That job checked every box on paper. It had the right title, right comp, right next step. So I said yes.
It didn’t take long before something felt off. I was out of sync with the leadership and spent most of my time there in a constant state of shock. I couldn’t understand why any of what was happening was ok for nearly everyone but me. I figured I just needed to power through. This is just growth. This is what stretching feels like. You’ll get used to it. I decided the discomfort I felt was the price of the opportunity.
But the more I said something felt wrong, the more I was questioned until I started to wonder if maybe I was the problem. That’s what gaslighting does. It just wears down your confidence, until you start to doubt the one thing you always thought you could count on: your own gut and intuition.
Here’s what took me the longest to see: the discomfort itself wasn’t the problem. Discomfort is part of every real stretch. The problem was that I’d stopped trusting my own signal, because so many people around me acted like there wasn’t one.
Eventually I learned to ask a different question. Not “am I uncomfortable?” because the answer to that is almost always yes when your swinging for the fence. The real question is: what is this discomfort signaling?
There’s a kind of discomfort that scares you but also opens something up. You can feel the possibility underneath it. And there’s a kind that just wears you down, over time, until there’s less of you left than when you started. In the moment, they can feel identical. That’s what makes this so hard to navigate alone, and it’s exactly the kind of condition that makes you question your own sanity.
If any of this is landing, you may be sitting in the overlap of two Messy Middle archetypes I work with. Quietly Burning Out: still showing up, still performing, running on fumes underneath. And The Seeker: standing right on the edge of a transition, sensing something needs to change, but not yet sure if the discomfort you’re in is the doorway or the warning sign.
If this is landing, the Messy Middle Archetype Assessment™ is a quick way to name the season you’re actually in.
And for added support, this week on Thriving in the Messy Middle, I sit down with resilience expert Alanna Fincke on what it actually takes to build the kind of resilience that holds you steady no matter which way you decide to go. Because once you know what your discomfort is signaling, staying takes resilience. So does leaving. Listen to Build Resilience with Emotional Regulation to Become a Better Leader.