The Walking Stick

These are possibilities to investigate, not explanations to impose. The same behaviour can arise for different reasons. But once you begin asking what a habit is protecting you from, a pattern that seemed senseless may become understandable. And what you can describe accurately becomes easier to address deliberately.

I call these psychological supports our walking sticks: the things we lean on to steady ourselves, preserve an identity, or get through feelings we do not yet know how to manage another way. The metaphor becomes especially useful when a support starts limiting the life it was meant to help us live.

A walking stick can be a relationship. It can be money, admiration, anger, control, or the conviction that your past has already decided your future. Sometimes it is a role that other people praise. Being the reliable one can become a life in which you are never allowed to need anything. Being the successful one can make an ordinary setback feel like the loss of your right to be respected.

The danger is easy to miss because the thing itself may be valuable. Love matters. Financial security matters. Achievement can be deeply satisfying. Faith, friendship, family, and community can sustain us through experiences we could not reasonably bear alone. The question is what happens when one of these becomes responsible for holding together your entire sense of who you are.

What happens when the thing holding you up becomes the very thing preventing you from standing?

A restrictive dependence rarely presents you with a single bill. Its cost is spread across ordinary days. You avoid a necessary conversation. You spend money to maintain an impression. You agree to a commitment and resent it before you have finished saying yes. You postpone a decision because somebody might disapprove.