Stop Hiding Parts of Yourself

Today, I want to talk about; let's stop hiding. 

Let's take off the mask. Let's show who we really are. 

It's not because it's everyone's business. 

It's because it helps us lead a more authentic life. 

In this blog, even as I was sharing the experience, I was like, you don't want to say that much. 

No, you don't want to explain that because it's like, I'm an enneagram too, then two threes and fours carry shame as their highest accessible emotion. 

I have felt shamed my entire life. It's only feeling shame when I'm in contact with unhealthy people. Does that make sense? 

The only time we ever need boundaries is when we're around unhealthy people. 

The only time we will feel the negative emotion of our abusers, those who are emotionally immature and- manipulated, controlled, and over-managed us, is when that's the emotion that comes back up from my childhood, right? 

Should I be ashamed that I had trauma in my childhood? No. 

Am I sharing my victimhood? No, I'm not. I don't because I'm not a victim of it. 

It was the greatest thing that ever happened to me, yet it continues to happen. 

That is mine to figure out in this life. 

I'll have 45 more years to do it. 

Since tomorrow is not promised, I'll work on it today. 

Let me just share a little bit. 

When I was over-managed as a child, it promoted sneakiness, lying, and not playing well with reality because you'll always be in trouble. 

When that happens in your life, and if you're listening to this and you're like, Oh my gosh, I always feel like I'm going to be in trouble. 

You're a very sensitive, empathic person. 

I have learned that my gift is being empathetic, extremely sensitive, and very close to the spirit world.

When that happens, it's tricky because you feel like you owe people something; you want to improve the world, but you've not been taught how to manage your emotions. 

Well, that is what emotionally immature parents do. 

They teach you to shut your emotions down because theirs takes priority over yours.

 You don't know how to manage your emotions, so you become what they call a people-pleaser. 

You're always trying to make things right or better, and you basically sacrifice your life so somebody else can feel better. 

That is the very definition of codependency, and we need something else. 

If that's been a thing for you, know it's normal. Your nervous system normally responds to a trauma response, but that's where hiding comes from, too. 

If we had been hiding who we are, it would not make somebody else happy because their happiness depended on whether you could provide happiness for them, whatever that looked like, which is an impossible task. 

You cannot be responsible for somebody else's happiness because you don't know what they need or want. 

Changing who you are for their sake only deprives you of having the life you were meant to live. 

Hiding, hiding who we are, hiding the shame we feel about how we act and behave. 

When I hide, I lose. When you hide, you lose. That's how that works. 

We're withholding a part of ourselves that needs to be currently engaged in living a life we were meant to live, but it can't be engaged because it's holding space for somebody else's disapproval. 

Unhappiness, dissatisfaction, and frustration, but you have to also understand that’s what's in them. 

Those are the emotionally immature parts of who they are, and they're putting it on you because they don't want to take personal responsibility for their thing. 

They may not be awake or consciously aware. They may be under the false impression that it is your job to make them happy. 

When couples especially get intertwined in this cycle, I need you to change so I can be happy. 

They're both involved in what you need me to do so you can feel better. You give it, but it's not when you do it under the false pretense that you are responsible for their happiness; it goes nowhere.

It's just you being stuck, you being stuck, and you being stuck some more. 

When you do it under the pretense that your bucket is full, you're offering to help somebody through something totally different rather than masking or changing who you are so they won't be annoyed with you. 

Back to blog 10.

It was just my shame. I don't know who thought about it. 

I haven't had any feedback on that story, in particular about me when everyone's out of the house; what do I do with my time? I waste it. 

When I was a child, you had to be productive doing something.

You couldn't do anything. Nothing was not allowed. 

But it was still go out and play with your friends. That was doing something. 

If I wasn't going out and playing with my friends, my mom happily handed me the vacuum cleaner or sent me outside with a paper bag to rake leaves in her beautiful rose garden. 

It was being productive all the time. 

She kept me busy until 9:30 PM because she was emotionally disconnected. It felt like she just wanted me out of the house. 

She wanted me out from underneath her feet so she could have the life that she was hoping to have at this point in her life because she was 43 when she had me and 48 when she had my brother. 

She thought she would have free time by now because she had raised her first two, and then she had three, and she was a little disappointed that her time was not her own. 

I felt like she was trying to keep me out of the house all the time and keep me busy. 

That was her way of trying to be emotionally present by keeping us busy all the time. 

But it was just that I needed rest.

We all need to have rest. 

My response to rest that I wasn't allowed to have was to do nothing or be mischievous.

Being mischievous, I would hunt out all of her favorite snacks. 

She had them hidden in places because, well, okay, the backstory is that she grew up during the Great Depression. 

She described her childhood as sucking on a potato because that's all they had to eat. She would hide goodies everywhere. 

We had hostess everything hidden in drawers and cupboards with the tennis rackets, like behind cereal boxes. 

They are hidden throughout the house now. 

I didn't gravitate towards those; I gravitated towards the candy because she had candy hidden in Secret little baggies everywhere. 

Did you have a parent who would save every ketchup packet they ever got from McDonald's? 

My mom did, and 25 years later, we finally snuck him out of her drawer and threw him away. But she would hide everything because she had such a huge scarcity mindset. 

There was so much control because of the scarcity mindset. 

She was emotionally immature because she came from an alcoholic background, and she learned co-dependency that she was the reason her father was drinking. 

These awful ideas came from her childhood, but she perpetuated them. 

She didn't know how to change it. 

There wasn't as much information accessible back in the day. 

She did the best she could with what she had. 

When she was gone, there were no exacting eyes on me, constantly monitoring my every move and whether it needed to be punished to get me back in line.

I would go snooping and find, like, do you remember when Wrigley's made the little gum sticks, but they were half-size.

She had those, and there was something so fun and cute. 

I just had to have one, and I would get in there and get a piece of gum.

She had them hidden behind the dishes in the dish cupboard.

I would get one of those out and I would chew gum. 

She hated us chewing gum. It was shocking that she even kept a little stash. 

I don't think she chewed it, but she had a stash of little Wrigley's spearmint gum for some reason. 

Actually, it was the winter green is the white kind. 

We weren't allowed to chew gum because she couldn't stand it. 

I would chew gum, and then I would have to find a really, really sneaky way to hide it in a Kleenex and throw it away so she wouldn't find it. 

But to the extent that she controlled us, she would dig through garbage cans. 

She would likely find this itty-bitty piece of gum and move her stash, and then I would also get in trouble for it. 

If you are doing things in your life, if you can find the backstory, the reason why, you can start to sit in the emotion and feel it. 

What I do is I give myself permission not to do anything. 

I am by nature; it's not. I've removed the conditioning of having to be busy all the time because I am literally just coming off of the time gap between blog 24 and blog 25. 

I'm four years from being in a fitness studio, and it's been almost a full year since I recorded my last podcast episode. 

I am not a stranger to taking time off and giving myself the necessary space.

I do not feel obligated to be busy all the time. 

Now, what do I do?

When I notice my husband leaves the house, I'm an empty nester; the kids are gone.

If I don't have any engagements with the grandkids, I'll just sit and watch a rerun of something that I love or pull up a documentary that nobody else is interested in watching with me.

I will do those things. 

Being very clear with myself. It's like, I could get into something right now. 

That's the initial woo, the spark of feeling free, which is funny because I feel very free in my home. 

I'm just self-assessing, making sure I'm saying what's true, what's actually true, not what I want to be true. I do feel free to watch anything. 

My husband couldn't care less if I'm watching a documentary or doing it in the middle of the day when I should be productive. 

There's still an element of that childishness in me that's like, ooh, I could get into something. 

I could pop popcorn and eat all the treats and indulge and enjoy it, but I've learned to do the thing that makes it not hide: I just give myself permission to do it. 

I used to do it, and then if I heard somebody come home suddenly, I would freeze and panic and try to hide everything quickly because I didn't want anyone to invade my space. 

That's a trauma response. 

I didn't want anyone to know what I was doing behind the scenes. 

I have to tell you this story because it's relevant. It's the first time I've decided not to hide. 

I had always taught my children that the Sabbath day was holy. 

We followed that rule so religiously that we even wore our Sunday clothes all day to remind ourselves that it was not a day to get all. Rock us and go crazy. 

That was my perception of what keeping the Sabbath day holy was at the time.

I was just doing it. 

I wasn't really thinking outside the box or thinking on my own.

I was hearing what I thought sounded right and following that. 

During the dismantling of my conditioning, my old self, my body, and my health crashed, my business crashed, and everything crashed. I was like; I think I'm dying. 

I felt so suffocated in my life that I needed to run. It was like a Force Gump moment, where I had to just run and figure things out.

My family freaked out. 

My children were like, Mom, you're breaking the Sabbath day. Can't do this, Mom. What are you doing?

 Everything I had ever taught them was being dismantled in that very moment for them and myself.

I was like, am I breaking the Sabbath day? Am I choosing health? Am I choosing life? Am I choosing me? Have I given myself up for their sake most of their life?

They didn't know anything besides Mom comes last, and it was difficult for me to start putting myself first. 

It was not easy, but it was me doing the thing I needed to do at the moment that I needed to do it, regardless of what anybody else thought about it. 

The key to stopping hiding is that I can't be responsible for whether or not you'll approve of what I need right now. 

This is what I need. 

I went out for a run, and I think I probably cried the whole way, hot, mad, angry tears, that nobody was thinking about what I might need. 

But I had taught them not to think about my needs. Of course, and to be completely honest. 

That's how they still treat me today. 

Mom doesn't have needs, so she doesn't need to hear from us or be included in conversations. 

It's my own doing. I get it. 

Mom doesn't have needs, but most parents are starting to open up to the idea that they may have needs now that they're starting to accept it.

 Hopefully, by me having needs now, they'll notice they have needs.

Again, it's part of stop hiding. 

We all have needs. We, many times, were just like, no, I can't. No, I shouldn't. No. 

That would make somebody upset. 

It would ruffle their feathers. It would be contrary to something I've professed my whole life. I can't change now. 

But if you don't, are you losing out on the kind of life you want to live? 

Are you really thinking that your life is supposed to be a 100%, 95% sacrifice so others can be happy, that you don't have needs, wants, or desires, and that you're not entitled to feel the way you feel when you feel it? 

When we take the mask off of what we think is shameful or harmful or not right in the sight of others, we might fall short of what? Success, perfection? I don't know. 

What is it that we fear? I think we fear the jeers and taunts of our fellow man. 

We're holding space for everyone except ourselves when we wear a mask.

Getting rid of our opinion of what other people think of us and instead getting into the creativity and the self-expression that is ours is our right; it's a God-given right. 

It is a spiritual need, a life itself, and the reason we breathe, right? 

Breath is the reason we're alive. 

Breath is the gift of life, the self-expression that we have to share our gifts with the world and even our gifts of transparency. 

It's not that you care what I think or that I suffer from any of your businesses. 

It does help us get clear, think things out, and sort them out. 

For example, I don't do these blogs, so that you can do what I've done. 

I share what I've experienced so that the thoughts that come to you that are right for you will help you move the needle. 

I feel like I'm dancing all around the main point that I want to make, that the healing is not necessarily not doing the trauma response. 

The healing is getting rid of who's going to know and what if they did. 

That's the healing. 

The healing is coming out of hiding with yourself. 

You will benefit from not hiding that you have nothing to hide. You can say what is true for you. 

It's not because you're trying to convince somebody else. It's not because you're trying to get them to agree with you.

If you're doing it that way, it will fail to work. 

You're going to be disappointed every time. 

But suppose you're doing it according to what is true for you. 

How important it is for you to voice what is, what needs to be said in a moment, a conversation, a relationship, or even something like this, like a podcast where you're hearing yourself talk and you're sitting, you're sifting. 

Sorting is like, yeah, that's still the very best advice I could ever give myself: be free to express without shame. 

The healing part of that is that I don't do anything when no one's home.

 I take opportunities when I want to because that's the difference: it's easy to do what you want to do, and it's hard to do what you don't want to do, right?

I don't want to be inefficient with my time, but I will do it anyway. 

I'm going to sit down, watch TV, eat all the snacks, and feel bad about it. 

That is unhealthy. 

That's where the harm remains. 

That's when you suffer the most, as you are acting against your personal integrity and your intuition of what you really need. 

If your downtime is what you really, really need, you're doing it right. If I choose to have my downtime, that's cause my husband works at home, too. 

If I watch TV, I have to have my headphones in and stuff like that during the day, which I don't do very often.

I listen to audiobooks and high-vibrational music. I keep it to myself because we work in the same workspace. 

Basically, our house is our office. 

When he's gone, I can turn on the TV, take the headphones off, and I can listen to the volume as loud as I want, which I know he does when I'm gone. 

I do it because I want to because I can and have all the permissions there. It doesn't matter that I'm taking the downtime.

If I'm disappointed that I took downtime, well, that's just more evidence that I did that with the wrong energy, under the wrong pretense of taking care of my needs. 

Taking care of my needs. 

I've got to go with the flow; I've got to be in line with this. 

I can take my downtime whenever I want. 

If I choose to do it when my husband leaves so I can listen to the volume all the way up, it doesn't mean I'm hiding. 

It means that I am still enjoying it. 

Yesterday, he came home while I was in the middle of watching a movie with the volume up pretty loud. 

We have three windows behind the couch. They glare at the TV. 

I was standing up close to the TV because there was a certain part of this movie that was just my favorite. 

I'm pretty sure it was ad-libbed, and it wasn't in the script, but it was the best part of the movie because it involved two people who were just laughing for real, like really being playful together for real. 

He walked in, and I noticed the shift in myself. 

Way back in the day, if anybody had walked in the house, I would have been like, quick, turn the TV off. I was never watching it. 

That is a trauma response. Not because the people I was with would have cared. It was just a trauma response in me, but he came home. 

I was like, come here. You guys see this. He was like, why are you standing so close to the TV? Well, we have a big TV, so no need to get close. 

I was like, because I was enjoying it so much as I watched this, and I would just play this three-second clip, and I looked over at him, and he was smiling and laughing. 

I was like, wow, what a difference.

If I were hiding this, he and I wouldn't have had that interaction together, watching these other people having so much fun together. 

You have to know that, in the last month and a half, we have not had a lot of fun in our house because he had a total hip replacement, and it's been a little bit of a struggle for him to regain his energy. 

There has been anemia and other things going on. 

We haven't had a lot of fun and laughter, but if I had been hiding, we wouldn't have had that moment together when we were laughing and enjoying ourselves. 

It was a big win for us because everything else has been fairly stressful. 

That's just an example of the wins. It's small, tiny, and a blip. 

It's just a minute or less of an interaction, but it made a difference because I wasn't scrambling to hide.

This morning, I wanted to scramble and erase the video I did with blog 10.

I had to think about it because sometimes you must think back into a healthy mindset. 

After all, the trauma is a knee-jerk reaction. 

It's just where you go, and you're there before you know you're there, right? 

Then, you have to figure your way back out into alignment again. 

When you're doing things, I can't get in trouble; I'm an adult. 

Second, this is my life. I claim it. 

Third, it's my God-given right to express myself anyway I want to, whether that's in my downtime or in my go time. 

When I share it with other people because it's my favorite thing, it's a bonus. 

Those are the takeaways. I hope you're hearing this. It's still the best advice I could give to myself. 

That's why this blog is healing for me. 

This morning, I needed to get back in realignment and remember that the benefits of healing your hiding come in your interactions with yourself, where you get your needs and wants to be met, and, secondarily, with others, where you are free of their opinions.

You're just sharing your life, and it feels so good. 

Note: You can access the full blog content in audio versions on Spotify and YouTube. Happy listening! 🎧

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