As we walk the path toward a fuller experience and expression of our lives, it’s common to figuratively beat our head against the desk, bemoaning, “Why am I this way? Why do I have to deflect all the time? Why do I always have an answer even when I’m pulling it out of nowhere? Why do I volunteer for all the things?”

The answer for many of us lies in our lived experience.

To navigate our childhoods with as much physical and emotional safety as possible many of us taught ourselves how to hide parts of our experience behind being funny, or being smart, or being useful. We emphasized the parts of ourselves that get us what best serves our needs for survival.

Note: Because, even as children, we walk between a number of contexts, sometimes what we did to survive at home looked very different than what we did to survive at school.

Over time we understood that the humor, smarts, and usefulness we provided a given communal space allowed us to stay securely in that space. Naturally, we keep showcasing those parts of ourselves we know are welcome.

Then come the inevitable moments where we aren’t funny, smart, or useful, and we experience the folks we’re with ignoring or attacking what we’re experiencing. Not only do these moments suck green fuzzy rocks, but they also reinforce our belief that only the funny, smart, or useful parts those parts will be welcome.

So, we become people who only feel safe expressing this really narrow piece of who we are to the world. All of the rest of what we feel or need to say gets shoved unseen inside ourselves or inside a journal.

This attempt at avoidance works for a while.

Life gets complicated when being funny stops getting enough laughs, you can’t always know everything, or you get injured, and your usefulness plummets as you recover. The thing you used to cement your place in the group disappears, and not only do you not feel safe without that thing, the group may not embrace the wholeness of your lived experience.

The odd thing about stepping outside of the roles we made for ourselves and letting our different pieces show through is that it feels both scary as duck and liberating. Scary because it introduces more uncertainty into our lives. Liberating because it creates space for more of us to be heard.

Then, you have a choice. Force yourself back into the narrow ways of self-expression that helped to get you here. I totally get it if that’s the choice you make. I made it multiple times over my journey toward whole expression.

Or, you can find spaces for the recently accessed parts of you to show up while feeling safe and seen. It’s even possible you already inhabit some of these spaces that accept the expanded expression of you.