There are situations I have left even though, physically, I was still right in the middle of them. I kept listening, nodded, perhaps even spoke, and yet part of me was already somewhere else. I began planning the next day in my head, thinking about something entirely trivial or looking for a sensible explanation as to why what was happening should not really affect me at all. None of this was visible from the outside. It was only much later that I understood that running away does not always mean slamming a door behind us or leaving a place. We can also withdraw while remaining seated. We can flee from a conversation, from a feeling, from a memory or from a truth about ourselves. And it is often only in hindsight that I recognise these quieter forms of escape.
In the past, I was quick to associate running away with weakness. If someone cannot face a situation, they simply flee from it. Today, that judgement feels too simplistic to me. Our bodies and minds possess very old protective mechanisms. When something is experienced as threatening, we do not wait for a long process of reflection before reacting. We become more alert, seek distance, fight inwardly or withdraw. In a situation of genuine danger, that can be vital. It becomes more difficult when the same movement appears in situations where there is no immediate threat, yet something within us still sounds the alarm. The possibility of rejection, a conflict, a memory of earlier hurt or the feeling of losing control can be enough. Then I am not necessarily running from the person or situation in front of me. I am running from what they might stir up within me.
This realisation changed the way I look at many of my own reactions. There were times when I avoided conversations because I told myself they would not lead anywhere anyway. I postponed other decisions because the timing supposedly was not right yet. And there were things I declared unimportant as soon as I sensed that I might not get them. Such explanations sounded reasonable and were not entirely invented. Even so, there was sometimes something underneath them that I was less willing to look at. I did not want to risk disappointment. I did not want to find out how someone might respond to an honest no. Or I wanted to avoid admitting to myself how much something really mattered to me. Escape can look remarkably intelligent. It does not always take the form of panic. It can disguise itself as logic.
I find the escape into activity particularly interesting. I know days when suddenly everything seems more important than the one thing that is genuinely occupying me. The desk could be tidied, a message answered, something researched or some long since insignificant task completed. There is even the reassuring feeling of being productive. Yet when I look at it honestly later, I sometimes realise that all this movement had one purpose above all: for a while, I did not have to stay with what felt uncomfortable. Busyness can be a wonderful form of protection because it does not look like escape. No one asks a busy person what they are running from. Often, they do not even ask themselves.
Humour, composure or spirituality can also become forms of avoidance. That was especially difficult for me to recognise because I value many of these things in themselves. I can make light of a difficult experience until it no longer has to reach me. I can tell myself that everything happens for a reason before I have even allowed myself to acknowledge that something hurt me. I can talk about letting go when, in truth, I simply want to get away from an uncomfortable feeling as quickly as possible. I encounter this temptation again and again, particularly in spiritual contexts. A beautiful explanation can offer comfort. But it can also come too soon. I have found in my own experience that a feeling does not become deeper simply because I give it a spiritual meaning. Sometimes what is needed first is the simple acknowledgement: This hurts. This frightens me. I do not know right now.
There is another side to this as well. Not every act of leaving is an escape. This distinction has become important to me. There are situations I leave because I have clearly recognised that they are not good for me. There are boundaries that are not expressions of fear of closeness, but of self-respect. Someone can end a relationship, leave a job or bring a conversation to an end without running away from themselves. From the outside, it is almost impossible to know what lies behind it. Even within ourselves, it is not always clear. For me, the difference reveals itself less in whether I stay or leave than in the movement beneath it. Am I fleeing because I do not want to feel something, or am I leaving because I have felt it very clearly and taken it seriously?
This is precisely where the subject touches I – Your Best Liar for me. While writing the book, I kept returning to the question of how convincingly we can present our own motives to ourselves. The inner liar does not say, ‘You’re afraid.’ She says, ‘You’re not interested anyway.’ She does not say, ‘You don’t want to be hurt.’ She explains, ‘The other person isn’t worth it anyway.’ She does not say, ‘You’re avoiding this.’ She finds a good reason why something else is more important today. That is what makes self-deception so human. We do not necessarily want to lie to ourselves. We want to protect ourselves. And often, we find exactly the story that makes our behaviour easiest for us to accept.
Over time, I stopped treating every impulse to flee as something that had to be overcome immediately. When I notice that I am inwardly disappearing from a situation, I am more interested now in what has become so difficult in that moment that part of me is looking for distance. That question alone already changes something for me. It does not force me back into a situation I am not yet ready for. Nor does it condemn the protection I may once have learned to rely on. But it makes visible that withdrawal can hold more than disinterest or convenience. Sometimes escape is guarding something within us that, for a long time, knew no other way to protect itself.
And then there are those rare moments when I feel the impulse to flee and still remain for just a little longer. Not out of duty and not to prove my courage to myself. I stay only long enough to notice what is actually happening. My heart beats faster, a thought immediately looks for a way out, something in me wants to make the situation smaller than it is. If I do not rush past that moment, I sometimes realise that there is no locked door in front of me at all. Only an old movement within me that learned long ago to run in a certain direction. And sometimes simply recognising that is enough for me not to run with it quite so quickly.