You are functioning. You answer the emails, you cook the dinner, you check the homework, you keep your tone measured and your image intact, and then you lie in bed at night wondering who you are inside any of it. Nothing is wrong, and something is missing, and that combination is more disorienting than an actual crisis would be.

In this episode I give that experience a name, because carrying it without one turns it into a personal failure instead of a process you can locate yourself inside. I call it core abandonment, and it is not something someone did to you. It is the gradual leaving of yourself, need by need, in order to keep everything around you intact, and it happens so functionally that most people do not notice until they are already in too deep.

We walk the three stages of how this moves through a person. The mask, which is  ...