You know that thing where you hear about someone’s struggle – especially when it ends tragically – and your first instinct is to distance yourself from it? “That’s not me. I’m not like that. My situation is different.”
Here’s what’s actually happening: You’re protecting yourself from a truth that feels too big to hold. Because if you really let yourself see the similarities, if you let yourself recognize the patterns, you’d have to admit something you’re not ready to admit.
The Distance Between ‘Them’ and ‘Us
The recent death of Doug Martin hits different because it forces us to look at something we’d rather not see. A 36-year-old former NFL player dying in police custody after what appears to be a mental health crisis. It’s easier to think of it as someone else’s story, someone else’s problem.
But here’s what I’ve noticed after 20 years of sitting with people in their darkest moments: The distance between “them” and “us” is a lot smaller than we pretend it is.
I see this pattern weekly – successful people who’ve built entire identities around having it together, suddenly finding themselves in territory they never imagined they’d be in. The executive who can’t stop drinking. The mother who can’t get out of bed. The athlete whose body was their temple, now using it to punish themselves.
What most people don’t realize is that the very strengths that made them successful often become the vehicles for their struggles. Doug Martin’s physical power – the thing that made him an NFL star – likely became part of what made his crisis seem dangerous enough to end in tragedy.
Think about your own strengths for a moment. The things people admire about you. Your intelligence that helps you rationalize why this drink, this pill, this behavior is fine. Your independence that keeps you from asking for help. Your resilience that convinces you to push through when you should stop.
This isn’t about addiction or mental health in the abstract. It’s about how we all use our gifts against ourselves when we’re hurting.
Here’s the truth nobody wants to say: The people who struggle the most are often the ones who’ve been the strongest the longest. They’re the ones who’ve carried everyone else, fixed everyone else’s problems, been the rock for their entire world.
Until they can’t anymore.
And when that moment comes – because it comes for almost everyone eventually – they have no practice being vulnerable. No muscle memory for asking for help. No framework for being anything other than fine.
I had a client once, a surgeon, who told me: “I save lives every day. How can I admit I’m falling apart?” Another, a therapist herself, said: “I literally teach people coping skills. What does it say about me that I can’t use them?”
What it says is that you’re human. But that’s the last thing high-achievers want to hear.
Let’s be honest about this: We live in a world that rewards us for being machines. For producing, performing, pushing through. We get praised for working while sick, celebrated for sacrificing ourselves, admired for never showing weakness.
Then we act surprised when people break.
The real tragedy isn’t just what happened to Doug Martin. It’s that his story will be filed away as an anomaly, a cautionary tale about “those people” who couldn’t handle their success, who let fame go to their heads, who had everything and threw it away.
But that narrative protects us from the truth: It could be any of us.
Because here’s what’s really happening when someone’s life unravels publicly: They’re just the ones we can see. For every Doug Martin whose crisis makes headlines, there are thousands of people right now white-knuckling their way through each day, convinced that if they just try harder, push more, be stronger, they can outrun whatever’s chasing them.
Your perfectionism isn’t protecting you. It’s isolating you.
Your ability to “handle everything” isn’t strength. It’s a wall between you and the help you need.
Your “I’m fine” isn’t fooling anyone who really sees you. And deep down, it’s not fooling you either.
What if I told you that the moment you stop pretending to have it all together is the moment you actually start to heal? Not in some mystical, journey-to-wellness way. But in a simple, practical “Oh, I can stop carrying this impossibly heavy thing” way.
The people who come to see me often spend the first session explaining why they shouldn’t need to be there. They list their accomplishments, their blessings, all the reasons they should be grateful instead of struggling. As if pain needs to be earned. As if you need permission to not be okay.
You don’t.
Whatever Doug Martin was battling before his death – we may never know the full story. But we know this: He was someone’s son, friend, teammate. He was a human being who reached a breaking point in a world that doesn’t make much room for broken people, especially broken men, especially broken Black men, especially broken successful Black men who are supposed to have made it.
The truth is: We’re all more fragile than we pretend to be. We’re all closer to the edge than we want to admit. And that’s not weakness – that’s reality.
So maybe instead of distancing ourselves from stories like Doug’s, we could let them remind us of something vital: The time to reach out is before the crisis. The time to admit you’re struggling is while you still have choices. The time to stop pretending is now.
Because once you really see that the gap between “fine” and “not fine” is smaller than you thought, that the line between “them” and “us” doesn’t actually exist, you can’t unsee it.
And maybe that’s exactly what needs to happen.
