I want you to imagine pulling up to a state run petrol pump in Mumbai on a sweltering morning this May. You wipe the sweat from your forehead, look up at the digital display, and realize the numbers have changed. Again. You just checked your budget a few days ago, calculating exactly how many rupees it would take to keep your delivery scooter running or your small transport truck on the road. But the math no longer works. For the fourth time in a mere ten days, the price of gasoline and diesel has been hiked. You reach into your pocket and understand that the rules of your survival have been rewritten without your permission.
This is the reality playing out across India right now. A Bloomberg headline crossed my desk this morning announcing that India’s state run fuel retailers are surging prices in a delayed response to the war in Iran. The global cost of crude oil has been spiking as the conflict escalates. For a while, the authorities tried to hold the line, absorbing the shockwaves to keep the domestic market somewhat stable. But the pressure became too great. The dam finally broke, and now the true cost of a geopolitical crisis thousands of miles away is being dumped directly onto the shoulders of everyday citizens.
If you sit in an air conditioned office looking at a financial terminal, a fuel hike is just an abstract variable. It is a slight adjustment to a national inflation forecast. It is a sterile percentage point on a screen. But if you are actually living inside that economy, it is a violent disruption. Diesel and gasoline are the lifeblood of a nation of over a billion people. When the price of fuel surges four times in ten days, the shock bleeds into absolutely everything. The trucks that bring rice and onions to the markets suddenly cost more to operate. The diesel generators that keep small businesses running during power cuts become too expensive to turn on. The daily commute to a job that barely pays enough to begin with suddenly eats up a larger fraction of a stagnant wage.
The people standing at those pumps are not combatants in a Middle Eastern war. They have no control over foreign policy, global supply chains, or the decisions made by state run retailers. Yet they are the ones forced to pay the bill. They made a basic agreement with the world. They worked their hours, earned their pay, and tried to plan for the month. Then the people in charge simply changed the numbers. Millions of individuals woke up poorer today than they were yesterday, not because they made a mistake, but because the system they rely on decided to extract more from them.
You can feel the collective exhaustion. You can picture the quiet panic as people do the mental math at the pump, realizing the treadmill they are running on has just been sped up yet again. They are playing a game they cannot possibly win because they do not control the board. And when the fundamental cost of living changes four times in ten days, it does something very specific to the human body.
When The System Externalizes Its Panic Into Your Body
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When you read about four price hikes in ten days, the economic analysts will tell you this is a natural consequence of global supply chains and conflict in the Middle East. They will say it is just a delayed adjustment to reality. But I want to tell you what is actually happening here, clinically. The people standing at those petrol pumps in India are experiencing an attachment wound on a massive, societal scale.
I have spent twenty years watching this exact dynamic in couples therapy. A couple comes into my office, and one partner is highly erratic. This person promises safety, claims everything is fine, and insists they have everything under control. But the moment they experience real pressure from the outside world, they completely dysregulate. Because they cannot soothe or manage their own anxiety, they immediately externalize their panic into their partner. They change the rules of the relationship without warning. They demand their partner absorb the shock. They extract emotional energy from the person who relies on them.
This is exactly what the state run fuel retailers and the fiat financial system are doing right now in India. We treat the economy as a mathematical machine, but it is fundamentally an emotional environment. In the modern world, the state has stepped in to act as the primary caregiver for the civilization. A good enough parent provides a secure, predictable base so a child can feel safe enough to go out and explore. But the fiat system acts as a dysregulated, not good enough mother.
Look at the sequence of events. The authorities tried to hold the price line. They promised stability. They acted like the war in Iran would not breach the walls of their domestic market. But they could not handle the pressure. When the reality of crude oil costs became too heavy, this not good enough mother did not take responsibility. She simply dumped the entire cost of her poor planning directly onto the people who depend on her. By hiking the price of diesel and gasoline four times in a mere ten days, she proved that the rules of survival can be rewritten entirely by decree.
When a mother is this unpredictable, the child learns brilliant survival strategies to stay alive. They become anxiously attached, constantly scanning the environment for the next disaster, or they become avoidant, shutting down and collapsing under the hopelessness of a game they cannot win. This is what we are seeing at those fuel pumps. The state is demanding absolute loyalty and participation in the economy while systematically extracting the value of the citizens’ labor.
When the state does this, it is not just extracting rupees from a wallet. It is extracting regulation from the human body. Your nervous system is constantly asking if the ground beneath your feet is solid. When the fundamental cost of staying alive changes four times in a week and a half, your nervous system receives a terrifying answer. The ground is melting. You cannot plan. You cannot rest. You are entirely at the mercy of an authority that will change the math the moment it feels threatened.
This kind of erratic caregiving trains a population to live in a state of chronic, low grade hypervigilance. The citizens are forced to become the adults in the room, scrambling to cover the deficit left by a system that refuses to hold the frame. They hustle harder, they panic, and they absorb the inflationary shockwaves into their own flesh. They develop the exact same survival strategies I see in children raised by unavailable parents. I explore this devastating collision between economic instability and human biology in my upcoming book, Sovereign Ground. When the system refuses to carry its own weight, the human body is always forced to pay the bill.
The Same Pattern In The Therapy Room
I see this exact dynamic walk into my office every single week. A couple sits down on my couch, and one partner is operating exactly like those state run fuel retailers. They are completely dysregulated by the pressures of their own life, whether that is stress from their job, a looming deadline, or their own internal anxiety. But instead of taking responsibility and managing that pressure themselves, they externalize their panic directly into their spouse.
They change the emotional rules of the house on a daily basis without any warning. On Monday, they promise to be a present, engaged partner. By Wednesday, they hit a stressful patch at work, so they completely check out, retreat into their phone, and disappear into emotional withdrawal. On Friday, they explode because the house is messy or a schedule changed, demanding that their partner step up and fix everything. They are constantly hiking the emotional price of peace. They demand absolute loyalty and understanding, yet they extract all the regulatory energy from the person who loves them.
Look at the other person sitting next to them on the couch. This partner is completely exhausted. They are living in a state of chronic, low grade hypervigilance. They cannot rest because they spend their entire week trying to anticipate the next emotional price hike. They hustle, they placate, and they try to absorb the shockwaves of their partner’s unpredictable moods just to keep the family afloat. They are constantly doing the mental math to figure out what it will cost them to keep the relationship running today.
This exhausted partner is experiencing the exact same biological reality as the citizens standing at those petrol pumps in Mumbai. They are trying to survive a caregiving environment that refuses to provide a steady ground. When you are tethered to an erratic attachment figure who dumps their unresolved stress onto you, your body learns that safety is an illusion. You learn that the rules of your own survival can be rewritten at any moment by someone else. You realize that the bill for their poor emotional management will always be paid by your nervous system.
This article applied one lens from my book. The full argument is in the book itself.
the Not-Good-Enough Financial Mother is one of the frames in Proof of Work: From Fiat Life to Thriving in the AI Age, my book coming with Greenleaf in 2027. The waitlist is small and gets the first chapters as they are ready, plus early notice when the book ships. No spam.
What To Do This Week If You Recognize Yourself
If you recognize your own exhaustion in this dynamic, I need you to do something that goes against every survival instinct you have. You must stop trying to absorb the cost of the instability.
Right now, when the financial ground shifts or your partner dumps their unresolved stress onto you, your immediate response is to hustle harder. You think if you just rework the budget, work a few more hours, or manage your partner’s moods perfectly, you can manufacture the safety that the system refuses to provide. You are acting as the adult in the room to cover for a dysregulated parent, printing emotional and physical energy you do not actually have.
To break this cycle this week, you must begin the practice of reflexive participation. The next time you feel the panic of a price hike or the sudden shift in your partner’s temper, do not rush to fix the logistics. Pause and drop your attention entirely into your own body. Notice the physical reality of your stress. Your chest is tight. Your breathing is shallow. You are bracing for impact. I want you to acknowledge what your nervous system already knows. You are terrified because the ground beneath your feet is moving.
Let yourself actually feel that fear instead of outrunning it. Then, you must actively refuse to carry the shame of the system. The fiat economy wants you to feel like a failure for not keeping up with the rising cost of survival. An erratic partner wants you to feel like it is your job to constantly earn the peace. You must give that shame back to where it belongs. Tell yourself clearly that this instability is the failing of the environment, not a flaw in your character.
If this pattern is playing out in your marriage, you must bring this raw truth directly to your partner. Sit across from them and speak from the bottom of your vulnerability. Tell them that when they constantly change the emotional rules of the house, you feel terrified and entirely alone. You must stop protecting them from the consequences of their own dysregulation.
You cannot heal a broken system by silently paying its debts with your own nervous system.
This article applied one lens from my book. The full argument is in the book itself.
the Not-Good-Enough Financial Mother is one of the frames in Proof of Work: From Fiat Life to Thriving in the AI Age, my book coming with Greenleaf in 2027. The waitlist is small and gets the first chapters as they are ready, plus early notice when the book ships. No spam.
Pegged to: India Raises Diesel, Gasoline Prices for Fourth Time in May
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