My intuition said leave; my fear said stay. Here’s how I made the impossible choice.
Have you ever known that you needed to leave—but felt unable to do it?
Suspected that something wasn’t right—but just couldn’t let go?
That crossroads can feel unbearable, and Hannah Fraser Moore captured it perfectly in a recent Instagram post. She begins:
“The worst pain isn’t confusion. It’s knowing exactly what you need to do—and not being able to bear what it will cost.”
Earlier this year, I felt exactly this way: on the brink of ending my long-term romantic partnership, but unable to face the heartbreak that that choice would bring.
It’s a threshold I’ve witnessed in my clients, too. Those whose intuitions are tugging them away from their careers, faiths, and relationships—but feel paralyzed by fear of what they’ll lose if they heed the call.
Moore goes on:
“Most people don’t come to therapy because they don’t know what to do. They come because they do know, and can’t yet act without breaking something sacred.
The mind can’t move forward when both paths feel like betrayal. So you loop. You freeze and replay the options…Your two parts, both speaking. One says: ‘Go.’ The other says: ‘If you do, you’ll lose everything…’
Some experiences are too much for the mind to hold alone. Too raw. Too contradictory. Too painful. They can’t be thought. They have to be expelled.
So they go into the body, into behaviors, and into crisis. This is the unthinkable thought. It doesn’t disappear. It waits for someone who can help hold it.
This is where the structure begins to crack. None of your defenses can solve the crisis anymore. No coping mechanism can quiet the war. The contradiction becomes unbearable.”
The unthinkable thought—“I don’t want this anymore,” “This isn’t right for me,” “I have to leave,” “I can’t keep doing this”—is the moment that precipitates many major life transitions.
It’s the moment we admit that the life we have isn’t the life we want anymore.
In this article, I’ll share my own journey arriving at the unthinkable thought in my romantic relationship. We’ll explore why it takes so long to confront the unthinkable—how our bodies sense it before our minds—and how protracted, messy endings aren’t a personal failing, but in fact, a reflection of profound inner wisdom.
Finally, we’ll examine how to cultivate the inner resourcefulness we need to follow our intuition—even when it whispers the unthinkable—so we can leap into the life that’s calling us.
The Unthinkable Thought: “I Don’t Want This Anymore”
It was 2am and I was lying restlessly in bed. Every so often, a pair of passing headlights shone through the gap in my curtains, illuminating the room in a brief flash of white.
Hours ago, I’d hugged my mom goodnight—she was visiting from New Jersey—and headed upstairs, eager for sleep. But the moment I slid under the covers, my mind began its nightly spiral.
I’d been some shade of unhappy in my romantic partnership for over a year now. In the moments right before sleep—when my mind was tired and undefended—my doubts blared the loudest.
I’d lost count of how many nights I’d spent like this: tossing, turning, ruminating.
My partner was a beautiful man with a gentle heart and brilliant mind. We’d been together for three and a half years, and we’d talked at length about having a kid. Driven hours outside Seattle to scope out land for a cabin. Daydreamed about road trips through Utah; bike tours through Italy.
I’d supported him through heart surgery, major depression, and the death of a friend. He’d supported me through burnout, chronic anxiety, and the death of a family member.
Over the course of our relationship, we’d shown each other a degree of safety and love that neither of us had believed possible before. I’d never been treated so gently—with such tenderness.
But we’d also had significant struggles.
Our styles of handling conflict were opposite, and it felt impossible to stay connected through rupture. We could communicate easily through the good times, but rarely through the bad.
Ultimately, that golden thread of secure connection—that felt sense of “I can count on you to be there when things get hard”—had eroded over time, leaving a staticky anxiety in its wake. On top of that, we had a significant age difference, were at different stages in our lives, and faced other practical concerns that, combined, made the future feel unstable.
Throughout the course of our relationship, I’d lingered in the questions that we ask when love is hard. How much compromise is love—and how much is self-abandonment? How can I feel so connected when things are good—and so alone when things are difficult? When is love enough to sustain a life partnership—and when does it fall short?
These weren’t just passive inquiries. I’d been working hard to find the answers, using all my tools to try to find a path that led to lifelong love.
Therapy. Couples counselling. Meditation. Medication. Daily journaling. Doubling down on my friendships. Radical acceptance.
But our problems remained gridlocked—and created a festering unease from which I found respite for only moments at a time. More often than not, I was preoccupied: worrying, tense, some part of my mind problem-solving.
That night, as I reflected on the days, weeks, and months I’d spent in this very state, I felt like a caged animal with nowhere left to go. My heart was heavy with resentment, heartache, and grief.
And then—with a clarity that came from someplace deep within—I thought the unthinkable thought for the very first time:
“What if I don’t want this anymore?”
How We Hide From Ourselves: Denial, Defense Mechanisms, and the Wisdom of the Body
It takes a significant degree of psychic pain to think the unthinkable thought: the thought that, if followed to its conclusion, could shatter our lives as we know them.
My partnership had been a struggle for over a year, so you would think that I’d already confronted this question. But I hadn’t—at least not consciously. I’d thought:
We have to fix it. How do we fix it? Let’s try this. It’s not working. Maybe this? We’re so disconnected. What should we do now? We have to fix it. How do we fix it?
And around, and around.
None of these thoughts were particularly frightening, because none of them threatened my reality. None of them implied I might have to leave the man I loved.
But beneath my “let’s find a solution” attitude—beneath the stirrings of my conscious mind—something deeper had been stirring.
That year, I’d battled a persistent, mysterious back pain that physical therapy hadn’t been able to pinpoint or fix. Already slim, I’d lost weight—too much weight—and my favorite t-shirts hung off me like clothes on the line. I bit my nails. Bounced my leg. Couldn’t, for the life of me, sit still.
In retrospect, my body was sending out cues of distress, manifesting the emotional reality I couldn’t bring myself to consciously face. This isn’t okay. Pay attention to me. Pay attention to me.
Bruce Feiler, author of Life is In The Transitions, interviewed hundreds of people on the brink of major transitions—and found that their bodies often signalled the distress of the coming change before their conscious minds accepted it. He writes,
“Scientists have been able to show how the body becomes both a vessel for registering crises and a starting point for overcoming them. A number of people I spoke with described feeling they were undergoing a massive change even before they had vocalized it to themselves. They had a gut feeling, heard an inner voice, felt something in their heart of hearts. Somehow, I just knew.’”
Eventually, my body’s signals forced me to confront the truth—but not before my defense mechanisms fought tooth and nail to keep it buried.
When we have to cope with a reality that feels unacceptable, our minds use defense mechanisms to protect us from pain.⁴ Five of the most common include:
Denial: An unconscious refusal to accept external reality because it’s emotionally threatening.¹ ² (For example: refusing to acknowledge a terminal illness, or minimizing a substance abuse problem.)
Repression: An unconscious process where distressing thoughts or feelings are pushed entirely out of conscious awareness. They often surface indirectly (e.g., through anxiety, irritability, or somatic symptoms).³, ⁴ (For example: Forgetting a traumatic childhood event, or having a phobia that emerges without understanding its root cause.)
Supression: A conscious effort to set aside unwanted thoughts or feelings. The person is aware of the discomfort, but chooses to postpone engagement with it.⁴ ⁷ (For example: Deliberately distracting oneself from thoughts of a recent breakup.)
Disavowal: A semi-conscious process where one acknowledges something on an intellectual level but refuses to let it emotionally register, maintaining the illusion that it isn’t threatening.⁵ ⁶ (For example: Receiving a terminal diagnosis and acknowledging the facts of the diagnosis, but disavows its emotional intensity.)
Rationalization: A conscious but self-deceptive strategy where one explains away discomfort with logical reasons—often to justify staying in a painful situation. (For example: Someone who feels unfulfilled in their job may acknowledge the dissatisfaction but explain it away: “Every job has its downsides.”)
Heartbreak is devastating for most people—studies show that the emotional and physical impacts can be as debilitating as those following the death of a loved one—and the threat of losing my partner touched on some of my oldest, deepest traumas.⁸ Throughout that final year of our relationship, my mind mobilized an army of defense mechanisms to protect me from that threat of pain.
When close friends and therapists challenged me on my relationship—noticing my visible distress and probing whether I really wanted this—I acknowledged my unhappiness, but argued that they just didn’t understand the complexities at play, or the depth of our love. (This is rationalization).
As I pendulum-swung between gratitude and resentment for my relationship, I downloaded an app to track my volatile feelings. Three times a day, I was prompted to document whether I was having a “good day” (green, no doubts), “okay day” (yellow, some doubts), or “bad day” (red, pervasive doubts). When I opened the app and saw a trend line of red, I closed it and distracted myself with Instagram. I wasn’t ready to follow where that line led me. (This is suppression.)
And in the final two months, I was haunted by what I called The Voice: a recurring inner cry of This isn’t right! accompanied by a physical sensation of heavy dread. Without warning, The Voice would materialize like a specter during my meditations; right before bed; in my quiet moments.
I recall one snowy January night, lying in shivasana at a yoga class as yellow candles bathed the room in flickering light. The studio was serene, but my mind was a tempest. Unrelenting, The Voice cried: This isn’t right! This isn’t right!
My heart clenched as hot tears spilled from my closed eyes onto the mat beneath me. These intrusive thoughts are killing me, I thought to myself in the dark. I have to find a way to get rid of them.
Even then—even with such an obvious inner signal—I wasn’t yet ready to let The Voice be my voice. This is denial. (Only much later did I realize that The Voice was not my enemy, but a fierce, last-resort warrior for my innermost self; the final manifestation of an intuition that had gone too long ignored.)
Is it hard to believe that I’m sharing these details in writing? These details that reveal the extent of my inner fragmentation? My denial? These details that make Past Hailey sound like a toddler with her fingers in her ears, singing “I CAN’T HEAR YOU” over the song of her own pain?
Before this experience—and before my research and coaching around life transitions—I would have seen such experiences as signs of pathology: signs of an unstable, perhaps “unhealthy,” mind. A mind clouded by naivete, codependency, or self-abandonment.
But now—having been through multiple major transitions and supported many others through them—I know that these processes are not only normal, but natural.
In fact, I’ve come to appreciate the wisdom of the protracted, messy ending; of the defense mechanisms that only allow us to process small amounts of pain at once; of the two-steps forward, one-step backness of it all.
This is our mind’s way of protecting us against change that is not only emotionally difficult, but existentially destabilizing—that shakes our identity to its core.
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The Unthinkable Thought Changes Our Identity
When our friends and family stand on the precipice of what seems like an inevitable ending, we often feel it’s "obvious" what they should do. After all, if a situation causes so much distress, why stay any longer than you must?
But if you’ve spent any time in the throes of such a change, you’ll know that this is a gradual process of unfolding: the intelligent process of a mind undergoing the many layers of emotional, logistical, and existential reorganization that change demands.
It takes time, because we simply can’t hold all of it at once.
Emotionally and psychologically, facing the unthinkable thought means diving into the very traumas, attachment injuries, and limiting beliefs that make these thoughts so scary — so “unthinkable.” Our deepest fears may be poked: fears of being alone, being disliked, not belonging, not having security, not being good enough. Our oldest beliefs may be brought to the fore: beliefs that we “could never” do X, or “aren’t capable” of Y. These aren’t just passing thoughts; they’re felt realities in our emotional system, and they require an immense amount of bravery to confront and challenge.
Logistically, facing the unthinkable means confronting hundreds of external factors, like the possibility of hurting or destabilizing others; financial distress; relocating, moving, or destabilizing social circles; hurting others, losing belonging, or facing social ostracization; too many to count.
Finally—and this is the factor that most often goes overlooked in the transition process—the unthinkable thought shatters the story of who we are in the present. It threatens our identity.
When we wrap our sense of self in something—as we often do in our relationships, careers, and belief systems—that “something” influences the very building blocks of our self-concept: our meaning, vision of the future, identity, beliefs, and values.
If your faith has been your meaning since childhood—and you eventually come to realize that you no longer believe—you’ll likely face an existential crisis as the core tenets that shaped your world dissolve.
If you’ve spent years identifying as A Lawyer or An Influencer or Steve’s Wife—and you leave that chapter of your life behind—you’re likely going to face the profound emptiness of “But I have no idea who I am without ____.”
(This is why I encourage my clients in transition to ground in their through-lines: the traits, passions, and superpowers that are intrinsic to them—that will stay stable in the midst of change. I offer some prompts for exploring your through-lines in my free guide How to Build Your Transition Compass.)
William Bridges calls transitions a “death and rebirth process,” and rightly so. Few of us choose to leap instantly into that fire.
Often, we only take that leap when the pain of protecting ourselves from the unthinkable thought begins to outweigh the pain of facing it….like it did for me that night at 2am.
Making the Unthinkable to Survivable: Resourcing Yourself For Wholeness
What finally pushes us over the edge? What finally makes the unthinkable thinkable?
In many cases, our typical, top-down decision-making strategies—like making a pros and cons list, amassing concrete evidence, and getting advice from trusted peers—fall short of getting us there.
Instead, we need bottom-up strategies that build our overall sense of inner resourcefulness, inner resilience, and inner trust—that help us reach a point where the unthinkable thought feels survivable.
Looking back on my own experience, here are four things that I believe led me to that point of readiness.
1) I was in a safe space with someone who could hold me through my big emotions.
It’s significant that my mom was visiting me the night I reached the unthinkable thought. She has always been my anchor, and her presence gave me enough emotional safety—enough trust that I would be buoyed—to turn toward the tidal wave of grief that I didn’t feel capable of holding on my own.
In other words, her presence made the unthinkable feel survivable.
Like Moore writes in her post, “Some experiences are too much for the mind to hold alone. Too raw. Too contradictory. Too painful…This is the unthinkable thought. It doesn’t disappear. It waits for someone who can help hold it.”
Many of my clients come to the conclusion that they need to leave their marriage, community, job, or belief system in the presence of a beloved sibling; a best friend; a trusted therapist or coach. Sometimes, we simply can’t hold it alone. And I don’t believe we’re meant to.
2) I’d gotten chances—small experiments, really—to remember who I was, and where I belonged, outside of the relationship.
Like many couples on the brink of collapse, my partner and I had taken short-term breaks—one planned, one unplanned—at the suggestion of our couple’s counsellor. The idea was that spending time apart, with an agreed-upon reconnection date, would give us the space to get clear on what we really wanted.
These breaks offered an unusual in-between: complete independence from the relationship, coupled with the security of knowing it would soon return.
Not only did I survive these breaks; in many ways, I thrived through them. I expanded my sense of belonging by leaning on old friends, new friends, and family; expanded my sense of self by diving into neglected hobbies; and rediscovered how whole I felt when I wasn’t consumed by the constant stress of a complicated relationship.
David McRaney, in his book How Minds Change, explains that because belonging is one of our most ancient and potent human needs, we need to trust that there’s somewhere else we might belong in order to change our minds in a way that could lead to the loss of belonging. “It is rational to resist facts when one has no social safety net,” he writes.⁹ For me, expanding my sense of belonging outside of my relationship gave me enough of a social safety net to imagine leaving it.
3) For months, I’d been practicing meditation and doing Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy—both of which helped me make space for contradiction and soothe myself through difficult feelings.
For months, I’d been meditating daily, both alone and in community. (Shout out to Clear Mountain Monastery and the Seattle Insight Meditation Society—y’all were lifesavers.) On the meditation cushion, the painful feelings of daily life rose up like waves—fear, anger, shame, grief—but, held with mindful attention, they eventually crested and subsided.
Through meditation, I learned that I could soothe myself through intense emotional experiences this way—and, the deep feeler that I am, I had begun to trust that they wouldn’t swallow me whole.
Meanwhile, IFS therapy is based on the premise that our minds are composed of multiple parts that all require our attention and care. It’s a particularly helpful modality for resolving inner polarities—when, like Moore writes, “One [part] says: ‘Go.’ The other says: ‘If you do, you’ll lose everything.’”
After many months of inner schism, IFS normalized having conflicting parts. I no longer believed I was going crazy for ricocheting between gratitude and grief; between fear and hope.
I began to understand that I wasn’t just my wounds and insecurities—I was also the loving inner parent who could soothe them. Parts work was a godsend, and today, it’s one of the key modalities I use with my clients to help them make sense of conflicting feelings in the midst of transition.
4) Over the course of a year, I had used every tool in my box to try to fix it. I was eventually forced to surrender, because there was nothing more I could do.
In the seven years that I helped people-pleasers set boundaries with difficult loved ones, I learned that few forces are more powerful than the gradual erosion of will as you try, over and over again, to “make it work”—and the surrender that comes when you realize there’s nothing more you can do.
I can confidently say that I fought harder for this relationship than I’d ever fought for anything (and ever will again). My partner did too, in his own way. But I’m a pragmatist at heart—and I eventually had to admit that I’d tried everything I could, and it wasn’t enough.
After the Unthinkable: Finding Alignment In The Aftermath
I ended my relationship shortly after the unthinkable thought. It’s been six months since then, and it’s difficult to describe what this time has been like for me.
On the one hand, it’s been a season of profound grief and mourning. I loved my partner—I believe I always will—and I feel the ache of his absence every day. We weren’t compatible as life partners, but he remains one of the most compassionate and loving men I’ve ever known.
On the other hand, I trust that this was the right decision for me. And after over a year of inner dissonance, clarity is a relief: the relief of a mind undivided.
My mental health has improved significantly.
I’m gaining weight.
My back pain has disappeared.
Getting unstuck in my romantic life has enabled me to get unstuck in other areas—particularly work and creativity—and I see now how being at war with myself dammed my agency and vitality. The unthinkable thought broke the dam of stagnation, and in its place came a flood of feeling: grief, joy, sorrow, desire, and hope.
Wholeness and aliveness, in all its color.
The unthinkable thought is an initiation into transition—into a period of radical self-honesty, self-connection, and long-awaited alignment. If you’re standing on the edge of your own unthinkable thought, you don’t have to face it alone.
The Pathfinder Process—my transformational private coaching journey—was designed to help you navigate the terrain of transition with support, clarity, and courage. I’m passionate about coaching people in transition because I know, firsthand, how messy and disorienting the process can feel—and I know how supportive it is to have someone in your corner as you walk it.
Every transition is different, but each follows recognizable phases and patterns—and I help you navigate the journey with support and structure. Unlike other forms of coaching that set a fixed destination and map the fastest route, my work centers the journey itself, because that’s where the clarity and transformation unfolds.
As an ICF‑credentialed coach who has worked with over 500 private clients, I know that the life-changing alchemy of transition lives in the moment-to-moment unfolding of your inner truth: the gut feelings, the sudden flashes of clarity, the disowned parts of you that you reclaim, and the unthinkable thoughts you can no longer ignore.
Knowing how to read the terrain of that inner unfolding—helping you make sense of it, trust it, and let it guide you—is the heart of my work as a coach. And when the inner shifts settle and the next chapter becomes clear, I help you walk toward it strategically. Learn more about private coaching and my Pathfinder Process here.
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Other Articles In This Series:
👉 My Story: How I lost—and found—my path, from success to connection.
👉 The 4 real sources of meaning—and why we keep missing them.
Citations
¹ Medical News Today. (2022). Defense mechanisms: What they are and how they work.
² Psychology Today. (n.d.). Defense mechanisms.
³ Verywell Mind. (2023). Repression as a defense mechanism.
⁴ American Psychiatric Association. (2022). Common defense mechanisms. In PsychiatryOnline: DSM-5 Text Revision.
⁵ Gourguechon, P. (2017, September 25). The cause of your worst mistakes: A psychological gremlin you never heard of. Forbes.
⁶ Freud, S. (1961). Negation. In J. Strachey (Ed. & Trans.), The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. 19, pp. 235–239). (Original work published 1925)
⁷ BetterHelp. (n.d.). Repress vs. suppress: How the unconscious mind affects our mental health.
⁸ Donaldson, Z. R. (2021, February 14). Mourning love: The overlap of heartbreak and grief. NU Sci Magazine.https://nuscimagazine.com/mourning-love-the-overlap-of-heartbreak-and-grief/
⁹McRaney, D. (2022). How minds change: the surprising science of belief, opinion, and persuasion. Portfolio/Penguin.