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One of the byproducts of facing any kind of anxiety is hiding.
A locked-in feeling you are trapped alone in a bubble away from everyone.Ā
Looking back at my own life, I didnāt tell anybody about what I was doing. I was trying to hide the good and the bad from everyone. Hiding from my friends, family, online, and the world because I felt as if I wasnāt good enough to share.
On top of that, I was afraid of peopleās opinions and afraid of how they would be used against me to instill doubts, hiding and holding everything as a secret is a defensive mechanism.Ā
For me, I was hiding that I literally couldnāt talk to people (social anxiety) which was holding my neck down 24/7. What I learned is when you hide from other people, you hide from yourself tooā¦
PS. before we get any further I wanted to give a quick shoutout to the affordable online course Iāve created to help people kick anxiety realistically, check it out here -Ā markmetry.com/program
Something happens in life that you donāt know how to handle, so you take it and throw it to the back of your mind and lock it in a black box of shame. While this may be an effective short-term solution, oftentimes what you will find is 10 years later that same issue you thought you hid is now controlling your behavior in what seems like a totally separate environment.Ā
Trying to hide everything in your life creates the ultimate breeding ground for shame to build up. Living a hidden shameful life leads someone to have no confidence, bad self-esteem, and in turn developing poor mental health and bad unhealthy habits.
Obviously, Iām not saying you should scream on the balcony everything about your life but if I could scream one thing from the rooftops it would be to āshare your insecurities & fears appropriately.āĀ
Why?
Because I learned in most situations the more you share about that big bad scary monster under your bed, the more that monster loses power over you and actually controls your behaviors and thoughts less. A lot of us donāt want to look at the problem head-on, so fear obscures and distorts the problem in our minds secretly.Ā
If you take a flashlight of truth and shine it under that big bad scary monster under your bed engulfed by darkness, you may actually just realize itās no monster at all and just a dust bunny, of fear which is a glitchy byproduct of us living in the modern world alongside our primitive neurobiology.
Looking back, most of my anxiety and social anxiety developed because I had no energy because I was trying to constantly hide from the world about my anxiety and how Iām so weird or messed up because everyone else seems better which drains so much out of you.Ā
Always needing to remember lies and hiding things about yourself from certain people is so mentally exhausting.Ā
āIf you tell the truth, you donāt have to remember anything.āĀ - Mark Twain
Additionally, I believe most of our problems arenāt actually about the problem. I believe that our problemsā problem is shame, not the problem itself.Ā
For example - you have social anxiety.
Most of us try to hide it from the world, which inherently builds shame, that feeling of being shameful is the emotion that stops you from getting up one day and saying screw this Iām going to expose my social anxiety and take steps to manage it properly.Ā
We all have skeletons in our closets, but whether it remains an inanimate skeleton or becomes a lively animated monster that can rip you apart is based on how much light you shed on that darkness.
On top of that, when you are shameful about your own life and behaviors you display that message on the outer skin of your body like Pinnochioās nose that grows with each lie he tells.Ā
Your body will act as if everyone knows that big bad thing you did 10 years ago. In turn, you will never be sure about who you are in front of others and live a life without confidence about your very character and integrity.Ā
The worst part about shame is that if it goes unaddressed, it seeps into your identity of how you think about yourself, which determines your level of self-esteem, confidence, and your day to day behavior at perhaps a subconscious level you donāt even think about it in your conscious mind.
Shame builds up again and again until addressed and lives & grows in the background of your unprocessed mind.
So, what do you do about this?
Below is a simple exercise that has worked wonders and I work with my clients all the time to begin releasing this sense of shame.
Exercise: Write down all of the events and things that you think you did back in your past that you feel shameful about and wouldnāt tell anyone. You need the courage to write down what youāve never written down before. You may realize many things. Gain clarity over your list, it may take a few days or weeks to truly remember what happened and vividly forgive your younger self who was in survival mode, and personally contact and apologize to the people who were impacted if possible.Ā
PS. Check out the affordable online course Iāve created to help people kick anxiety realistically, check it out here -Ā markmetry.com/program
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