u/ZealousidealNote6963

I was recruited through an Indeed job posting by a company called Responsible Choice for an event staffing role in Ottawa on May 27–28, 2026. After applying, I noticed several red flags:

Their website appears entirely AI-generated with no verifiable history despite claiming 20+ years in business

The location images on their website appear AI generated or photoshopped

Their Indeed headquarters address is listed as an auto repair shop

The job description is inconsistent (outdoor shuttle/valet role for what they described as an indoor government/military technology event)

The recruiter communicated through text, then switched to indeed when I asked for the listing name and switched back to text

My face webcam was recording during a personality assessment in the online application without explanation

In-person training is scheduled before the event, close to the ottawa airport

Payment is delayed 3 weeks after the event

im making this post to warn about a potential human trafficking attempt

for the dread that has no object. the anxiety that stopped being about anything specific and became a climate. the high solar plexus hum that says — not quite in words — i don't know if i'm allowed to be here.

before you begin

this one is different from the others.

the other scripts had targets — specific needs, specific absences, specific things that were done or not done. this one doesn't. this is the fear underneath the fear. the one that was there before you had language for it, before you knew to call it anything, before you understood that not everyone walks around feeling like their existence is provisional.

you might not feel it as fear exactly. it might feel more like a low hum. a slight unreality. the sense of being present but not quite landed. like you're here but the world wasn't quite expecting you, and you've been compensating for that your whole life without fully knowing it.

sit somewhere quiet. place your hand on the high solar plexus — just below where the ribs meet, the place where dread lives when it's stopped having a reason. just notice it. you don't have to name it or move it yet. just — arrive at it. let it know you know it's there.

tap the karate chop point continuously through the setup phrases. go slowly. let the words land somewhere even if they feel too big or too abstract. the nervous system doesn't need you to fully believe them. it just needs contact.

setup — karate chop point

"even though i carry this feeling that my existence is provisional — that i'm here but not quite anchored, alive but somehow waiting for confirmation that i'm allowed to be — i'm willing to sit with that feeling without immediately trying to fix it or explain it away."

"even though this fear has no edges, no specific object, no single source i can point to and say — there, that's it, that's what i'm afraid of — and that makes it so much harder to hold, i'm here with it anyway. i'm not turning away."

"even though some part of me has been asking the question — am i allowed to take up space, am i allowed to exist without justifying it, does the universe have a place shaped like me in it — for so long that the question has become a physical sensation, a climate, a thing that lives in my chest and hums — i'm open, just slightly, to the possibility that the answer might be yes. even if i can't feel that yet. even if yes feels very far away."

the tapping sequence

move through the points slowly. more slowly than feels necessary. this particular fear doesn't respond to speed or force. it responds to patient, repeated contact. like learning to trust something you've never been able to trust before — it takes time, it takes gentleness, it takes showing up again and again until the nervous system starts to believe you mean it.

1. top of the head (tap the crown with your fingertips)

this feeling that i'm here but not quite here. like i exist in the technical sense — i occupy space, i move through time, i show up — but there's something underneath all of that that never fully arrived. never fully landed. like i've been waiting for confirmation that it's okay to be here and the confirmation keeps not coming and so i keep waiting and the waiting became the background of everything.

i don't even know when it started. it might have started before i had words. it might have started the first time i felt like my presence was too much, or not enough, or beside the point — and something in me concluded, quietly, without ceremony, that existence was something other people had more right to than me.

i've been carrying that conclusion ever since. and i'm tired. i'm so tired of holding the question open.

2. eyebrow point (inner edge of your eyebrow, where it meets the bridge of your nose)

the anxiety has no object. that's what makes it existential and not just regular fear — regular fear has a thing. a source. something you can face or flee or negotiate with. this just — hums. underneath the thoughts, underneath the feelings, underneath even the specific wounds — there's just this low-frequency question the body keeps asking. am i okay. am i okay. am i okay. not in response to anything. just — as a baseline state. as the water i swim in.

and the exhausting part is that i can't fix it by answering it. i've tried answering it. i've reasoned with it, researched it, tapped on it, talked about it. and the hum keeps humming. because it's not actually a question waiting for an answer. it's a nervous system that never learned what safe feels like. still scanning. still braced. still waiting for the impact it was always taught was coming.

3. side of the eye (outer corner of the eye, on the bone)

i think the deepest layer of this fear is — that i don't know what it would feel like to just be. without the audit. without the scanning. without the part of me that's always slightly hovering outside my own experience, watching, assessing, checking whether i'm taking up the right amount of space, whether my existence is landing correctly, whether i'm too much or not enough or somehow beside the point again.

i've never fully inhabited myself. and i grieve that. quietly, without naming it most of the time — but tonight i'm naming it. i grieve the years of being slightly outside my own life. of experiencing everything through a pane of glass. present but not quite contact. here but not quite home.

that's not who i was supposed to be. that's who i learned to be, in a body that was trying to keep me safe.

4. under the eye (the bone just beneath your eye)

and there's grief in here too — for the version of me that should have gotten to just exist. the kid who should have been told, early, reliably, in a thousand small ways — you're allowed to be here. you don't have to earn it. you don't have to justify it. you're allowed to take up space just because you're you.

that kid didn't get that. got something else instead — got conditional, got audited, got too much or not enough, got the implicit message that existence was something to be managed, not something to be inhabited.

and the nervous system learned. god, it learned so thoroughly. it built an entire architecture around the absence of that message. the hypervigilance, the self-erasure, the constant calibration — all of it downstream of one thing that was never said clearly enough, early enough, by the right people.

you're allowed to be here.

i'm saying it now. even if it doesn't land yet. even if the body doesn't believe it. i'm saying it.

5. under the nose (the groove between your nose and upper lip)

the existential anxiety made everything feel high-stakes. because when you don't have a baseline sense that your existence is okay, every interaction becomes evidence gathering. every person's response becomes data about whether you're allowed to be here. every moment of being seen becomes a potential verdict.

and so i've been exhausted. not just from the healing work, not just from the carrying — but from the sheer metabolic cost of treating existence as something that has to be constantly re-earned. of waking up every day and needing to re-justify being here. of never getting to just — rest inside my own life.

i want to rest. i want to stop re-earning it. i want the hum to get quiet enough that i can hear what silence sounds like. i don't know what that feels like yet. but i want it. and wanting it is enough to start.

6. chin point (the indent between your lower lip and your chin)

here's what i know, somewhere beneath the fear — the universe didn't arrange itself against me. the world didn't decide, before i arrived, that i was going to be the one who didn't quite belong. that happened in smaller rooms. with specific people. in a developmental window when i had no way to refuse the conclusions they handed me.

the cosmic condemnation i feel — the sense that existence itself is something i have to justify — that's not a fact about the universe. that's a fact about what i was taught. by people who were themselves in pain, who needed me to be less so they could feel like more, who handed me a verdict about my own existence that was never theirs to issue.

i didn't choose this fear. i inherited it. and i'm allowed to start — slowly, imperfectly, without forcing it — to hand it back.

7. collarbone point (just below the collarbone, about an inch to either side)

my nervous system has been braced for so long that bracing feels like neutrality. the high solar plexus, the tight upward pull, the low hum of dread — that's just what normal feels like from the inside. i've calibrated to it so completely that i don't always know when it's happening until something shifts slightly and i realize — oh. i was holding that. i'm always holding that.

and the body doesn't unlearn this quickly. it doesn't unlearn it through insight. it unlearns it through repetition. through safety accumulating, slowly, in small moments, in gentle interactions, in the practice of returning to the breath, in exactly this — showing up to the fear with presence instead of bracing. the nervous system learns through experience, not argument. so this is experience. this counts. tonight counts.

8. under the arm (about four inches below your armpit, on the side of the ribcage)

i want to say something to the part of me that carries this. the part that's been holding the question am i allowed to be here for as long as i can remember.

you were doing the only thing that made sense. when the people who were supposed to confirm your existence didn't — or confirmed it conditionally, or inconsistently, or not at all — you turned the question inward. you made it about you. because that was safer than accepting that it was random, that it was their failure, not your flaw, that the universe wasn't arranged against you — just some people in it.

you've been protecting me this whole time. running the scan, holding the brace, keeping the question open because closing it felt more dangerous than living inside it.

i understand. i understand why you learned this. and i'm not asking you to stop overnight. i'm just asking you to loosen the grip. just slightly. just enough to let a little safety in.

9. top of the head — returning (back to the crown)

here is what i want to practice believing. not performing. not forcing. just — practicing. the way you'd practice anything you don't yet know how to do.

i am allowed to be here. not because i've earned it. not because i've healed enough, or grown enough, or understood enough. not because i'm exceptional, or useful, or finally figured out what i bring. just because i'm here. because i exist. because that is, in itself, sufficient.

i don't feel that yet. the high solar plexus is still humming. the brace is still there, slightly. and that's okay. i'm not trying to force the feeling. i'm just planting the direction. i'm just pointing myself toward something i want to grow into.

existence doesn't need my justification. it was never waiting for it. i was.

10. karate chop — closing (outer edge of the hand)

even though the hum is still there — i showed up to it tonight. i didn't look away from the most formless, most foundational fear i carry. i sat with the thing that has no edges, no object, no simple source. and i said — i see you. i know you're there. i'm not turning away.

that is not nothing. that is, in fact, everything.

the nervous system learns through experience. this was experience. showing up to the fear with presence — not bracing, not bypassing, not fixing — just being here with it, which is exactly what it never got — that's the medicine.

slowly, with repetition, with patience i'm only just learning to have for myself, the hum will get quieter. not gone. not overnight. but quieter. and in the silence between the hums — i might start to feel it. the thing i've been waiting for permission to feel.

that i'm here. that i was always allowed to be. that the universe has, in fact, a place shaped exactly like me.

i just have to keep showing up until i can feel it.

tonight was showing up.

that was enough.