Temporary relief and safety today, hindering growth and connection tomorrow

Let’s talk about the things we hide behind.

There are so many ways to avoid being seen, noticed or interacted with in this world. And each tactic is more fascinating and seductive than the next.

That’s human nature for you. We’re all expert at using things to protect ourselves from criticism, punishment and vulnerability. We have been conditioned to quell many of our top fears, like the fear of annihilation, the fear of losing autonomy, the fear of separation and the fear of ego death.

What does that even mean? How does someone go about not hiding behind something?

There’s no simple, seven process for doing so. It’s mostly a matter of intention and attention. And so, rather than offering instructions, let’s see if we can work backwards.

This week we’ll cover four common things people hide behind, myself included. After reviewing them, we will tease out the common traits and reverse engineer a framework that you can use going forward.

Item number one to hide behind is our story.

Big word there. Story suggests complex, nuanced psychological ideas like personality, identity, ontology, the self, and so on. It’s more than a simple account of past events in our life, but also the narrative about the evolution of our growth. Now, knowing our history is central to knowing who we are.

But the past can’t be our exclusive way of understanding ourselves. This can easily slip into a pervasive defense that’s based on what we used to be, not who we are in the moment. We can over identify with our past to such an extent it negative affects our present.

And to hide behind our story is to take distant and neutral position, without having to acknowledge all the ways in which we’ve changed.

There’s a wonderful romcom about two songwriters collaborating to compose a hit single for a pop star. The girl refuses accept that she’s actually a phenomenal lyricist, because she’s too reliant on an earlier iteration of her creative identity.

Back in her youth, she was this cowering, silenced artist, living under the cruel reign of an abusive boyfriend. But as painful as her situation was, it was familiar to her.

She could hide behind it. She could lean on that story to define her without having to dig into who she really is as an artist. To which her songwriting partner comments:

You’re afraid of losing your story, because then you’d have nothing to hide behind and be forced to stand on your own two feet. But you are way too talented and gifted and special to let anyone keep you from standing.

Sound familiar? Are there stories you’re hiding behind because you don’t know who you would be without them?

It’s a bitter identity pill to swallow. And yet, there’s a difference between something that identifies us, and something that defies us. Each of us can trust that we’re bigger than our past and learn to live larger than our labels. We can decide that whoever we were before is important to the degree that it brought us here.

But we are the ones who choose the path forward.

We are a human being who notices the moment, not a victim of our case history.