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Specific Pain of Being Used by Someone You Trusted

The trust, care, and belief that this person was on your side was real, and then you realized they were using the trust to take something from you. They were taking your time, energy, vulnerability, or something else and they weren’t giving anything back. The trust you placed in them was a tool they used to access things you wouldn’t have given if you’d known what they were planning. The specific pain of this is different from being used by someone you didn’t trust. This hurts more because the trust made you vulnerable. The trust made you open. The trust made you believe that someone had your best interests in mind when really they had their own interests. The vulnerability that came from trust is what they exploited. You are replaying conversations trying to figure out when it started. When did they stop being genuine and start being manipulative? When did the relationship become one-directional? When did you start giving more than you were receiving? But the answers don’t matter ...
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You Learned to Make Yourself Smaller Than You Are

You have gotten really good at shrinking. Taking up less space, wanting less, needing less, or being less. The shrinking happened gradually until you forgot you were ever bigger. Now the small version of you is who you are and you don’t even remember that you used to be different. The shrinking probably started because being big wasn’t safe. Being visible meant being noticed. It meant being judged or criticized or told to be different, and so you learned to be smaller. You learned to want things quietly, need things only when it was convenient for other people, and you learned to make your life small enough to fit in the space other people had allocated for you. The shrinking became a habit and habits become identity. Now you don’t take up space automatically. You make yourself smaller before anyone even asks you to. You apologize for your opinions before anyone questions them. You minimize your needs before anyone can tell you they’re too much. You are doing the shrinking yourself...
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The Part of Yourself You Have Never Told Anyone About

There is something about you that nobody knows. A thought you have had, a feeling you hide, or a desire you don’t admit to. Something that’s true but needs to stay secret because telling it would make you unsafe somehow. The secret is protecting you or protecting someone else or protecting the image people have of you. The secret makes you incomplete around other people. You are missing a piece because that piece stays hidden. People know parts of you but not all of you because the hidden part is too risky to show. The people closest to you are still further away than they could be because of the secret. The weight of carrying the secret is background weight. It’s always there, it’s there in conversations that get close to the truth and you have to change direction, and it’s there when someone could understand but you can’t let them understand because understanding would require explaining the secret. It’s there all the time even when you are not thinking about it directly. Part ...
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The Lie You Tell Every Time Someone Asks How You Are

Someone asks how you are and your mouth says fine before your brain even catches up. The word is out before you can consider saying anything else. The fine is automatic. Fine is the answer people want and it’s easier than the truth. The truth would be complicated, require explanation, or it would make things uncomfortable, so fine works. Fine is simple. Fine closes the conversation. Fine is the answer that lets people move on without having to actually care about the answer. You are not sure when fine became your default. It happened gradually until the habit was so deep that saying anything else feels like oversharing. Saying anything else feels like burdening someone with information they didn’t ask for. Saying anything else feels wrong somehow even though the fine is a lie. The lie is small so it doesn’t feel like much. One word can’t hurt anything. One word doesn’t matter. But you say it every day to multiple people and the accumulation of the lies starts to add up. You are l...
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Stop Waiting for Someone to Fix It

You have been waiting for someone to come help and the waiting has gone on long enough that you are starting to realize nobody’s coming. The person who was supposed to show up isn’t showing up. The rescue that was supposed to happen isn’t happening. You are still stuck with the same problem and you are still alone with it. Admitting this is painful. Admitting this means accepting that external salvation is not coming. It means accepting that you are not going to be rescued. It means accepting that you have to figure this out yourself somehow. The waiting was easier than the doing. The waiting let you believe that at some point things would change. The waiting let you believe that someone had the answer even if you didn’t. The waiting let you believe that this was temporary and wouldn’t always be like this. Now you are facing the possibility that this is how it’s going to be and you are the only one who can change it. Other people might have their own problems or their own limitat...
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Competence Becomes a Prison

You are the person who handles things, figures it out, and the person people call when they don’t know what to do. Being competent felt like freedom once but now it feels like a job you can’t quit. Other people have given you the role of person who has it together and you have been in that role long enough that you don’t know how to step out of it. They need you to be capable, to have answers, and to handle the things that scare them. What happens when you actually don’t know? Or what happens when you are scared too? The competence doesn’t allow for that. The competence requires you to be solid when everyone else is falling apart. The competence requires you to have answers even when there are no good answers. You have gotten very good at hiding the parts of yourself that aren’t competent. The confusion gets hidden. The uncertainty gets hidden. The fear gets hidden. What’s visible is the capable version and that’s the version that people know and rely on. The other version gets s...
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Vulnerability Does Not Come With a Guarantee

You open up to someone and there is no guarantee they are going to reciprocate. There is no guarantee they are going to understand. There’s no guarantee they are going to hold what you have shared with care. You have given them access to parts of yourself and there’s absolutely no way to protect yourself if they use that access to hurt you. This is the actual cost of vulnerability that nobody wants to talk about. The cost is the risk that you might be seen and rejected. That you might be known and dismissed. That you might open up and have your openness used against you. So you don’t open up. You keep it safe by keeping it hidden, maintain distance by maintaining mystery, protect yourself by protecting information about yourself, and you stay isolated and lonely but at least you are not at risk of being hurt. The people who are good at connection somehow tolerate this risk. They open up knowing there’s no guarantee. They show up vulnerable knowing someone might take advantage of ...
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Being Understood Makes You Want to Run

Someone gets it. They understand what you have been trying to explain for so long, see the pattern you have been avoiding, know what you need before you have to ask, and your first instinct is to leave. Being understood should feel like you have been rescued. Someone finally gets it, someone finally sees what’s been true all along, but instead of relief, there’s panic. The panic that comes from being known, or from having someone understand you so completely that they could hurt you with that knowledge if they wanted to. As long as nobody really gets you, you are safe. Their not understanding is protection. But this person understands and now you are vulnerable in ways you weren’t before. They could predict what you are feeling, know when you are lying, and see through the defenses that have been keeping you separate and protected. You want to be understood so badly but you also want to stay safe and those two things are in direct conflict. Understanding requires vulnerability, l...
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Can’t Stop Wanting Something You Think You Should Be Over

You thought you had moved past this by now. You thought you had gotten over it or healed from it or accepted that you can’t have it. Then you want it again and the disappointment is huge because you feel like you are back where you started. All the progress you thought you made evaporates and suddenly you are right back in the wanting. The wanting keeps coming back and each time it comes back you treat it like failure. You have failed at getting over it, failed at accepting what is, failed at moving on, or failed at being the kind of person who can want something and then let it go. The wanting keeps resurfacing like proof that none of your progress was real, but the wanting isn’t actually failure. The wanting is just there. It’s part of you. It comes and goes and sometimes it comes back stronger than before. That’s not a reflection on you or your growth. That’s just how wanting works. Wanting doesn’t follow a timeline. It doesn’t permanently disappear because you have decided it s...
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When All Your Energy Goes Into Making People Feel Better

Your day gets spent managing how other people feel. Someone’s irritable and you are trying to figure out what you did wrong. Someone’s withdrawn and you are trying to bring them back out. Someone’s in a bad mood and you are working on fixing it. Your energy is going to other people’s emotional states instead of your own life. The work of this is invisible but it’s constant. You are monitoring, adjusting, responding, managing. You are smaller when they need you to be smaller. You are quieter when they need peace. You are more energetic when they need cheering up. You are whatever they need because their comfort is the priority. This happens without conscious thought most of the time because you have been doing it for so long. This probably started because it was necessary. Maybe it was the only way to survive in your family or your relationships or your environment, or being attuned to other people’s feelings was the only way to stay safe, so you learned to do it really well. You be...
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