🕯️The Cost of Avoidance
Why Emotional Maturity is No Longer an Option…and Culture Can No Longer Be The Scapegoat.
A common theme for my work is culture, but specifically how culture is used in the context of mental health. When people say, “It’s just our culture,” what they often mean is:
“This is how we avoid accountability.”
To feel my heart in this piece, I will link a musical goodie—a heartstring puller—because the ache of this loss is not one I forget. As I approach the anniversary of her passing, I do this work for her. I do this work for all those silently suffering.
I have been standing firm on my word for this year: C O N G R U E N C E
And one thing I have learned about culture is it’s not a fixed rulebook. It is a living system that is shaped by people, values, and choice. It was never meant to protect harm or silence discomfort. What I keep observing in moments of deep incongruence is this:
what’s being defended isn’t culture at all.
It’s control.
There is a difference between honoring ancestry and enforcing obedience. So let’s Zoom in— these same avoidant systems operate through the lens of protection, but the obedience is selective. When “culture” is used to shut down questions, punish dissent, or preserve power, it stops being cultural and becomes a mechanism of avoidance. Now, Zoom out: especially here in America you’ll see this pattern everywhere.
We call it boundaries.
We call it self‑care.
We call it protecting our peace.
But so often, it’s the same old thing
We avoid discomfort.
We avoid accountability.
We avoid complexity.
And then we moralize the avoidance using God, religion, culture, or the phrase that cuts my heart every time I hear it in session:
“This is just how it is.”
And if you zoom out just a bit more —
you’ll see it on a much larger stage.
We call it allyship.
We call it cancel culture.
We call it staying “safe.”
We call it “doing the work.”
But watch closely:
How often is it just emotional reactivity in disguise?
How often is it performance that avoids repair?
How often is it a new language used to shame, exile, or scapegoat
while the same core pattern of avoidance stays untouched?
When we normalize that logic, gaslighting gets reframed as love. Control gets reframed as belonging, and anyone who questions, names a pattern, or disrupts the script gets labeled “unsafe,” “negative,” or “too much.” Why? Because the system the illusion depends on gets fracture. The certainty that people once clung to (attached to) snaps. There is nothing to grab onto anymore… At least, that’s what we think…
Now, let’s pause for a moment… Something most avoidant systems don’t want to face is the fact that healthy cultures don’t fall apart when they’re questioned. They fall apart when they can’t be questioned.
Healthy cultures/ families can metabolize feedback.
They can hold nuance.
They can evolve. I have seen and held those families in it.
Avoidant cultures — can’t.
They rely on silence.
They rely on conformity.
They rely on everyone agreeing not to name what’s actually happening.
The not naming is the reinforcement that allows. So, What often gets labeled as “just the culture” is actually selective avoidance. The rules only apply to certain people.
The ones who won’t push back.
The ones who won’t disrupt the system.
That’s how you know it isn’t really culture at all and just the word being used to justify shutting down the conversation. Those are the data bits of exercising discernment that we can see. But, how many of you have been told to keep your head down? Probably many… Which is why it may not be easy for everyone to see because in involves getting uncomfortable and the willingness to actually see what is and not what you gaslighted yourself to believe. This comes with grief. Grief for the family we believed in, the family we needed, the family we hoped would change. Would grow.
Because real cultural norms are consistent.
They apply across the board.
When rules only exist for the people least likely to resist, they stop being norms and become mechanisms of control that are designed to maintain comfort and power for select people or person. Can you see it yet? We are watching it live in the Macro everyday.
Now, congruence…
When people are incongruent in what they say, it becomes hard to continue to listen because it’s no longer about language—it’s about embodiment. A new muscle we must learn to exercise, but most importantly discern in others. In a world full of performance‑based healing, I can smell incongruence everywhere. But when God and culture are used to hide that incongruence, when spirituality becomes a shield instead of a mirror designed to help us grow. That is when I see harm multipliy quietly, but spread fast.
That’s when the ache goes unnamed.
That’s when the glue keeps holding… until it can’t.
This is where the safari takes a turn. So we need to turn the volume down and give respect for this part.
How High-Functioning Grief Becomes Invisible
Avoidant families don’t go silent—they just go strategic. Which is why data collectors it is important to have discernment skills. This is the arena where the under currents live. Everything in this forest we explore is not about what the eye can see, It’s about what is felt.
In avoidant families there is not alot to see or hear.. why?
Well it’s avoidant🤣
There is nothing being said and nothing to hear. So that emotion gets rerouted into sarcasm, jokes, unconscious behaviors. What we call over here as Undercurrents. Those invisible Tron highways that the eye can’t see but the body can feel. Grief gets flattened into “just get over it” . It’s called “drama” when someone speaks truth, and the system rewards the one who suppresses it.
Let’s understand, These families don’t say “Don’t feel.”
No, no, no. That would be to overt. To obvious.
They say:
“Not like that.
“Put a smile on your face”
“Not here.”
“Not now.”
They say it through covert tactics. So the structure forms quiet and coercive. There’s usually one loud child. The “difficult” one. The defiant one, and then there’s the other one. The one who “looks fine.” The one who performs, produces, and plays mediator.
The glue.
The bridge.
The one nobody worries about, because they worry about everyone else and that’s the one whose ache goes unnoticed. That’s the one who internalizes the system’s emotional debt. That’s the one who gets called “strong” while they slowly disappear Because in families like this, productivity is the currency.
Backs become bridges.
Children become therapists.
Women become service animals to people who just don’t want to be uncomfortable.
Self-sacrifice becomes status.
Until one day, the glue snaps.
And the system, in it’s shock, says:
“But I thought they were fine…”
I don’t write this lightly. I write it because I’ve lived it, because I lost the one no one thought they had to worry about. The one who held the room while barely holding herself. Getting the text that your friend is “dead” is not something I want anyone to experience.
That’s why I do this work.
That’s why I challenge comfort.
That’s why I won’t sugarcoat dysfunction just because it hides behind “culture” or “faith” or “they did their best.” Because “best” isn’t good enough when someone’s nervous system is at stake and love isn’t love when it comes with emotional costs. As much as I wish we could Tom Cruise Minority Report our way into preventing every suicide. Not every death is preventable. I know that. We cannot save everyone.
But we can stop pretending that silence, avoidance, and emotional illiteracy aren’t part of the landscape that leaves people unseen until it’s too late.
All we have to do is talk.
Listen.
Try to understand.
But we don’t.
Not until someone breaks.
Not until the funeral.
Not until the body tells the story no one wanted to read. We say “mental health matters,” but what we mean is:
“It matters when it makes me look good.”
“It matters when I can use it to justify a boundary I didn’t want to explain.”
“It matters when I can explain my behavior instead of work on changing it.”
“It matters when I can use it as a shield, to avoid having to sit in someone else’s discomfort.”
So what are we really “raising awareness” for? Because just like families, societies have their scapegoats.
Their golden children.
Their bystanders.
And the saddest part is, we know who’s carrying the weight. We watch them every day.
Overfunctioning.
Over-Explaining.
Soothing.
Performing.
And we let them, because it frees us. Because their pain is quieter than our guilt.
Now, Zoom in— take a look around your family foundational blueprint… Does anything resonate from this for you? Feel familiar? Is there any discomfort with that?
Where?
Now ask yourself:
Which discomfort do you choose?
The one you’re in now: cozy, familiar, stagnant, slowly draining you by the hour. Or the discomfort that comes from starting something new unfamiliar at first, but temporary. The kind of discomfort that only lasts until you no longer feel it because you moved.
You pivoted.
You rose.
And suddenly, the thing that felt unbearable…
is behind you.
All it takes is getting past that one emotion.
Fear.
Fear of what will happen, what will they say, what will people think.
But we only have one life. Why choose to suffer in it?
This is a call for eyes to open. For dinner tables to hold more than silence. For systems to stop expecting women to be the sponge and the spine, because when the glue is gone, there’s nothing left to hold you.
And you don’t get to say
“We didn’t know.”
You did.
You just didn’t want to feel it.
A Note for Anyone Struggling Right Now
If this piece stirred something heavy for you, you don’t have to carry it alone.
If you are experiencing thoughts of self-harm, suicide, or feel like you might be in danger, please reach out to someone who can support you. Help is available, and speaking to a trained listener can make a difference — even if it doesn’t feel like it yet.
International Support Lines:
🇺🇸 USA
988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline — Dial 988
Text “HELLO” to 741741 — Crisis Text Line
🇨🇦 Canada
Talk Suicide Canada — 1-833-456-4566
Text: 45645 (4pm–12am ET)
🇬🇧 UK
Samaritans — 116 123 (24/7)
🇦🇺 Australia
Lifeline — 13 11 14
🇮🇳 India
iCall — +91 9152987821
Worldwide: Clink Link
You don’t need to earn rest. You don’t need to justify why it hurts.
Let this be the moment you decide: You’re worth staying for.
Let the ache speak and let someone answer.
You are not alone. 🫶🏽