Misunderstood, Trapped, and Mostly Tired
When Self-Awareness Becomes a Cage Instead of a Compass
What’s been on my mind lately? Overthinking as a full-time job, identity as a cage, and the deep fatigue of being misunderstood in a world that wants you simple and sellable.
In a nutshell: on being too complex for the internet - and too tired to care.
Every day, millions of us wake up, analyze ourselves into paralysis, and then wonder why we feel simultaneously exhausted and stuck.
We've become professional overthinkers, masters of self-assessment, and experts at everything except actually living.
What keeps us trapped? It's not a lack of information or clarity. I think a lot of the time it's being locked in identities that no longer hold the whole of us.
We've been pitted against each other for years now - because polarization attracts eyeballs. But look what's happened: You're either all the way to the right or all the way to the left. You're either woke or a hustler; ambitious or living a “soft life” - whatever the hell that is.
It's always either/or, and, from my perspective, everyone clutching their camp is shooting themselves in the foot.
We live in what seems like a world of paradoxes, but this complexity has always been there. We need to embrace "both/and" instead of "either/or." Nothing is black and white, and if you stubbornly stick to either camp, you're actually adding to the problem.
Just take a moment and look at us -we're jumping at each other's throats. We can't talk. I keep seeing this idea that different types of thinkers need their own separate social media platforms and spaces. But what is this accomplishing? It's just driving further division.
The problem isn't just that people are different. We each hold multitudes. We all contain different people within ourselves, and suppressing any part, whether it's anger or ambition or the need for rest, it just not healthy. No one benefits from it - ok, some actually DO, big time. The Attention Economy does.
The Identity Cage
I think what's keeping so many of us stuck is fear of crossing invisible lines. What will they think? I'll look like a fraud. I won't be my "authentic self."
But guess what? Maybe being both this AND that IS your authentic self.
I see people spinning in circles because they've done all the possible tests and personality profiles. They know their ENFP or INTJ (I’m a INFP-A1, btw, not that it matters - although maybe it does?), their Enneagram, their Human Design, their CliftonStrengths. They've built perfect self-awareness resumes.
Then on the other side are the hustlers, grinders, and the optimization bros.
But come on. It's never been that simple. We just made it artificially so.
We've Pathologized Everything
I see so much trouble coming from how we've pathologized different ways of being. For years, feelings and emotions were pathologized.
Now we're swinging to the other extreme, where effort, striving, and ambition are treated like character flaws.
I see so many people who've become their own project, their own main gig. Their life's work is about healing and aligning. But then what? IF there even is a then, because it looks like the horizon is constantly moving, and there’s always more work to do before we can get to work.
I'm not saying don't heal if healing is necessary. But it doesn't have to be either/or. Most of the time you can do your thing and heal simultaneously. Sometimes the healing comes from the doing.
We've compartmentalized everything, buying into the idea that you can't really move forward until you've "done the inner work."
No. You do the inner work WHILE doing other things. Otherwise, it's like only learning about a language without ever speaking it.
That's what's become the norm in many circles: endlessly learning about ourselves, our needs, our wounds; planning, thinking, doing a lot of pseudo-work without ever doing the real thing.
Because we're "not ready."
Guilty as charged.
No, it's not about being ready. It's about being scared.
We don't need more motivation or more discipline or more willpower. We need less fear.
Being Human
People are complex beings. We're complex systems living within complex systems. And we are cyclical.
Sometimes when I write, I feel like an utter fraud. One day I'm advocating for not grinding, the next I'm telling people to push harder. But is this a contradiction? Not really. That's life. That's natural.
But we've been told we need to niche down and brand ourselves. Find that core message -the one and only; it can be this or it can be that, but it can't be both.
I'm saying: why the fuck not?
Recently, I posted something about how many of us are so bone tired. It resonated deeply with some. People admitted they're exhausted from constantly updating, chasing, performing, with so many different voices in their heads shoulding on them.
We're tired of feeling we should be doing something even when it doesn't feel right inside. But here's a more nuanced take: you can feel the same exhaustion whether you're hustling or not. That's the fascinating part.
The truth is that resistance is NOT passive—it actively drains our energy. Sorry to be so crude, but it's a form of mental constipation.
When you're holding back parts of yourself, suppressing desires, or forcing yourself into a box that doesn't fit, you're using enormous energy to maintain that resistance. You actually are doing something that requires a lot of energy: maintaining the status quo.
This is why people on both extremes—the constant hustlers and the eternal healers—can end up equally depleted.
One burns out from external action against internal resistance, the other burns out from internal processing against the natural impulse to act.
Your body knows when you're living out of alignment with your whole self and that creates friction that often shows up as fatigue, irritability, and that persistent feeling that something's just... off.
Brittle Egos
Take a closer look and ask yourself: Have I pigeonholed myself into an identity that's too tight? Too rigid? Definitely not antifragile?
We need antifragility to navigate today's chaotic world with any grace. We can't be rigid or we will be brittle. Anything too tightly defined is, by definition, not antifragile. It snaps easily.
You're not a bio. You're a whole human. And you get to hold all your contradictions.
Let's try to live from that place more often.
Mediator (INFP-A)
Mediators are poetic, kind, and altruistic people, always eager to help a good cause. They approach life with thoughtfulness and imagination, guided by their principled version of humanism.
Wow! What a breath of fresh, paradox-loving air.
Yes to the mess. Yes to the contradictions. Yes to the BOTH, the AND, the not-yet-clear.
This whole piece reads like an ode to the complexity we’ve been told to package, smooth out, and sell. And I love that you’re saying: let’s not. Let’s let ourselves be multitudes and cycles and contradictions that are actually just… human.
I especially felt this: “Maybe being both this AND that IS your authentic self.” Yes. That’s not confusion, that’s aliveness. That’s truth refusing to be flattened.
Thank you for naming the fatigue of false simplicity, and for reminding us that nuance isn’t weakness — it’s wisdom.
"You're not a bio. You're a whole human. And you get to hold all your contradictions.
Let's try to live from that place more often."
I definitely appreciate this. Our wholeness includes our contradictions, our passions, our diversity. By embracing the whole, our own whole, perhaps by dropping our self-demands for perfection, we can hopefully find deeper wisdom.