The Existential Crisis No One Talks About: Being Trapped in the Life You Settled For
Time Isn’t the Enemy—Avoidance Is
Time is gloriously merciless.
It carves through our grand intentions like a hot knife, leaving behind the skeletal remains of what could have been—a museum of unrealized dreams we occasionally visit. I track the subtle shifts in my body after a week of renewed discipline: muscle fibers awakening, metabolism recalibrating… and find myself infected with that quintessentially American disease: impatience.
I want transformation delivered with the speed of an Amazon Prime package. I can't help it (though I'm working on that too, darling, we all have our flaws).
My years in the trenches as a clinician have taught me to spot time's casualties on sight. The patterns are predictable, almost comically so: those who ride time's current with open eyes inevitably wash up on shores of possibility, while those who deny its flow slowly fossilize, their potential hardening around them like amber preserving the insect that could have flown.
They construct elaborate mazes of avoidance, a ritualistic numbing with substances, strategic deployment of distraction, calculated campaigns of “not-giving-a-damn.” Different poisons, same intended outcome: to build a reality where their exquisite cowardice looks like cosmic misfortune.
Existential Suffocation: The Silent Epidemic of Unlived Potential
Let's be real - we've perfected a unique form of self-torture: existential suffocation. You know it well. That tightness in your chest when you realize another year has vanished while your potential sits untouched in the freezer, preserved but unused. It's the 3 AM panic when your body jolts awake with the sickening realization that the goals you've whispered to yourself remain just that… whispers.
In the grand cosmic carnival of existence, where we're miraculously conscious stardust dancing on a blue miracle spinning through infinite possibility, it seems particularly absurd that we'd choose to make our fleeting moment smaller than it could be. Yet here we are, masters of diminishment.
Self-Deception: The Elegant Cage We Build for Ourselves
The cure isn't some esoteric nonsense wrapped in self-help jargon. It's brutally simple:
Tear down every comforting lie you tell yourself and embrace radical self-discipline.
Not as punishment (though it might that way at first) but as the only real shot at escaping the designer straitjacket that modern life has tailored specifically for your dimensions. Think of it as bespoke freedom, the ultimate luxury good.
Photo by Tyler Shields from his Provocateur collection
Radical Discipline Is the Path to Liberation
Notice the focus is on SELF.
Not others. Not circumstances. Not the elaborate excuses we craft with architectural precision (though some of you are quite talented at this - I've seen excuse structures that would make Frank Gehry weep with envy).
Just YOU.
This isn't about developing new, sophisticated forms of self-loathing, it's about staging a deliciously rebellious takeover of your own narrative. Reclaiming every square inch of territory you've surrendered to external authorities, cultural expectations, and the comfortable numbness of routine. Because the moment you outsource responsibility for your life is the moment you start rehearsing for death while your heart's still beating. And darling, that's a terrible waste of a perfectly good heartbeat.
The Questions That Resurrect
WHAT ARE YOU PRETENDING NOT TO KNOW ABOUT YOURSELF?
If you stood naked before the mirror of absolute honesty, stripped of the costumes you wear for others (and we all have a wardrobe full, don't we?), what would your soul confess as your deepest regret in waiting? And remember, the deathbed framing this question could materialize tomorrow or decades from now. Death doesn't check your Google calendar before showing up—rude, I know, but there it is.
Some people can't even begin to answer this. Their connection to authentic desire has gone so faint it's like trying to hear a whisper at a rock concert. They move through their days like tourists in their own lives, collecting experiences without inhabiting them, hearing their true nature's voice about as clearly as a gas station radio during a thunderstorm. The existential equivalent of watching your own life through someone else's Instagram filter.
The Three Tribes of Transformation—and Which One You’re In
After years watching from the front row of human transformation, I've seen people naturally sort themselves into three distinct tribes when faced with their unfiltered truth:
The first tribe knows exactly what they want but remains trapped in an elaborate dance of paralysis—choreographed by past trauma, directed by cultural programming, produced by toxic relationships, and bankrolled by the comforting predictability of staying small. They stand at the border of their potential with passport in hand, inventing increasingly creative reasons not to cross. (Some of these reasons are genuinely entertaining—I could publish a book of just these alone.)
The second tribe makes a bold first leap toward change but retreats the moment shit gets real. They've bought into the modern delusion that discomfort means something's wrong rather than something's working. They want metamorphosis without the messy breakdown of identity, revolution without breaking a single window. Bless their hearts… they want to be butterflies without the whole dissolving-into-goo phase of chrysalis.
And then there's the third tribe—rare as genuine political discourse but infinitely more valuable. These magnificent rebels push through every barricade, transforming fear into rocket fuel, understanding that self-discipline isn't about restriction but about creating the precise conditions for freedom. They breathe deeply while others hyperventilate on anxiety and excuses. They've grasped the existential paradox: that true freedom comes only through rigorous structure.
Reclaiming Responsibility: The Rebellion That Breathes Life
What separates this third group isn't some mythical willpower or genetic lottery win. It's their practical recognition that evolution requires scaffolding; guides, communities, practices, and systems that not only initiate movement but sustain momentum when motivation inevitably crashes like a sugar high. (And it WILL crash, my dear. In fact “internal motivation” is a bit of an oxymoron in psychology)
The Real Cure: Truth, Structure, and Self-Loyalty
No matter which tribe currently claims you, the invitation stands: identify with surgical precision where you're stuck, empower yourself to dynamite those limitations, and develop the self-discipline that transforms fantasy into lived experience.
The cure for existential suffocation isn't more time - it's more TRUTH.
YOUR specific, uncomfortable truth.
And the courage to live it without apology or dilution. In a universe indifferent to our existence, the most rebellious act is to insist on living fully despite the cosmic absurdity of it all.
Are You Ready to Stop Holding Your Breath?
I've built my practice as an oxygen delivery system for those ready to breathe fully again. Not to do the breathing for you, but to ensure you have every damn thing you need to fill your own lungs with the rarified air of potential finally realized.
The question isn't whether you can be cured. The question is whether you're finally ready to admit you've been holding your breath all this time. And darling? Blue is not your color. ;)
