Why Knowing Better Doesn’t Always Help You Change

“You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.” ~Jon Kabat-Zinn

My three-and-a-half-year-old daughter was playing at the park when her eyes began crossing and uncrossing. One moment she was moving through the afternoon like any other little girl, and the next I was watching her face, trying to understand what I was seeing.

She told me her head hurt, but then she went back to playing. Everything around us still looked normal, yet something inside me had shifted.

The pediatrician’s office was about to close, and a nurse suggested we go to the emergency room just in case. By the time we arrived, my daughter’s symptoms had disappeared, and for a while it seemed possible that we had overreacted. The doctors nearly sent us home without testing. Then someone decided to order a CT scan.

I do not remember how long we waited, only the strange suspension of time that happens when you are trying to reassure yourself while also knowing, somewhere deep inside, that something is not right. Eventually, a doctor walked into the room and said the words no parent is prepared to hear: “Your daughter has a brain tumor.”

There are moments that divide your life into before and after. That was one of mine.

We were rushed to a children’s hospital in the middle of the night. I remember sitting on the cold hospital floor, calling my sister and somehow forming the sentence, “Ann has a brain tumor. She needs emergency surgery.”

Then came the decisions, conversations with doctors, and the impossible act of handing my little girl over to a surgical team. I prayed with everything I had and wondered what her future would hold.

At the same time, I was the mother of a seven-month-old baby. One child needed surgery, another still needed nursing and holding, and there was no place in any of it where I could simply stop being needed.

So I functioned. I listened carefully, made decisions, cared for my children, and moved from one necessary moment to the next.

I was terrified, but terror had to coexist with responsibility. There were people I loved who needed me, so I did what I knew how to do: I held everything together.

Eventually, we received the news we had been desperate to hear. The tumor was benign. My daughter had made it through surgery, and she was going to be okay.

More than a month after everything began, I sat on the floor of my bedroom and sobbed. I had spent so long containing what I felt that, once the immediate danger passed, it was as if a dam inside me finally gave way.

I did not know much then about mindfulness or somatic healing. I only knew that somewhere in the middle of those tears, I needed to breathe.

So I focused on one inhale, then one exhale. Then another.

For the first time in weeks, I felt the smallest flicker of peace.

That moment changed the direction of my life. I began reading everything I could about mindfulness and healing and eventually developed a daily meditation practice that gave me a steadiness I had not known before.

The work helped me enormously. I became better at observing my thoughts without automatically believing them, staying present with difficult emotions, and returning to myself when life became overwhelming.

Over time, these practices gave me a steadiness and presence I had not known before. They helped me feel more grounded in myself and better able to meet difficult moments without being swept away by them.

From that more stable place, another layer of the work began to emerge. I started noticing the deeper patterns beneath my choices and reactions, including the ones I had been living for so long that they had become almost invisible.

Years later, I was leading a school, raising my family, and carrying what felt like an endless stream of responsibility. From the outside, I looked capable, productive, and deeply engaged in a life I cared about.

Inside, I was exhausted.

My days were packed with meetings, emails, decisions, conversations, and unexpected problems. I tried to be responsive to everyone, and my office door was almost always open.

At home, the rhythm continued with one more task, one more person to support, and one more thing that needed attention. Because I was capable of carrying a great deal, I kept carrying it.

Beneath all of this was a thought so familiar that I did not initially recognize it as a belief: “I have no choice. I have to do it myself.”

It did not feel unhealthy. It felt responsible.

Meanwhile, my body was speaking in ways I had become very good at overriding. I dealt with fatigue, jaw tension, back problems, digestive issues, thyroid concerns, and other health challenges.

I had come to understand that the body often carries what the mind has not fully processed. Stress, emotion, and deeply ingrained patterns can leave their imprint physically, and I began wondering what my own body had been trying to tell me.

That did not mean ignoring medical care or searching for a single explanation. It meant treating my body as a source of wisdom, not merely something to manage, dismiss, or push past.

I had learned to listen to my body, but often only until what it was telling me became inconvenient. If I was tired but something needed to be done, I kept going. If I felt tension rising but someone needed me, I stayed available.

If I needed space, rest, or help, someone else’s need almost automatically moved ahead of mine. Over time, I saw that this was not simply about being busy or responsible. It was a pattern of overriding myself.

That realization was uncomfortable because I already knew so much about self-awareness. I knew boundaries mattered, rest mattered, and there was strength in asking for support.

I had meditated for years and examined my beliefs with sincerity. Yet here I was, still living by this one.

Eventually, I began to see a connection I had missed.

During my daughter’s illness, my ability to function had served me. In one of the most frightening periods of my life, there truly were moments when I had to put one foot in front of the other and keep going.

But somewhere along the way, “I can get through this” had quietly become “I have to carry everything.”

The strength that had served me so well in difficult moments had also become a default way of moving through everyday life. I was so accustomed to being the one who handled things that I rarely questioned the cost.

For years, I had assumed that if I understood a pattern deeply enough, I should be able to change it. When the same behavior returned, my instinct was to analyze more, reflect more, or try harder.

This time, I began asking a different question.

Instead of asking only, “Why do I keep doing this?” I became curious about what happened inside me when I tried to do something different.

What happened when someone offered to help me? What happened when I imagined saying no, closing my computer before every email was answered, or allowing something to remain unfinished?

The answers were not intellectual. Sometimes I felt tension, sometimes guilt, and sometimes an unmistakable urge to jump back in and take control.

My mind could say, “You are allowed to rest,” while another part of me behaved as though rest had to be earned. I could believe that receiving help was healthy while still feeling safer in the role of the person giving it.

Slowly, I began to understand that we can know a belief is no longer true and still find ourselves living as though it is.

That insight changed the way I approached myself. Instead of treating discomfort as something to overcome, I became curious about what it might be showing me.

One of the first places I experimented with this was at work. I redesigned my schedule so I had designated times for email, meetings, projects, and walking through the school to stay connected with the community.

I also started closing my office door when I needed uninterrupted time. It sounds like a small thing, but it did not feel small to me.

I had spent years equating good leadership with availability, so closing the door stirred up discomfort. Part of me worried that I was being less supportive.

Instead, several staff members told me that when they saw me working all the time, they felt as though they should be working all the time too. When I began protecting my own focus and energy, they felt permission to create boundaries of their own.

I had been afraid that taking better care of myself might diminish what I gave to others. Instead, it changed what I was modeling for them.

That experience taught me something another book or meditation could not have taught me in quite the same way.

I closed the door, and nothing fell apart. I accepted help, and I was still capable.

Little by little, I began to have experiences that challenged the old rule I had been living by. Change was no longer only something I understood. It became something I could feel and practice.

That has changed how I think about being “stuck.”

When we have done years of personal growth work, repeating an old pattern can feel like evidence that we have somehow failed. We think we should know better by now.

But knowing better and feeling safe enough to live differently are not always the same thing.

If there is a pattern in your own life that you understand and still cannot seem to change, perhaps the next question is not “Why am I still doing this?” Perhaps it is, “What happens inside me when I try something different?”

You may notice tension when you think about setting a boundary, guilt when you rest, or discomfort when someone offers to help. You do not have to immediately explain or eliminate what comes up.

Sometimes noticing is enough to create the first small space between an old response and a new possibility.

Then perhaps you try something small. Let one email wait until morning. Ask for help with one thing. Say no once without writing a paragraph to justify it.

The new choice does not need to be dramatic to matter. Sometimes transformation happens through small experiences that quietly teach us that what once felt necessary no longer is.

More than twenty years ago, sitting on my bedroom floor after my daughter’s surgery, I learned the power of one conscious breath. I thought that experience had taught me how to find myself again in the hardest waters of life.

It had.

What I learned much later was that I also needed to listen more closely to my body and to the patterns operating beneath conscious awareness.

The exhaustion mattered. The tightening mattered. So did the automatic yes and the reflex to take on more than was mine.

So did the belief that everything was mine to carry.

I still catch myself slipping into that old current sometimes, but I recognize it sooner now. I can pause before I automatically pick up what is in front of me and ask a question that once barely occurred to me:

“Is this actually mine to carry?”

Sometimes the answer is yes. Sometimes it is no. What matters is that I am no longer answering automatically. I have created enough space to listen, to choose, and to respond in a way that feels more aligned with who I am now.

If this story feels familiar, begin with one small pause. Notice the belief or automatic pattern that keeps pulling you back into an old way of responding and pay attention to what happens in your body when you try something different. Then make one small new choice. Real change often begins when we stop forcing and start listening.

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About Dr. Lena Kushnir

Dr. Lena Kushnir is a transformational coach, author, and speaker who helps people reconnect with themselves through self-awareness and embodied healing. After nearly three decades in education and leadership, she now supports others in creating meaningful, aligned change. She is the author of A Gentle Return Back to You. Take her free online quiz for a snapshot of where your life is flowing, where it feels stuck, and where to begin. Follow her: Instagram @lenakushnir_

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The Magic in Me: How I Stopped Waiting to Be Saved

I do not think trauma made me a Dream Weaver. I think I was born this way.

I have always found threads between things. Stories, movies, dreams, tarot cards, astrology charts, repeating numbers. I have always been a spiritual seeker—through Christianity, Buddhism, curiosity about Taoism and Hinduism, and more recently Norse mythology. I have always noticed what repeats and felt when something resonates.

That capacity was already mine. But childhood danger gave it a job.

As a child, I needed someone to see what was happening and get me out. I did not have the power to create safety for myself, so stories helped me imagine that rescue was possible and someone would one day come save me.

I watched movies like Cinderella and read books like Charlotte’s Web. Someone could see the one who was being mistreated. Someone could use their love, words, or power to change what happened next.

That was regulating. When I could not leave the reality I was living in, imagination gave me a future beyond it. Hope was one of the ways my system kept me psychologically alive.

The magic was never the problem. It was a gift that helped a child survive something she could not control. But survival gifts do not always know when their old job is over.

Scanning the Shoreline

In 2010, after a painful divorce, I was reading a book about manifestation during the time the self-help industry was roaring with visualization and law of attraction books. It instructed me to visualize the future I wanted and write it down as though it would happen. So I wrote in a journal that I would meet my soulmate on a beach in Florida in 2014.

In the visualization, I wore a white sun hat, my youngest son dug in the sand, and a little girl wandered over to play with him. Somehow, her father and I would “just know” and live happily ever after.

Years later, after one more devastating relationship, my boys and I took a road trip to Florida. I remembered what I had written, and I realized I still owned that white sun hat—so I packed it. I hadn’t gone to find this person, but it was 2014, and the coincidence carried weight in my mind.

When we reached the beach, my son was digging in the sand exactly as I had imagined. For a moment, I found myself scanning the shoreline. Looking. Waiting.

What I wanted was not only romance. I wanted to believe I would be seen, chosen, and not left to carry my life alone. It was the same magic that had helped me survive a horrendous childhood. Again, I was waiting for rescue silently.

I remembered that recently when I found my mind doing something similar again. I felt embarrassed for the younger version of me who needed that fantasy so badly, then grief—for the sweet child inside me who has, at times, been steering my life.

Many of us build private stories like this. When the present does not feel safe enough to inhabit, the imagined future becomes a place of refuge.

There is nothing shameful about that. Sometimes imagination keeps a small light burning when very little else can.

When Magic Began Working Against Me

The imagination that protected me as a child did not disappear in adulthood. It kept looking for the hidden goodness that would lead to rescue.

I could weave a story around a brief moment of care and make it evidence of something deeper. I could believe so strongly in the goodness underneath someone’s behavior that I stopped responding to the behavior itself. The magic that once made me feel safer could now make me less protected.

As a child, projecting goodness into the future gave me hope. As an adult, projecting goodness onto someone who hadn’t earned my trust kept me attached to them. I could stay patient and forgiving while waiting for the person I imagined them to be.

The shadow of the Dream Weaver in me is not that she believes in magic. It’s that she can weave a story beautiful enough to hide from reality.

Looking for the one right person was not the only way I searched for safety outside myself. I also looked for the one right set of instructions. Even the beach visualization had begun with a manifestation book telling me what to do: imagine the future clearly, write it down, and trust that it would arrive.

As a child, the instructions came through Charlotte’s Web and Cinderella. As an adult, I looked to tarot, astrology, the Bible, Google, and other people’s interpretations to tell me what my own dreams, intuitions, and the numbers I kept noticing meant.

I treated meaning as if it belonged to the object or the authority interpreting it. If I could find the right book, person, spiritual system, or explanation, maybe it would tell me what was happening, what would happen next, and what I should do to be safe.

Those external things can help me access meaning, but they do not own it. I get to decide what meaning I give them and how much weight that meaning carries.

I Am Worth Protecting

For the past ten months, I have been seeing the number 911. Instead of searching online for what someone else believed it meant, I finally asked myself: What does 911 mean to me?

The connection came from inside me.

9-1-1 is the number we dial when we need help. It is a signal that says: Something is wrong. I need protection. Here is where I am. We have to actively dial the number and ask for help. We call 9-1-1 when we believe something is worth protecting. When I had that realization, the song “Safe & Sound” was playing.

It felt like something inside me had been trying to tell me this for months. Maybe it was my unconscious. Maybe it was God. Maybe it was some collaboration between the two that I will never be able to explain.

But no book, religion, spiritual teacher, algorithm, or outside authority interpreted it for me. I was the one who created the meaning for myself.

I had spent much of my life waiting for someone to notice that I needed protection. But I’m a grown woman now. I do not have to find the one right person who will finally make me safe, and I do not have to find the one right set of instructions outside myself. I can trust my own ability to recognize what I need and find the resources that can help me.

I can pay attention to what someone’s behavior is showing me. I can speak when something hurts, set a boundary, leave, call a friend, hire an attorney, or ask someone to stand beside me. Heck, I can even reach out to a stranger, which I have when I was in active danger. I’ve shown myself I can protect myself. I keep showing myself that.

The Dream Weaver does not have to use magic to keep me safe anymore. I can use my discernment, boundaries, voice, and ability to reach for resources.

That frees the magic to do something else. It can make my life feel more alive and meaningful.

The Right Not to Know

I used to think I had to choose between believing every coincidence carried a message and dismissing the symbolic world altogether. I don’t think I have to do either.

Spiritual certainty can force an ambiguous experience into a fixed explanation because not knowing feels intolerable. Dismissing anything that cannot be verified or measured can close the question too quickly too.

There is another possibility: I do not know exactly what this sign or coincidence means, and I choose to see something meaningful in it anyway. That isn’t denying reality or insisting my interpretation is objectively true for everyone—it’s letting an experience remain alive without forcing it into certainty.

Reclaiming our inner authority doesn’t mean becoming certain about everything. It means trusting ourselves to live with uncertainty without abandoning what reality is showing us.

Holding the Mystery Beautifully

In an astrology book I own, the day I was born is called the Day of the Dream Weaver. I have always woven stories from symbols, longing, intuition, and hope—noticing what repeats, feeling when something resonates.

I have a black cat now. He did not mysteriously appear on my doorstep as a sign. I wanted a black cat, so I searched for one and adopted him. I happened to get a really cool little asshole who is lovable and feisty.

Choosing him was a way of remembering my own magic—the imaginative, intuitive, slightly witchy part of me that finds beauty in darkness and meaning in symbols. I don’t need the outside world to prove that part of me is real. The meaning I see in something may tell me more about who I am than about what is going to happen.

He is also a way of acknowledging the beauty of my own shadow. The Dream Weaver only becomes dangerous when I don’t know she is weaving. I can see her now. I can love her and decide when she gets to tell the story.

The magic was always mine. But it is no longer responsible for keeping me safe.

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About Allison Briggs

Allison Jeanette Briggs is a therapist, writer, and speaker specializing in helping women heal from codependency, childhood trauma, and emotional neglect. She blends psychological insight with spiritual depth to guide clients and readers toward self-trust, boundaries, and authentic connection. Allison is the author of the upcoming memoir On Being Real: Healing the Codependent Heart of a Woman and shares reflections on healing, resilience, and inner freedom at on-being-real.com.

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How to Stop Replaying Conversations and Questioning Yourself

“We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.” ~Seneca

There is a particular kind of tired that comes from arguing with someone who is not in the room. I learned it one night lying in bed, my phone face down beside me, replaying the same short exchange over and over.

Nothing new had come in. Nothing had changed. I was simply walking the same lap in my head, as though one more pass might finally tell me what I had done wrong.

That is the trick overthinking plays. It feels like work while you are doing it. It feels like you are getting closer to something when really you are just getting more tired.

The Easy Part

We had been seeing each other for about two months. The beginning was easy, the way beginnings usually are, when everyone is quietly on their best behavior.

We were both busy with our own lives. We saw each other about three times a week, and in between there was room to breathe. It was light and warm, and it did not ask much of either of us.

Then it started to get real. And the moment something starts to matter, it also starts to feel like something you could lose.

When the Texts Changed

When we were together, it was good. When we were apart, she began to feel unsure of where things stood, and she would reach for reassurance.

I understood that more than I wanted to admit. I have been the one reaching before. So I gave what I could.

I texted more. I checked in more. I said kind things, and then I said them again, a little louder, as if volume could make them land.

Somewhere along the way, the messages stopped feeling like conversation and started feeling like maintenance. I was no longer writing because I had something to share. I was writing so that she would not worry.

I think we could both feel the difference. Reassurance offered to prevent a fall never lands quite like affection offered freely. The more I gave, the less it seemed to hold.

Looking back, I do not think either of us was doing anything wrong. Her worry set off mine, and mine probably fed hers. It was rumination answering rumination, two nervous systems trying to calm each other down and only turning the volume up.

The Night

The night I keep returning to, I was out with friends, the kind of evening where the table gets louder and the hours go soft at the edges. I was not ignoring anyone. I was simply where I was, and my phone sat unanswered in my jacket longer than it usually would.

By the time I looked at my phone, she was hurt. To her, the slow reply meant something.

I apologized, I explained, and I reassured her, and then I reassured her again. None of it seemed to reach her. She had already told herself a story about what the silence meant, and my words kept arriving after the story had closed its doors.

I remember feeling something I did not want to feel: a little attacked. I had not been unkind. I had been out with my friends, and somehow I was on trial.

Then I went home, got into bed, and put myself on trial too.

The Question

Lying there, my mind reduced the whole evening to a single sentence. What did I do wrong?

Once you accept that premise, the evidence writes itself. I scrolled back through the thread and studied the timestamps like a detective at a scene where nothing had happened. I wondered whether I should have stepped away from the table, whether I had sounded cold, whether I had said too little or too much.

Every pause became an exhibit. Every ordinary moment became proof.

I tried the things you are supposed to try: slow breaths, counting backward, thinking about anything else. Eventually I put in my earbuds and pressed play on a guided meditation.

It helped, a little. But the calm voice in my ears had no idea what was happening in my head. It asked me to let my thoughts drift by like clouds while I was rereading the same message for the fortieth time.

There was nothing wrong with it; it just was not speaking to the person who was listening. I did not need another instruction to stop thinking. I needed someone, or something, to understand why I could not.

What Was Underneath

When I finally looked underneath the question, I did not find guilt. I found fear.

It was the fear that no matter how much I gave, it would never be enough. And underneath that was an older fear, one I recognized from long before this relationship: that maybe there is something about me that makes people doubt me or eventually pull away.

That is where overthinking gets its power. You are no longer trying to understand one late reply. You are quietly putting your whole sense of self on trial.

I noticed something else, too, and I am not proud of it. As I lay there, I began building a case about her: that she could not settle herself, that she was handing me her fear to hold. It is remarkable how quickly a frightened mind will look for someone else to put on the stand.

Maybe some of that was true. But I was lying awake at the same hour, doing the very thing I was quietly blaming her for.

We were two people who had each lost the thread back to calm. And each of us was asking the other to find it for us.

That was the lesson I did not expect. I want a partner who can find their own way back to steady and who trusts me to find mine. And I realized I had to become that person first.

What I Actually Knew

What finally loosened the knot was not finding the perfect interpretation of the night. It was separating what I knew from what I was guessing.

Here is what I actually knew:

• I had been out with friends.
• I answered later than I usually would.
• She was hurt, and she told me so.
• I apologized and tried to reassure her.
• We had been seeing each other for two months, and until recently, it had felt easy.

Here is what I was guessing:

• That I had done something wrong.
• That I was failing her.
• That if I had only replied faster, none of this would have happened.
• That this one night said something about who I am.
• And, if I am honest, that her fear meant something was wrong with her.

The first list was five short, plain lines. The second list was the one keeping me awake.

None of the facts said I was a bad partner. None of them said she was a bad person. They said that two people who cared about each other were scared in different ways at the same time.

What Helps Me Now

I still overthink. But I have a way through it now, and it begins where that night finally ended.

1. Name the question.

Say it in one sentence, out loud if you can, not the whole story but the one line your mind keeps circling. Mine was: What did I do wrong?

2. Look underneath it.

Ask what you’re feeling is and what you’re afraid the worst-case scenario would mean about you. That is where the real weight lives, and it is almost never the thing you have been replaying.

3. Make two lists.

What you know, and what you are guessing. Keep the first one painfully plain; it is usually much shorter than you expect.

4. Come back to your body.

A slow breath, your feet on a cool floor, a short walk around the block. Not to make the question disappear, but to put some space around it.

The order matters. Most calming advice skips straight to the last step and asks you to let go of something nobody has named yet. Naming it first is what makes letting go possible.

What I Understand Now

The situation mattered much less than it felt like it did that night. When I think about it now, I do not feel resentment. I feel something closer to tenderness, for both of us, two people trying to feel safe and asking the other to hand it over.

Some nights I still lose the thread. The old question still shows up at the foot of the bed, dressed in new details. But it no longer gets to be the only voice in the room.

If you are in the middle of your own replay right now, you are not bad at letting go. You may simply be trying to let go of something you have not named yet. So name it, look underneath it, separate what you know from what you fear, then breathe. And let the question sit there without having to solve it tonight.

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About Evan Lane

Evan Lane is a photographer and product designer in Los Angeles. He makes Lull Meditation, an iPhone app that starts where this essay ends: by asking what is on your mind. If a question like this is keeping you up tonight, the practice from this essay and a meditation made for exactly that moment are waiting at lullme.app/replay.

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The Generational Cycle I’m Breaking Without Losing My Fire

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate.” ~Carl Jung

“You’re just like your mother.” I came across those words in a post recently, followed by a response that made me pause: “Actually, I’m my mother’s revenge. I’m the voice she didn’t have and the boundary she couldn’t set.”

It stayed with me, not because I felt any desire for revenge against anyone, but because something was resonating. I couldn’t quite put my finger on why, so I went back to something I had written five years ago.

In 2021, Tiny Buddha published an article about an aspect of my childhood that I had rarely spoken about: how overwhelmed my mum could become when she was alone with my brother and me, which could often spill over into snapping or shouting at us with intense anger.

I learned to think ten steps ahead, choose my words carefully, and anticipate what might set things off.

I also wrote about my mother with compassion. She had her own history, including an abusive alcoholic father, and while she was certainly not alcoholic, I could see how patterns can seep through generations without anyone consciously choosing to pass them on.

When children grow up seeing one parent as the perpetrator and the other as the victim, as my mother had, they can make strong decisions about what they will never tolerate and what they will never become. But sometimes those protective responses become patterns of their own, carrying elements of the original dynamic forward rather than truly breaking the cycle.

I had always had a fire in me. As a teenager, I wielded my voice as captain of my swim team in our chants. One parent apparently once asked my mother, laughing, “Do you feed her raw meat?”

The problem wasn’t that I had a fire. The problem was that, when I was overwhelmed, I had no idea how to hold it.

Having become a mother myself, I’ve caught myself occasionally slipping into the same kind of chuntering state I remembered from my own childhood. That was a red flag. I didn’t want my children learning to monitor my emotional state in the way I had learned to monitor my mum’s.

So I worked on it. At one point, I came up with a simple exercise with the kids. At the end of each day, they could give me a tick or a cross on a chart I kept on the fridge, depending on whether they felt I had communicated respectfully with them.

It was humbling and one of the most useful parenting exercises I ever did. I wasn’t trying to become perfectly regulated. I was trying to notice when I was getting it wrong, repair it, and keep learning.

But I had spent so much of my childhood experiencing fire as something dangerous that, when my own children were young, I didn’t know what else to do other than swallow it.

This was particularly true because the kids were sensitive to conflict, especially loud voices. I therefore became very conscious of keeping the peace, choosing my words carefully, and containing my reactions.

That was an important stage, but it wasn’t the destination. Because swallowing our fire is not the same thing as regulating it.

Over time, and with practice, I found another voice. I learned that I could disagree without attacking, set a boundary without turning it into a battle, say no without needing the other person to agree with me, and be forceful while still being respectful.

I see this particularly in parenting. When my teens push boundaries, I sometimes feel frustrated. In the past, I might have swallowed that frustration to keep the peace or let it build until it came out in a less constructive way. Now I pause and focus on what I need to communicate. I can be clear and firm about what’s needed without making it a battle.

I didn’t lose my fire; I learned how to hold it. And that is why the sentence about being “my mother’s revenge” landed differently for me than it might have once.

I could recognize echoes of her behavior in myself, especially when frustration built up, but I came to understand that I didn’t have to repeat her patterns. I inherited her fire, but I could decide what to do with it.

My mother’s fire had a story behind it too. I think much of it came from a determination that said, “That won’t be me.”  

Her own childhood had shown her how vulnerable women could be to the men in their lives. She remembered witnessing her father hit her mother. She also knew her mother’s first husband had abandoned her, leaving one day and never returning, before eventually sending divorce papers.

I think Mum carried a deep determination that she wouldn’t allow herself, or her daughter, to be taken advantage of in the same way.

It was a recurring theme: don’t be naive, don’t let yourself be taken in, don’t give someone the opportunity to hurt you.

My mum also positioned me for something else from an early age. She’d often comment, “Shona’s not afraid of anything,” or “She’s fiercely independent.” That was a voice that gave me courage. Ironically, like a moth drawn to a flame, I became drawn to many of the circumstances and situations I had been warned against my whole life.

Yet I was more afraid of being on my own than I should have been, and I put too much trust in people and situations for far longer than I should have. The truth is, I have been burned on more fronts than I could have imagined when I was young.

But I’m strangely grateful for that now. Not grateful for the pain itself, obviously, or for the people or circumstances that caused it. Grateful for what I discovered on the other side.

I discovered that I don’t have to spend my life trying not to be burned, nor stay until I’m totally frazzled. I can lean into what happens, feel it, learn, adjust, leave when I need to, and come out still knowing who I am.

But I didn’t arrive at that understanding overnight. I had to learn to sit with the discomfort of someone being unhappy with me without immediately trying to fix it. I had to learn that I could be really uncomfortable and still be okay.

It hasn’t always been graceful. Sometimes I’ve fallen back into old habits when I haven’t known how best to respond to conflict. But I’ve learned that I can pause, take time to find words that feel right, or talk things through with someone I trust. I can use the tools available to me to help navigate a difficult conversation rather than reacting from the first wave of emotion.

Each time I hold a boundary, survive the discomfort, and discover that I haven’t lost myself in the process, I build a little more trust in my own ability to cope.

Perhaps that is the difference between my mother’s fire and mine. Her fire was fueled by the determination that that won’t be me. Mine has increasingly become fuelled by the knowledge that even if it is me, I will be okay.

Both things can be true. She hurt me in ways she probably never understood, and she loved me in ways I will always remember. Her own story shaped her, and her story shaped me, but it doesn’t end there.

What I understand more deeply now is that breaking the chain isn’t necessarily about becoming nothing like the people who came before us. Sometimes it is about taking what they gave us, separating the wound from the wisdom, and deciding what gets carried forward.

So perhaps I am my mother’s revenge after all. Not revenge against her, not revenge against any one person, but revenge against the silence. The silence that kept painful experiences hidden and that can keep us from speaking up, setting boundaries, or doing things differently.

I look at genealogy charts, and I see names, dates, and who was born from whom and who married whom—little else. But in my bones and my heart, I feel the disappointment of bad relationships, the abuse that happened behind closed doors, the pregnancies lost, the choices made in secret, the abandonment, the upheaval, the grief, the compromises, and the things people endured because they could not see another way.

A family tree tells us who came before us, but it tells us almost nothing about what they carried.

I carry what my mother survived, what her mother survived, what our fathers survived, and all those who came before us. But I don’t have to carry it in the way they did.

My mother’s project was protection. My project became resilience. She taught me to be afraid of what might break me. Life taught me that I could bend without breaking, burn without being consumed, and find my way back to myself.

What did you inherit from your family that was never yours to carry, and what did they give you that you would never want to lose?

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About Shona Keachie

Shona teaches by the power of example how to find our inner truth among the often-harried day-to-day practicalities of life. If you enjoyed this article, you may enjoy Normal Is Dysfunctional That Is the Growth Opportunity, Clear the Fog of Trauma to See the Magnificence of Your Being, and Your Childhood Is Not Your Fault but It Is Your Responsibility. To follow her blog, click here.

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When Drinking Stopped Being Fun and Why I Quit

I stopped drinking ten months ago. It’s the longest I’ve ever gone. I’ve been thinking a lot about what finally made me stop because the truth is, I loved drinking. I really did.

Drinking was such a big part of my life. It was part of growing up, part of my Irish culture, part of friendships, celebrations, dinners, weddings, birthdays. It was just what we did. I started drinking when I was probably thirteen or fourteen, so I don’t really know much of my life without it.

And for a long time, I genuinely enjoyed it.

But eventually the pain of drinking became greater than the joy of it.

I still loved the idea of drinking, but I absolutely hated how I felt afterward.

The mornings were becoming unbearable. Waking up with anxiety, trying to remember what had happened the night before. Wondering what I’d said, what I’d done, whether I’d embarrassed myself. Sometimes not wanting to hear anything about the night because I was too afraid of what someone might tell me.

The blackouts were happening way more often, and that was probably one of the worst parts. Being at a party or a dinner, apparently having a great time, and waking up the next day with little or no memory of it. And then pretending I remembered.

Someone would mention something from the night before, and I’d laugh or go along with it as though I knew exactly what they were talking about. In reality, I had absolutely no recollection.

It’s a horrible feeling.

And the anxiety and shame that came with it would sometimes stay with me for days.

When I look back now, I see so many occasions that should have been wonderful memories. Weddings, birthdays, evenings with friends, parties at our house. And instead, I remember how drunk I got, or I don’t remember much of the night at all.

That’s a sad thing to admit.

I read something after I stopped drinking about keeping a “burn journal,” basically writing down the experiences you never want to repeat. The mornings you felt awful, the things you regretted, the times you weren’t the person you wanted to be.

I think there’s something to that. Not to keep beating yourself up over the past, because God knows there’s enough shame already, but because it’s so easy to forget how bad things had become. You start remembering the fun of drinking and not the aftermath.

And I think that’s where I finally got to.

The fun just wasn’t worth it anymore.

I couldn’t keep waking up feeling the way I did. I was tired of disappointing myself, tired of the anxiety, tired of wondering what had happened the night before.

I just couldn’t keep doing it.

One of the harder things I’ve come to realize since stopping is that I had a completely different perception of how much everyone else drank.

I honestly thought that when I was getting wasted, everyone else was too. That we were all drinking the same amount and having the same experience. And somehow that made it feel more acceptable to me.

But now that I’m sober and still going to dinners and parties and spending time with friends, I can see that wasn’t really the case.

Most people weren’t drinking the way I was.

It was me.

And that’s been quite difficult to come to terms with.

Because now I wonder how many times I was the person people talked about after a party. We’ve all had those conversations when someone gets really drunk, and the next day people say, “Oh my God, she was wasted.”

And I think back now and realize that was probably me more often than I would ever have wanted to believe.

There’s shame in admitting that, but there’s also something important about being able to see it for what it was rather than continuing to convince myself that everyone was doing the same thing.

Even little things around the house have made me realize how much drinking was really mine.

We have a drinks fridge, and it used to be full of beer, wine coolers, all sorts of alcohol. I always thought of it as something my partner and I stocked together.

Now I look in there, and it’s mostly sparkling water and non-alcoholic beer.

And I realize that maybe it wasn’t really both of us drinking all that alcohol. A lot of it was me.

It’s funny how stopping something can make you see your life so differently.

Another big reason I wanted to stop was my children.

I think about my daughter, who is eighteen, and my son, who is eleven, and the example I want to set for them. I don’t want them remembering their mom being drunk or seeing me in a state where I wasn’t really myself.

More importantly, I want them to feel safe with me.

I’ve thought about nights when I’d had so much to drink that I was passed out, and what would have happened if one of them had needed me. What if there had been a car accident in the middle of the night? What if there had been a fire or some other emergency?

Would I have been able to get up and help them? No.

That’s a really uncomfortable thing to ask myself as a mother.

I want them to know that I’m there, that they can call me at any hour, that I’m capable of helping them if something goes wrong.

My son has been so proud of me for stopping, more than anyone else. I think he understands that this has been a big change for me. Sometimes I don’t think other people necessarily realize how much goes into it, especially when drinking has been part of your life for so long.

But I also know that everyone is dealing with their own things, and that there are people struggling far more than I am. I don’t see my ten months as something that makes me better or stronger than anyone else. It’s simply something I’ve been trying to do for a very long time, and so far, I’ve managed to keep going.

And I hope I continue.

The other thing I’ve been thinking about is how much your relationships and your life change when you stop drinking.

Because they do.

I’m not quite the same person I was before.

When I drank, I was much more easygoing. I would go along with things, stay out longer, say yes to things I probably wouldn’t have otherwise. I was more social, more spontaneous, maybe more fun in some ways.

Now I find myself questioning things more. I don’t necessarily want to go out all the time. I don’t have the same enthusiasm for sitting around for hours while everyone drinks. And sometimes I feel a bit left out.

Not because anyone is deliberately leaving me out, but because the dynamic has changed. When everyone is drinking and you’re not, you’re just not experiencing the evening in quite the same way.

And I do wonder sometimes whether people find me less fun now.

Maybe they do. I don’t really know how my partner is feeling about this change. Sometimes I think he wishes I still drank….

I can understand that because I’ve been on the other side of it. Maybe it’s the Irish in me, but I remember hearing people say, “You can’t trust someone who doesn’t drink.” Drinkers don’t really want non-drinkers around watching and judging, but I don’t judge. In my case, I wish I could have a drink and that one drink would be enough, but it’s never just one. Too bad for me.

I think it’s also changed the way I see some of my friendships and even my marriage. Not necessarily in a bad way, but things are different, and I’m still trying to understand what that means.

There’s a part of me that misses how easy everything seemed when I was drinking. How simple it was to go along with whatever was happening. But then I remind myself that it wasn’t actually that simple, because I was the one waking up the next morning feeling terrible.

And I don’t miss that at all.

What I find interesting now is how much I want to be on my own.

I love being home. I love my own company. I’m genuinely happy having a quiet evening, doing my own thing, and not feeling that I have to be somewhere or be doing something.

I don’t know whether that’s because I’m getting older, because I’ve stopped drinking, or a combination of both.

But I’m enjoying it.

And I think part of it is that I’m trying to figure out who I actually am without alcohol.

That’s a strange thing to say at this stage of my life, but it’s true.

I’ve been drinking since I was a young teenager. It’s been part of almost every stage of my life, so I don’t really know what my adult life looks like without it.

What do I actually enjoy doing?

What do I want to spend my time on?

What kind of social life do I want?

Do I genuinely enjoy some of the things I used to do, or did I enjoy them because drinking was involved?

I don’t have the answers to those questions yet.

And maybe that’s why I want more time on my own. I need a bit of space to think about those things without feeling I have to immediately replace drinking with something else.

I also think there’s a lot of emotion that comes with stopping, which I hadn’t really expected.

There’s regret when I look back on certain situations. There’s embarrassment about how I behaved sometimes. There’s sadness about memories I’ve lost. And there’s also the realization that I can’t go back and change any of it.

I can only do things differently now.

I don’t want to spend the rest of my life feeling ashamed of the past, but I don’t want to pretend it didn’t happen either.

It’s part of why I’m here.

People sometimes ask me if I’ve stopped drinking forever.

And my answer is usually that I don’t know. I’m just not drinking for now.

I don’t feel comfortable making a big declaration about forever. Maybe part of that is because I don’t want the pressure of having to explain myself to everyone. And maybe part of it is because I know how complicated my relationship with alcohol has been.

I’ve said before that my relationship with alcohol was so complicated that I had to break it off.

And that’s probably the best way I can describe it.

It gave me a lot of fun times over the years, or at least what I thought were fun times. But eventually it was taking more from me than it was giving me.

I think about people who are struggling with drinking, and I know how difficult it can be to even imagine life without it, particularly when it’s tied to your friendships, your culture, your social life, and your sense of who you are.

I also know that just because someone hasn’t stopped doesn’t mean they don’t want to, or that they haven’t tried. Everyone’s relationship with alcohol is different, and not everyone gets to the same place in the same way.

For me, I had reached a point where the pain had become too much.

And I think I had to recognize that for myself.

Others might have seen it long before I did. They might have worried about me or thought I was drinking too much. But until I reached that point myself, I don’t think I was really ready to change.

That’s just my experience. I know it’s not everyone’s.

Ten months later, I still think about drinking. I still miss certain parts of it. I still have moments when I wonder what it would be like to just have a drink and not have to think about any of this.

But then I remember why I stopped.

And I remember those mornings.

And I know I don’t want to go back to feeling that way.

I’m not suddenly a different person with everything figured out. I still have my struggles, my insecurities, and things about myself that I want to work on.

Stopping drinking hasn’t magically solved everything. In some ways, it’s made me look at things I probably avoided for years.

But I do feel more present. I feel more in control of my decisions. I know what happened the night before. I can wake up without that terrible anxiety hanging over me.

And those things matter to me.

I want to keep going, mainly for myself, but also for my kids. I want them to have a mum they can depend on and be proud of.

And I want to see what my life looks like without alcohol being such a big part of it.

I don’t know exactly what that looks like yet.

I’m still figuring out my friendships, my routines, what I enjoy, and even parts of who I am.

Some days that feels good, and other days it feels a little lonely.

But I think that’s okay.

I don’t want to turn these ten months into some big inspirational story, because that’s not really how it feels to me. It’s been difficult, uncomfortable at times, and also very revealing.

I know there are people quietly struggling with alcohol every day, people trying to stop, people who have stopped and started again, and people who are simply not ready or don’t know how to begin.

I understand more of that struggle now, and I certainly don’t judge anyone for where they are.

I can only speak for myself.

For me, the joy of drinking became overshadowed by the pain of drinking.

And eventually, I just didn’t want to live with that pain anymore.

So I stopped.

And ten months later, I’m still not drinking.

I’m proud of that, but I’m also very aware that I’m still figuring things out.

Maybe the biggest thing I’m learning is that I don’t need to know exactly who I am or what comes next.

For now, I’m just trying to live my life a little differently, be a better mother, be more honest with myself, and find out what makes me happy without a drink in my hand.

And for the first time in a very long time, I’m giving myself the chance to do that.

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About Sunny Jean

Sunny Jean spent eighteen years climbing the corporate ladder. Then one day, she stopped to take in the view, realized she’d been climbing the wrong thing, and made a run for it. She traded boardrooms for big skies, deadlines for dirt trails, and the chase for what’s next for the joy of what’s here. Last spotted somewhere in the mountains, hugging trees, getting lost on purpose, and looking up at the stars.

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The Excuses We Make to Avoid Being Vulnerable

“Vulnerability minus boundaries is not vulnerability.” ~Brené Brown

It’s ten at night, and I’m sprawled on the couch at the end of a long day, messaging an old friend from grad school. My wife is already in the slow process of heading to bed, the kids are asleep, and the house is quiet enough for a conversation to feel easy.

This isn’t something that happens often, but it isn’t unusual either.

The beginning is fun, like it always is. What’s going on with my family, how work is treating me, how life is in general. Then the same from her side.

I’ve always liked her. If we lived closer, we’d probably be much better friends, but distance does what distance does.

Then we run out of routine updates and arrive at the familiar fork in the road. You can share something personal, or you can close with a standard goodnight.

So do I tell her about my health and about the last year? Something chronic. Not exactly the glamorous kind.

I run into this decision a lot. On one hand, I’m embarrassed by it. On the other hand, I know there’s nothing to be embarrassed about, since none of it is my fault.

And we’re both psychologists, for heaven’s sake. If we can’t trust ourselves with this, then what are we doing here?

And then they show up. My wonderful defense mechanisms, rising to protect my delicate soul, each of them arriving with an excellent reason.

The first one: it’s late, and who has the energy for something this heavy right now?

The second one: she just told me she’s tired, so what am I going to do, dump something else on her?

The third one: and it’s not like she tells me about every illness she’s dealing with, right?

And I’m sitting there listening to myself. How considerate I am. Really looking out for her.

How generous of me not to burden an exhausted woman at a late hour.

Classic avoidance, dressed up as consideration. Yes, I know. I even know the clinical term for it.

And that’s the part that’s hard to explain to anyone who hasn’t been there. That I can see it happening in real time, and that seeing it doesn’t help at all.

Knowing stops nothing. It only makes the whole thing more embarrassing.

Look at that third excuse, by the way. It’s the only one that gives itself away. The first two at least pretend to be about her.

The third one isn’t consideration anymore; it’s accounting. She doesn’t give, so why should I.

But then something else comes up, and that one isn’t an excuse.

Because my close friends know. I don’t hide this. I’m not someone who avoids telling the people who are close to me.

What I don’t want is for it to turn into a conversation about me in a room I’m not in. Someone tells someone, in words that aren’t mine, and I’m not there to shape how it sounds.

And then they’ll feel sorry for me.

In the middle of that thought, a question surfaces. A question I once asked someone else, years ago. Something along the lines of: and how does it feel to imagine people talking about you, maybe pitying you?

I sit there with my own question turned on me, and I don’t answer it.

Because there is a difference between people who are close and people who are far, and the difference isn’t only distance.

With someone close, this piece of information joins a hundred other things they already know about me. It sits in proportion.

With someone far away, someone who sees me once in a long while, it might become the most prominent thing they know. My label from that day forward.

And there’s logic in that. I have a right to privacy. I’m not supposed to walk around with a sign announcing my medical status.

Avoiding the loss of control over my own story isn’t cowardice. It’s a consideration.

And yes, I care what people think of me. What can I say.

So that’s what’s on the table. Three bad excuses, and one thing that’s genuinely a consideration. And the difference between them matters.

Except I don’t get to decide.

Because right as my head starts to hurt from all the back and forth, my daughter wakes up from a bad dream.

A lifeline. Thank God, the deliberation is over. I’m going to take care of my daughter. Lucky me.

So I walk to her room, still half inside my own head.

But she’s a kid who enjoys talking whenever she wakes up, so it doesn’t take long for me to let the whole thing go. We talk about her bad dream. We talk about monsters.

Subjects that suit me much better right now.

The next morning came. Coffee, school run, inbox. Routine carried me forward.

A small thought stayed behind about the whole thing, but by then it already felt artificial to go back to it.

To write to her now, a day later, just to close something that was only ever open on my end.

And here I have to be honest with myself.

The deliberation wasn’t resolved. It was interrupted. A five-year-old woke up from a nightmare and put an end to it, and I called that postponing it until I’m ready.

As though it had been a decision.

I don’t think every avoidance needs to be solved. There are things you don’t tell, and there are people you don’t tell them to, and that’s completely fine.

The right not to share is a real right.

But there’s a difference between choosing to avoid and drifting into avoidance. And that night I didn’t choose.

I just ran out of time before I had to decide, and the excuses did their job until the lifeline arrived.

I still haven’t told her. Maybe I never will, and maybe that will turn out to be a perfectly reasonable decision. The only difference is that this time I know I didn’t choose.

I’ve thought about those three excuses since.

Two of them were about the hour. It was late, she was tired. Both of those expired by morning, and I still didn’t write to her, so clearly that wasn’t what stopped me.

The third one was keeping score, and I’m not proud of it.

The one that wasn’t an excuse is still here days later. I don’t want to become a story told in a room I’m not in. That one I think I get to keep.

That’s the difference I’d watch for. Not whether you end up telling someone, but what’s motivating you not to.

What I want isn’t to finally tell her. It’s to reach that fork and actually decide something, instead of letting whatever’s lying around at ten at night decide for me.

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About Roi Haber

<Roi Haber is a licensed psychologist who helps people prepare for the conversations they've been putting off. He built StayIn, where you can practice a difficult conversation—with a partner, a parent, a boss—before you actually have it. You can also try the free Custom Practice.

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How My Life Got Better When I Stopped Trying to Be Normal

For most of my life, I had a second full-time job. Nobody hired me for it. Nobody paid me. But it ate more hours than anything else I did. The job was pretending to be normal.

I am autistic. Growing up, I didn’t always have that word for it, but I knew one thing for sure: I was different, and different was not safe.

Kids let me know early. I got teased and picked on, and more than once someone looked at me like I was a science experiment and asked if I was from another planet.

So I did what a lot of kids do. I decided the problem was me, and I got to work fixing it.

I studied other people the way you’d study for an exam. I watched how they stood in groups, when they laughed, how long they held eye contact before looking away.

I memorized jokes.

I practiced facial expressions in the mirror.

I learned the rules of conversation like they were traffic laws: ask questions, don’t interrupt, don’t talk too long about the thing you actually care about.

I got good at it. That’s the exhausting part—I got good at it.

For years I could walk into a room and perform “normal” so convincingly that most people never suspected a thing. I made the small talk. I laughed at the right moments. I nodded along. And then I
went home and collapsed, completely spent, like I’d run a marathon I never signed up for.

That’s what masking is, though I didn’t call it that at the time. It’s performing a version of yourself that’s acceptable to everyone else, at the cost of the person underneath.

Every social interaction became a performance. Every conversation, a tightrope walk. And I never got to put the costume down, because what if someone saw the real me and decided I wasn’t worth knowing?

The burnout crept up slowly. It started as tiredness—bone-deep tiredness after ordinary days. Then it became something heavier. I started dreading things I used to enjoy. Phone calls sat unanswered.

Invitations piled up. I’d cancel plans not because I didn’t want to see people, but because the thought of performing for another three hours made me want to cry.

I told myself I was lazy. I told myself everyone felt this way, and I just needed to try harder. That last part is funny, because trying harder was the whole problem. I had been trying harder than anyone around me for years, and it was breaking me.

Here’s the thing nobody tells you about pretending to be someone else: it works just well enough to keep you trapped. I was functional. I held it together in public. So nobody saw a crisis. They saw a quiet
guy who was maybe a little tired. And because I looked fine, I believed I should be fine, and I kept pushing the real feelings down and the performance up.

The turning point didn’t arrive as some dramatic revelation. There was no lightning bolt. It was more like a slow leak—the realization that I could keep this up for the rest of my life and be miserable, or I could stop and find out what was on the other side.

Stopping looked small at first. I stopped forcing eye contact that felt like staring into the sun. I stopped laughing at jokes I didn’t find funny. I let myself stim—rocking a little, fidgeting with my hands—the stuff my body had always wanted to do, but I’d always been too ashamed to let it.

I stopped apologizing for needing quiet. For years, I’d treated my need to recharge alone like a character flaw, something to confess. “Sorry, I’m just tired.” “Sorry, I need to head out early.” I dropped the sorry. I just needed quiet. That’s allowed.

And something strange happened. The world didn’t end.

Nobody staged an intervention because I stopped making small talk about the weather. A few friendships shifted—the ones built entirely on my performance couldn’t survive without it, and honestly, good riddance. But the real ones got better. It turns out people can feel it when you’re performing, and it’s actually harder to connect with someone wearing a mask than someone being awkwardly, genuinely themselves.

The biggest change was internal. For the first time, I wasn’t spending every waking hour monitoring myself.

Imagine carrying a heavy backpack everywhere for twenty years and finally setting it down. That’s what dropping the mask felt like. My shoulders came down. My jaw unclenched. I had energy left at the end of the day—energy I couldspend on things I actually enjoyed instead of recovering from things I endured.

I started noticing what I actually liked, not what I thought I was supposed to like.

I stopped forcing myself into loud, crowded situations to prove I could handle them and started choosing the quiet coffee shop, the walk alone, the evening with one good friend instead of the party with thirty acquaintances.

My life got smaller in some ways and infinitely richer in others.

Accepting that I’m autistic didn’t fix everything. I still have hard days. Sensory overload is real—a bad fluorescent light or a chaotic room can still wreck me. But now when it happens, I don’t add a layer of shame on top of it. I don’t think, “What’s wrong with me?” I think, “This environment isn’t built for my brain, and that’s information, not a verdict.”

That shift—from “I’m broken” to “I’m different and that’s fine”—changed everything. Not because the world changed. It didn’t. But because I stopped asking the world for permission to be myself.

Here’s what I want you to know, if you’re reading this and you’re exhausted from your own version of the performance: the mask feels like protection, but it’s actually a cage. It keeps you safe from rejection, sure. But it also keeps you from rest, from genuine connection, from the relief of just being a person instead of a project.

You don’t have to drop it all at once. I didn’t. Start small. Let one unguarded thing be true in one safe place. Notice how it feels. Notice that the people worth keeping don’t flinch.

I spent years trying to be normal, and all it got me was tired. The day I stopped, I didn’t become someone new. I became someone I’d been all along, underneath the performance—and he turned out to be worth knowing. Normal was never the goal. It was the obstacle. And I don’t miss it at all.

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About Jimmy Clare

Jimmy Clare is an autistic writer and speaker (Speaker of the Year 2026) who shares stories about self-acceptance, belonging, and life on the spectrum. He's the founder of CrazyFitnessGuy and host of The CrazyFitnessGuy Show. https://jimmyclarespeaks.com

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When You Think You Know Yourself, but You’re Wrong

I know myself pretty well by now.

I’ve had seven decades to work on the case, and I’m not exactly known for leaving a question alone.

I know what matters to me. What gives me energy. What drains it. What I want more of. And what I have absolutely no intention of putting up with again.

At seventy, I’ve accumulated a fair amount of information.

Preferences. Patterns. Opinions. A fairly detailed operating manual.

After more than two decades as an executive coach, I’m also pretty good at helping other people figure these things out.

I could probably create a beautifully organized PowerPoint presentation about the next chapter of my life.

I’d know exactly how to format it.

I just wouldn’t know what to put on the slides. Which may be part of the problem.

We spend years trying to know ourselves better. Our patterns. Our triggers. Our strengths. Our blind spots. The stories we tell ourselves.

All useful.

But I’m beginning to wonder if self-awareness can eventually turn into something else.

Self-definition.

“I notice this about myself” becomes “This is who I am.”

And once we decide who we are, we can get pretty good at proving ourselves right.

I’ve said for years that I’m not a joiner. It rolls off my tongue.

I love being with people. Well, many of them. But clubs? Committees? Organized groups? Not really my thing.

Case closed.

Except recently I found myself scrolling through Meetup groups near where I live.

Books. Walking. Museums. Films. Travel. Food. Conversation. Practically every interest imaginable.

Who knew?

Apparently, millions of people.

I found several that sounded genuinely appealing. Then I closed the computer.

Signing up was easy. Actually showing up required a separate negotiation with myself.

Suddenly there were emails I should answer. Things around the house that needed attention. And, of course, another episode of Lioness.

Somewhere in the middle of this, I heard myself say it again.

I’m just not a joiner.

This time I caught it. Is that true? Or was it once true?

Those aren’t necessarily the same thing.

Walking into a room where I know no one has never come naturally to me. It’s easier when I have a role. A reason to be there. Someone waiting for me.

A Meetup is different.

You walk in because you chose to. No assignment. No built-in place. No guarantee you’ll click with anyone.

For someone who says she wants more connection, I can be surprisingly resistant to the awkward few minutes that often come before it.

Maybe “I’m not a joiner” isn’t entirely about groups. Maybe part of it is not yet knowing where I’ll belong. And belonging rarely happens before you show up.

That got my attention.

Because we all collect descriptions of ourselves.

I’m shy.

I’m not creative.

I could never travel alone.

I don’t like parties.

Some are absolutely true.

There’s real freedom in knowing yourself well enough to stop auditioning for experiences you already know you don’t enjoy.

At this point, I have no need to discover one more time that yelling over loud music is not my preferred form of human connection.

We’ve earned some clarity.

But what else may have gotten filed under self-knowledge without really deserving a permanent spot there?

Maybe someone decided in third grade that they weren’t artistic because their drawing of a horse looked like a kitchen appliance.

Sixty years later, they still won’t pick up a paintbrush.

I have another one.

I don’t give dinner parties. Except I like having people in my home. I love conversation. I’ve hosted plenty of gatherings.

What I don’t love is cooking. Somewhere along the way, apparently, I turned that into a personality trait.

Who wants to spend three hours preparing a wonderful meal I could eat in three minutes in front of a Phillies game?

And last I checked, food can be purchased.

So maybe I don’t dislike dinner parties. Maybe I dislike making dinner.

This is not a major psychological breakthrough. But I’m increasingly fond of the small ones.

Then there are the stories we tell ourselves that are a lot more flattering.

Open-minded.

Easygoing.

A great listener.

Think of the person who considers himself a wonderful listener while his spouse has been trying to finish the same sentence since Tuesday.

Most of us carry around an internal portrait of ourselves. Some of it is pretty accurate. Some may have had a little help from the AirBrush app.

That’s the other side of knowing ourselves.

It’s one thing to question a belief that limits us. It’s another to question one we rather like.

Maybe I’m not quite as open-minded as I think. Maybe I’m not such a great listener. Maybe “I’m just being direct” sounds very different to the person on the receiving end.

Those are less fun. Probably more useful.

Lately, I’ve been listening for certain phrases when they come out of my mouth.

I always.

I never.

I’m just not someone who…

I don’t automatically argue with them. I just make them show their work. When did I decide that? Is it still true? And maybe the question with the most bite:

What do I get to avoid if I keep believing it? Feeling awkward? Looking foolish? Finding out I’m not particularly good at something? Walking into a room where nobody knows my name?

Sometimes the story is protecting something. And sometimes it’s just old. That’s what interests me.

Not reinvention. I’m a little tired of that word.

We talk as though we periodically toss out one version of ourselves and unveil a shiny new one. That hasn’t been my experience.

I’m still the girl who rode her bike everywhere. The young woman who became a television journalist. The woman who walked away from that career and built another one.

They’re all still here. They just don’t all get a vote on every decision.

Maybe our earlier selves leave behind more than memories. They leave rules.

I’m not a joiner.

I don’t give dinner parties.

I would never do that.

That’s just not me.

Maybe.

Or maybe the rule has been sitting there so long nobody thought to ask whether it still applies.

The unexamined life may be a problem.

I’m beginning to think the overexplained life has hazards too.

You can get so good at telling yourself who you are that you stop noticing when life starts giving you different information.

I know myself pretty well. I hope I always will.

I’m just less interested these days in turning that knowledge into a permanent job description.

I’ve spent seven decades becoming the woman I am. It would be a shame to assume I’ve met all of her.

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About Jill Chernekoff

Jill Chernekoff is a seasoned executive leadership and communication coach, former Emmy Award-winning news anchor, and writer. She believes a good question can change everything, especially when we’re willing to ask it of ourselves. Visit her at chernekoffcommunications.com and on LinkedIn: Jill Chernekoff on LinkedIn.

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