I recently received an email from a reader that felt like a masterclass in resilience. It is raw, honest, and incredibly brave. I’ve decided to share it in full because her story—the journey of a young woman navigating a lifetime of being the “designated target”—is one that I know many of you will see yourselves in.
She is finally connecting the dots between her past and her present, and she’s asking the question so many of us face: “I’ve found freedom, so why do I still feel like I’m under threat?”
The Email
“For a long time, I felt like I was living in a script written by someone else. Looking back, I can see a pattern I was trapped in for years—one where I was always the scapegoat, the person to blame.
It began in the school hallways. I was a terrified girl, so scared to go down any of the three main corridors that I would hide during lunch just to avoid being seen. The fear was constant, a feeling of being in danger. Teachers couldn’t help, and at home, my parents were already stressed. If I tried to talk to them about the bullying, I was basically told off, on top of being criticised for not being ‘good enough’ at maths, English, or science. My father would shout and take the mickey; my mother would keep me behind to read the holy book, but I never progressed from page 1 or 2. I felt stuck and constantly ‘not enough.’
This pattern followed me into adulthood. In university, my brother was emotionally abusive—snatching my phone so I couldn’t talk to boys or make friends. I was even targeted by another student for four years over a situation with her boyfriend that I didn’t even know existed. He never told me, and she chased me and was nasty.
Then came the workplace. As a junior, I was treated like cheap labour. My manager would shout at me in public, mirroring my father’s temper. I was always the scapegoat—hired but never trained, then punished for not performing exactly how they wanted. The pinnacle was a CEO of a small business who called his son and asked why he needed a calculator. He told me, ‘My 13-year-old son can answer this, you can’t.’
I went into freeze mode. I couldn’t speak. My mind shut down because it was a lifetime of pain hitting me all at once. I was let go the next day when I wasn’t even in.
The Turning Point: Finding Freedom My life felt like a series of toxic loops until university. Those were the best years of my life. For the first time, I felt freedom, happiness, and learning. I wasn’t an object for someone else’s anger, a person to be blamed, or someone to be controlled.
I started my own business at 28. I realized I wasn’t being punished because I was ‘bad’; I was simply in toxic environments. Starting my business was about reclaiming my narrative. I am finally building a life based on self-worth.
But I still struggle.
I find myself worried, hypervigilant, and painfully self-aware. It seeps into my life and it’s tough. How do I move forward?”
My Response: How to Move Forward
Firstly, thank you for your honest and raw email. You’ve done the hardest part: you’ve removed yourself from the “danger zone.” But as you’ve discovered, the body keeps the score long after the environment changes.
Healing isn’t a straight line, and I want to share something from my own journey that might help you feel less alone. For five years, I ran my own business. I worked with global brands and held total control; if a situation felt toxic, I had the power to walk away. But recently, moving into a part-time contract role, I have a manager again, and it has been a total shock to my system. Even though he is actually quite chilled and supportive, I am living in a state of constant fear. It is the heavy legacy of 15 years of trauma. My brain is constantly waiting for the shouting to start or the 'scapegoating' to begin. Even in a safe environment, my body is still reacting to the ghosts of managers past. It proves that while we can change our jobs, our nervous systems often take longer to catch up to the fact that we are finally safe.
When you’ve spent 26 years being told you are the problem, your brain develops hypervigilance as a protection. You are “worried” because your brain is still scanning the horizon for the next shouting manager or the next “nasty” peer. Here is how you begin to move forward:
Validate the “Freeze”: Understand that when you freeze, it isn’t a weakness—it’s your nervous system trying to save your life. When that CEO belittled you, your brain thought you were back in that school corridor. Be gentle with yourself in those moments.
The “Survival Hangover”: Hypervigilance is like a survival hangover. You are safe now in your own business, but your internal alarm system is still set to “high.” Moving forward requires “re-parenting” that alarm. When you feel worried, tell yourself: “I am the CEO now. I am in control. No one is coming to snatch my phone or shout at me today.”
Focus on Autonomy: You mentioned that self-employment was your “best years.” This is because, for a scapegoat, autonomy is the cure. Every time you make a business decision, you are proving to your younger self that you are capable and smart—far beyond what that CEO or your teachers believed.
Healing is Not a Linear Line: You aren’t “broken” because you still feel low or depressed at times. You are unlearning two decades of conditioning. The fact that you started a business at 28 despite everything is proof of a core strength that no one could shout out of you.
Final Thought
To the reader who sent this, and to anyone feeling the weight of their past while trying to build their future: You are no longer the girl hiding in the corridor. You are the woman who built the building. The hypervigilance will quiet down as your body realises that you are the one in charge now. We are moving forward, one breath at a time.
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