Original Advice
“Your armor is hiding real needs: Working harder won’t protect you from hurt. Stoicism can become avoidance, and people can’t meet needs you never name. If vulnerability feels risky, remember silence is too.”
Retire Stoicism, Name Your Need
Your grind is camouflage. You answer hurt with spreadsheets, late emails, extra reps. It reads as strength; it functions as distance. Pain doesn't vanish under productivity. It waits under your calendar, patient. Stoicism is useful on the climb and lethal at the table. People can't meet needs you never say aloud. Silence is a locked door you keep guarding.
Control kept you alive. It won promotions, clean floors, predictable mornings. It also turned tenderness into a problem to solve. Needs don't negotiate with willpower; they leak through sarcasm, shutdowns, migraines. Work shields you from the shame of wanting, then starves you anyway. Naming a need is not collapse. It is design: you invite support, you test who can stay, you free your bandwidth.
Cosmic Context
Saturn trains Capricorn to build, endure, excel. That same steel becomes a cage unless you master the equally adult skill of asking directly.
Action
──────Tell one trusted person exactly what you need tonight.
✨ You are allowed to be held without earning it. ✨