written by an amazing present @Pathwayclinic Client
Small children often have discussions over what super powers they would like to have. Perhaps they want to be like their favourite super hero, or someone from their favourite comic book or fairy tale. Some long for super strength, others for the ability to use magic, or perhaps the power to read minds or maybe to be able to become invisible. This last one is the one I have in mind today, invisibility. From a hopeful childlike perspective invisibility is full of opportunity, you can go where you want, do anything you want, it comes with a sense of excitement, possibility and freedom. But for me the idea of invisibility is linked with deep pain, a sense of hiding, perhaps being forgotten or overlooked and the heaviness of a weight you carry alone.
Have you ever felt invisible? I mean truly invisible, like you walk into a room and no one is even aware of your presence, as if people can look at you and see right through you to the other side. Or sat at a dinner table surrounded by people and yet it’s almost as though you’re not there, if you got up and left nothing would change for those around you. Like you are alive, functioning and moving through life but at the exact same time you are frozen still and the world is spinning around and moving on without you. Or perhaps you have felt invisible in a slightly different way, perhaps you have felt as though you have to play a role or behave in a certain way to be seen and recognised even as a human let alone as the individual you are. Therefore feeling like the real you is utterly invisible. You live carrying out the tightrope walk between your reality and the role you’re playing knowing if you choose one you lose yourself but if you choose the other you would be so invisible you might as well not be real. I truly hope you have never experienced any of these or invisibility in a similar way but if you have you’re not alone, for me these are all too familiar. Throughout my life feeling invisible or like I’m hiding every single aspect of myself has been one of the most common states for me to be in.
This has come from a deeply ingrained sense of feeling so insignificant, or that my presence perhaps causes too much pain for others, or that I am so much of a burden its easier and more convenient for others to look over me or through me instead of at me. As a result of these feelings I thought it was my purpose to make myself more and more invisible, to take up less and less space, be less of a burden, do your best to get everything right and to fit in, be as easy as possible for others to be around, so to hide and repress more and more of myself to make others’ lives better, or easier or more straight forward. You do all of this an much much more to make yourself useful in some way to try and make it so that you can be seen, to feel wanted or needed or even just to feel like you’re really there and you matter in some tiny way. Somehow I became really sure that if I made myself more invisible and made everyone’s lives as easy as possible then finally I would feel valued, finally I would feel needed, finally I would feel seen. But in reality I was just am making it easier and easier for people to see through me, for people to step over me, for people to forget me.
For most my life I had a sense of feeling utterly irrelevant, out of place or just like I didn’t quite fit right. It felt like I was always in the wrong place at the wrong time or putting a foot wrong, like I was a burden or in the way, perhaps caused more trouble and pain that I was worth. I thought these all came from something being wrong with me or me doing or being wrong in some way. And so over the years I adopted every practice possible to try and put this right without even realising that I was adopting anything at all. Part of this was learning to play a role or wear a mask, I learnt to adapt who I was, how I behaved, what I said in accordance to where I was or who I was with. I learnt who I was meant to be for different people, what they needed from me, how I could be of use. I learnt how to make myself as useful as possible while fitting each role, I was sure if I was as easy to be around, asked for nothing while being as useful as possible then I would be worth something. Another element I adopted was to follow every rule and guidance set out, whether at home, school, work or in society. I even used to get very upset and frustrated when people used the phrase "rules are made to be broken", because one of the very clear lessons I had in life and believed with every fibre of my being was that rules are made to be followed. Obey every rule as closely as you can and you might make it through, you might get it right, you might just about survive. These two lessons were instilled into me pretty strongly because they felt like the solutions to make myself have a place and a use and a purpose. If I could be useful and repress all of me and any needs I had down then people would want me around because I had a purpose and was easy to be with. But they became truly cemented into my mind because over time I learnt that when the mask slipped or I messed up and broke a rule things got worse. These slipups formed holes in my armour where I became extremely venerable, they acted as neon arrows to the cracks for others to use against me or stick knives into. My slip ups became jokes that circulated around, or weapons for those closest to me to use for destruction and to cause pain. So I leant to be invisible as a safety buffer, only be visible in controlled and managed ways, to only give out what I could 100% trust and knew others wanted of me but this meant hiding or repressing every aspect of myself or what I was experiencing or what might have happened to me so that I could please and be useful to everyone else.
Through all of this I became an expert at ignoring my own needs to be able to put others above me. This process came so naturally to me and so deeply ingrained over time that I lost all elements of who I was or what I needed. It became my default to set myself on fire to keep others warm when they possibly weren’t even cold and were able to just walk away and carry on with their days while I was ablaze. I was happy to sacrifice all of my self, lose any element of my personality or sense of self, to not know what I wanted, liked or even needed just to be able to help others and put them first. I was filled with constant anxiety and consumed by making sure I never stepped wrong or caused issues that I lost and neglected myself. I thought this was normal, good, noble even. I had been raised to be a well behaved good girl, I prided myself on caring for others and being kind and helpful and surly that was all I was doing. What I wasn’t aware of was that there is a difference between being a good, kind and helpful person and sacrificing all yourself and your needs including basic ones like safety and nourishment to put others first. I couldn’t understand that you could be good or kind or helpful while being a priority yourself as well. I had learnt that love and care, to be seen and valued were things that you had to earn and that could be taken away at a moment’s notice. This meant that for me I couldn’t comprehend that these were just innate needs to all of us, for me they were conditions to measure yourself against and I aways fell short.
Through spending time getting to know myself and exploring my past, experiences and relationships with family, friends, colleagues and even myself, I started to become aware of this self-sacrificing nature I had built my concept of self and my life around. I became aware of the fact that I choose a career, friends and partners all based on a foundation belief that everyone else was worth ten times more than me. I began to become aware of how little I knew of myself, my worth and my own basic needs. I knew how to read a room or the person opposite me, I knew how to decipher others emotional states, I knew of expectations and how to perform but I was utterly clueless about myself. I couldn’t for the life of me tell you my hopes, dreams or aspirations for the future, I couldn’t tell you my favourite food or book or activity. Put me in a situation where I didn’t know who to be or what the expectations were and I would freeze entirely and go mentally blank. If there wasn’t a mask to put on and a role to adopt I was simply unable to take up space and would be consumed by overwhelm. This was really painful to start to become aware of, I felt like I had suddenly opened my eyes and so much of my life had passed me by and I had no idea of anything about myself. It was really difficult to sit and be honest with myself that I had no clue what I wanted or who I even was unless someone was telling me who to be. I really started to feel this deep sense of pain that unless I was in relation to someone or something e.g. work, my family, a partner, I just almost ceased to function because I had so strongly built my self concept on others. Unless I was fulfilling a purpose/role, or being of use/help to others I simply didn’t know how to function and just ceased to take an active part in the world because how could I, I only had worth or a right to take up space if I was doing these things. It took me a long time to come to terms with this awareness and the pain that came with it. I didn’t know how to move forward if I had no understanding of myself in anyway, all I had ever known was how to perform for others and to be consumed by the constant buzz of fear and anxiety. I didn’t know how to do or be any different than this. For me the blank page of learning about self was just so overwhelming, where do you start, how do you even know what you like or don’t, or what you enjoy or are drawn towards. I was just so sure I needed someone else to tell me what to do or what was right or what direction to go in, those answers surely couldn’t come from me. I constantly felt like I had missed out on the day when you were issued the manual for life, so I was left following everyone else’s guidance and rules, now that had been taken away and I was left frozen not having any idea how to do life or where to start at tackling the journey ahead.
For me taking time and space away from all the roles I had always played was the first step in trying to learn how to know and listen to myself. I needed to have space to work out what life looked like if I wasn’t fulfilling a role or function for others. However this is also when my eyes truly got opened to the huge sticky knot of deep dark pain that was buried inside of me. I was exposed to a deep understanding of why I had learnt to become this way, why I built up my walls and firmly put a mask on. I was confronted by the overwhelming pain that comes with taking a step back from those you love and care for and them not taking a step forward to fill the gap, some even firmly took a step in the other direction further away from me. This process highlighted a void that was already there but also opened it up into a cavernous expanse. It brought a deeply painful understanding that of course I felt irrelevant and worthless, because I existed in a space where 'out of sight out of mind' wasn’t just a saying it was almost a life moto that defined all the in the space. During this process I made attempts to bridge the void and express what I was experiencing, start to reveal some tiny flashes of the pain and struggle I was experiencing. I began to try and say hey right now I don’t know much about me but what I do know is that I’m in pain and I’m struggling and I need support, love and care. This is where the hardest blow to take came this is when I realised that we lived by guidance of not just 'out of sight out of mind', but found a deep deep awareness that we were only supposed to share and give light to the pretty, appropriate, nice bits of life and ourselves. I realised that this was why I hid so much of myself and what I was experiencing or had been through, because I had always been shown that it wasn’t acceptable to put that out into the world. It must be swept under the carpet, hidden away, the message was clear: eyes forward step over all of this and carry on. I was met with the message of by all means get help but do it quietly, be discreet, keep everything buried. This made me so aware that I had always felt like I had to burry and sweep so much under the carpet that I had been swept under and hidden away with it all. This felt like a very forceful eye opening, to then sit with this pain and the realisation that the pain has always been there but I had numbed it off by playing along and making myself invisible. It was pain of living by others conditions and measures, it was pain of feeling deeply alone and truly unseen and recognised, it was the pain of feeling unacceptable as yourself. There is an incredibly deep pain in becoming aware of the fact that you have made yourself invisible for years, possible all your life purely to ease the pain of not being seen or having a place. In realising that you were so unseen that you had learnt that you can't be in pain from not being seen if your invisible or there is nothing to see because it’s all hidden.
I had really not been aware of this pain trapped inside, although I felt out of place and invisible in some way I never knew it was protecting this deep deep pain. I did not feel at all prepared for the pain that I had buried deep within to be exposed to air and light, but I’m not sure this is something you ever could feel prepared for, not matter how ready and brave you feel this is the kind of pain that runs through every fibre of your being and feels so much a part of you. But although deeply painful and eye opening I can see that this was a process that I really needed to go through because it was transformational. This kind of deep all-consuming visceral pain is not something I would wish for anyone to experience, but I truly know now that the only way not to be ruled by this pain was to move through it, to let light and love into the depths of it. Looking back now I know my mind had protected me from this pain and awareness all my life and it let me experience it now because I was ready, even if I didn’t feel like I was.
I feel as though I’m out of the depths of this pain now but still in its waters, perhaps if this pain was the sea I’m not drowning out in the open ocean anymore but I’ve not made it to the solid safety of land yet either. I still have times when this pain overwhelms me, where its refreshed by old patterns being carried out by me or others or where a wound I thought had healed is reopened through awareness or experiences. But these are now like waves coming from the deep, they crash and momentarily consume me, but they do recede with the natural flow of the water too. There is respite between them where the water is only around my legs and I can make baby steps and sometimes even strides forward towards healing and the safety of land that awaits. Moments where I can have space to breath and time to learn and discover more about myself, who I am and who I would like to be. I think this pain will always be a part of me, you can’t undo your past or erase the battles you have fought and the wounds that you bare from them. But you can tend to these wounds, you can nurture and care for them until they heal over rather than hiding them and letting infection set in. The scars they leave are a part of you, they are a part of your very unique story and are one of the many building blocks in you becoming the person you are. However just because you carry that pain within you in those scars, once you have taken time to allow healing to take place it won’t be as overwhelming at it once was, it won’t rule who you are. And with time scars do fade, they may never go away, but they fade back into just being one of many on a journey rather than being the whole story. I’m still learning my way to navigate this. I’m still learning who I am and what I want. I’m learning how to spend time with those I love that have wounded me in the past without letting them still hurt me now but also not putting up such a thick wall of armour that I loose myself again. I’m learning to accept that some people may want to hide parts of me and my journey and swept them under the rug, but I don’t have to sacrifice myself to make them feel more comfortable. I’ve learnt if I can find ways to accept myself in my entirety, including the pain, the scars, the still open wounds that there is so much power in this. It will not only set me free from the chains of being hidden away and invisible but it will help guide me to others who want to live truly and authentically in themselves too.
