It's a Duress to Me because I'm Not Ready for Step Z
Like I'm drowning from the misplaced expectation.
Around the last quarter of last year, I had a semi-breakdown. I was just beginning to find my footing when I was suddenly pulled back to the edge again.
It started with those what-ifs and worst-case scenarios. Each one felt like my heart was being stomped on.
There is a massive difference between a controlled environment with a therapist - where there are brakes and a guide to pull you out - and when these things are brought up without a safety harness.
In a clinical setting, I can go through the darkest details and the worst possibilities and still get myself home to my daily life. But doing that outside that room, I just can't do anything for days.
It isn't that I don't want to hear the truth. It's like how homes in some countries have a built-in bomb shelter. You prepare the emergency kit, you know the drill, and then you go on with your life.
Can you imagine if you were getting married and someone told you, You know, you could divorce, right? Or if someone constantly reminded you that your parents will die one day, or for me, that my cats will leave me one day?
I know nothing is forever and we will all die someday - but knowing that, and getting trapped in that dark space, are two very different things.
Somehow, you are made to feel these future possibilities as if they happened already. Like it's a current crisis rather than a distant thought. I'm not in denial; I'm simply refusing to let those morbid thoughts consume my present.
I know the drill - but I still need to find a way to actually live. I don't want to live in that simulation.
Photo by Richard Burlton on Unsplash
People should have a safe space to get things off their chest without being judged.
Without that safety, the only other option is to bear the burden in isolation, where the silence eventually becomes a wall no one can climb over. I don't speak for all; I am describing the two walls of my own reality.
There is a massive difference between a suggestion that helps me build a bridge and an insistence that leaves me standing at the edge of a cliff.
When I am met with endless what-ifs without consideration for my reality - my limited resources and actual emotional capacity - it becomes a complicated, misunderstood clash of context.
This is where I start to lose my footing.
I internalized that pressure until it felt like I was being held underwater by the weight of a solution I wasn't ready for.
I began to believe I was much more useless and weaker than what I initially thought. I am so ashamed of my own incompetence that I almost gave up entirely.
It makes me feel like I just want to turn off the internet and stop everything - including treatments and therapies - just to lie there until I disappear for an early ending.
It takes everything I have to work through these dark thoughts and stay present.
Photo by Yusuf Onuk on Unsplash
We don't force a chick unable to fly into the wilderness only to get attacked by predators or force a newborn to sit upright only to injure them before they are ready.
My situation is no different. Pushing me into a change of circumstances before I am ready doesn't save me - it just exposes me to a different kind of ruin.
We understand that life rarely moves as we wish. There are so many reasons people stay in difficult situations. People stay in jobs they dislike because leaving isn't as simple as walking out the door.
If everyone had the freedom to be completely unbound by their life's reality, there wouldn't be a single unhappy person left.
It's not like in the movies, where someone can just grab a single suitcase and buy a one-way ticket to a new life.
In reality, we struggle to pack for a three-day trip without hitting the weight limit at check-in. We certainly can't fit a life and a household into a piece of luggage - and we definitely can't afford a flight ticket if we are counting pennies just to get through the week.
It's like jumping into the water when the tide is turning against us; we spend all our energy just staying afloat instead of moving forward. We aren't making progress; we are just drowning slowly.
I truly value genuine concern and sensible suggestions that works for my actual situation without jumping to extremes. I'm okay with Step A, B, or C, but I'm not ready for Step Z.
When someone suggests things I can actually work on, it feels like a vital first step. I actually practice most of these suggestions, from breathing exercises and grounding techniques to specific ideas for the types of gigs I can take on and technical additions for the things I do.
Even the simplest, most basic thing - like suggestion for Linktree from a friend helps. The discovery of the littlest, unexpected things like this are actually so helpful.
If you give me something I can reach, I will take it. If you put it on top of a mountain, I might fall trying to get it.
The struggle only begins when the help bypasses these small, vital steps and tries to push me toward a massive life shift I am not equipped for yet. It is those misplaced expectations that make me feel like I'm drowning.
Photo by Amy Humphries on Unsplash
In my situation, waiting is not passive.
When I use this time for self-betterment, gaining insight, and building strength for the right moment, I am still moving internally. I have made a decision based on both instinct and logic - it just wasn't the one the world expected.
I am the one going into the water, not them, and I am the only one who knows if I am truly ready. I know the balance in my pocket; I am the one who has to live with it. No one else but me will have to face the consequences of whatever decision I make.
Illnesses compound; they don't wait their turn. I am already fighting to stay present and safe; I have no desire to hasten a downfall by rushing into a wilderness I am not equipped for.
Whether I eventually become strong enough to fly again, or I die in the midst of this struggle, at least I will have died working toward my own betterment - and not on the street. To make a move recklessly now would be a form of self-abandonment - a premature and unnecessary end.
If you understand this, you understand the weight of life's circumstances - that no one chooses to be exposed or broken if they have the luxury of a better choice.
I haven't lost touch with reality - I know exactly how difficult it is out there. I know that if I make a rash decision, I won't even be able to continue the small gigs that provide a foothold.
It isn't exactly ideal, but I am able to carve out a tiny sanctuary and still be functional. I need what remains of me - and this space - to work. If I lose the ground I am standing on now, everything would just spiral.
When I am unable to take in certain suggestions, it is nothing personal against anyone. It is just me, and perhaps my own personal flaw. Call me a coward if that helps to justify anything - but please, don't push those insistences on me anymore. They are simply beyond my capacity right now.
I've made my decision; it just wasn't the one expected of me. Please don't put me under the kind of duress where I feel I have to constantly defend my own act of self-preservation.
©Britt H.
Thank you for reading this.
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I’ve been reading through your posts, and to be honest, it’s clear that you’re getting things off your chest, but that you’re also expecting some sort of response. And you only get a response if people read what you’ve written, and that’s when they decide whether it’s worth giving you an upvote. That upvote is the small income you’re talking about. At least on this platform.
To be honest, I think it’s unlikely that people here will force you to do ABC or even just Z.
Furthermore, I don’t think your posts make it very clear what your situation is actually like.
I think the following says enough, and from my own experience I can only say that if your situation is really bad enough, you’ll definitely go, even if you’re not sure what lies ahead (who is, and that certainty will never exist). Money does indeed play a role, but there will always be help. Help that you cannot see right now, coming from an unexpected quarter, and which is not visible or present at the moment, as I have experienced. If you do not leave, it also means that you are resigning yourself to your situation or dying. As for the latter: we are all going to die. Nobody needs to remind you of that.
As for your personal conversations with friends: friends cannot sense how you are feeling at that moment, so you will have to express that yourself each time. I understand that distant reaction of yours as a form of self-protection, but also that your friend notices it. Because you are indeed distant when you first pour out your heart and then, with pain and difficulty, leave short messages.
Incidentally, I also read a lot in this piece of yours where I think you see and, above all, feel things in a certain way, whilst that might not be the intention at all. At least, I don’t see it the way you do, the reactions of people as you describe them. Perhaps it’s also worth bearing in mind that you’re not the only one being put under pressure and feeling driven into a corner; this applies to the friends around you too.
I wonder whether the people around you actually expect anything from you at all. The fact that someone says: ‘do this or that’ or ‘try this or that’ doesn’t mean they expect you to do it. Often, especially when the word ‘if’ is thrown in, it’s just thinking out loud, an attempt to think along with you and help you see things differently. If you don’t feel the need for this, you should simply say: ‘I just want to get something off my chest’, and then you don’t need to respond any further. Is that alright?
This would be a lot healthier for both of you. Ultimately, it’s your life, and I don’t think you can blame people who listen to you and may or may not suggest something in response – or who, after thinking it over at length, might even explore the possibilities – for your feeling that you’re being forced in a certain direction, such as booking a flight to an unknown destination straight away; and that’s certainly how it sounds to me when I read this.
What I also understand is that this feeling is really bothering you.
I wish you strength and above all peace of mind.
❤️
Oh no, this isn't about the readers at all. There is a different dynamic here. While public comments stay within boundaries and offer useful suggestions that I process and keep in mind, my situation with this person involves a private friendship. He knows far more detail than a typical reader.
You’re right: I have a huge issue setting boundaries. I get thrown off too easily and find it hard to say basic things like, 'I don’t want to talk about this.' I let my emotions lead me by the nose, and when that happens, I eventually just go into hiding. If I could have voiced out at the first incident, things may not have compounded and escalated at all. This is my major flaw. I own this.
Upvoted! Thank you for supporting witness @jswit.
Thank you!
You are no coward. This internalizing and deep questioning is human. I am guilty of this as well.
The most common exercise I usually try out is building a wall in front of me, like an invisible wall. Try it and tell me how it feels. ChatGPT suggested it to me.
If you are not able to go to therapy regularly, talk with AI models, not in an obsessive way, and ask them to be critical of you. Suggest that you can take it.
You’ll find a model that, though not human, understands you. I have tried two or three times and sometimes you get something out of yourself.
Keeping in mind I am not an expert in this.
It will tell you that you are a deep thinking and creative human who observes the world like no other, and this is not a flaw.