation building underneath the surface.

Not at anyone.

At the whole thing.

It felt like a performance.

Like we were going through the motions of planting something without any intention of actually growing it.

That’s when the question showed up.

Why would I plant something like this?

That question doesn’t get asked.

Not by me.

I’m the one who fixes things.

I take something half-done and finish it.

Take something with no water, no soil, no care and make it work anyway.

I could feel that instinct kick in almost immediately.

Take it home. Add soil. Water it. Figure out what it’s supposed to be.

Make it real.

That would have been easy.

And it would have been mine.

Instead, I stood there holding something I didn’t trust.

Something with no care in it. No real chance of growing unless I stepped in and forced it.

And for the first time, that didn’t feel like responsibility.

It felt like being handed someone else’s unfinished thing and being expected to love it into existence.

“No is a complete sentence.”

— Anne Lamott

I’ve done that before.

With people. With work. With versions of myself that someone else needed me to be.

I know how that ends.

The clearest moment wasn’t the frustration.

It was this.

This would just become something I ignore.

Because I know what it feels like when something matters.

You don’t ignore it.

You check on it. You think about it. You adjust for it.

And I could already see exactly how this would go.

A windowsill. Half-forgotten. A small guilt every time I passed it.

Before anything started.

So I stopped trying to fix it.

I didn’t take it home.

I didn’t add soil or water or intention.

I dumped the pot.

Just like that.

No ceremony. No second-guessing.

What caught me wasn’t the act itself.

It was how final it felt.

Because I don’t do that.

I don’t walk away from things that could be made better. I don’t leave something half-finished if I know I can fix it. I don’t meet something that lacks care and respond with then I won’t care either.

But that’s exactly what happened.

It wasn’t anger.

It wasn’t even rebellion in the loud sense.

It was quieter than that.

More like a refusal.

And underneath it — something I didn’t expect.

Relief.

Not everything deserves your effort just because it’s in your hands

Spring always starts the same way for me.

Not on a calendar. Not on a date you circle and prepare for.

It starts the first time the ground softens.

Spring will keep happening.

The ground will soften whether I participate or not.

There will be other seeds.

Other moments.

Other things that actually want to be planted.

But some things aren’t waiting to grow.

They’re waiting for someone willing enough to pretend they are.

I’ve been willing before.

I’m not anymore.

I could have made it work.

I just chose not to.

And once you make that choice once —really make it —it changes something.

Because you start to recognize the feeling sooner.

The lack of care.

The absence of anything real to grow from.

And you realize how often you’ve stepped in anyway.

Not because it was yours —but because you knew how to carry it.

“Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.”

— Rainer Maria Rilke

So the question isn’t whether I could have made it work.

I already know I could have.

The question is —

why I ever thought I was supposed to.

I spent a month sick, and everything stopped whether I liked it or not.
When I finally slowed down, I saw something I didn’t expect.
I hadn’t lost momentum—I had built a life that was smaller than I thought.
This is what it looks like now that I can see it… and still don’t know exactly what to do next.
This is the part that doesn’t make it into the article.

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“It’s been one of those days” turned into “it’s been one of those years.”

Unexpected things kept showing up.
Not all of them bad.
But enough of them felt like it.

At some point, it stopped being a phrase and started feeling like evidence that nothing was actually working.

I didn’t see what was happening at first.
That’s the part that matters.

Every time I stepped up ready to take a step that felt real, life threw something sideways.

Not enough to take me out.
Just enough to keep me from feeling safe.
Or trusting what was coming next.

The Strategy That Built Me Is Now Breaking Me

I’ve spent most of my life being the one who gets back up.
Push through.
Figure it out.
Make it work.
That’s how I built everything I have.

And then I stopped.

Not because I couldn’t push anymore, but because my nervous system was done paying for it.

So I let go of force.
Stopped trying to override everything.
Started letting things move instead of dragging them.

That’s when the shoulds got louder.

My Mind Is Keeping Score Against a Life That Doesn’t Exist

I’ve been sick.
Nothing dramatic.
Just enough to slow everything down.
And I don’t bounce back the way I used to.
Not worse.
Just slower.

Aging isn’t the issue.
I don’t regret the life I’ve lived.
That part is settled.

The issue is the voice that keeps saying:
you should be further along by now.

It doesn’t matter that it’s not true.
The mind doesn’t measure reality.
It measures distance from an expectation.

So it builds a case.
You should be doing more.
You shouldn’t be this slowed down.
You’re falling behind… and you know it.

The Old Life Doesn’t Feel Like Regression. It Feels Like Relief

And without thinking, I went back to what I know.
Push.
Even when the minimum for the day felt heavy.

And right behind that, the old life showed up.
Not as a memory.
As an option.

Go back to full-time work.
Go back to structure.
Go back to something that makes sense.

A life I fought my way out of four years ago.
And for a second, it didn’t feel like going backward.
It felt like being responsible.

That’s the part people miss.

You don’t go back because you want the old life.
You go back because it’s familiar enough to feel like control.

You will walk yourself straight back into a life you already left and convince yourself it’s the smart move.

Your Brain Will Use Anything… Even Your Health To Pull You Back

I caught the mind shift before I moved.
But that didn’t stop what came next.

My own mind stepped in again.

“Let’s talk about your health.”

It literally knocked me on my ass.

Now the story had weight.
Now there was a reason to slow down.
Now sitting still looked justified.

Except when I actually looked at it… nothing major was wrong.

A couple of viruses.
Seasonal allergies.
Time and place.
That’s it.

I’ve been lucky.
My health is good.

But that didn’t stop the pile-on.
Now the shoulds had backup.

When You Stop Pushing, You Finally See What You’ve Been Avoiding

So I stopped.
Not as a strategy.
I just didn’t get back up.

At first, it felt like everything was slipping.
Like I was losing momentum.
Losing ground.
Letting it all fall apart.

But once I stayed there long enough, it didn’t feel like everything was falling apart anymore.

I started looking around.
Not to fix anything.
Just looking.

And what I saw wasn’t what I expected.

It wasn’t the setbacks.

I Didn’t Lose Focus I Just Built a Cage and Called It Discipline

I hadn’t been outside just to feel the sun.
I hadn’t called anyone just to talk.
I hadn’t stepped outside the narrow lane I’d built for myself.

I thought I was creating focus.
I was building walls.

Not obvious ones.
Not dramatic ones.
Just quiet rules about what I should be doing and how life should look right now.

A script.

One I didn’t question because it looked like discipline.

But it wasn’t discipline.

It was containment.

And I didn’t see it happening.

This Isn’t a Setback It’s Repeating the Same Life With Better Intentions

You don’t notice when it happens.

You just get more focused.
More structured.
More “on track.”

Until your life gets smaller
and you call that progress.

The problem isn’t that you stopped moving.

It’s that you never questioned
what was deciding the direction in the first place.

That’s how you end up back in a life you already left.

Not because you failed.

Because you followed the same rules
and expected a different outcome.

You didn’t get stuck.
You just got really good at calling the same life progress.

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“Should” doesn’t sound dangerous.

It sounds responsible.
Logical.
Like the kind of thought that will get your life back on track.

It doesn’t stay small.

“You should be further along.”
“You should have handled that better.”
“You should be doing more.”

That’s all it takes.

One thought… and suddenly your entire life is under review.

And the worst part?

You don’t question it.

Because should doesn’t feel like a lie.

It feels like truth.

So you follow it.

You build on it.

You start collecting evidence…until you’re no longer dealing with a moment. . .you’re dealing with the idea that something is wrong with you.

“We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.”
— Seneca

The Spiral Starts

Would.
Could.
Should.

The other two imagine.

Should judges.

It doesn’t just suggest action.

It rewrites reality.

You don’t even have to say it out loud.

The implication is enough.

A single thought.

I should be somewhere else.

That’s the first crack.

At its core, should is about expectations.

All three words are.

But should carries weight.

It doesn’t imagine what’s possible.

It measures where you are against where you think you’re supposed to be.

And most of the time?

Those expectations are invisible.

Until they start hurting.

Stress doesn’t come from life being hard.

It comes from the gap between what is and what you think should be.

And when that gap opens…something in you tries to close it.

Forcefully.
Relentlessly.

“You should be in a different place by now.”

Sounds reasonable.

Until it isn’t.

Because now the question isn’t what happened.

It’s. . .What’s wrong with me?

And once that question lands…the spiral doesn’t stay contained.

It starts collecting.

Every mistake.
Every delay.
Every imperfect moment.

Even the things you’ve already made peace with get dragged back onto the stage.

“Nothing in life is as important as you think it is while you are thinking about it.”
— Daniel Kahneman

Now You’re the Problem

Now you’re not dealing with a situation.

You are the situation.

A walking list of everything that didn’t go the way it should have.

And your brain offers a solution.

“Fix it.”

Great.

Now we add overthinking.
Perfectionism.
Control.

You try to think your way out.
Organize your way out.
Force your way out.

Control shows up like a hero.

“If you can just get this together, everything will calm down.”

Right.

But the more you try to control it…the tighter it gets.

At some point, it stops feeling like thoughts.

It starts feeling like truth.

Like you are the problem.

Like you are one big walking mistake.

All of this…from one small shift.

Where It Broke for Me

I saw this clearly after I got sick.

Not a quick bounce-back kind of sick.

The kind that shuts everything down.

My routine? Gone.
Energy? Gone.
Basic functioning? Barely.

Life simplified to one question.

Can I take care of myself today?

Then I started to feel a little better.

Not strong.
Just enough to be dangerous.

So my brain stepped in.

“Perfect. Let’s get everything back on track.”

Of course.

Within days, the list showed up.

I should be writing again.
I should be productive.
I should be further along.
I should be bouncing back faster.

But I wasn’t.

And reality didn’t care about my expectations.

So the pressure built.

I hadn’t written in two weeks.
I didn’t have the energy to connect.
Some days I could barely take care of myself.

And instead of letting that be true…I fought it.

That’s when it clicked.

I wasn’t failing.

I was gaslighting myself.

I was trying to make reality into something it wasn’t.

Here’s the shift.

You don’t have to fix everything.

You only have to find one lie.

“I should be back to normal.”

No.

That wasn’t reality.

That was expectation.

“It is not things themselves that disturb us, but our judgments about them.”
— Epictetus

And the moment I saw that…everything else collapsed.

Every should lost its weight.

Not powerful.
Not convincing.

Just loud.

What’s Actually True

I wasn’t behind.

I was recovering.

I wasn’t failing.

I was rebuilding.

And more than that. . .I could see it.

The way I had been doing things wasn’t sustainable.

So this wasn’t a setback.

It was a redesign.

Sometimes it takes everything stopping…to show you what was never working in the first place.

“Should” isn’t guidance.

It’s judgment wearing a reasonable voice.

And the longer you listen to it, the further you drift from what’s real.

So stop asking what you should be doing.

That question is the problem.

Start here.

What is true.

Deal with that.

Everything else is noise.

This is the part of the article I couldn’t write.
What it actually felt like when nothing was wrong. . . and nothing was pushing me.
How quickly that state disappeared, and what showed up after.
This isn’t about staying balanced, but recognizing when you lose it.
And what you do when nothing is choosing for you anymore.

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I was going to write about laziness.

About how it isn’t just a matter of discipline.
How the brain settles when it feels safe.
How we reach for the scroll, the show, the easy dopamine.

We don’t move because nothing is forcing us to.

I’ve lived most of my life that way.

Fear and anxiety were my fuel.
If something felt wrong, I moved.
If something felt off, I tried to fix it.

Even my internal shifts came from that pressure.

Even my writing reflects it.

I write from the moment something breaks.
From the moment something doesn’t make sense anymore.
From the moment I can’t ignore what’s happening inside me.

That’s where the clarity comes from.

“The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.” — Carl Rogers

But what do you do when nothing feels wrong?

That’s what I kept coming back to.

Nothing is falling apart.
Nothing is urgent.
Nothing is forcing me to move.

And that’s exactly where things stall.

Because when nothing is wrong, there’s no pressure to change.
No external reason to act.
No clear signal that something has to shift.

So the mind does what it’s designed to do.

It settles.

No guilt.
No mental noise.
No internal argument trying to get me to move.

Just… stillness.

And at first, that stillness felt strange.

Almost like something was missing.

I was so used to movement coming from friction
that the absence of it felt like a problem.

Like I should be doing something.
Like I should be figuring something out.
Like I should be pushing myself forward.

“You cannot find peace by avoiding life.” — Virginia Woolf

So I let my mind go back to the word laziness.

But it didn’t land.

Because laziness carries a very specific feeling.

It implies avoidance.
A lack of motivation.
A disconnect from reality.

And usually, it comes with guilt.

The kind that says you should be doing more.
That you’re wasting time.
That you’re falling behind in some invisible race.

It creates a split.

Between what you think you should be doing
and what you’re actually doing.

And that split creates tension.

That tension creates stories.

Stories about who you are.
Stories about what you’re not doing.
Stories about what this means for your future.

And then the mind tries to fix it.

It argues.
It negotiates.
It pushes.

But I don’t have any of that now.

No guilt.
No internal argument.
No pressure building underneath the surface.

So the explanation stopped working.

Because I don’t feel lazy anymore.

And if I’m not lazy…

then what am I actually doing?

That’s where the shift happened.

I started to notice that I wasn’t stuck.

I was just sitting in a space where nothing was pushing me.

No pull.
No urgency.
No fear telling me I had to act.

Just a kind of quiet.

At first, it felt like numbness.

But it’s not numbness.

Numbness has a dullness to it.
A disconnection.

This felt… clear.

Like everything had gone quiet at the same time.

And what I realized in that quiet is this.

Nothing is choosing for me.

There’s no external force.
No internal pressure.
No emotional surge directing my next step.

So I have to choose.

And that’s the part that feels unfamiliar.

Because I’ve been used to reacting.

Reacting to fear.
Reacting to discomfort.
Reacting to something feeling off.

But this isn’t reaction.

This is selection.

And when you’re selecting instead of reacting, something changes.

The urgency disappears.

And what’s left is responsibility.

Not the heavy kind.
Not the kind that says you have to get it right.

But the kind that says:

This is yours.

Whatever you choose next… is yours.

“Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.” — Jean-Paul Sartre

And the strangest part is this.

It doesn’t feel like there’s a right or wrong choice.

There’s no immediate feedback.
No signal that tells you this is correct.

It almost feels like the world doesn’t care what you choose.

And for a moment… that can feel unsettling.

Because if nothing is guiding you…

then what are you supposed to follow?

But then something else happens.

There’s a kind of relief in it.

No expectations.
No outcome you have to force.
No path you have to prove is correct.

Just something you can step into.

And see where it goes.

I’ve started calling it “leaning in.”

Not forcing.
Not figuring it all out.
Not trying to optimize the next move.

Just leaning toward what’s there.

Following what has even the slightest pull.

And letting it unfold from there.

Because when nothing is wrong…

there’s nothing to fix.

There’s only something to choose.

And maybe that’s what this phase is.

Not about solving a problem.

But about learning how to move without one.

Maybe the hardest part isn’t being stuck.

It’s realizing you’re free to choose…

and nothing is choosing for you.

And there’s nowhere left to hide.

I started working with my ancestors during a Samhain ritual, not really knowing what to expect. At first it felt formal and distant, but over time something shifted. The more I connected, the more questions began to surface — not just about them, but about myself and the nature of connection across time.

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You probably think your money problems are about you.

Your discipline.
Your decisions.
Your mindset.

But what if the beliefs shaping your relationship with money were already inside you?Long before you ever earned your first dollar?

What if scarcity isn’t just a habit of thought…

What if it’s inherited?

Not only through family stories and childhood experiences.

But through generations of people who lived in worlds where survival meant holding tightly to everything.

Think about the people in your family who lived through hard times.

What did they have to believe in order to survive?

When I began looking closely at my own beliefs about money, I realized something uncomfortable.

Many of them were not mine.

They belonged to my ancestors.

Looking backward through the family line

When I started exploring where my beliefs about money came from, I went back through my family history as far as I reasonably could.

As a writer, I naturally started imagining what their lives must have been like from the fragments of information I could find.

Small details began turning into stories.

Farmers.
Laborers.
People who lived through economic instability that I can barely imagine now.

Wars.
Hard winters.
Generations where survival meant working with whatever was available and hoping it would be enough.

Scarcity wasn’t just an idea to them.

It was reality.

When you look at life through that lens, holding tightly to resources isn’t irrational.

It’s survival.

And slowly I began to see something clearly.

Scarcity didn’t start with me.

It traveled through generations.

When the past stops feeling distant

While researching my ancestors, something unexpected happened.

The more I looked into my family tree, the more fascinated I became by the people I was finding.

They stopped feeling like distant names in a record.

It started to feel more like standing in a room filled with people who had quietly been there all along.

Many cultures throughout the world actively honor their ancestors. Some keep altars with photographs or personal objects belonging to those who came before them. Sometimes incense is burned. Sometimes there are special days devoted to remembrance.

The exact practices vary, but the idea behind them is simple.

The people who came before us are still part of the story.

The writer Alex Haley once said:

“In all of us there is a hunger, marrow-deep, to know our heritage.”

Looking back into our lineage is one way we begin understanding ourselves.

When the veil grows thin

In pagan traditions, one of the most well-known times to honor ancestors is Samhain — what many people recognize as Halloween.

It is considered a time when the veil between the living and the dead becomes thin.

A moment when communication with ancestors becomes easier.

I have been fortunate to experience this connection for many years.

At first, I thought I was simply connecting with my family line.

My grandparents.
Their parents.
And the generations behind them.

But the more I explored ancestor work, the more something surprising began to appear.

It wasn’t just my blood relatives showing up in the story.

It felt like the past itself was much larger than I had imagined.

Eventually I learned why.

The six circles of ancestors

Most people think of ancestors as the relatives in their family tree.

But many traditions describe several different circles of ancestors.

Learning this changed the way I understood the past.

Because suddenly the number of people connected to our lives grows much larger.

Ancestors of Blood (DNA)
These are the relatives in our family tree — the people whose lives directly shaped the generations that eventually led to us.

Ancestors of Cultural Heritage
These are the people who shaped the traditions, customs, and collective experiences of the culture we come from or are descended from.

Ancestors of Lineage
These are teachers within spiritual paths, crafts, and bodies of knowledge passed down over generations.

Ancestors of Place
These are the people who lived on the land before we did. The history of the land itself carries their stories.

Ancestors of the Ancients
These are the wisdom keepers of humanity — philosophers, mystics, elders, and teachers whose insights echo across time.

Ancestors of Past Lives
Some traditions believe our souls may have shared other lifetimes with certain people. These relationships can echo forward through time.

When you begin looking at ancestors this way, the past becomes very full.

There are countless people connected to us in one way or another.

And with that realization comes an unexpected comfort.

The North on the transformational wheel

Within the framework of the Transformational Wheel, ancestors belong to the North.

North is the direction of elders, lineage, and deep time.

It is the direction where we turn to remember what stands behind us.

It reminds us that our lives did not begin in isolation.

They are the continuation of many lives that came before.

As the psychologist Carl Jung once observed:

“The dead are not absent, they are only invisible.”

The North reminds us that our lives are part of a much longer story.

Learning to listen

I began working with my ancestors through several practices.

Shamanic journeying.
Tarot readings.
Simple rituals acknowledging their presence.

What surprised me most was not the guidance they offered.

It was their willingness to be remembered.

Many of the ancestors I encountered seemed genuinely happy that someone was thinking about them again. Some offered insight. Others simply sat quietly in the space.

Presence was enough.

Over time, working with them began shifting things in my own life.

Scarcity slowly loosened its grip.

Because alongside the survival stories in my lineage, there was something else I had overlooked.

Courage.

Generations of people who endured difficulty and kept going anyway.

The wisdom we inherit

The ancestors didn’t just help me understand scarcity.

They helped me understand people.

They showed me what it was like to live in generations shaped by war. What it was like to grow up in worlds defined by prejudice and judgment. What it felt like to carry fears that came from unstable times.

Their worldviews made sense once I understood the conditions that shaped them.

And beneath all of those differences was something else.

Love.

Not always expressed the way we might express it today, but present through the generations nonetheless.

The philosopher Søren Kierkegaard once wrote:

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”

Working with ancestors is one way of understanding life backwards.

And once you begin to see the story clearly, something important becomes obvious.

You did not inherit only the struggles of the past.

You also inherited the wisdom that survived them.

And somewhere in that long line of people behind you…

is the courage that carried them all this far.

In this episode, I talk through the thinking process behind my article about scarcity and ancestors. What started as a simple reflection on my relationship with money turned into a deeper exploration of the beliefs I inherited from my family. As I traced those ideas back through my parents, grandparents, and generations of farmers before them, I discovered something unexpected. Alongside scarcity, my ancestors may have also passed down courage.

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I never expected to write about money.

But the more I looked at my relationship with it, the more I realized something strange.

Some of my beliefs about money didn’t start with me.

They started long before I was born.

The Beliefs That Came Before Me

Growing up, I never believed the idea that you would work for one company your entire life. That world was already fading by the time I entered college and started looking for my first job.

What I didn’t realize was that even though the world was changing, I had already absorbed something much deeper.

My parents’ beliefs about money.

I was raised with what people now call a scarcity mindset.

At the time it was just normal life.

There were starving children in China, so you cleaned your plate. My mother made most of my school clothes until I was nine. My mom was called “Auntie Generic” because our pantry was filled with store brand groceries. Coupons were gold in my house.

We never went out to eat. Everything was homemade.

Money was never a joke.

My dad even worked extra hours just to rent the flute I was learning to play and pay for my lessons. I didn’t know that at the time. I only understand it now.

The message was simple.

You worked hard.

You never got ahead.

Wealthy people were not to be trusted. They stepped on everyday workers to get ahead.

My parents were born during the Depression. My grandparents lived through it as adults. The stories of that time were everywhere in my family. There are even stories that my grandparents lived in a boxcar for a while because they couldn’t afford housing.

Hard times weren’t theory in my family.

They were memory.

“We are shaped by every place we have been.”
— Maya Angelou

The Life I Built on Those Beliefs

I was taught to work hard. I was the first and only person in my family to attend college and graduate. That education was supposed to be the ticket out of scarcity.

But it wasn’t.

Somewhere inside me was the belief that life was not supposed to be easier.

If you earned money, you paid for it with suffering.

Without realizing it, I would place myself in situations where work meant enduring the abuse of supervisors. I worked long hours at whatever job I found myself in. Enjoyment was something that belonged in my free time.

Dreams were hobbies.

Things you loved were things you did quietly on the side. They were never supposed to make you money.

All of this was invisible to me at the time.

When Fear Showed Up

Then my life changed.

I found myself off the traditional work grid but still responsible for bills and a mortgage. My savings started disappearing faster than I expected.

Every time I thought about money, fear flooded my body.

It wasn’t mild concern.

It was fear down to my bones. My muscles would freeze with stress.

When I felt that fear, I made desperate choices. I wanted someone to hand me the golden plan that would fix everything. A map I could follow without risk.

But life doesn’t work that way.

So I did what I have always done when I don’t understand something.

I started reading.

I read the wealth building books. The abundance books. I tried the exercises and the mindset shifts.

None of it worked.

Eventually I realized why.

All of those strategies were sitting on top of beliefs I had never questioned.

One word kept echoing in my mind.

Scarcity.

Tracing Scarcity Backward

I realized I had believed in scarcity my entire life. That belief quietly shaped how I saw money, work, and even my dreams.

I believed that following my passions would leave me penniless. I believed real money could only come from a job. I believed there was never quite enough.

When I traced those beliefs back, they didn’t start with me.

They started generations earlier.

“Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.”
— Gustav Mahler

I don’t come from money people.

I come from farmers.

Farmers who worked the land year after year and rarely had much beyond the necessities. Money was hard earned and easily lost. Frugality wasn’t a philosophy.

It was survival.

For a long time I interpreted that inheritance as limitation.

What My Ancestors Actually Taught Me

Then I started thinking about what it actually means to be a farmer.

Farmers live with uncertainty almost every day of their lives.

They never know what the weather will do. Crops might flourish one year and fail the next. A storm or drought can wipe out months of work.

And yet they plant again.

They face uncertainty over and over.

When I saw it that way, something inside me shifted.

The people I come from are not small.

They are courageous.

They lived their entire lives facing uncertainty and kept going anyway.

For the first time I felt proud to be descended from them.

For years I had quietly pushed my ancestors into a mental closet, as if their struggles had nothing to do with me.

Now I see something different.

Their resilience lives in me too.

“The greatest inheritance we can give our children is roots and wings.”
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Learning to Face Uncertainty

I am still working with my beliefs around scarcity and abundance. That work is not finished.

But when fear around money shows up now, I remember something important.

I come from people who faced uncertainty their entire lives.

And if they could face it…

So can I.

Some inherit scarcity.

I inherited courage.

Not polished insight, but the process behind it … the stories the mind creates, how they spiral, and how I catch them before they become reality.

I speak through what I’m noticing as it happens.

Especially the subtle ways the brain tries to protect through narratives that aren’t actually true.

This is the space where the thoughts are still forming, before they become clarity.

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You are lying in bed at 2am grappling with a decision.

You want to make the best choice possible.
So you logic your way through it.
You weigh everything.
You make the most reasonable decision you can.

Yet it still feels wrong.

Not loudly wrong.
Not dramatically wrong.
Just quietly wrong.

And that quiet wrongness is unsettling.

Because nothing is technically incorrect.
Nothing is reckless.
Nothing is obviously harmful.

But something inside you does not settle.

Sometimes there is a secret choice you would make.
If it didn’t have to be explained.
If it didn’t have to be justified.
If it didn’t have to look responsible from the outside.

Then there are the 2am ideas.

The ones that arrive when everything is quiet.
When the noise of the day is gone.
When the pressure to perform is asleep.

An idea appears.
Clear. Alive. Almost electric.

And immediately your brain asks.
“Have you lost it?”
“That’s unrealistic.”
“That’s too much.”
“That’s not safe.”

But the idea does not disappear.

It sits quietly in the background.
Like an itch you can’t scratch.
Like something that wants your attention without demanding it.

So you cautiously check it out.

You research.
You explore.
You look at it from a practical angle.

And sometimes the most surprising part happens.

It’s viable.

Not fantasy.
Not delusion.
Not chaos.

Just unfamiliar.

That is usually when the ego catches on.

Not with panic.
Not with dramatic sabotage.
But with containment.

It throws you breadcrumbs.

Small plans.
Safer versions.
Controlled interpretations.

It reshapes the idea into something manageable.
Something that fits inside your current identity.
Something that won’t disrupt the nervous system too much.

At first, this looks supportive.
Responsible, even.
Protective, even.

But over time, you begin to notice a pattern.

The idea never fully breathes.
It gets trimmed.
Reduced.
Adjusted until it no longer feels alive.

I used to think this only happened during big decisions.

Now I catch it in small ones.
Daily ones.
Quiet ones.
Personal ones.

Especially during periods of change.

I have been honoring my nervous system more lately.
Trying not to stress it.
Trying not to force myself the way I used to.

And that is when a new voice got louder.

“You are vulnerable.”
“You shouldn’t push.”
“Writing is too much on top of a part-time job.”
“You should rest more.”
“You shouldn’t reach for anything big right now.”

It sounded caring.
Measured.
Protective.

Almost wise.

But something about it felt… off.

Because there is a difference between regulation and restriction.

My nervous system does have requirements.
It needs pacing.
It needs steadiness.
It needs gentleness.

But it does not need me to abandon what matters.

“Fear is the cheapest room in the house. I would like to see you living in better conditions.” — Hafiz

It does not need me to shrink my life in the name of safety.

That realization was uncomfortable.

Because I have experienced real gaslighting in my life.
And I know how disorienting it feels.
When something true inside you is constantly questioned by another voice.

I never expected to recognize a quieter version of that internally.

Not as cruelty.
Not as self-hatred.
But as partial truths dressed as logic.

The ego is very good at this.

It doesn’t always lie loudly.
It offers edited versions of reality.

Versions shaped by fear.
By past stress.
By the desire to stay in control.

“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant.” — Albert Einstein

It tells you that hesitation is maturity.
That doubt is realism.
That staying small is stability.

And if you are someone who values responsibility then you listen.

You listen very carefully.

But there is another voice present too.

Much quieter.
Almost easy to miss.

It doesn’t argue.
It doesn’t spiral.
It doesn’t flood you with explanations.

It simply whispers.

Whispers that live in the heart.

Not in the racing thoughts.
Not in the fear loops.
Not in the endless analysis that keeps you awake at 2am.

“There is a voice that doesn’t use words. Listen.” — Rumi

The heart does not debate.
It recognizes.

It nudges toward expansion in ways that feel steady instead of overwhelming.

This is deeply personal for me.

My heart whispers about my writing.
About how important it is.
About how it is not something I do only when conditions are perfect.

My ego prefers things small and controllable.
Predictable.
Contained.

Writing consistently does not feel contained.
Growth does not feel contained.
Change does not feel contained.

So the mind tries to reinterpret reality.

“It’s too much right now.”
“It will stress your nervous system.”
“You should wait until everything is stable.”

But stability, in this context, can quietly become avoidance.

Not loud avoidance.
Refined avoidance.
The kind that sounds intelligent.
The kind that sounds self-aware.
The kind that sounds like protection while slowly disconnecting you from what is meaningful.

That is how the internal gaslighting works.

Not by shutting you down completely.
But by convincing you that staying smaller is the most responsible version of yourself.

There is a strange part to this.

You can logically agree with your thoughts and still feel misaligned in your body.

You can make the “right” decision on paper and still feel unsettled in your chest.

You can follow every rational step.
Still sense that something true was quietly overridden.

That is not irrationality.

That is awareness.

The mind speaks loudly.
The ego speaks strategically.
But the soul does not shout.

It whispers.
Often at 2am.
Often through the heart before the brain has time to rewrite the story.

Not because they are less important.
But because they are less resolved.

Fearless Mindset is where I share the perspective.
The Back Room is where that perspective is still forming.

It’s where I speak more honestly about the process behind the writing — what is unfolding in real time, what I’m noticing in my nervous system, and how I am actually working with fear, stability, and change while life is still happening.

This also includes the quieter parts of my practice.
Reflection. Symbolic tools. Metaphysical orientation.
Not as performance, and not as escape ... but as grounded ways I stay steady while things are still in motion.

You won’t always find conclusions there.
You’ll often find the middle.

The part where I am working with things instead of pretending I’ve mastered them.

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I used to joke that if I ate a cockroach first thing in the morning, nothing worse could happen to me that day.

It was funny to say, but impossible to do.
Like many affirmations, it was less about action and more about perspective.

We all have bad days. That is the balance of life.

But if you are not paying attention, the bad days stop feeling occasional and start feeling cyclical.
It begins in small ways.
Traffic delays. Technology glitches. Spilled coffee before something important.
Minor inconveniences that stack quietly.

By the end of the day, your nervous system is shot.
You tell yourself that if you can just make it to bed, tomorrow will be better.

Sometimes it isn’t.
Then the week isn’t any better.
Then you start looking forward to relief instead of living your days.

At some point, I began to notice something deeper than bad luck.

When Reality Starts to Feel Heavier

When stress lines up long enough, the events themselves matter less than how you experience them.
The outside world starts to feel sharper. More urgent. More confrontational.

It could easily be brushed off as a run of bad luck.
But another possibility quietly appeared.

What if the external world was not changing as dramatically as it felt?
What if my internal state was shaping how I was experiencing it?

Over time, I started to see a pattern. The outside world seemed to mirror what was happening inside of me.

Not in a mystical sense.
In a nervous system sense.

Building a Life — and Forcing It

For years, I wanted to build a life I dreamed about.
A life I had waited years for.

I bought the things I would need slowly and stored them away. Preparing for the day I would finally put myself first.

And then I did it.
I quit my job.

There were no detailed plans, just ideas and determination.
So I did what I believed disciplined people were supposed to do.

I created a schedule.
Then I made it stricter.
Then more structured.
Then nearly impossible.

There were not enough hours in the day to complete everything I assigned myself, even though I was no longer working.

I became a drill sergeant to my own life.

Every day was a checklist that was never fully finished.
And strangely, I was more stressed than I had ever been at my actual job.

I was forcing a way of life that my nervous system did not want.

The Burnout and the Mirror of Lack

Burnout did not arrive dramatically.
It crept in through exhaustion, financial pressure, and constant internal urgency.

I was not making money yet.
My savings were disappearing.
And my attention narrowed almost entirely to what was not working.

Lack.
Scarcity.
Pressure.

After a while, the mind begins to believe the thoughts it repeats the most.
Mine repeated fear.

I noticed the world started to show me how I lacked.
How much scarcity there was.
There was confrontation everywhere.

As Viktor Frankl wrote,

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response.”

I had compressed that space completely through exhaustion and pressure. Everything felt immediate. Everything felt threatening.

Was reality actually becoming more hostile… or was I only able to perceive it through a nervous system already in survival mode?

Panic as a Signal, Not a Failure

Then the panic attacks started.

Not subtle ones.
Clear ones.

My nervous system had reached a point where it refused to be ignored.
It was letting me know in terms I could no longer override with discipline or willpower.

Fear set in quickly after that.

I began turning inward in a harsh way.
I believed I was failing.
Failing to build the life I wanted.
Failing financially.
Failing creatively.

My writing became forced, and I could feel it.
The words were there, but they were not true enough at my core.

As Bessel van der Kolk notes in The Body Keeps the Score,

“Being able to feel safe with other people is probably the single most important aspect of mental health.”

I realized I did not feel safe inside the life structure I had created for myself. Even though nothing external was directly threatening me.

Was I actually failing… or was my nervous system rejecting the way I was trying to live?

Fighting for a Place in the World

That question revealed something deeper.

It wasn’t just about lack.
I was fighting to be seen.
Fighting to be taken seriously.
Fighting for every dollar.
Fighting to have a place in this world and to feel that I mattered.

I was almost fighting for every breath I took.

No wonder my system was on overload.

I had structured my life like a battlefield and then wondered why reality felt hostile.

Relaxing the System, Shifting the Mirror

Instead of pushing harder, I began doing something unfamiliar.
I practiced relaxing.

Not perfectly.
Not all at once.
Just intentionally.

I checked in with my body several times a day.
Were my shoulders relaxed?
How was my breathing?
Was I actually present?

At first, it wasn’t easy.
My instinct was still to force things.
To push.
To control outcomes.

But slowly, my body began to settle.

And something surprising happened.

Nothing external changed.
My responsibilities were the same.
My circumstances were still real.

But the world stopped feeling immediately dangerous.

A Softer Structure the Nervous System Could Support

I redesigned my system in a gentler way.

Instead of overwhelming to-do lists, I chose three minimum actions.
Each one only two minutes long.
Not as a productivity trick, but as a signal to my body that showing up did not equal threat.

My journaling shifted from dumping negativity into morning pages to becoming a space for reflection and encouragement.
My tarot practice changed from “What do I need to know to avoid danger?”
to “What energy do I want to lean into today?”

This subtle shift removed the sense of constant defense.

Within a few weeks, I noticed something unexpected.
I was calmer.
More present.
Less reactive in my daily interactions.

I stopped fighting people to make my view of reality work.
I let life be and observed where it naturally went.

Reality as a Mirror, Not an Enemy

And then I noticed the deepest mirror of all.

I had not failed at building the life I wanted.
I had built it in a way my nervous system could not support.

When my system was overloaded, reality mirrored scarcity, pressure, and confrontation.
When my system began to settle, reality felt more open, manageable, and even quietly interesting.

Carl Jung observed,

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

What I had been calling lack, pressure, and confrontation may have been my internal state reflected back through an exhausted system.

The external world had not transformed overnight.
But my experience of it had.

Maybe reality was never the enemy.
Maybe it was reflecting the internal state I was living in.

Not as punishment.
Not as blame.
But as feedback.

And once my nervous system stopped living in constant fight,
the mirror finally stopped showing me a battlefield.