My boss looked across the table and asked me a question I wasn't ready for.
If you could tell me anything right now, anything at all, what would it be?
A thought immediately rushed to the surface and I felt my whole body flush with heat. I leaned forward and began to open my mouth, but just as fast, I felt a different pull trying to awkwardly shove it all back down. Instead of saying something I ended up just sitting there in front of him with my mouth hanging open.
He didn't look away. He just sat there and calmly watched the tension rip through my body and the tears build in my eyes. Then he smiled and said, "I'm really glad you're with us, Evan."
That's when the tears started coming.
I didn't tell him what tried to surface that day, partly because the stuff I was holding inside had been sitting in me so long I'd stopped recognizing it as something I was carrying. In so many ways, that pressure just felt like being me. But I knew, in that moment, that I needed to tell someone.
What Was Actually in There
I was carrying real secrets in that moment. Old ones that I'd kept hidden from everyone, for decades. Things that had happened to me, and things I'd done that nobody knew about including my closest friends, and my wife. My entire life wasn't just a performance to earn acceptance and love. It was a second job, working overtime to keep those things hidden.
Try to hold a beach ball underwater sometime. It doesn't sit still. It squirms and it shifts with the current looking for any gap in your grip. The longer you hold it down, the harder it fights you, and the more of your strength it takes just to keep it under.
That's what it felt like I was doing every single day while managing an operation and leading a team. I was trying to be the steady guy everyone could count on, while I had both arms wrapped around a beach ball, using everything I had left just to keep it from breaking the surface.
My boss didn't know any of that. He just asked an honest question and sat there quietly sipping his coffee while I didn't answer. It wasn't the words he spoke that affected me so much as his presence. The tenderness in his eyes, the calmness in his voice, and the non-anxious posture he brought to the table.
Admittedly, he wasn't your average boss, and I wasn't working at your average company. He was a chaplain, and I was working in a recovery center at the time.
Regardless of the setting, that moment was enough to crack me open.
What Actually Changes a Man
I'd spent years trying to fix this on my own through self-help books, discipline, self-discovery tools, and every podcast or new framework that promised to unlock what I couldn't solve. None of it touched what was under the surface, because insight was never the problem. After years of studying my story I understood plenty about myself and why I did what I did. What I didn't have was a single person who'd seen the real weight of what I carried and chose to stay with me anyway.
That's the part that media can't do. A framework or podcast can't ask you a question and then watch you almost say the thing and choose to stay in the room with you regardless of your answer. Only a person can do that.
The truth is, what you're carrying likely won't blow up on its own. It'll just gets quieter because you'll keep finding ways to cope with the weight. You'll keep managing the operation, keep being the steady guy, keep holding the ball under, and from the outside, nothing looks wrong. That's exactly what makes it dangerous.
What are you working hard to hold under, hoping that no one will notice how much energy you're burning to keep it there?
If you're ready to stop holding it by yourself, let's talk.
Talk soon,
Evan
