Can we talk about hiding and what it does to you? Can we talk about how toxic it is? Hiding as a means to gaining validation quickly becomes a survival tactic that actually prolongs the trauma it causes.

Censoring yourself (not like intentionally being mindful or tactful, but habitually covering up or turning off part of your personality) in certain company in order to fit in or gain approval, or to evade surveillance (let that last part sink in) –

Hiding as a means of gaining validation quickly becomes a survival tactic that actually prolongs the trauma it causes.

Shrinking your spirit, your joy, your intelligence, your anything – dimming your light – to make others more comfortable – playing small so that they can feel big and “love” you from that false projection of “big”ness –

Morphing, acquiescing, stifling, silencing parts of yourself, your thoughts, feelings, beliefs, needs, desires, or talents, until your inner monologue doesn’t even sound like you anymore (or worse yet, sounds like a drowning version of you trying to speak underwater) –

Self sacrifice on the altar of codependency, servitude or control, often masked as “compromise” –

Feeling trapped, having no freedom, lacking support, feeling like it’s unsafe or unwelcome to be the real you, to authentically express –

Covering up or forgoing things you like because it doesn’t fit someone else’s agenda or priorities or their idea of “good”-ness or “enough”-ness or fun –

You already are the recipe. Your true essence and everything you love about yourself are the secret ingredients that keep people coming back for more. Continually doctoring the recipe for critics by tampering with the ingredients or omitting them entirely is not a natural “give and take,” it’s exile.

When our response to pressure (lots of things exist under the umbrella of “pressure”) is to hide or change, that is a red flag. Don’t cast yourself aside or cover yourself up. Don’t live in the dark when the world needs your light. Changing yourself beyond recognition to suit someone else’s narrative won’t please them any more than it’ll benefit you because it’s based on unhealed pain and falsehoods. It’ll just perpetuate a vicious cycle of deceit and resentment.

When we believe we need to live a lie (or at least not live our truth) in order to conform to someone else’s ideal and fulfill the big “shoulds” we were conditioned to think comprise our identities, it’s like an act of treason against our souls.

If you’ve been hiding, call yourself back home into the light. Let yourself be seen again. All that recoils from the light wasn’t capable of beholding it in the first place.