When being reasonable becomes a way of avoiding your life

I've always had a healthy respect for logic. I studied environmental science, worked in engineering, and spent years in environments where being able to analyse a problem, weigh up the evidence and make a sensible decision was considered a strength.

And it is a strength. I still believe that.

But I've also learnt that I can come up with a perfectly logical explanation for almost anything, including the things I don't really want to face. Think about how many perfectly sensible reasons we can find for staying where we are.

The job is secure. The salary is good. There are opportunities ahead. We've invested years getting to this point, and starting again would mean giving up everything we've worked towards. Besides, plenty of people would love to be in our position.

And these are all perfectly valid reasons to stay. But what happens when we've been repeating them for years, even as something within us grows increasingly restless?

I know what that feels like. For a long time, I could explain my own stress quite easily. There were deadlines, responsibilities, expectations, and the pressure I put on myself to be knowledgeable and capable. I wanted to do well, to be someone people could rely on, and I took those responsibilities seriously.

There were plenty of reasons to feel the way I did. But I also knew there was something else...

Underneath the busyness and the constant thinking was a feeling I struggled to put into words. I was living a life that made sense to me, while feeling increasingly disconnected from something within myself. Some deeper sense of drive, curiosity, passion. I couldn't quite identify what was missing, but I could feel its absence.

And I think that was what made it so difficult to address. I could explain the stress, but I couldn't explain the disconnection nearly as well. So, the things I could explain were the things I kept focusing on.

The stories that sound like facts

We like to believe we make decisions by gathering information, considering our options and reaching a sensible conclusion. Sometimes that's exactly what happens. But human decision-making is far less straightforward than we tend to imagine.

Our emotions, expectations, previous experiences and beliefs about ourselves influence what we notice, how we interpret situations and which possibilities we take seriously.

Psychologists call one part of this motivated reasoning. Research suggests that our goals and desires can influence how we evaluate information. We may examine evidence that challenges our preferred conclusion much more critically than evidence that supports it, often without realising we're doing so. And because the reasoning itself feels sincere, we can be remarkably convincing. Especially to ourselves.

Imagine someone who has been thinking about leaving a career for years. They can explain exactly why the timing isn't right. They need more savings, another qualification, a clearer plan. The economy is uncertain. Their current role offers stability and opportunities that would be foolish to abandon.

But ask what would need to happen for the timing to become right, and the answer becomes less clear. Maybe it’s a little more experience. A better financial position. More confidence. Or some certainty about what comes next.

The requirements keep shifting, while the decision stays exactly where it was. We can spend years gathering evidence for a conclusion we've never really allowed ourselves to question.

When thinking becomes a hiding place

There's a particular comfort in being able to explain things. If something feels uncomfortable, we want to understand why. We analyse what happened, consider possible causes, revisit conversations, research solutions and try to work out what we should do differently.

But I've noticed how easily thinking can become an activity in itself. We can spend so much time trying to understand an experience that we never quite get around to experiencing what it's telling us.

There's a psychological concept called intellectualisation, where abstract thinking creates distance from difficult emotions. It's one way people manage discomfort, and in certain situations it can be useful. Being able to remain clear-headed during a crisis, for example, is hardly a disadvantage.

The difficulty comes when analysis becomes our preferred response to almost everything. We explain why a relationship is difficult without acknowledging how lonely we feel in it. We understand the demands of our work without admitting how exhausted we've become. We research every possible outcome of a decision because the uncertainty of making it feels unbearable.

Coming from an analytical background, I was accustomed to approaching problems by understanding them. Find the cause, assess the variables, develop a solution. It's a useful way to work when you're dealing with processes and systems. But I eventually began to realise that I couldn't approach every part of my inner life in quite the same way.

I could identify the pressures in my environment and understand why I felt anxious. I could recognise the expectations I'd placed on myself. I could even see that something in my life no longer felt quite right.

Yet understanding all of that didn't automatically bring me any closer to what I was missing. I was very good at explaining my circumstances. I was much less practised at listening to myself. And I wonder how many of us live like that for longer than we realise.

The things we find difficult to admit

Sometimes what we're avoiding isn't even a difficult decision. It's admitting what we want. There's something surprisingly vulnerable about wanting a different life, particularly when the one you've built looks perfectly good from the outside.

What if people don't understand? What if you disappoint someone? What if you make a change and discover it was a mistake? And maybe most unsettling of all, what if you don't really know what you want yet?

It's much easier to talk about practical obstacles. Those can be discussed, calculated and defended. We can explain them to our partners, colleagues, friends and families, and they usually make sense to everyone. But saying that you feel disconnected from your own life, even though nothing is obviously wrong, is a much more difficult conversation.

For a long time, I didn't have a clear answer to what I wanted to do differently. I just knew that something about the way I was living didn't feel right. And that can be an uncomfortable place to find yourself when you're used to having a plan.

We tend to give a lot of weight to what we can measure and explain, while the quieter parts of our experience are easier to dismiss. A persistent sense of dissatisfaction can seem less legitimate than a salary, a career opportunity or a well-constructed argument.

Yet that feeling is still information. It may be incomplete, difficult to interpret or influenced by things we haven't understood yet, but it deserves our attention.

I don't think every uncomfortable feeling is a sign that we need to change our lives. Sometimes we're tired, going through a difficult period or expecting too much from ourselves. And sometimes the sensible decision really is to stay, to wait, or to work through what's in front of us.

But I do think there's something worth exploring when we keep returning to the same feeling, year after year, while finding increasingly sophisticated reasons to ignore it.

What are we really protecting?

I've become more curious about the explanations I give myself, especially the ones that seem to settle a question very quickly.

Why am I so certain this isn't possible? What would I have to face if I tried? Am I making this decision because it's what I genuinely want, or because the alternative makes me uncomfortable?

Sometimes the answers are straightforward. There are real responsibilities, practical limitations and consequences to consider. I wouldn't want to live without the ability to think carefully about those things.

Other times, the answers are more personal.

I'm afraid of getting it wrong. I don't want people to think I've failed. I've spent so long becoming this person that I don't know who I'd be without it. I want something different, but I'm not sure I can explain why.

These aren't always easy things to acknowledge. They can challenge the stories we've built about ourselves, and sometimes the expectations other people have come to place on us. But they can also tell us something that another spreadsheet, another pros-and-cons list or another carefully reasoned explanation might never reveal.

I still value logic as much as I ever did. My scientific background continues to shape how I think, question and make sense of the world. I wouldn't want to lose that part of myself. What has changed is my willingness to accept that understanding something intellectually isn't always the same as understanding what it means to me.

Some questions need time. Some need experience. Some need us to pay attention to feelings we've become very good at explaining away. And sometimes, after years of looking for a sensible answer, we have to consider whether we've been asking the right question in the first place.

I don't want to spend my life getting better at explaining why I can't do the things that matter to me, only to look back and realise that everything made perfect sense on paper, but somewhere along the way I'd lost touch with what I actually wanted.

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