You're the one always crying.

You're the one who escalates.

You're the one the relationship has quietly decided is "the emotional one."

And they just seem… fine.

I am here to tell you: you may not be falling apart.

You may be feeling on behalf of someone who can't.

People who close off their access to feeling don't just become numb. They become a field. And that field pulls — wrapping itself around the people closest to them, enlisting them into an underground web of chaos they didn't choose and can't quite name.

In shamanic traditions, this has always been understood. The one who will not descend into their own underworld sends others there instead.

I wrote about what this actually looks like — the mechanics, the nervous system science, why you keep doubting yourself, and what's really needed.