What happens when change is slow?
Dropping a Frog into boiling water
There’s an old metaphor that says if you drop a frog into boiling water, it will jump out immediately. But if you place it in cool water and slowly raise the heat, it won’t notice the danger until it’s too late.
It’s not a perfect story — but it captures something important about how people adapt to rising pressure, stress, or harm. Many of us don’t realise how much we’ve adjusted to unhealthy situations until the temperature is unbearable.
At a glance
- Change isn’t always loud — sometimes it’s the quiet shifts that reshape your safety and sense of self.
- Situational awareness helps you notice when “normal” has changed — before you’ve adapted to harm or imbalance.
- Gaslighting, stress, or chronic tension can distort your perception; awareness helps you measure the heat, not just feel it.
- Therapy supports this awareness — not to shame past coping, but to help you recognise what’s changed and why it matters.
- You don’t need to leap out of the water; you just need to notice when it’s warming. Awareness is the start of safety.
When “Normal” Shifts Without You Noticing
Stress, control, neglect, or manipulation rarely arrive all at once. They creep in gradually — through small compromises, small silences, small moments when you tell yourself it’s fine.
That’s how the heat rises. You explain away behaviour. You rationalise change. You start accepting things you once would have questioned.
The longer it continues, the harder it becomes to see the difference between adapting and losing yourself.
The Subtlety of Gaslighting
When gaslighting enters the picture, the water gets even murkier. Gaslighting distorts your perception of reality. It makes you doubt what you felt, saw, or heard.
If you say “the water feels hot,” you’re told it’s your imagination — or worse, that you’re the problem.
And over time, that message sinks in. You begin to monitor yourself rather than the environment. You learn to stay quiet instead of questioning the source of harm.
That’s how psychological abuse works: not through explosions, but through erosion.
Why Situational Awareness Matters
Situational awareness isn’t just about noticing danger — it’s about noticing change.
When your sense of what’s “normal” starts to narrow, it’s often because the environment around you has shifted. Maybe it’s a workplace that’s turned toxic. Maybe it’s a relationship that’s grown controlling. Maybe it’s a life rhythm that’s slowly draining you.
The signs are usually small:
- You feel tense more often than calm.
- You make yourself smaller to avoid conflict.
- You feel relief when things are “quiet,” rather than joy when they’re good.
Each of these signals matters. They’re not overreactions — they’re your body’s way of saying something’s off.
Naming the Heat Is Power
Once you recognise that the water’s heating up, you can start reclaiming your sense of choice. That might mean confiding in someone you trust, reaching out for support, or simply saying out loud, “This isn’t right.”
Naming what’s happening doesn’t make you weak — it means the fog is lifting. And that’s how you start stepping out of the pot.
If This Resonates
If you’ve been living in that slow heat — trying to keep things calm, to manage, to stay — it’s okay to notice that it’s too much. You don’t have to justify every degree of change to prove it’s real.
In therapy, this awareness often becomes the turning point. Not because someone rescues you, but because together you start measuring the temperature honestly. You begin to see what’s been normalised — and what no longer needs to be.
You didn’t fail to notice. You adapted to survive. And that’s what humans do.
But survival isn’t the same as safety. The moment you start noticing the heat, you’re already beginning to heal.
