A community can praise sacrifice until the people making it forget they were entitled to alternatives.

Praise can quietly close down options. When a group celebrates the people who give most, giving becomes the way to belong, and after enough of it the person doing the giving no longer experiences it as a choice among several, but as simply what one does. Nobody has to be coerced for a genuine alternative to disappear.

Check what your surroundings reward, and whether you can still see the paths you are not taking. Ask what you would do if nobody praised you for the harder option. That question does not always change the answer, and when it does not, the choice becomes yours again rather than the group’s.