How long were you in that environment before you understood what it was doing?
Four years. And I want to be careful here because it did not feel like harm for most of that time. It felt like high standards. Like pressure that was justified because the work mattered.
What made you see it differently?
When I left, I expected to feel better within weeks. Instead, the first year outside was harder than the last year inside. My system did not trust the new environment. It kept waiting for the thing it had learned to protect against.
What would you want someone to know who is still inside something like that?
That your body knows before you do. The closures are not weakness. They are the system doing exactly what it should. It is protecting you from something it has correctly identified as too costly.