Desperation

Welcome to issue #013 of Under the Surface. Each week, I share one thoughtful piece to help you grow, lead and thrive in the messy reality of project work. If something lands - or misses - I’d love to hear your thoughts. And if you’re exploring what’s next, you can join the Pathfinder waitlist to go deeper with others on the same journey.

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A parked car and a quiet collapse

There’s a moment I often return to. Nothing dramatic. Nothing anyone else would notice. I’m parked outside site, engine off, sat motionless in the driver’s seat. Five minutes, maybe more. No music, no phone. Just me, the glass and the weight of whatever was going on under the surface. I wasn’t paralysed exactly, I just couldn’t make myself open the door. Not yet.

That wasn’t an isolated moment. It was one of many quiet, in-between spaces where I realised I wasn’t okay. Not in a fall-apart way. Just in that slow, silent way that desperation has - creeping in, closing around you, making everything feel slightly tighter and slightly harder than it did the day before.

And yet, life kept moving. The world didn’t pause. I had meetings. Projects. Clients. A family. The same expectations, the same performance. You keep showing up. You keep replying to emails, leading teams, delivering reports. From the outside, everything looks normal… even admirable. But inside, you’re spinning. You’re tightening. You’re slowly losing the clarity that used to guide you.

What desperation really looks like

This is the thing about desperation: it’s rarely loud. It doesn’t usually look like a breakdown or a crisis. More often, it looks like competence. It wears the face of the capable colleague, the reliable parent, the helpful friend. It lives in the phrases we hear all the time: “I just need to get through this week,” or “once this next thing’s done, I’ll be okay.” It’s perfectly timed replies. It’s meetings attended, deadlines met, smiles offered. But it’s all being held together with tape. Invisible, quiet, strained.

I’ve been there more times than I care to admit. And I’ve met countless others who have too, sometimes without even realising it. Because desperation is slippery like that. It mimics discipline. It hides inside high standards. And it often rewards people for their suffering by giving them more work to do.

What makes it worse is that we’re rarely trained to see it. As Thomas Erikson outlines in Surrounded by Idiots, we often misunderstand the people around us because we assume our way of coping is universal. So we miss the signs. We misread the silence. We think someone’s aloof when they’re actually overwhelmed. We assume someone’s cold when they’re actually trying not to lose it. And in that misreading, we let the suffering deepen.

I’ve worn the mask

I’ve worn every one of those masks. The high performer. The rock. The quiet provider. But underneath, I was often stuck in loops I couldn’t name. Joe Dispenza, in Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself, writes about how we get stuck in patterns that feel inescapable. That was me… reacting, surviving, replaying the same script, not because I wanted to, but because I didn’t know what else was possible.

The shift didn’t come all at once. No big breakthrough, no dramatic transformation. Just a slow return to honesty. The first was with myself, finally admitting that I wasn’t coping, that I wasn’t present, that something needed to give. The second was with others. Trusted friends, coaches, colleagues. Not the kind of help that fixes, but the kind that sits beside you and reminds you that you’re still a person underneath all the pressure.

That’s where I started to understand the real nature of support. Not as advice or rescue, but as presence. As The Go-Giver reminds us, our value doesn’t lie in how much we do, but in how fully we show up. And sometimes, showing up means sitting in the puddle with someone, not trying to make it go away.

Who this is really for

Some of you reading this will feel seen in the struggle. Others will realise you’ve been walking past people weighed down by more than they let on. Both are important. But the real shift happens when we begin to act on that awareness. When we choose not just to survive our own desperation, but to see it in others… and to respond.

That doesn’t mean becoming someone’s therapist or fixer. It means being human. It means slowing down enough to notice when someone’s not quite right. It means asking questions and waiting for the real answer. It means being willing to hold space for someone else’s mess without turning away.

Eckhart Tolle wrote that anxiety lives in the future and depression in the past, but peace, and presence, live in the now. If you’re feeling desperate right now, my hope is that this lands as permission. You don’t need to be okay. You don’t need to keep pushing. You’re allowed to pause. To speak. To be heard.

And if you’re not desperate, but you see someone who might be, let this land as a call to care. Not in some sentimental way, but in a skilled and grounded way. As Michael Bungay Stanier reminds us in The Coaching Habit, good support isn’t about giving better answers. It’s about asking better questions. And about staying curious a little longer.

This is how we change things

There’s a quote I return to often - Kahlil Gibran wrote,

You don’t have to be fully healed to help someone else.

You just have to remember what it felt like and be willing to sit with it.

We are all, at different times, the desperate one and the one offering help.

We are all, in some way, still learning to be human.

Let’s do that together, not by fixing each other, but by seeing each other.

Yours,

Gerwyn

PS – What we’re building at Coron Projects

I’m building something for project professionals who want more than just tasks and titles. Pathfinder is a new kind of membership built for people in engineering and construction who are ready to grow, lead and thrive on their terms. No corporate bullshit. No gatekeepers. Just the tools, support and mindset shifts that help you take ownership of your career.

It’s currently in development and if that sounds like something you might want in your corner, you can join the waitlist here and include “Pathfinder” in the message.