The Difference Between Who You Are and Who You Learned To Be

Most people are not living as their true selves.  They learned from an early age that being themselves was not safe for one reason or another.  Maybe you have never felt safe because of needs not being met or because you were sent the message that being you was too much or not lovable.  So you create a version of you that feels cared for, loved, seen, heard and valued because in receiving these needs also receive the safety that being you didn't allow.  This is your survival self.

People then grow up thinking that this survival identity is actually who they truly are at their core, but it isn't.  There is a difference between adaptation and identity.  Many people mistake people-pleasing, coping mechanisms, performance, hyper-independence, emotional shutdown, overachievement, or perfectionism for their true identity.  The issue isn't that these patterns formed; the issue is that they become your entire identity until you are able to recognize and release them.  If you continue to hold onto these patterns, they will continue to run your life unconsciously, and the truth is that as an adult, you don't need them to keep you safe anymore.  You no longer live in your childhood, and the adult you is more than capable of keeping you safe without these survival tactics.

The Person You Learned To Be Was Built For Protection

Survival patterns are learned responses to environments, relationships, expectations, and emotional consequences.  Children learn very quickly who they have to become to receive safety, love, approval, or stability.  A child may have to become the "responsible one" in order to gain the praise and love of their parents.  Or maybe a child learns that trying to express their needs isn't safe because they get yelled at when they do so, they become the "easy one", the one who does what they are told to not upset anyone.  The overachiever quickly realizes that their parents are only happy with them when they bring home A's on their report card.  These are just a few of the identities that we develop early in life, and they often begin as protection, not truth.  What once felt like it protected you will eventually disconnect you from yourself in adulthood.

High-Functioning Does Not Mean Aligned

Once we become adults, many people build their entire lives around survival patterns.  Many people may look successful on the outside while being internally disconnected from themselves.  Functioning is not the same thing as knowing who you truly are.  With this functioning usually comes burnout.  The internal can never seem to get enough rest, soul-tired, type of burnout.  This affects your career, relationships, parenting style and even social identities.  This exhaustion comes from working overtime to maintain an identity built around survival rather than self-truth.  Your nervous system can become addicted to performance, predictability, and external validation, so the loop continues even without you being aware of it.

Signs You Are Living As Who You Learned To Be

Self-awareness is the key to realizing what a survival pattern is and what your true identity is.  Here are some signs that you are living as the person you needed to be to survive and not your true self:

• Chronic overthinking and/or struggling to make decisions
• Feeling as though you are stuck in your life
• Not knowing who you are outside of the roles you play
• Struggling to trust yourself without needing outside validation
• Feeling like your life is "fine" but knowing that something internally feels off
• Feeling emotionally numb or emotionally overloaded
• Feeling guilty for resting, saying no, or putting yourself first

The True Self Is Usually Quieter Than The Survival Self

The survival self was built on fear.  It's urgent, reactive and loud.  The true self is the quiet whisper that you hear when you silence the survival self.  So much of what people believe is their intuition is actually their true self having its voice heard.  It feels foreign when you can finally hear the true self after years of conditioning and believing that the identity you have come to know is not actually who you are.  This is extremely uncomfortable and unfamiliar.  Your nervous system often interprets truth as being unsafe at first because it threatens the old survival patterns.  In time, your nervous system will recalibrate itself to the true self, so it's imperative that you stick with the releasing process, but also have patience and compassion for the process that you are going through.  

Being your true self is not about becoming someone new.  It's not about learning how to regulate your nervous system (your nervous system is built to regulate itself).  It's about having the self-awareness to see the survival patterns as they come up and reprogram your response to them in real time.  You can not journal or meditate your way through releasing your survival self.  Becoming your true self will require honest self-reflection, awareness of how your nervous system is programmed, what triggers you, and where you are abandoning yourself.  These are all part of the survival roles that need to be released.

You Are Not Broken

You simply became who you needed to be, but there comes a point where survival will start to cost you yourself and your truth.  The goal is not to hate the version of yourself that adapted, but to recognize where adaptation is not imprisonment.  The real work begins when you stop asking yourself, "Who do others need me to be?" and start asking, "Who am I underneath everything I learned to become?"  This is the point when you can begin to uncover the authentic you in all your glory and truth.

Dr. Laurie Williams

https://lauriewilliamswellness.com/