Episode 22: Escaping the Trap You Didn’t Know You Built

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When you were deep in people-pleasing and perfectionism, the urge was to control. You controlled your tone, your timing, your calendar, your image. You got good at managing how others experienced you. And for a while, it worked. But once you stop performing and start telling the truth, a new urge can show up, the urge to escape. Not because your life is falling apart, but because it was built around a version of you who no longer exists.

This episode is about what happens after the unlearning. When you’re no longer shape-shifting to stay safe, but you still feel trapped inside the choices you made from that old version of you. It’s the part no one talks about: when freedom doesn’t feel freeing yet. We’ll talk about how to recognize the trap, how to understand the urge to escape, and how to stay with yourself long enough to let something new emerge. Not through fixing or burning it all down, but through honesty, presence, and slow return.

What You'll Learn

• Why the urge to escape often shows up after you stop controlling everything
• How people-pleasing and perfectionism can shape your entire life, not just your behaviors
• What makes this phase feel disorienting, even when nothing is “wrong”
• How to stay with the urge to escape without burning it all down
• Why naming what no longer fits is more powerful than fixing it

Episode Transcript

There’s a strange thing that can happen after you stop people-pleasing. After the perfectionism quiets. After the self-improvement slows down. After the need to control everything loosens its grip.

You start to look around at the life you’ve built, the job, the relationship, the schedule, the roles, and you realize:

I’m not performing anymore…but I don’t feel free.

I actually feel stuck. Trapped, even.

Not because anything is falling apart, but because it doesn’t feel like you anymore.

You might find yourself fantasizing about escaping your own life. Not in a dramatic way, but in those quiet moments where you think: “I don’t want this version of my life.”

Even if you created it.

Even if you worked hard for it.

Even if it’s what you thought you wanted.

It can feel like waking up in a room you’ve lived in for years and suddenly realizing the windows don’t open.

That’s what we’re talking about today.

The space after people-pleasing and perfectionism, when you’ve done the work, you’re not trying to earn your worth anymore…and yet, the life around you still reflects an older version of you.

And I’ll say this upfront: This is where I’ve been. For the last two years, I’ve been in this place, where I can see the trap, but I don’t have a clean solution. I’m not on the other side of it. I’m still in it. But I’ve learned enough to name it, and I think that’s worth sharing.

So today, we’re going to talk about what this trapped feeling really is, why it shows up now, what the urge to escape is trying to tell you, and how to stay with yourself instead of numbing, quitting, or running away too quickly.

Not to fix it, but to name it, while it’s still unfolding.

SEGMENT 1: WHY THIS FEELS SO HARD

This part, the space after people-pleasing, after perfectionism, after performance, is often described like a liberation. But in my experience, and in what I hear from clients, it doesn’t feel like freedom right away.

It feels like disorientation. It feels like anxiety in a new outfit. It feels like watching your life happen from inside a version of yourself you’ve outgrown.

And there are good reasons for that.

Reason number one: Our nervous system is still wired for control. People-pleasing, over-functioning, being easy were never just personality quirks. They were strategies built to keep you safe.

So when you stop performing, your body doesn’t immediately relax. It often panics. Because your old safety signals, approval, harmony, usefulness, are gone and you haven’t built new ones yet. I feel like this all of the time these days. My old anxieties of how to get through the day are gone, and I am left with an empty canvas for new, existential anxieties.

You might also be in between identities, and your nervous system doesn’t know if it’s safe here.

Reason number two that this feels hard is that you’ve lost your external reference points.

When your life has been shaped around other people’s needs, expectations, and approval, you get really good at scanning for cues:

How do they feel?

What do they need?

Who do I need to be here?

When that scan drops, it can feel like silence.

No cues. No immediate sense of direction. Just you and your confusion.

The third reason this is hard is that you’re grieving your past self. Not because she did anything wrong necessarily, but because she shaped so much of your life.

She made things work.

She got you here.

And now, you’re realizing: you’ve changed.

Your needs, your values, your boundaries, they’re evolving…rapidly.

But your life might not have caught up yet.

And that’s a kind of grief that has hit me hard and I did not know how to recognize, until my therapist pointed it out. It’s the grief of waking up. The grief of realizing you built something beautiful… that no longer fits.

And finally, the fourth reason this is so hard is that there’s no immediate next thing. This isn’t the part where you leap into the next big version of your life. This is the in-between.

Where clarity hasn’t arrived.

Where the new story hasn’t taken shape.

Where it’s tempting to escape, or numb, or fix, or burn it all down.

But maybe what’s needed here…is simply staying put.

Staying long enough to see what’s actually true — underneath the old roles, the old habits, the old version of “you.”

SEGMENT 2: STRATEGIES

So let’s talk about how can you stay with yourself when the old life no longer fits and the new one hasn’t formed yet.

There’s no checklist for this part. There’s no five-step plan to rebuild your life overnight, and, honestly, if there were, you’d probably use it to recreate another version of the trap.

Because I think this phase doesn’t require a plan. It requires presence.

Here are a few ways to stay with yourself here, without numbing, fixing, or escaping too fast:

Number one: Let the urge to escape be information, not a plan. The impulse to run, to blow it all up, or withdraw, or fantasize about starting over, isn’t wrong. But I am learning that it’s rarely about the literal thing you want to escape.

Often, it’s about finally feeling the pressure of a life you built from self-abandonment…and not yet knowing how to relate to it from self-trust.

Instead of acting on the urge, sit with it.

Ask:

What exactly do I want out of right now?

What does this part of me think I’ll find if I disappear?

What does she want to feel?

And is there some small way I can help her feel that right now?

For example, maybe you fantasize about getting in the car and just driving, no destination, no texts, no dinner to make, no one needing anything from you.

That version of you might not actually want to leave your whole life. She might just want to feel space. Autonomy. A little freedom from being responsible for everything all the time.

So instead of driving away, maybe you carve out an hour where no one can reach you. You silence the phone. Take a walk. Sit somewhere unfamiliar. Just a way to offer yourself what she’s been quietly asking for.

You don’t have to disappear to listen to her. You just have to maybe stop ignoring what she’s telling you.

Strategy number two: Name the parts of your life that came from survival, not selfhood. This isn’t about blame. It’s about sorting.

Some parts of your life were built to help you feel safe. To keep things stable. To earn love. To stay liked.

Those parts were necessary at the time.

Now, you can start to name them without making them wrong. For example:

“I said yes to this job when I needed to prove I could handle anything.”

“I stayed in this relationship because I was afraid of being alone.”

“I kept showing up like I was fine, because I didn’t think I was allowed to not be.”

Naming these stories creates space to eventually rewrite them and also space to feel compassion for the version of you who lived them.

Strategy number three: Replace control with rhythm.

When you let go of perfectionism, you lose structure. That doesn’t mean you need to live in chaos. But you do need to shift from control to rhythm.

For example, this might look like having a daily ritual to check in with how you’re feeling in some way.

I personally write for ten minutes every morning without agenda or purpose. This really helps me explore me. I always delete what I’ve written. Knowing that I’m going to delete what I’ve written assures my brain that there really is no agenda to my writing. 

You could also practice letting your body lead for a while, asking, what feels honest today?

You may not get answers right away, but the routine can help you stay present long enough for answers to emerge over time.

And strategy number four is patience. I offer that you can let the new version of you reveal herself slowly. There’s a part of you who is trying to come through.

You don’t have to name her yet or define her in any way. That will come. And you don’t have to explain her to anyone.

But you can start listening.

To what you resent.

To what you crave.

To what you no longer have the energy to pretend about.

SEGMENT 3: TAKE ONE ACTION

If this episode is resonating, chances are you’ve already started waking up.

You’ve noticed the quiet tension in your life.

You’ve felt the pull toward something you can’t yet define.

You’ve realized that the performance is over, but the container hasn’t changed.

So here’s your invitation this week, maybe right now.

Name one part of your life that no longer fits.

You don’t have to change it.

You don’t have to confront anyone.

You don’t have to burn anything down.

Just name it.

You can write it down, say it out loud, or sit with it in silence.

“This job was built on who I thought I had to be.”

“This schedule doesn’t reflect who I am anymore.”

“This version of my marriage isn’t what I want.”

“This whole chapter was shaped by fear, and I’m not afraid in the same way anymore.”

Whatever it is for you, I challenge you to name it.

And then stay with yourself there.

Not as a project.

Not with urgency.

Just with honesty.

This is how the next version of your life starts to form, not through reinvention, but through refusal to disappear.

CONCLUSION

Ok, amazing job today, let’s recap. You’re not doing anything wrong if the life you built no longer fits. This is what happens when you stop performing and start telling the truth.

It’s disorienting.

It’s honest.

And it’s the beginning of real freedom, not the curated version, but the kind that comes from deep self-trust.

If this is where you are, right with me, in the in-between, noticing the trap, not sure how to move, this is the work I do on myself and with clients every day.

Inside my coaching program, we hold this space together. The un-performing. The re-orienting. The slow, grounded return to yourself. If you want to explore that work more deeply I invite you to check out my coaching program. I’d love to meet you.

And if all you do this week is name what no longer fits and stay with yourself in that honesty, that’s more than enough.

Thanks for listening. I’ll see you next time.