Why So Many Women Feel Trapped When They’re Not

Issue 174, July 3, 2026 ✨ Higher Power Coaching & Consulting ✨

One of the phrases I hear most often from clients is some version of “I have to.”

• I have to stay in this job.
• I have to help.
• I have to keep the peace.
• I have to say yes.
• I have to take care of everyone else first.

Sometimes the language is a little different. People tell me they “need” to do something or that they “should” do something. But underneath those phrases is often the same experience. It feels as though life is happening to them and they don’t really have much say in the matter.

For years, that’s how I lived too.

I didn’t realize how many times and in how many areas I felt compelled to do things. I thought I was making decisions, but many of my choices were actually being driven by fear, guilt, obligation, old conditioning, and a overriding desire to avoid disappointing other people. I wasn’t consciously choosing how I wanted to live. I was reacting to what felt safest, most familiar, or most likely to maintain my connection to others.

One of the biggest shifts in my recovery happened when I began to recognize that many of the things I believed I “had to” do were actually choices.

Now before you get annoyed with me, let me acknowledge something important. Sometimes our options are shitty. Sometimes we’re choosing between options we don’t like. Sometimes we’re choosing what feels like the lesser of two evils. But that’s very different from having no choice at all.

I’ve come to believe that one of the reasons people struggle so much with self-trust is that they don’t realize how many choices they’re making every day. When we tell ourselves we have no choice, we stop looking for alternatives. We stop evaluating options. We stop asking ourselves what we actually want. We resign ourselves to the story that this is simply the way things are.

And when we do that, we give away a tremendous amount of our power.

The Difference Between Having No Choice and Not Liking Your Choices

Several years ago, I spoke with someone who told me she had no choice but to continue running a family business she hated.

She inherited the business when she was a single mother with young children and felt trapped. At the time, she believed she had to keep it running because she needed the income to support her family. What struck me wasn’t the decision she made. What struck me was that more than 20 years later, she was still telling herself the same story.

“I didn’t have a choice.”

The reality was that she did have choices. She could have sold the business, closed it, brought in a partner. She could have hired someone else to run it. She could have taken a completely different path. Instead, she gave her the daughters the message, “When you grow up, I’ll be leaving this business to you, and you won’t have a choice either.” 

Interestingly, after we had this conversation, she revealed that the same exact thing had happened to her father: he inherited the business and he didn’t want it either! So the legacy of “you don’t have choices” continued.

Would any of those choices have been easy? Probably not. They may have felt risky, uncomfortable, or financially frightening. But difficult choices are still choices.

One of the hallmarks of victim mentality is the belief that we don’t have options. We start seeing our circumstances as fixed and ourselves as powerless. Once that happens, we stop looking for alternatives because we don’t believe they exist.

What’s fascinating is that when we don’t perceive that we have choices, it’s almost as if we don’t. We behave as though we’re trapped. We stop asking questions. We stop imagining possibilities. We stop considering what we actually want. The result is that we end up living lives shaped more by obligation than intention.

Why We Don’t See Our Choices

For a long time, I thought people struggled with boundaries because they didn’t know how to set them. While I think that’s sometimes true, I no longer believe it’s the primary issue. More often, I think people struggle because they don’t feel safe enough to choose differently.

The options are there, but the emotional cost of exercising those options feels too high. 

• You could say no, but someone might be disappointed.
• You could ask for what you need, but someone might think you’re selfish.
• You could speak up, but someone might disagree with you.
• You could leave the relationship, but then you’d have to face being alone.
• You could stop rescuing people, but then they’d have to experience the consequences of their choices.

From the outside, it looks like there are plenty of options. From the inside, those options can feel terrifying.

That’s why I’ve become so interested in the concept of internal safety. Internal safety is what allows us to tolerate the discomfort that often comes with making choices that are right for us. When we don’t feel safe inside ourselves, we tend to default to whatever option creates the least amount of immediate emotional discomfort.

The problem is that avoiding discomfort and making wise choices are not always the same thing. In fact, many of the most important decisions we make require us to tolerate temporary discomfort in service of a healthier long-term outcome.

What Boundaries Taught Me

When people think about boundaries, they often think about saying no. While that’s certainly part of it, boundaries taught me something much more profound. They taught me that I have choices.

Before recovery, I spent a lot of time acting as though I didn’t. I said yes when I really wanted to say no. I focused on what other people wanted while not even considering what I wanted. I overrode my preferences, dismissed my needs, and subconsciously believed that keeping other people happy was more important than being honest with myself.

What boundaries helped me understand is that I had a say in how my life unfolded.

• I could say yes or I could say no.
• I could stay or I could leave.
• I could speak up or I could remain silent.
• I could continue doing what I’d always doneor I could choose something different.

That realization was incredibly freeing. It’s one of the reasons I often describe boundaries as living on purpose. Boundaries require us to ask questions many of us were never encouraged to ask:

What do I want?

What matters to me?

What do I need?

What do I prefer?

What kind of life am I trying to create?

Those questions shift our attention away from obligation and toward intention. Instead of asking, “What am I supposed to do?” we begin asking, “What choice aligns with who I want to be?”

The Language Shift That Changed Everything

One of the simplest tools I use with clients is helping them pay attention to the language they’re using. When someone tells me they have to do something, I reframe it as something you “get to” do.

At first, that distinction can sound like semantics. But it’s much deeper than that. When we say, “I have to stay in this job,” we create the experience of being trapped. We position ourselves as someone who has no agency and no alternatives.

But what if we said, “I’m choosing to stay in this job because financial stability is important to me right now”? The circumstances haven’t changed. The job is still the same. The paycheck is still the same. The challenges are still the same. But when we realized we’ve making the choice to stay, we get to stop complaining about the job, the boss, the industry, the company. And we get to do the job the best we can under the circumstances, and put our energy into that instead of bitching and complaining. We feel more powerful when we realize, “I’m choosing this.”

What has changed is our relationship to the situation. We’re no longer pretending we have no choice. We’re acknowledging that we’re making one.

The same thing happens when we replace “I should” with “I could.” “I should go to that event” feels heavy and obligatory. “I could go to that event” reminds us that it’s an option.

Likewise, replacing “I need to” with “I’m choosing to” helps us remember that we’re participating in our lives rather than being dragged through them.  The reason these shifts matter isn’t because language magically changes reality.

It’s because language reveals reality. And the reality is that most of us have far more choices than we think we do.

How Self-Trust Is Built

Many people think self-trust is something you either have or you don’t. My experience has been very different. Self-trust is built one choice at a time. Every time you pause and ask yourself what you actually want, you strengthen self-trust. Every time you pay attention to your needs, preferences, values, and limits, you strengthen self-trust. Every time you make a conscious decision rather than operating on autopilot, you strengthen self-trust. Every time you tell the truth instead of abandoning yourself, you strengthen self-trust.

Over time, those small moments create something powerful. They create a secure relationship with yourself.

You begin to trust that you’ll listen when something feels wrong. You begin to trust that you’ll take your own experience seriously. You begin to trust that you won’t automatically abandon yourself in order to gain approval, avoid conflict, or keep other people comfortable.

And once that trust starts to develop, decision-making becomes much easier. Not because every decision is obvious, or because life stops being complicated. But because you’re no longer looking outside yourself for all the answers. You’ve started building a relationship with the one person you’ll spend your entire life with: YOU!

A Different Way to Live

One of the greatest gifts boundaries gave me wasn’t better communication, healthier relationships, or less resentment (although all of those wonderful things happened too). The greatest gift was realizing that I had choices. Once I saw that, I couldn’t unsee it.

I could say yes.

I could say no.

I could stay.

I could leave.

I could continue living according to old patterns and expectations.

Or I could choose something different.

That realization changed everything because it moved the center of gravity in my life. My attention became less focused on what everyone else wanted, expected, or needed from me and more focused on understanding what was true for me.

And thatnis where self-trust begins.

It begins when we stop asking, “What do I have to do?” and start asking, “What am I choosing?”