Why do I feel trapped?

November 6, 2023 9:09 AM

You are not my therapist, I have one and we are working on this, but I wanted to crowd source the question since I'm coming up blank here.

Ever since I was a kid, there have been specific times that I have felt inexorably TRAPPED. This has happened only when I have been unwillingly assigned the responsibility for taking care of someone else. First time it happened was in elementary school when I was expected to be friends with a girl in my class who was deaf and struggling to make friends. I don't know why I was chosen by the teachers but I was such a people pleaser that I couldn't say no. As a result, I felt TRAPPED like I could not get out of this responsibility and I felt like a rat in a cage.

The second time was with a particularly clingy boyfriend except this time I wasn't unwillingly volunteered for the job. I felt I had no agency in telling him to lay off because I thought this was normal boyfriend behavior and I was being unreasonable.

Third time was when I had my first kid and I was understandably snowed under the responsibility of keeping a helpless infant alive. It happened to a lesser degree with my second but I knew what to expect and had help available 24/7 in case I started to get the trapped feeling.

Most recently, it has happened when we fostered a dog that I felt was kind of foisted on us. I felt as if I was solely responsible for the health and happiness of this dog and I could not get out of it hence TRAPPED.

So the question is, why such a violent TRAPPED feeling to such discordant situations? In all but one I had the agency to say no and leave the situation but that primordial trapped feeling was overwhelming. Note that this does not happen with my husband or my kids now that they are older.

TL;DR: Why do I feel trapped when I am given responsiblity for the care/happiness of another?

posted by tafetta, darling! to Human Relations (17 answers total)

Because you are trapped.

You may in fact hypothetically have agency, but... it's not always that simple, is it? Saying "I don't want to spend time with this girl" means disappointing teachers, and probably the girl as well. Saying "Hey, I want you to back off, boyfriend" wasn't an option because you didn't feel you had agency and you didn't know it wasn't reasonable. And when you have an infant - well, even with all the support in the world, you really can't just NOPE out and say bye.

Things that come from within ourselves are still real. I'll offer an example from my own life: I had a job that was really upsetting me. In theory I could have just quit at any time. But:
* I would have suffered a loss of income
* I didn't know how to get the next job
* I feared that my boss, who was fairly powerful and well-liked within my professional community, would have influence over future hiring managers to get in my way
* My partner doesn't think that quitting jobs without one lined up is an acceptable solution; this would mean dealing with their disapproval and disappointment in me.

So - in theory I had tons of agency; in practice I felt like I had absolutely none, and that feeling of being trapped was overwhelming.

In your case the exact factors are different. But I think it's important to recognize that you really are hemmed in, you really do have reduced options, and even if you technically can get out, the cost of doing so may be high. "I can escape but only by gnawing my foot off" isn't... not-trapped.
posted by Tomorrowful at 9:16 AM on November 6, 2023 [17 favorites]

I want to clarify on my answer above that sometimes we really can learn to see ourselves as not-trapped. I really, truly could have gotten a new job. You definitely could have been in a better position to set boundaries with that ex. But I think that the gap between "hypothetically I could do anything" and "in practice, I may not know what options exist" is huge, as is the gap between that and "I can escape but only at a cost, which I must be willing to pay." And if you're a people-pleaser by nature or nurture, the cost of disappointing others and saying "I am unwilling or unable to care for this other person" really really is quite high!

I should say that one time that I did feel this sense of being trapped, I used this exact kind of analogy - "I'm trapped and stuck in a cage" - and my own path out really was coming to terms with "if I have to pay a high price and gnaw my own foot off, that's better than being trapped." In reality the cost wasn't nearly as high as I thought, but it was not fun and it really sucked but it let me escape, and for that, I am truly grateful and glad.
posted by Tomorrowful at 9:19 AM on November 6, 2023 [7 favorites]

That trapped feeling, which I totally get, is powerlessness at an evolutionary level. I was the kid who had to befriend the other kid that nobody liked--because nobody liked me. (Or rather, I often didn't like them either, and spent a lot of time by myself à la Calvin, but I didn't realize that yet.) I was sitting out alone, vulnerable, not knowing how to be a different person (I was a people pleaser too), and people took advantage of that. They were meanies, doing that, and there was nothing I could do about it at the time, since I didn't know boundaries, had to do what the teacher said, etc.

I remember another time, on a multi family vacation, all the kids went off to do some fun thing like exploring, but as the youngest I had to stay behind with the adults, because I was quiet and passive and they wanted someone who could help out, or something, I forget. (And again, in retrospect, I would not have liked the roughhouse activities that the other kids did.) But I was miserable, feeling so powerless over the things that the adults were making me do, taking advantage of my nature.

We want to fit in with our peer groups, because our evolution tells us that we need people to survive. We have a need to be liked. But then we get taken advantage of, and we're trapped between who we are and what we need. It's awful. It was years because I realized I could put up reasonable boundaries (THANK YOU METAFILTER) with certain people, and it would still be ok.
posted by sockerpup at 9:53 AM on November 6, 2023

Is it something about the open-endedness of social bonds? Would it help if you made (first in your head alone, maybe) boundaries outside which your time and effort are yours to dispose?
posted by clew at 10:01 AM on November 6, 2023

Rereading my comment sounds like trying to fix the problem, I’m so sorry. I should have framed it as a test case or thought experiment or comparison to specific concrete obligations.
posted by clew at 10:52 AM on November 6, 2023 [1 favorite]

Best answer: This is 100% a trauma response. I immediately and exactly recognized the feeling you're talking about. Sockerpup is right in pointing out that it is evolutionary. It is an involuntary biological response that is, unfortunately, well-recognized and experienced by a significant portion of the population. I think you would be well-served by reading some of the popular books on trauma such as:

The Body Keeps the Score
Transforming the Living Legacy of Trauma
Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma
Trauma & Recovery

You will immediately recognize this feeling and have better ways to describe it and understand it. You may also get some mileage out of googling "complex PTSD" because, since you describe it as reoccurring, it is likely you have triggers that are "taking you back" to the original source of this trauma.

The "freeze" part of the "fight, flight, freeze" saying generally occurs only when all other options have been exhausted and one is in a truly vulnerable and powerless position (IE young child, new mother, truly on the bottom of the social rung, etc.) Not to be morbid, but it is, essentially, the body shutting down and preparing for death in what it perceives as a situation of overwhelming odds.
posted by stockpuppet at 11:03 AM on November 6, 2023 [9 favorites]

I’m a person who believes in radical existential freedom but, like most people, I don’t really practice it in my life. So theoretically one can always be like, “No, piss off, I won’t, and if you persist in this you’re dead to me.” One can open the emergency doors, deploy the exit slide, and run off. But one rarely does.

The mature response “I’m sorry, that won’t be possible” has a varying cost to oneself, one’s relationships, social standings, others etc. I, for example, was brought up not “allowed” to refuse anything, and I received major social fallout in my culture when I asserted myself in really minor matters or refused to be “assigned” roles.

Thus when I find myself in such situations, the person I hate most is myself. After all, I could have said no! I could have taken the social consequences, the worldly fallout. But instead, “I let people treat me this way. What else can I expect.” The very “choice” framing torments me, as I envision the alternate universe where I asserted myself and enjoyed my freedom.

Maladaptive, yes, but I recognize this as part of what’s going on. The thought that “we can’t control other people’s actions, we can only control our responses to them” often curdles.

And you had things put upon you by others! Your classmate was ultimately the responsibility of your teachers, not another child! Your boyfriend should have been more responsible about meeting his own emotional needs! Dogs don’t just spring into existence, someone did not take proper responsibility and then the dog was left without care “unless you help it…”
posted by Hypatia at 11:25 AM on November 6, 2023 [6 favorites]

What happened in your family if you said "no" to requests or commitments? Or what did you worry would happen? Were there any times where you were not allowed to say "no"? How did you know that, especially if it wasn't said explicitly?

Who had that sort of responsibility for taking care of you? How did you see your caregivers responding to that commitment -- with resentment and martyrdom? With neglect? With anger? With love?

Have you had times in your life when you had such a commitment and didn't feel trapped? You mention your family of choice. What was different about that relationship or situation from the others? Are there other exceptions?

What societal messages might be at play? Messages you've received through family, pop culture, friends about gender/racial/other norms in caregiving, being "nice," not rocking the boat, sacrificing yourself for the good of others, the importance (or not) of community care, independence, interdependence, dependence. How do you intellectually relate to those concepts? How might that be in play with your emotional responses?

(Not meant for you to answer here! Just ways of poking at the situation to see what resonates, or doesn't.)
posted by lapis at 11:28 AM on November 6, 2023 [10 favorites]

Best answer: I have this too. For me it's because I'm afraid of that being getting harmed under my care which means I failed and am bad. Related to perfectionism.

Also a dash of, I want to be taken care of and nurtured and if I am having to nurture others, it greatly reduced the chance someone will nurture me as I'll be in "caretaker" mode. Wrapped up in this is my fear of my own dependency. I am afraid to depend on others and therefore also afraid for them to depend on me in areas that require social emotional stuff. Practical stuff is fine if I have the bandwidth/spoons for it.

I think it's also very different if we feel like we made the choice. Like the foster and the classmate, it sounds like you didn't really consent.

I don't know if that's relevant to you or not but you might feel a little twinge of something if it is.
posted by crunchy potato at 11:40 AM on November 6, 2023 [3 favorites]

I totally agree that this is a trauma response. And I want to offer the possibility that the various times when this has happened to you, that you describe in your post, are themselves the trauma that is causing this response to happen, especially the stuff that happened when you were a child. I don't think you necessarily need to go searching for more reasons (although there may well be more -- I just mean, I don't think there has to be). The experience as a kid of feeling unwillingly responsible for someone else's wellbeing is itself trauma. As is having a clingy boyfriend at a young and impressionable age when you didn't feel empowered to set boundaries. That's trauma! And it makes total sense to me that situations in your life that feel similar would trigger powerful feelings and reactions for you now. Your body is replaying the reactions and feelings you had when those formative experiences happened.
posted by peperomia at 11:40 AM on November 6, 2023 [3 favorites]

I have had this feeling a lot. In my case, it’s not even over such obvious things. It might be over having to buy Christmas presents, or choose a restaurant for dinner.

For me, this comes from having a mother where if I didn’t pick what she wanted or what she wanted to do, there were consequences. Sometimes just a look or a sarcastic remark, sometimes worse. I literally was trapped at that time. The feelings that come now are less about actually being trapped, but very much about the way that I learned my world wasn’t safe.

In all the situations you described, you were struggling with a responsibility that shouldn’t have been yours. I think the sense of entrapment was actually appropriate. But maybe the extremity of the feelings is more about things in the past.
posted by warriorqueen at 12:31 PM on November 6, 2023 [7 favorites]

I think the sense of entrapment was actually appropriate. But maybe the extremity of the feelings is more about things in the past.

I think this is important, as is being able to differentiate between traumas and triggers. Being asked to be friends with someone is not a trauma, even what some call "small-t trauma." You could have said no, walked away, etc -- there (presumably, or you would have said!) was no gun to your head.

It absolutely could have been been a trigger, though, something that emotionally made you feel as if you were back in a real life-or-death(ish) type situation. And the younger you are, the more your parents/caregivers are the ones managing your literal survival (as you note from your own experience of parenthood). So often times, feelings of intense powerlessness, especially combined with people-pleasing, are coming from times we were indeed intensely powerless and needed to please the people with the power over our survival.

This isn't to say that your parents were automatically abusive or anything; we often get these messages really subtly or due to other trauma (e.g., the death of a caregiver when we're a kid can make us feel really vulnerable and like we have to prove we're worthy of not being abandoned). It also doesn't mean that you absolutely need to find the "one true reason" for your current feelings in order to heal them. But it can help to get a sense of what your inner powerless kid is reacting to, with appropriate fear for their safety, so that you can let them know that you've got their back now and will set boundaries and say no and step away from things when needed, and that pleasing others is not a survival-level issue anymore in these situations.
posted by lapis at 12:44 PM on November 6, 2023 [1 favorite]

I definitely would look at your family of origin and your relationship with them. What were your responsibilities -- explicit and implicit -- and what would have happened if you walked away from them?
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 12:46 PM on November 6, 2023

The first thing that popped into my mind on reading your question: there is a type of neurodivergence called PDA. It stands for Pathological Demand Avoidance (although Persistent Drive for Autonomy or Pervasive Drive for Autonomy seem to be becoming the preferred terms.) It's when your nervous system has an extreme, involuntary resistance to having any sort of demand/request/obligation placed on you... sometimes even ones you place on yourself! It might be worthwhile to read up on it and see if anything rings a bell.

I understand the feeling for sure. A couple of weeks ago I nearly had a panic attack when I was stuck in a situation where a person talked at me for HOURS. There wasn't any polite way to cut it off, I couldn't be impolite to them for a couple of reasons, and I couldn't easily leave. The feeling of being trapped was intense.
posted by Serene Empress Dork at 4:17 PM on November 6, 2023 [2 favorites]

It sounds like a primal, child place feeling, which does not know/does not care that you are an adult with agency. Were you as a child made responsible for your parents' feelings? Because that would track with you becoming a people-pleaser at a young age and having a difficult time honoring (or maybe even identifying) your boundaries.

I identify with you, by the way. I also tend to feel trapped in situations like these (one time even also with a dog). I am usually pretty clear on what is and is not my responsibility (and when I am not clear, I meditate on this story as a heuristic of sorts) but sometimes my own guilt or people-pleasing impulse are stronger than my desire to protect my boundary even in a situation where I rationally know that I could say "no" to something rather than shouldering a responsibility I did not want or ask for.

My conclusion for myself (but maybe also for you?) is that the TRAPPED feeling comes from internalizing the actual early childhood moment when you were, in fact, TRAPPED, and still feeling and reacting from that place as an adult.
posted by virve at 7:24 PM on November 6, 2023 [3 favorites]

Best answer: I agree with Tomorrowful. I viscerally felt all of your examples. I have felt similarly awful whenever I've been volunteered or manoeuvred into a task or responsibility that I really did not want. In all of those cases I also theoretically had the option to get out of it, but it would have come at a social cost that I, a conflict-avoidant person, would have found excruciating.

I think that your feelings are perfectly reasonable, and I don't think that there has to be a concrete external consequence to refusing a responsibility (or for you to have experienced one in the past) for it to make sense for you to feel so bad about refusing that you feel as if it's not a real option. I don't recall any formative experience in my life that made me afraid to say no to things -- but that's never stopped me from feeling guilty about saying no to things when I feel that it's "too late to back out", "someone is depending on me", etc..

(I have learned over time to suss out these kinds of situations better in their early stages and to fight tooth and nail to avoid them by putting my foot down when it's early enough that it feels "acceptable" to say no -- not always successfully, but I think I'm better at it than I used to be.)
posted by confluency at 4:34 AM on November 7, 2023 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I was pondering this idea just this morning. I think a lot of people genuinely want to be helpers, to be there for people in need of care. Yet, there's a stark difference between extending a hand willingly vs. feeling compelled to extend a hand. That compulsion takes away the intrinsic motivation (the beauty and dignity of helping a fellow human from the authentic heart) and externalizes it (help because you MUST, because you're a bad person if you don't).

It just... pollutes the caretaking. On both sides—the helper and the helped both feel the emptiness of the gesture. In the cycle of trauma, no one is getting what their heart wants. Those who demand care, like parents or partners, don't trust that they will be taken care of, so they must cajole, manipulate, brainwash, or intimidate their way into getting love. That love is never enough, either, because it's not coming from an authentic place in the caretaker. The caretakers, who are subject to those demands and manipulations, then feel trapped by the other person's insatiable need. And that lack of autonomy is genuinely quite terrifying! You're cut off from your own feeling.
posted by gold bridges at 9:21 AM on November 8, 2023