When Protection Becomes a Prison
This phrase, recently heard in our team EFIT (Emotion Focused Individual Therapy) training, landed for me in that way the best truths do — clear, simple, and absolutely undeniable. This statement is what I see every day in my work. It’s what I’ve lived myself. And I bet it’s something many of you will quietly recognize.
We learn to protect ourselves early in life.
By shutting down when it’s too much.
By staying silent to avoid conflict.
By not trusting anyone because trust has meant pain.
By taking care of everything ourselves because no one else showed up for us.
These are actually brilliant, adaptive strategies. They’re not signs of weakness — they’re signs of survival. But over time, the protection starts to overstay its welcome. It stops being a shield and starts to become a cage.
That quiet, careful, self-reliant version of you might have kept you safe, but it might also be what’s keeping you stuck. Because the walls you built to keep out hurt? They’re keeping out connection, too.
They’re keeping out joy. Support. Belonging. The kind of love that requires you to be seen — even in your mess, even in your fear.
And that’s the moment many people end up in therapy: Not because they’re broken, but because what used to work just doesn’t anymore.
This is the heart of the healing journey — not tearing down the walls all at once, but gently recognizing them. Naming them. Learning why they were there. And then deciding, piece by piece, what can stay, and what can go.
We don’t dismantle protection with shame. We soften it with understanding. With connection. With new experiences of safety — the kind we didn’t get the first time around. This felt experience of safety is created throughout the therapeutic process to begin.
Because you don’t have to live in that prison forever.
When I heard that phrase — “protection can become our prison” — something clicked. And I hope it clicks for you, too.
If you’ve been protecting yourself so fiercely that you’ve forgotten how to receive, how to ask, how to feel, it might be time to crack the door open.
Because you are not broken.
You are not too much.
You are not behind.
What old habits or defenses might have once helped you, but now hold you back?