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In our practice, we often encounter profound pain, that is mistakenly labeled as personal pathology.

The most compelling stories are rarely just about individual minds. They are about minds navigating, and being shaped by, oppressive systems. The journey of one therapy client has stayed with me, not because it is unique, but because it is a perfect map of how our familiar structures—educational, economic, cultural—manufacture grief and shame; and then blame individuals for feeling them.

Childhood Learnings of the Therapy Client

The childhood of this therapy client was a lesson in impermanence. Due to a parent’s transferable job, his world was reset every few years. New schools, new friends, a series of abrupt goodbyes before any sense of safety could root.

Developmental research now robustly links frequent childhood moves with higher risks of depression, anxiety, and a fragile sense of belonging, later in life. What the economy calls “mobility” is, to a child’s nervous system, a chronic stressor. His early, unspoken learning was that attachment is precarious and grief must be swallowed for the sake of adaptation.

The hidden syllabus of his young life taught him that institutions reward the quick, the compliant, and the emotionally quiet. Over time, he internalized a devastating belief: his loneliness and subsequent anger were not natural responses to chronic disruption, but evidence of a private defect.

A significant part of our initial work was simply normalizing his need for stability and security—reframing it not as a weakness, but as a fundamental human requirement. This began to defuse the deep shame that surrounded his “outbursts.”

Entering Adulthood with socially pre-defined goals

The Therapy Client entered adulthood clutching a new script; achieve stable employment, secure a home, find a partner. This cultural promise equates success with static, nuclear-family stability. He followed it diligently, hoping to build the permanence he never had.

Then, the rules changed. The globalized script took over; that prized global mobility for studies and jobs; and for constant career evolution. Peers moved abroad. His partner also left for advanced opportunities. He stayed back this time; and in the quiet rhetoric of our systems, those who stay are subtly framed as being “left behind.”

In our therapy sessions, a profound and disorienting rage emerged.

“They get to leave. They left me. After everything I did to be good, to be reliable.” On the surface, it was interpersonal. But in the therapeutic deep dive, we uncovered its true source; a learned helplessness in the face of systems that govern life trajectories—education, labor, even modern relationships.

His anger was not a sign of being “too much,” as he feared. It was crucial relational data. It pointed directly to years of ungrieved loss; and to systems that had treated him and his partner as a relocatable assets. All while praising freedom, growth and resilience; and while pathologizing the grief that disruption causes.

The real culprits affecting the Therapy Client

So, who are the true culprits in this clinical presentation?

Not his sensitivity or his longing. Our work identifies:

· Mobility Regimes that uproot developing minds and call it “necessary for evolution.”

· Economic Structures that glorify detachment and pathologize attachment.

· Cultural Narratives that mistake a normal human response to repeated loss for a personal failing.

The way forward in Therapy

Our therapeutic journey became an act of decolonizing his story.

Together, we are now :

1. Treating his grief as evidence of intact humanity, not pathology.

2. Mapping his shame to locate where oppressive narratives have lodged internally.

3. Listening to his anger as a radar, pointing to what has been unjust all along.

The empowerment plan we are co-creating for the therapy client , focuses on:

Building Internal Stability: Cultivating a secure base within himself, so his sense of safety is less contingent on externally unstable systems.

Finding Communal Witness: Connecting him to narratives and communities that validate this form of systemic relational trauma, transforming isolation into shared understanding.

Crafting a Durable Narrative: Supporting him in building a life that values continuity and depth on his own terms, holding connection not as a vulnerability, but as the cornerstone of a meaningful life.

This client’s story is a powerful reminder, that our work often involves helping clients separate their self from the systems embedded within them.

By acknowledging the structural roots of their pain, we don’t just alleviate symptoms—we help restore a sense of justice to their inner world, and agency to their path forward.