Running From Something
What happens when avoidance feels safer than honesty
You know the feeling.
Something happens. You decide it is bad, or overwhelming, or just too much to hold emotionally.
So the logical answer becomes run.
Be anywhere but in your head.
Run from confronting your feelings.
Run from sitting with uncomfortable thoughts.
Run from ever having to deal with your own trauma.
But the thing is no matter where you run, your mind comes with you.
And eventually, it always catches up.
Sometimes it catches up quietly.
Other times, it catches up in ways that hurt you and the people around you.
Trust me. I have been an expert marathon runner. 😂
Anytime problems came up, I ran. Even when I did not consciously realize it, I was already halfway out the door.
And I do not mean taking a week-long vacation or needing space to reset.
I mean, when things got hard, I left. Emotionally. Physically. Energetically.
I would rather be anywhere but home.
Anywhere but still.
I convinced myself that if I stayed busy enough, scattered myself thin enough, maybe my life would not feel like a tornado of emotions.
For some of us, the flight response does not look dramatic.
It looks like staying busy.
Keeping the calendar full.
Always having somewhere else to be.
It looks like movement instead of stillness.
Distraction instead of presence.
Leaving before things get too close.
But that is not self-preservation.
That is abandonment.
I later learned many years ago that this pattern has a name.
The flight response.
A nervous system strategy designed to keep us safe by getting us away from what feels overwhelming.
I did not learn this pattern because I was broken. I learned it because at some point, it kept me safe.
The Truth
For a long time, my default belief was that things should be easy.
That if something felt hard, heavy, or uncomfortable, it meant something was wrong.
But nothing meaningful is easy.
Growth does not come from ease.
Clarity does not come from avoidance.
Everything comes from confronting your shadows and staying in the room with them long enough to understand why they are there.
Escaping my emotions showed up most clearly in my romantic relationships.
Letting anyone get close felt, honestly, too close.
I trusted no one.
Still half true. 😂
But was it really that I did not trust others?
Or was it that I did not trust myself?
Those are the questions you sit with when you stop running.
The ones you ask when you stay in the room.
Why do I need to escape?
Why do my emotions feel so threatening?
Why do I avoid confronting them?
And here is the part that is hardest to admit.
You already know the truth to your questions. And that truth terrifies you.
So running, from yourself, from your environment, from the situations you are in, becomes the default.
Because running feels easier than honesty.
The only way to break a pattern is permission and acceptance.
To bring everything to the table.
To confront yourself without judgment.
Because when you spend years running, like I did, other people pay the price.
The people you care about become the cost.
This awareness did not arrive overnight.
It took more than a decade of sitting in discomfort long enough to finally ask the hard questions.
Questions lead us to consciousness. Consciousness leads us to reflection. And reflection, eventually, leads us to the truth.
So I will ask you this.
What truths are you wrestling with right now?
Have you lived the running lifestyle?
Did you find your way through it, or are you still sprinting?
Either way, you will get there.
Just keep going. 💕
