I need to tell you about the pattern I couldn’t see while I was living it—the one that nearly swallowed me whole.
It always started the same way. New job. Fresh start. This time will be different.
I’d walk in cautiously, boundaries drawn with precision. I knew what I wanted: work stays at work, life stays sacred, balance maintained. I’d been here before. I knew the warning signs. I was ready.
And for a while, the ground felt solid beneath my feet.
When the Earth Shifts
Then something would happen—a leadership change, a team crisis, a restructure that left everyone spinning. The disruption would ripple through the office like an earthquake, and suddenly everyone was floundering, looking for solid ground.
And here’s where I’d feel it: that pull. That whisper that said, “You could fix this. You could be the one who holds it together.”
It felt noble. It felt necessary. It felt like the right thing to do.
So I’d step forward. Stay late. Take on more. Smooth over conflicts. Fill the gaps. Be the steady presence when everything else was chaos.
I was helping. I was needed. I was making a difference.
I was also sinking.
The Quicksand I Couldn’t Name
What I didn’t understand then—what took me years and multiple job cycles to recognize—was that I wasn’t standing on solid ground trying to help others. I was already in quicksand, and every “helpful” action just made me struggle harder, pulling me deeper into losing my value and increasing my self-doubt.
The value/capacity/motivation collapse was in full effect. Still, I couldn’t see it:
My value became tied to being indispensable, to fixing what was broken, to proving I was the one who could handle it all. Without that role, who was I?
My capacity was constantly tested and exceeded. Each time I stretched myself thinner, I proved I could do it—which meant next time, I’d have to do even more to prove my worth. The bar kept rising, and I kept jumping, even as my legs grew weaker. (This is a good example of the fear of success that is tied to the barriers).
My motivation shifted from my own needs to everyone else’s emergencies. The fuel that should have powered my life was being burned to light other people’s paths. And I called it selflessness.
The boundaries I’d so carefully drawn at the beginning? They weren’t erased by anyone else. They dissolved from the inside out, nutrients stripped away by my own frantic efforts to save everyone but myself.
The Cycle I Couldn’t Break
Here’s what the pattern looked like from the outside:
New job → Cautious boundaries(performance) → Crisis hits(perceived expectations) → I become the hero(perceived reality) → Overwork(further performance demand) → Burnout → New job → Repeat.
But here’s what was actually happening beneath the surface:
New job → Brief stability (value/capacity intact)→ Ground becomes unstable (crisis) → I panic and try to create solid ground by controlling everything (perceived control- the tar pit of the mind) → My foundation collapses under the weight (poor boundaries creates seepage of tar to surface) → I can’t admit I’m drowning (the tar is killing everything around me) → I escape to “fresh start” (perceived control by building a new negative narrative of shame and blame) → Repeat.
Each time, I told myself I’d learned my lesson. Each time, I swore I’d maintain my boundaries. Each time, I was so sure I could see the quicksand coming and avoid it.
But I was looking for quicksand in the wrong places. I thought the danger was out there—in bad bosses, toxic cultures, dysfunctional teams. I didn’t realize the quicksand was forming beneath my own feet, created by the very patterns I was using to try to stay safe.
Learn more: From Family Scripts To Corner Offices
The Suffocation of Helplessness
The worst part wasn’t the burnout itself. It was the suffocating awareness that I was doing this to myself.
I knew the quicksand would be there. I could feel it forming. I’d watch myself step into the same patterns, make the same choices, ignore the same warning signs. And I felt completely helpless to stop it.
That helplessness is its own special kind of torture. It’s not the powerlessness of being trapped by external circumstances—it’s the agony of being trapped by your own nervous system, your own deeply grooved patterns, your own inability to do anything other than what you’ve always done.
I’d lie awake at night, exhausted but unable to sleep, mentally rehearsing how I’d set boundaries tomorrow. I’d have the conversations planned out. I’d know exactly what I needed to say.
And then tomorrow would come, and someone would be struggling, and the team would need help, and I’d feel that pull, and I’d step forward, and the boundaries would dissolve like sugar in water.
The ground would give way again. And I’d sink a little deeper.
What I Couldn’t See Then
What I understand now—what years of this cycle and eventually, necessary therapeutic work helped me recognize—is that I wasn’t trying to fix dysfunctional workplaces. I was trying to fix something in myself.
The leadership disruptions, the team distress—these weren’t creating my pattern. They were triggering something that was already there, already waiting. Some deep belief that my value came from being needed, that my capacity was only proven through excess, that my motivation only mattered when it served someone else’s crisis.
The quicksand wasn’t out there in bad work environments. It was in the soil of my own internal garden, nutrient-depleted from years of giving everything away and keeping nothing for myself.
And here’s the thing about quicksand: the harder you fight it, the faster you sink. All my efforts to “do better this time,” all my determination to maintain boundaries through sheer willpower, all my attempts to fix the external situation—these were the struggle that pulled me under.
Learn More: The Feedback Loops of External/Internal Validation.
The Beginning of Solid Ground
I wish I could tell you there was one moment of clarity that changed everything. There wasn’t.
What there was: a slow, painful recognition that I couldn’t willpower my way out of quicksand. That the solution wasn’t to try harder or be stronger or have better boundaries. The solution was to understand why the ground kept turning to liquid beneath me.
It started with stopping. With getting out of the cycle entirely, not to find another job, but to ask a different question: Why do I keep needing to be the one who fixes it?
It continued with learning to recognize the feeling—that pull, that whisper, that sense of noble obligation—not as a call to action but as a warning sign. A signal that I was about to step into my own trap again.
And it deepened with the hardest work: building a foundation of value that didn’t require me to be indispensable, capacity that included rest and limits, motivation that served my own growth and not just everyone else’s emergencies.
This transformation isn’t complete. I still feel the pull sometimes. I still have moments where the ground feels unstable and my first instinct is to control everything to make it solid.
But now I know: you can’t create stable ground by working harder. You create it by tending the soil beneath your feet, by restoring the nutrients you’ve depleted, by learning to recognize quicksand before you’re already sinking.
Want to dig deeper? Book a coaching session.
Art Therapy Practice: Finding Beauty Through New Filters
One of the practices that helped me begin to see differently—to recognize that perspective matters more than perfection—was a simple art therapy technique using something we all carry: our phones.
Here’s what I invite you to try:
Step 1: Photograph Your Self-Doubt
Take out your phone and spend some time photographing things that represent your self-doubt, your self-conscious parts, the aspects of your life you tend to hide or feel ashamed of. These might be:
The pile of dishes that represents your “failure” to keep up
The unmade bed that symbolizes your exhaustion
The stack of unfinished projects that whispers “you never follow through”
Your reflection in the mirror on a hard day
The messy corner of your workspace
The wilting plant you forgot to water
Your hands when you think they look tired or aged
Don’t stage these. Don’t clean up first. Photograph them exactly as they are, in their “imperfect” state. Take multiple shots from different angles—close up, far away, from above, from the side, in harsh light, in shadows.
Step 2: Play With Filters and Angles
Now comes the transformative part. Open your photo editing app and begin to experiment. Try different filters. Adjust the lighting, the contrast, the warmth. Crop the image in unexpected ways. Turn it black and white. Add a vintage tone. Shift the saturation.
Notice what happens when you change the angle or the filter. That pile of dishes? With the right light and angle, it becomes a study in curves and reflections. The unmade bed transforms into soft textures and gentle shadows. Your tired face becomes a portrait of resilience and lived experience.
Step 3: Find the Beauty
Keep experimenting until you find at least one way of seeing each subject that reveals unexpected beauty. Not false positivity—genuine aesthetic interest. The goal isn’t to pretend the struggle isn’t real. It’s to recognize that the same reality can look entirely different depending on how we choose to frame it, what light we allow in, what angle we take.
Step 4: Reflect
Look at your collection of transformed images. Ask yourself:
What changed about these subjects when I shifted my perspective?
What filters have I been using to view my own life—and are they showing me the truth or just one harsh angle?
If I can find beauty in these “flawed” things through a camera lens, what becomes possible when I adjust the lens I use to view myself?
The filters we use to view our lives matter. When we’re in the quicksand, we’re often looking at everything—including ourselves—through the harshest possible light, from the most unforgiving angle. We see only the mess, the failure, the inadequacy.
But what if we could learn to shift our perspective? Not to deny reality, but to recognize that reality contains multitudes, and the way we choose to frame it determines what we see.
The same life that looks like failure from one angle might reveal unexpected strength from another. The same trait that seems like weakness in harsh light might show itself as sensitivity when the filter changes. The same pattern that feels like quicksand when viewed from inside it might reveal valuable information about what we need when we can step back and adjust our lens.
This practice won’t solve the quicksand. But it can help you begin to see yourself—and your patterns—with more curiosity and less condemnation. And that shift in perspective? That’s often where the nutrients begin returning to depleted soil.
If You’re in It Now
If you’re reading this and recognizing your own pattern—the cautious start, the crisis, the hero complex, the burnout, the escape, the repeat—please hear this:
You’re not weak for being in the cycle. You’re not failing for not being able to break it through willpower alone. The quicksand is real, and it’s suffocating, and the helplessness you feel is part of the trap.
But recognition is the first step out. Not recognition of what you need to do differently—you probably already know that. Recognition of why the ground keeps giving way beneath you. Recognition of what’s happening in the soil of your internal garden.
The transformation doesn’t come from finding the perfect job with perfect boundaries and perfect leadership. It comes from building ground beneath you that can stay solid even when everything around you is shaking.
It comes from learning that your value isn’t measured by how much you can carry. That your capacity includes the right to say “this is too much.” That your motivation is allowed to prioritize your own life.
The quicksand will always be out there, waiting. But you don’t have to keep stepping into it.
You can learn to recognize when the ground is starting to shift—and choose to step back instead of forward.
You can learn to tend your own garden first, so you have something solid to stand on.
You can learn to adjust your filters, to see from new angles, to find beauty even in the parts of yourself you’ve been viewing through the harshest possible light.
And you can learn that sometimes the most courageous thing isn’t being the hero who fixes everything.
Sometimes it’s being the person who says, “I can’t save this. But I can save myself.”
Have you found yourself in this cycle? What does your work/life boundary quicksand look like? And if you try the filter exercise, I’d love to see what you discover—what changes when you shift your perspective? Share your story or your insights in the comments. Sometimes knowing we’re not alone in the pattern is the first nutrient that helps new growth begin.
