When emotionally challenged, should you run?
- B Bistak
- Jan 28
- 4 min read
Updated: 2 days ago
THE GATE SHOWS YOU HOW TO DEPART PREMATURELY.
There's a specific kind of broken thing in your life. It's not the type of breakage that occurs abruptly. It's the kind that deteriorates gradually, over a period of years, in ways that appear normal until they don't.
For Billy—whose story has haunted me for years—it was a fence. A backyard gate split open by a winter storm when he was eight years old. The gate remained broken in Billy's mind. And in that brokenness, something shifted in Billy's young nervous system.
He learned that broken things stay broken. Sometimes, waiting for repair is the only viable option. He discovered that certain barriers, once breached, can never fully close again.
But the broken gate also taught him how to leave, even though something else got in, as Billy's story shows.
If you relate to this in any way, the question becomes: should you run when faced with emotional challenges?
I work with people who've learned this same lesson. This lesson is not always imparted through an actual gate, but rather through the symbolic architecture of their personal lives. They found themselves in a family that could no longer support them. A relationship that fractured. They have created a version of themselves that no longer fits. These people carry a particular kind of knowledge: they know what it feels like to stand at a threshold, looking at the distance they'd need to cross, and feeling absolutely paralyzed by the possibility of movement.
The work I do isn't about fixing the gate.
It's about understanding why the gate was broken in the first place. What was it protecting you from? What was it protecting others from? Most importantly, what occurs when you choose to stop waiting for someone else to fix it and instead learn to navigate it on your terms?
Billy's dissociation—his capacity to step outside himself, to observe from a distance, to create psychological space between himself and unbearable experience—wasn't a symptom of brokenness. It was a survival mechanism. His nervous system learned early that separation could be safety. That distance could be protection. Sometimes, observing from the outside was the only way to endure what was happening inside.
For decades, Billy treated this capacity as a liability. Something to overcome. Something that proved he was fundamentally broken. Later in life, he went to church after church, hoping someone would tell him how to be normal. He pursued relationships, hoping that being loved would somehow teach him how to feel. His jobs required him to care for others, yet he disengaged from his own need for care.
But none of that changed the fundamental truth his nervous system knew: some gates teach you how to leave because staying will destroy you.
The people I work with understand something most people never learn: those who have experienced the kind of dissociation that feels like a superpower and a curse simultaneously. They understand that disconnection isn't always pathology.
Sometimes it's wisdom. Sometimes it's your most intelligent self saying, "This is too much." We need to create distance. We need to survive this moment by stepping outside of it."
The question isn't how do we eliminate this capacity. The question is, how do we choose when to use it and when to be fully present? How do we transform a survival mechanism into a tool for understanding ourselves and others?
This is where writing comes in. And photography. Additionally, the practice of listening is crucial—not for the purpose of fixing someone, but for the purpose of witnessing them.
When you externalize what's been internal—when you write the story that's been haunting you, photograph the moment that's been defining you, speak the truth you've been carrying in silence—something shifts. You move from being a victim of your own neurology to being someone who understands and can work with their own.
Billy didn't heal by becoming "normal." He healed by understanding that the gate wasn't the problem. The gate was the passage. The dissociation wasn't the problem. The dissociation was a preparation. Everything he'd learned about stepping outside himself, about observing without judgment, about surviving the unsurvivable—all of that became the skill set that allowed him to finally say yes to something real. He finally took a leap that required absolute faith.
The broken gate taught him that some things you can't fix. Some things require acceptance. And sometimes you have to be willing to leave something completely behind.
But here's what's revolutionary: once you understand that the gate was never meant to trap you, it becomes something else entirely. It becomes the threshold. The passage. The crossing is the point at which the agony of remaining motionless surpasses the danger of embarking on a journey.
I work with individuals whose lives have shattered open. Unforeseen storms have split their gates wide. Their nervous systems learned to dissociate, step outside, and observe from a safe distance, as the internal turmoil became overwhelming.
These people aren't broken. They're intelligent. Their nervous systems are precisely calibrated to their circumstances. The question isn't how do we fix them. What happens when they realize that their best defense mechanism is also their best connection tool?
That's the work. That's what happens when someone finally recognizes that dissociation—stepping outside, observing, creating distance—isn't a symptom to overcome. It's a capacity to understand and work with.
The gate that was meant to break you can become the gate that teaches you how to leave. (click here to learn how)
And sometimes, leaving is exactly what love requires.
But there is another layer underneath this distance; it is you, the one who never asked for help, except in your eyes, where no one noticed.
The forthcoming posts shed a gentle light on you.
Sincerely,
Bill BIstak
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