The more powerful you become, the less you know if anyone is actually talking to you

You’re at dinner with your team.

Someone raises a glass and says something generous about you. Specific, eloquent. The kind of thing that would have meant everything ten years ago.

Everyone agrees. Enthusiastically.

You smile, you deflect with the right amount of humility, you make it about the team.

You’ve done this before.

But somewhere under the table, your foot is pressing into the floor.

Because you don’t know.

You genuinely do not know if that person means it.

And what disturbs you isn’t the uncertainty. It’s that you can see all three versions simultaneously - the genuine one, the strategic one, the one who just needs you to feel good about them right now.

You can’t tell which one is talking.

You used to be able to.

There was a time when the circle was small enough that trust wasn’t something you had to interrogate. When someone saying I believe in you didn’t immediately make you scan for the ask underneath it.

That changed somewhere on the way up.

Overtime. One conversation at a time.

The first time loyalty revealed itself as positioning.

The first time warmth preceded a request.

The first time you realized the version of you they were praised wasn’t quite you - it was the version that was useful to them.

So you adjusted. You gave enough that people felt close. Not enough that it cost you. You stayed warm, present, generous and behind all of it, slightly unreachable.

You told yourself it was discernment.

But discernment doesn’t keep you up at night.

This does.

Because it’s been years now. Years of rooms, toasts, handshakes, performance reviews, loyalty declarations and underneath every single one, the same quiet interrogation running in the background.

Do they mean this, or do they need something from me?

Here’s what I want you to understand.

This isn’t a trust problem. Trust can be rebuilt with the right people.

This is a nervous system problem.

Somewhere on the way up, your body learned that being readable was dangerous. That letting people see you clearly what you wanted, what hurt, what mattered - gave them leverage.

So your nervous system built a solution.

Fast, accurate, always running. An interpreter that could scan any room, any face, any tone of voice, and tell you exactly what was really happening before it could cost you anything.

It worked. It kept you safe. It helped you rise.

And now it won’t turn off.

Not at dinner. Not at home. Not in the rare moments when someone is actually, genuinely, trying to get close to you.

The part of you that would allow closeness has been offline for so long you’ve stopped noticing it’s missing.

Now you’re at the top of something real.

The room is full of people who want to be near you.

And you cannot remember the last time someone said something to you that you just believed.

Not analyzed. Not held up to the light.

Just believed.

You don’t say this out loud. You wouldn’t know how to start.

• I have everything. I trust no one.

That’s not cynicism. That’s not arrogance.

That’s a survival pattern that outlived the danger that created it.

And the loneliness of that isn’t that no one is close to you.

It’s that the part of you capable of closeness has been running on override for years.

That’s the body keeping score in the only language it was ever taught.

And it can be unlearned.

𝘐𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘯𝘢𝘮𝘦𝘥 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦𝘯’𝘵 𝘴𝘢𝘪𝘥 𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘭𝘰𝘶𝘥 𝘺𝘦𝘵 - 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵’𝘴 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘬 𝘣𝘦𝘨𝘪𝘯𝘴. 𝘋𝘔 𝘮𝘦.