He was thirty five when the tightness started to feel loud enough to deserve a name. It lived in the center of his chest. Not pain exactly. More like a polite fist that never quite unclenched. A small animal curling up behind the sternum. Sometimes it arrived as a quick tap, sometimes as a slow heavy press, as if gravity itself had leaned in to listen. Because he had a background in counseling psychology, he did what people like him do. He narrated it. He built a story fast. Anxiety, obviously. Panic, maybe. Later, heartbreak felt like the most poetic explanation, and therefore the most convincing. He had read enough research to know better, which somehow made it worse. He knew that affect came first. Raw sensation. Valence free. Just data. Emotions were what happened when the brain tried to make sense of the data with a story. Still, knowing the theory did not stop the mind from improvising tragedy. For years, every tightening became a referendum on his life. Something must be wrong. Something must be ending. Something must be too much. He would sit with it, breathing carefully, as if the sensation were a wild animal that might bolt if startled. Sometimes it passed. Sometimes it stayed long enough to convince him he was broken in a subtle but permanent way. Ironically, the tightness grew more noticeable as he got healthier. He dissociated less. He felt more. Growth, it turned out, came with better signal reception. The volume knob had been turned up. The body, long ignored, had opinions. Then there was the cuddle puddle. It was not a spiritual retreat. It was not therapy. It was several adults on a couch, stacked in a way that would have alarmed an orthopedic surgeon. Someone’s elbow was in his ribs. Someone else’s weight was squarely on his chest. He could not move without negotiating a small treaty. And there it was. The same sensation. The exact same constriction. Familiar, almost friendly in its consistency. But this time the story did not fit. He was not anxious. He was not panicking. He was not heartbroken. He was being crushed. Literally. Thoracic compression, courtesy of people he loved. Something in him laughed. A dark, relieved laugh. The kind that shows up late to the party and stays too long. Later, he noticed it happened when someone hugged him too tightly. When a friend lay on him absentmindedly. When a body leaned in without checking the physics first. The sensation had been demoted from existential threat to mild mechanical issue. Heart adjacent pressure. No metaphysics required. So he tried something radical. He changed the story. The next time the tightness came, he pictured a friend hugging him too hard. He imagined warmth, weight, the smell of laundry detergent and skin. He imagined being loved incompetently. The chest tightened. He smiled anyway. Sometimes it was still too much. In those moments, he did the bravest thing he knew how to do. He asked for gentleness. A little less pressure. A little more space. He breathed. The fist loosened. The animal stretched. And then something strange happened. Once the constriction passed, he missed it. Not the fear, but the closeness it now represented. The reminder that his body knew what it felt like to be held. That his nervous system had a reference point for safety, even if it had mislabeled it for years. Eventually, the sensation stopped being a warning siren. It became a memory. A quiet cue. A private joke between him and his chest. This is how he cured his anxiety, he tells people, knowing full well how absurd that sounds. By being crushed by friends. By learning the difference between danger and contact. By letting sensation be sensation, and choosing a kinder story to wrap around it. He still feels it sometimes. He always will. But now, when it arrives, he thinks of love that leaned in too close, and he makes room for it.