True-Self: Can Someone Believe That They Need To Hide Their True Self To Survive If They Experienced Developmental Trauma?

If someone was able to get to the point where they were able to step back and reflect on how they experience life, what may soon stand out is that they have the tendency to hide who they are. They could see that this is something that typically takes place automatically.

When this does take place, it will mean that they lose touch with their needs and feelings. Consequently, their connected, true self will have gone into hiding and how they come across will be a reflection of their disconnected, false self.

Self-Alienation

By being in this disconnected state, it won’t be possible for them to truly connect to another person. Still, what it is likely to do is allow them to be accepted and thus, they won’t be physically alone.

If so, they will be together with another, or others but they won’t feel truly connected to them. For this to happen, of course, they would need to be in touch with and to express what is going on inside them.

A Miserable Life

Unless they have at least one person in their life who they are ably to be real with, they are going to have a very lonely existence. But, as they have the ability to lose touch with their needs and feelings, they might have rarely felt lonely.

Instead, they might have often felt very low and depressed and questioned if their life has any meaning. By being estranged from their emotional self and not feeling connected to anyone or anything, life will naturally seem very barren.

Hidden

This is likely to be how they feel behind the scenes, so to speak, with them creating the impression that everything is fine when they are around others. Their ability to cover up what is truly going on for them is then going to be very good.

It will largely be a mystery to others and it will largely be a mystery to themselves. Still, as time has passed, they are likely to find that it is getting harder and harder for them to live in this way.

Weighed Down

Not only will they be carrying a lot of tension but they can also feel a strong need to reveal who they are. They could be sick and tired of behaving in this way and desperately want their life to change.

What could cross their mind is that they are not going to live forever and hiding themselves is not going to allow them to live a fulfilling life. It will allow them to fit in and survive but that will be it.

What’s going on?

At this point, they could wonder why they experience life in this way and what they can do to move forward. If this is how they have been for as long as they can remember, it could show that they are this way due to what took place during their developmental years.

This may have been a stage of their life when they missed out on the nutrients that they needed in order to grow and develop in the right way. This would have deeply wounded them and left them in a very bad way.

A Closer Look

Practically from the moment they were born, they may have typically been neglected and when they were given attention, it may have largely been misattuned care. This would have caused them to experience a lot of pain and it would have caused them to associate both their needs and themselves as bad.

To handle the pain that they were in, their brain would have automatically repressed how they felt and part of their being would have also been split off. What this would have done is allowed them to handle a very traumatic stage of their life.

The Outcome

Many, many years will have passed since this stage of their life, but deep down, their needs and feelings will be seen in the same way. Expressing who they will be seen as something that will cause them to be rejected and abandoned.

The only way for them to not be cast aside and for their life to come to an end, then, will be for them to hide who they are and to put on an act. Part of their being will do what it can to make sure that their needs and feelings are repressed and will do what it can to make sure that they don’t reveal who they are.

Divided

It is due to this inner conflict that they behave as they do and why they are unable to simply change their behaviour. This part of them can also hate their needs and the fact that they need others.

Therefore, although part of them will have the need to change their life and to fully show up, another, stronger part of them won’t want their life to change or to be seen. Yet, as being seen and heard is associated with being abandoned and their demise to this part of them, this is not going to be much of a surprise.

Awareness
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If someone can relate to this and they are ready to change their life, they may need to reach out for external support. This is something that can be provided with the assistance of a therapist or healer.