Things We Stay In Because We’re Afraid to Leave

What keeps us in jobs, relationships, roles, or systems that have become unsustainable? We can know something is wearing us down and still be terrified to leave because uncertainty feels even more threatening. Through a personal story involving professional rupture, burnout, anxiety, recovery, supervision, and private-practice change, this episode looks at the ways fear, dependence, and the need for stability can keep us trying to preserve something long after it stops fitting.

The work is learning to tolerate enough uncertainty to make choices based on what is actually happening rather than only on what feels safest. That can mean knowing when to repair, when to set a boundary, when to leave, and how to live without immediate closure or guarantees about what comes next. It is also about what happens after the rupture: how we use the support we receive, what we do once we have more autonomy ourselves, and how recovery can become the ability to stay present through fear and discomfort without needing to escape it.