Does It Feel Like You Are Suffocating In The Face Of Pressure?

Sometimes just a glance can cause you to lose your concentration and judgment. The pressure of a leader, a teacher, a boss or a powerful person looking at you can immediately make you cry or make you feel as if you are suffocating. Suddenly you start doing everything bad. You drop things, your mind becomes empty, and you do not know how to respond. Your words and actions just fail.

Other times, being watched by a powerful person will not trigger these reactions in you. But instead, an aggressive or intimidating message can cause you to react that way. Like when they aggressively ask you a question, or criticize something you have done in an insistent and almost cruel way. And this prevents you from being able to respond, which leads to insecurity or paralysis.

When you think about what happened later, it seems inconceivable that you as an adult were not able to react continuously. The situation bothers you, fills you with anger and frustration, and you end up blaming yourself for what happened. But if a similar situation happened again, you would be confused again and the cycle would continue.

You are suffocated in the face of internal and external pressure

There are two types of pressure: external and internal. External pressure is the type we described above, when a person with some form of power tries to influence your words or actions directly.

External pressure is when someone tries to gain a strong influence over you for the purpose of intimidating you or inhibiting you. These people do not usually make their intentions clear; they justify their actions under the pretext of achieving better quality, optimizing time, improving your training, etc.

The point is that for this type of pressure to succeed, it must coincide with another type of pressure: internally. The most obvious type of internal pressure is the desire to please the person in power.

This is often expressed as anxiety about that person’s expectations. This type of internal pressure can be accompanied by others, such as maintaining your image as a competent person, or just not wanting to look ridiculous in front of others. In other words, not to suffer a blow to your ego.

You get confused precisely because these two types of pressure coincide. It happens in seconds, and you are not aware of everything at stake in these situations. A demand arises in the form of a glance, a question or a comment, and you are unable to respond properly. You end up looking like a child who has been abused, who can not meet the other person’s expectations, and who is not strong enough to respond.

It is possible that in such a situation you may just be trying to get on their good side. As you let go of the pen and your hands tremble, you put on a nervous smile, and without knowing why, you end up admitting that they are right and apologizing for your clumsiness. Or you remain silent and begin a process of self-punishment inside you.

You suffocate because you have a wound that has not been healed

Psychological limitations are not “production errors”.  They are due to an uncertainty or signal a fear you have. It is probably an unresolved event, or many unresolved events, from the past that tell you that you can fail, that you are going to fail.

One explanation for this confusion in the face of pressure is that your life began in environments where contempt, humiliation and devaluation were widespread. Your family, your school, or the place you grew up in was probably haunted by criticism, and this has probably come back to haunt you on more than one occasion. Or maybe you have been through a traumatic experience that left a mark on your identity: the loss of one of your parents, an illness, a physical limitation, etc.

According to this explanation, you get upset and feel crying or suffocated when you feel like the addicted and rescued child you once were. Underneath all these mental blocks are two things: fear and guilt.

Is there an escape route? Of course it does. In fact, it can be a fascinating journey, a wonderful challenge where you can use reality yourself to grow. You have to go into that place, before someone else puts you there, and make yourself stronger in it. Do not wait for the circumstances to put you in a situation that paralyzes you. Do it yourself in such a way that you have enough control over your environment, so that you can master your situation little by little.