The choice underneath

Recently, I was speaking with a PhD student. She had written an article for a significant journal in her field, a piece proposing a genuinely new theory in her area of research. Her professor had backed it and agreed to co-author. This was a real moment for her. Years of thinking, condensed into something she believed in.

Then it came apart. Her fellow PhD students, the ones aligned with the established theory, lobbied the professor to pull his support. He relented. He told her he would no longer put his name to it.

She could still publish on her own. But doing so would strain her relationship with him, and she needed that relationship. It would also cost her the credibility that comes with a supporting professor as co-author, which readers of these journals expect. So she withdrew the piece.

When she told me about it, the words she used were, "I was forced not to publish." She had cried for two days. She had been low for two weeks. All that work, set aside. She talked it through for a while, the unfairness of it, the waste.

Then I said, "But you chose not to publish."

Her eyes widened. "No. I had no choice."

I walked her back through it. She had just told me she could have published. She decided it would be unwise, so she didn't. That is a choice. Not a good one, not a pleasant one, because neither option was attractive. But a choice all the same.

We do this often. "I can't." (I won't, or I would rather not.) "I have no choice." (There is one, I just don't like it.) "You made me." (You didn't.)

Here is why it matters. When she saw that she had chosen, something shifted. "You're right. I made the choice. I had agency." She was not defeated by that. She was lighter. She thanked me more than once. Something she had been carrying got set down.

When we believe we have no choice, we hand away our agency. We step outside our own accountability. And from there it is a short walk to the ugly places: blame, resentment, anger, contempt. Byron Katie puts it more bluntly. "Victims are violent people," she says. It sounds harsh until you see both edges. Inward, the story keeps our own wound open. Outward, it works as quiet pressure on everyone around it.

Naming the choice does not make the situation fair. Her professor still folded under pressure. The piece still went unpublished. But she was no longer a bystander to her own life. She had acted, for reasons that made sense to her, and she could own that.

So, a question for your walk this week.

Where are you saying "I can't"? Where are you saying "X made me do it," "I have to," or "because you...," or "I have no choice"?

Look at one of those. See if a choice is hiding underneath it. You might not like either option. That is allowed. But knowing it is yours changes where you stand.