I first noticed rigidity within myself around food. I had rigid rules about what to eat, when to eat, how often I should exercise, and even when to exercise. Any deviation from these plans would send me into a spiral of shame and overwhelm. At the time, I believed that these rigid rules were the only things keeping me together.

However, through my healing work, I discovered that rigidity often masks deeper, unresolved emotional wounds. When we explore our rigid behaviors with curiosity and offer compassion to the places where we feel righteous, we open ourselves to new ways of being. We become softer.

From a psychoanalytic perspective, the urge to protect others from disappointment often reflects our own unresolved fears and defenses against this emotion. Disappointment is an inherent part of human experience, yet many of us develop defenses to avoid it, both for ourselves and others. This tendency is rooted in early childhood experiences where disappointment was either mishandled or overwhelming.