When your environment doesn't support your growth

I'm always trying to look at ways that people can help themselves, even when they can't make changes that would alter their current situation or experience. The environment plays such an important role in how we feel and how we are supported. But you can't always change your environment.

Sometimes growth doesn’t look like thriving — it looks like enduring without losing yourself.

When you can’t change the environment yet (family, workplace, relationship), the work shifts from external change to internal protection and preparation.

1. Separate survival from identity

The environment may be where you survive, but it doesn’t get to decide who you are.

A job can pay your bills without defining your worth

A relationship can be a chapter without being your whole story

A family system can shape you without owning you

This mental separation is powerful. It stops the environment from colonising your self-belief.

Think: “This is where I am, not who I am.”

2. Create micro-environments that do support you

If the main environment is barren, you grow in pockets

One friend who really sees you

One daily ritual that’s just yours

One place (gym, walk, journal, car rides, music) where you exhale

You don’t need the whole ecosystem to change — you just need enough nourishment to stay alive inside.

3. Learn the skill of energetic boundaries

Even when you can’t physically leave, you can stop emotionally over-giving.

Do your job well, but stop seeking validation there

Love, but don’t self-abandon to keep the peace

Participate without absorbing everything

Boundaries aren’t always walls. Sometimes they’re just not explaining yourself anymore.

4. Use the environment as information, not punishment

This is subtle but important.

Instead of:

“Something is wrong with me because this isn’t working.”

Try:

“This environment is showing me what I don’t want and what I’ll build next.”

Unsupportive environments refine your values. They sharpen your discernment. They don’t mean you’re failing — they often mean you’re outgrowing.

5. Build a quiet exit plan (even if it’s years away)

Hope matters. Direction matters.

You don’t need to leave today. You just need to know:

You are allowed to want more

This is not forever

You are preparing, even on days it looks like you’re just surviving

Sometimes growth looks like saving energy, skills, confidence, money — not making dramatic moves.

6. Be deeply compassionate with yourself

If someone grew up in a hard family, stayed in a hard job, or a hard relationship to meet basic needs — that’s not weakness. That’s resourcefulness. That’s love. That’s survival intelligence.

And survival is not the opposite of growth — it’s often the soil it grows from.