"Eventually, having unmet needs or having to meet the needs of others is no longer experienced as stressful. It feels normal. One is disarmed." When the Body Says No, Gabor Mate, M.D.

Otherwise known as learned helplessness. Like a dog electrocuted in its cage with no escape eventually curls into it and won't walk out. 

I doubt myself (rightfully). Is my wholesale physical rejection of current options refusing a cage or refusing to leave one? 

But that's the wrong question (?) When a cage door opens into another cage, still at the mercy (or not) of others, the dog is set up to go from helpless to perishable. 

(And for better or worse, I'm not a dog.)

The psycho-neuro-immuno-endocrine upshot is that being subsumed by another(s) is so stressful to a human being that they get sick, maybe even sick to death. That is measurable in my body. SCIENCE. And it is the strongest people who go down hardest, as we are not maleable enough to survive it. We withstand it. Until we snap.

"I look at you, and I see a shade of yourself."