When Holding It All Together Gets Heavy

I was watching Encanto with my kids this week, which, as a parent, means I was seemingly supervising screen time while actually being far more emotionally invested than I care to admit.

It’s a really good film. It’s fun, heart-warming, and full of songs that lodge themselves in your brain… everything Disney does so well. One song in particular caught my attention. It’s called ‘Surface Pressure’.

Now, one of the occupational hazards of being a psychologist is that you can’t fully switch your brain off, even during a Disney musical. While my kids were happily absorbed in the colour and choreography, I found myself thinking, This is uncomfortably good. Better, in fact, at capturing the human experience than it has any right to be.

Later, once the house was quiet, I looked up the lyrics.

“I take what I’m handed, I break what’s demanded”

“But under the surface, I feel berserk as a tightrope walker in a three-ring circus”

Luisa goes on to sing:

“Under the surface, was Hercules ever like, "Yo, I don't wanna fight Cerberus?

Under the surface, I'm pretty sure I'm worthless if I can't be of service

A flaw or a crack, the straw in the stack

That breaks the camel's back, what breaks the camel's back?

It's pressure like a drip, drip, drip that'll never stop.”

The song transitions at the bridge, at the moment where Luisa starts to question her role, and what might happen if she didn’t have to hold everything together all the time. What if she didn’t hold it all together for everyone?

“But wait, if I could shake the crushing weight of expectations

Would that free some room up for joy or relaxation, or simple pleasure?

Instead, we measure this growing pressure”

One of the insidious tricks of being good at coping is that you rarely notice how much effort it takes.

And if you are someone who plans ahead, thinks things through, keeps a lid on internal challenge, and generally tries to stay on top of life, you’re often praised for it. You’re described as strong, reliable, dependable. And people will assume you’re coping because nothing appears to be falling apart.

And usually, nothing is.

But, control, in this sense, comes at a cost. It depends on continual monitoring and adjustment - inhibiting reactions, correcting course, anticipating what might go wrong, keeping everything contained. It’s effective, but it’s exhausting. Maybe it shows up in some or many of these ways:

• Only relaxing once everything else is finished and noticing it rarely ever is.

• Feeling responsible for other people’s moods, outcomes, or experiences.

• Being calm and capable in a crisis, but uneasy with stillness.

At some point, often after years, sometimes a lifetime, of sustained effort people decide they’re simply too tired to keep carrying the weight of expectations and holding everything together. So they attempt to do the sensible thing and let go a little.

They rest more. They stop micromanaging themselves. They try not to think so hard about everything.

And instead of relief, they feel… worse.

And this is often the moment people conclude they are “bad at relaxing” or that change, rest… simply isn’t for them.

The thing is… when control has been protective, loosening it can initially increase distress. 

In the Dynamic-Maturational Model of attachment, which has shaped a great deal of how I think, patterns like control and self-reliance are understood as adaptive strategies. They develop because, at some point, they made life safer, more predictable, or more manageable.

Control aims to reduce uncertainty.
Uncertainty resembles danger.
And the human mind, having been refined over a few hundred thousand years of fighting for survival, is extremely alert to danger.

So when you loosen control - even in a life that is objectively safe and stable - your system won’t register rest. It will register risk. The old danger-sensing machinery flickers on, scanning for what might go wrong now that vigilance has eased. Because this is how protection works: it notices the absence of effort before it notices the presence of safety.

This is where ideas from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy are helpful. ACT draws a distinction between trying to control internal experience - thoughts, and feelings such as doubt, fear, uncertainty - and developing the capacity to live alongside them.

Control aims to eliminate discomfort.
Calm comes from discovering that discomfort can be tolerated without constant supervision.

Calm isn’t introduced by stopping effort. It’s learned, over time, through small, repeated experiences of not needing to work quite so hard and realising that (like Luisa) you won’t crack or break.

And when you reach a moment like that in your life…  a moment where you know something needs to change, but that very change initially feels worse rather than better, don’t let that sensation convince you you’re doing it wrong. 

That unsettled feeling is often the echo of an ancient protection beginning to realise it’s no longer needed in the same way.

So, we return to Disney…

“But wait, if you could shake the crushing weight of expectations
Would that free some room up for joy or relaxation, or simple pleasure?