The Reach
Trauma, Achievement, and the Cost of Borrowed Safety
The Reach is a memoir about what happens when the strategies that helped someone survive become indistinguishable from identity, achievement becomes a source of safety, and eventually the systems that kept everything moving stop being enough.
The title comes from the idea at the center of much of my human systems work: the motion toward something outside ourselves when the system needs stability. Achievement, relationships, certainty, roles, and institutions can all become places we reach for. The book follows what that reaching built in one life, what it cost, and what happened when it stopped working.
What the book is about
- Survival strategies that become identity. Scanning, fixing, performing, and the other adaptations that stop feeling like choices.
- Achievement as a source of safety. What happens when success is doing a regulatory job it was never designed for.
- Borrowed safety. The external sources people use to steady internal states, and what they charge.
- When the systems stop being enough. The point where the strategies cost more than they return.
The ReachIn progress
The motion toward something outside ourselves when the system needs stability.
Borrowed SafetyIn progress
How people use relationships, achievement, certainty, institutions, substances, roles, and other external sources to regulate internal states.
Attachment in MotionIn progress
Umbrella model for understanding attachment, regulation, identity, borrowed safety, and what happens under pressure.
Fastest Stability PrincipleIn progress
The tendency of systems under pressure to reuse the fastest available route to perceived stability at the lowest perceived cost.
Get book updates
An occasional note when there is real news about The Reach. Nothing else.