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Omar's avatar

Hi Derek,

I just read your post, and I genuinely had to sit in silence after. It felt like someone across the world had cracked open the story I’ve been living... only you put words to it in a way that was raw, brave, and beautifully human.

We’re walking different paths, but what you’re doing with your voice and work resonates deeply with the transformation I’ve committed to in my own life. I'm building something called Quitter... a project about identity shift, letting go, and finally rewriting the story I’ve carried for years. Your journey is exactly the kind of example that makes this work feel necessary and possible.

More than anything, I just wanted to say I’m proud of what you’re creating. It’s rare, it’s real, and it’s reaching.

Keep going. I’m rooting for you.

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Darya Luganskaya's avatar

Love it, Derek! What a great piece. Do you have any thoughts on how to respond when people share their worries about the future as if they were today’s problems? I’ve been struggling with that lately.

Years of therapy has definitely helped reduce my anxiety over the years, but last year I had to face real—not hypothetical—problems. That experience created a new baseline for me. And here’s what I’ve noticed this year:

• When people are caught up in their own anxiety, they often have no emotional resources left to support others. It was really hard to find anyone who had the capacity to listen to me, too. I was in constant pain and couldn’t sit for more than 30 minutes after hip surgery. That’s obviously hard to relate to unless you’ve experienced it yourself—but still. Then, when people share their fears about things that might happen in 10 years (like visa rule changes in the UK), and those fears keep them up at night, I just feel it’s such a waste of energy—for them, primarily.

• At the same time, I find it draining to listen to these worries. I often feel like there’s nothing I can do to help. Validate? Hold their hand? Say, “It’s going to be okay”? You do that once or twice, but then the cycle repeats with a new round of worries the following week. I get it—that’s how the brain works after trauma. You stay on alert. But I feel lost.

Distancing myself and avoiding people doesn’t feel like a real solution either. But in this “Age of Anxiety,” as the band Arcade Fire puts it, you kind of run out of people if you’re hoping to find someone who’s less anxious.

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