Episode Fifteen: The Fear of Being Fully Seen

What happens when you finally stop hiding parts of yourself, and people can actually see you?

In Episode 15 of Becoming the Sanctuary, we explore visibility, authenticity, vulnerability, and the fear of success. Most of us want to be seen. We want to feel understood, share our ideas, create meaningful work, and build relationships where we can be ourselves. But being fully seen also means giving up some control over how other people perceive us.

And that can be uncomfortable.

Visibility isn't just social media. It can mean speaking honestly in a relationship, sharing an idea at work, creating something you're proud of, applying for an opportunity, starting something new, or allowing someone to see a part of you that you've carefully protected.

The moment we allow ourselves to be seen, we open ourselves to being misunderstood. Someone might disagree with us, judge us, or simply see us differently than we hoped. Sometimes that possibility is enough to make us shrink before anyone has even asked us to.

This episode explores how many of us learn to read the room and adapt ourselves accordingly. We become the agreeable one, the strong one, the successful one, the easygoing one, or the person who never needs anything. Adaptability can be a strength, but there is a difference between adapting and disappearing.

Where are you still asking, "Who do I need to be here?" instead of "Who am I here?"

We also explore a difficult truth about authenticity: you cannot control how people see you. You can communicate clearly and still be misunderstood. You can have good intentions, and someone can interpret them differently. Being seen and being understood are not always the same thing.

Then there's the fear we don't talk about nearly enough: the fear of success.

What if the thing you've been working toward actually works? What if people start paying attention? What if your business grows, your creative work reaches more people, or an opportunity asks you to step into a version of yourself you've never been before?

Success can make us visible too.

Sometimes staying small feels safer because small is familiar. A dream can feel safe when it's hypothetical. Once we begin building it and allowing people to respond to it, the dream becomes real, and real things are vulnerable.

We talk about why caring deeply can feel so uncomfortable. It's easier to pretend something doesn't matter than to say, "This matters to me."

But caring isn't embarrassing. Trying isn't embarrassing. Wanting something isn't embarrassing. Being passionate isn't "too much."

Authenticity also doesn't mean sharing everything. Being fully seen does not mean being fully available. Privacy and authenticity can exist together. You can have boundaries and decide what belongs to you.

The question is whether you're choosing privacy from a place of truth or hiding from a place of fear.

We also look at how often we reject ourselves before anyone else gets the chance. We don't post it. We don't say it. We don't apply. We don't launch. We don't create. We don't speak.

Sometimes nobody has actually told us to make ourselves smaller. We've simply learned to do it preemptively.

If I never step forward, nobody can push me back.

But nobody can connect with the fullest version of me either.

Maybe visibility isn't ego. Maybe sharing your work is simply allowing something meaningful to reach the people who need it.

And this brings us back to becoming the sanctuary.

Becoming the sanctuary isn't about becoming fearless. It's about becoming safe enough within yourself that fear doesn't get the final vote.

You can feel vulnerable and still show up. You can care what people think without allowing every opinion to direct your life. You can be misunderstood and remain grounded in who you are. You can succeed without apologizing for taking up space. You can protect your privacy while still being authentic.

This week, notice where you instinctively make yourself smaller: the sentence you don't say, the thing you don't share, the opportunity you almost don't take, or the excitement you immediately downplay.

Then ask yourself: Am I protecting something that genuinely deserves protection, or am I hiding because being seen feels vulnerable?

You don't owe everyone access to you. You don't need everyone to understand you. But you do deserve the opportunity to experience what happens when you stop hiding from your own life.

Maybe the goal isn't reaching a point where being seen no longer scares you.

Maybe it's becoming safe enough within yourself to be seen anyway.

Becoming the sanctuary also means becoming a place within yourself where the fullest version of you is finally safe enough to exist.

#BecomingTheSanctuary #ThrivewellEstate #Authenticity #Vulnerability #PersonalGrowth #HealingJourney #SelfAwareness #Visibility #FearOfSuccess

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:16

Hi, everybody, and welcome back to Becoming the Sanctuary. If this is your first time here, my name is Kelly, founder of Thrive Well Estate and Thrive Well Hub. This podcast is a space where we explore healing, embodiment, emotional awareness, creativity, human connection, and what it actually means to return to yourself while still living inside a very overwhelming world. Over the last couple of weeks, we've spent a lot of time talking about the body. We've talked about when the body remembers. We talked about how difficult it can actually be to return to it when our minds are so accustomed to taking over. And we talked about learning to notice ourselves, to pay attention to what we're experiencing instead of constantly analyzing, overriding, or moving past it. And I think there's an interesting place that conversation takes us next. Because what happens when we finally start becoming more connected to ourselves? And then we have to let other people see us. Not the version we've carefully edited, and not the version we know will be accepted, and not the version that makes everyone else comfortable, but who we actually are. I've been thinking a lot about visibility lately, and I don't mean visibility only in the social media sense. I mean the much bigger experience of allowing yourself to be known. Your ideas, your dreams, your opinions, your creativity, your imperfections, and the things you're still figuring out, and the things you're incredibly proud of. The parts of yourself that maybe you've spent years making smaller because you weren't sure how they would be received. Because being seen sounds like something we all want. We want people to understand us. We want our work to matter. We want our relationships to feel authentic. We want to be loved for who we really are. We want the thing we're building to succeed. We want our voices to reach people. And then visibility actually comes. And suddenly it can feel terrifying. Because being fully seen also means accepting that people get to have opinions about what they see. They might misunderstand you. They might disagree with you. They might judge you. They might decide you've changed. And sometimes something we don't talk about nearly enough, they might actually love what they see. They might support you. They might believe in you. They might tell other people about your work. They might ask you to step into a bigger room. The thing you've been quietly dreaming about might actually start working. And that can be scary too. I think we talk a lot about fear of failure, but I'm becoming increasingly interested in the fear of success. What happens if this actually works? What happens if people are paying attention? What happens if the dream you've been talking about becomes real enough that you can no longer hide behind the idea that you're just trying something? What happens when you're asked to become the person can that can hold the thing you said you wanted? There's vulnerability in failure. But there's vulnerability in success too. Because success makes us visible, and visibility asks something from us. It asks us to stop shrinking. It asks us to stop waiting until we're perfectly polished before we speak. It asks us to let people witness the process instead of only presenting the finished product. And maybe most importantly, it asks us to become comfortable with the fact that authenticity does not guarantee approval. And that's hard. Especially if you've spent a lot of your life learning how to read the rum. How do I need to show up here? What version of me belongs here? What should I say? What shouldn't I say? How much of myself is safe to reveal? How do I make sure everyone is comfortable? And sometimes we become so good at adapting that we don't even realize we're doing it anymore until we begin asking a different question. What would it look like to show up as myself before I know how everyone else is going to respond? And that's the conversation I want to have today. The fear of being fully seen, not just online, in relationships, in our work, in creativity, in leadership, in success, in the things we believe, in the dreams we're finally willing to say out loud. And maybe authenticity isn't reaching a place where we no longer care about what anyone thinks. We're human. I think most of us are always going to care on some level. Maybe authenticity is knowing that being misunderstood doesn't automatically mean we need to change ourselves. Maybe visibility is allowing people to see us without immediately trying to control what they think about what they see. And maybe becoming the sanctuary also means becoming safe enough within ourselves that we no longer need everyone outside of us to validate who we're becoming. All right, now it's time to dive into it. Okay. So we say we want to be seen, right? And if you're like me, um, and which I have found with the people that I've talked to, most people want to feel understood, right? We want to be known, we want to have meaningful relationships, um, we want our work to be recognized, we want our ideas heard, and we want people to understand our intentions. But uh wanting to be seen and allowing ourselves to be seen are two very different things. Now I want you to think of what I just said there. Let's just take that and break that down. Wanting to be seen and allowing ourselves to be seen are very different. Now, I know I'm I'm doing a few episodes back to back again because the end of summer and life is just life. And then I don't really need to make excuses about that anymore because it's just life, right? Sometimes we have all the time in the world, and then next time, holy crap, summer is over and you're preparing for back to school, right? But me explaining that in the way that I did is a good example of wanting to be seen or allowing ourselves to be seen. I really want to be the person that has it together every week and can post these every Friday and have a successful business and be home present, be present enough at home and you know, do all the things. But what I was realizing, and I um I am going somewhere with this, I promise. I was at a retreat this past Sunday. It was I was invited um by the host, and and I was very grateful for that invite because even though I wrestled with it, I knew deep down that I I saying yes would have been the best for me, um, and really allowing others to pour into my cup so I can continue to learn how to pour into my own cup, but can also continue to pour into others' cups. And what I said um at that retreat was I was, I feel like every day I'm getting more and more honest. And so what I was talking about is that I'm really starting to struggle with all of these practices and habits and routines um and and rituals or whatever it is that I am trying to take my life, and not even just my life, right? I'm not even talking just external, but who I am as a person and become embodying it, right? Like we're talking about taking that movement from awareness to embodiment and where I am in my career and and also with what I have chose to do for a living, and and I do it very passionately because I do believe um that it that it is my purpose, it has so much to do with research and understanding, you know, understanding different practices, understanding different healing patterns, understanding different religions, right? Because so much of spirituality comes into the healing journey. Um, and being an inter-face-face, I want to be respectful to to all um to all journeys. And and that also includes the people who don't have it, right? So, because being atheistic agnostic, that's that's in that category as well. So so much research goes into um just having the space that I have, but never mind trying to then be a bridge to connect all these these different modalities and ideas and belief systems and and finding the common thread that brings us back together as humans and and connects us. So so much of that research needs to be done, but I think for my own practice, I'm feeling stuck in that research part. So, what I was talking about was that I am continuously stacking more and more information, more and more awareness. And I, and what I'm really trying to do, and and the move that I'm really trying to make, is making me go from that awareness into the embodiment. It doesn't mean that I stop the awareness or I stop the research. We're always a student and we're always learning. But it does mean that those two need to start to coexist, right? I can I can do the research and understand more and learn more, but I need to start embodying these practices because to learn this much information at the speed that I am and and how much information I am taking in. I mean, you're talking about so many different um ideas and and it's just so much in one sitting that I'm able to digest, which I am able to, it's it's how my brain works, but it's it's burning me out faster than the regular research that I used to do before I started Thrive Well. So this is a very long-winded way of explaining that wanting to be seen or allowing ourselves to be seen is different. And and that is because when I was there, I said, I need to stop. I need to stop with the smoke of mirrors, I need to stop with the mask. I need and want and feel deep in my bones that the more that I lean into this slowness and this stillness and understanding that I need rest and my body cannot keep going, that the more that I lean into that, the opposite of what I think will happen is actually what's going to happen. And but for me to feel to go from that still in survival mode, feeling overwhelmed, don't know which way to go, do I, you know, getting a part-time job, trying to build thrive well, trying to be better at home, trying to be the best woman that I can, it was it's too much. So for me to admit out loud that I am taking that mask off and I'm going to be living more honestly every single day, that was allowing myself to be seen instead of wanting to be seen in the way I want you to perceive me. Because when you when we want that recognition that we talked about, right? So though our work being recognized or our ideas being heard, any part of that having recognition, um, it's easy to want that without the exposure, right? Because if you want your idea to be heard, you have to risk someone thinking that idea is not good. And that's okay. Because, and and but when we sit in this, right, and we continue down this path and we want the the connection without vulnerability or success without the visibility, right? That's that's where it's not realistic. And that's what the hard part is. And me saying that it's not realistic, and um, I don't mean that in a sense that, you know, I don't know, that what you're feeling is wrong. I don't want that to come out because I feel it too, right? Like I always said I'm I don't have a problem with becoming well known or having having to speak in a room full of people, or like I do welcome this part of the life, but in a controlled sense. And that's where that's not realistic. That is not possible. I have a really hard time when people don't like me. Well, I have to get over that because I've already just in this quick time of being a business owner, my sheer existence pisses people off. And I had to really work through a lot to be okay with that. And I'm still working through that. Because when you think about, right, ask your when we ask ourselves how much of you people actually get to see, think about where that line is for yourself, right? How much are you showing people? Are you showing them the polished finished product? Are you telling them that that's the polished finished product, or have you told them about the journey that it took to get there? Because how often are you editing yourself before anyone else has the opportunity to respond? Right? Um, how much are we editing videos, editing photos? Um, just what we're gonna say. We rehearse the conversation in our head so much before we even just say it. And we're we're shrinking ourselves, we're expanding ourselves. There's so much that we're doing that we want people to see us, but we don't even realize we're not even showing them the real us. And we've gotten really, really good at that. Because being seen means you giving up the control over how you're perceived. And once something leaves you a thought, a piece of writing, a business, a creative project, anything, you can't completely control what someone does with it. And especially not on social media, right? Definitely not with social media, because once it's out there, and never mind social media, internet too, like people are going to see what you're putting out there, and you need to be able to prepare yourself for to keep moving, right? Keep being creative, keep putting yourself out there, keep being seen and keep being your authentic self. And again, I want to give the reminder I'm not talking about being seen just on social media. I'm not talking about going viral, I'm not talking about becoming famous, right? Anybody who's been watching the um Lindsay Clancy trial, right? There's a there's a woman who was seen um for not a good reason, right? She was in a green dress, she was in the the part of the courtroom where people can come and press and you can listen, and you know, the the panned over, and she's making all sorts of winky faces and smiles at the cameras. I don't know why. I don't know why she thought that was a good idea. Um, but in her mind, she's living her authentic self, right? And that was not perceived well at all. And you can see she is getting, but you know, she she is getting to be honest, she's getting ripped apart on online. She is getting put right in her place, but she's still not having any accountability for what she did. And so giving that example is really good because was her motivation in the right place during during that, you know, when she was doing that? What was it that she was trying to influence? What was it that she was trying to say? Because read the room, that was not the place. So that's where we want to be a hundred, not a hundred percent certain because we can't be, but we always want to check our motivations of why we're doing something. We want to make sure that we are checking in with our moral compass. Is this aligned with the person that we are, right? Is this who we are trying to become or you know, coming back to, right? Going back to our truer self. And and if we believe in that, um, it's not to say we don't make mistakes because being seen, you can, you know, when you're really authentically out there, you still make mistakes, but just hold hold accountability for yourself when when that happens. Because, like I said, once it's out there, people got it. And and they're gonna react and perceive um, you know, what how they want, and you could we can't control that. But I want you to think to yourself, and after this kind of all over the place introduction um to the topic that we're talking about today, do you want to be seen or do you want to be seen only when you can control blah blah blah, only when you can control what people see, right? Do you want to be seen, or do you want to be seen only when you can control what people see? Because I think one of the reasons visibility can feel so uncomfortable is because many of us learned very early how to read a room. Now, learning how to read a room can mean many different things. But when I'm referring to it, I'm talking about the versions of ourselves that we learn to become, right? Going into this next part of the podcast, I really want to talk about something that Brene Brown had said that really sat with me. Um, and more than sat with me, it stayed with me, is what I meant to say there. Um but she talks about the difference between belonging and fitting in. So, and it doesn't mean that every single room that you're going to walk into, right? Because we have different rooms that we need to walk into, whether that be for our personal life, our professional life, um, for family members, for partners, whatever. So don't think that you shouldn't walk into a room just because you don't belong. There's different situations for everything. But in general, the difference between fitting in and belonging is if you they're actually opposite. So if you feel the need to fit in, you're gonna change yourself to fit into that room, right? Or into that group of group of people or that situation. But if you belong, it will be a natural fit, right? That would be like me trying to fit in um and continuing to do what I was doing for a professional career. My boss, he knew it. When I gave my notice, he was like, I'm not surprised at all. Like it was just it had become one of those things where I was never going to naturally belong in that role. And I would have to work a lot harder to achieve my goals because I didn't naturally belong in that position. Whereas now the work is harder. It's I didn't choose an easier path, but I belong here. This is where I'm supposed to be. So the flowing of the work and the drive and the energy that I get is because I belong in this work. And so I want you to think about the difference there of fitting in and belonging while we talk about this next section. Because when we learn the ability to read a room, what we're doing is we're adapting to different people in different situations, right? I mean, you could go in and read a room, and a lot of people can read a room with like the tenseness in it or the energy in it. But I'm talking more of how that's going to change you. And we start to collect these different versions of ourselves, and then we know which version of ourselves feels the safest somewhere. Is it being agreeable? Or being useful or funny successful, being the easy-going one, being the strong one, people pleasing. That I mean, people pleasing here is a real what how do I say this? Like, it's just exhausting, to be honest, if you can't tell in my voice. I'm just over it. I'm over this people-pleasing way in myself. Where it doesn't mean that I don't want to please the people that I care about and that are around me, or even strangers for that reason, but not to my own sacrifice and not to become somebody. If if the people pleasing in me is changing who I am and creating somebody that that other person is more comfortable with, or somebody that I am more comfortable with them perceiving me as, then that's where the the, you know, the unhealthy version of the people pleasing. But and then as we go through this as well, we read the room, we start learning what earns approval and what causes conflict. And it doesn't, it's it's not necessarily meaning that we're fake. I I want to make sure I say that because being adaptable in a room and being able to kind of shift shapes in a sense, it is a strength. But how why are we using it and how are we using it? Right. I can uh I can adapt to different people in the way that I'm communicating because that's you know, somebody who comes in to thrive well, or even somebody that I had, you know, I was a boss to once upon a time. I would change how I communicate to be able to um really make sure that what they need is coming. But that's because I'm in a place of support. So it would be very different if it was the other way around. So then we the question is really is whether we're adapting or or disappearing. Because, right, the adaptability part of it, that's a strength to be able to go with the flow. And I don't know if go with the flow is the right thing, but in a stressful situation or if plans change or a situation comes up, like being adaptable is a strength, but we want to ask ourselves that question are we adapting or are we disappearing? And when does flexibility become self-abandonment?

unknown 24:24

Right?

SPEAKER_00 24:24

Think about environments where you naturally become smaller and compare those to the places where you feel expansive. Who gets the edited version of you? Who gets the real one? Who makes you feel like you have to explain yourself? And who allows you to simply exist? So I want you to ask yourself this question where in your life are you still asking, who do I need to be here instead of who am I here? Right? And once we be we begin showing more of ourselves, another fear appears, right? The possibility of being misunderstood. So, like I said, the visibility aspect and and really being seen, and being seen for who you really are. Because we you have to remember you cannot control how people see you. And this may be one of the hardest parts of authenticity. Now, you have all at this point gotten to know me a little bit more, and whether you're listening to this podcast or you read my blog online, or you follow Thrivewell on social media, or you've been here in person if you live close to our physical location. Living the authentic life that I have so far. Now, keep in mind, I still have masks that I'm learning to take off because true authenticity is really hard. Like, really, really hard. And it's not for the sense of showing up as my authentic self, is the hardest part. It's what comes after this whole part. We cannot control how people see us. So that people pleaser in me, like I'm talking about, and if someone's mad at me, or you know, I I still do care how people perceive me. And that is what can make authenticity one of the hardest parts. Um, because you can be clear and still be misunderstood, and you can have good intentions and someone can still interpret them differently. And a lot of times someone else's perception of you is filtered through their own experiences, right? I can't tell you how many times people would now get don't get me wrong, like I do push myself and you can hear I'm talking about burnout, and I do feel it. But there, but I am very capable. I know I can handle a lot. I've learned um, you know, there's moments where I have to rise to the occasion and I can do it because I've done it before in a different situation, and I know I'll I'll get through it. It's just I'm handling these situations a little bit too much these days and um not really being authentic with myself. So that's where I can really see, you know, me working on my people-pleasing ways, but also how still caring about how people perceive me. So when somebody does it through their own experiences, they might say, you know, you're really overwhelmed, you're really overloaded, they're putting too much work on you, you're handling too many things, you know, that's between school and work and home and life has a lot. But people will take their perception of you through their own experience. Like I said, so many people would tell me at my my last job that, you know, they're putting way too much on your plate. And those people, I would just I would be thankful that they are appearing to care about me, but I would just say, I just believe that my plate is bigger than yours. And that's okay. Because for me, my boss is also new. I really needed to be challenged if and and I can handle a lot of jobs at once. And um, it's you know, it's a blessing and a curse of an you know, a systems thinker with the brain that I have and and how much it can handle. But but there was a limit there that that was a delicate dance for my boss, my old bosses and I to figure out. But that would be a lot where I could, you know, say I listened to that person and said, Oh, I guess I am overwhelmed. And I stopped, started, you know, saying no to opportunities. Um, that's me changing who who I am or what I'm capable of, or shrinking or expanding, whichever way that goes, um, because of somebody else's perception of me through their own experiences. And I can't tell you how much energy, like we waste an enormous amount of energy trying to manage perception. I I tell you week after week, um, you know, how much of energy is is being poured into Thrive Well and how much I'm I'm giving it everything I've got. And I'm eat eating and sleeping and breathing healing, and I'm looking at all the time, and I still really, really struggle with how much energy I give to managing perception. The explaining, the over-explaining, clarifying something nobody asked me to clarify, the replaying of the conversations, that's a good one. That'll just go and go and go. Wondering whether someone's upset. Um, changing ourselves because one person reacted negatively. And like I said, social media certainly intensifies this because more visibility means more interpretations, more people means more opinions. So you can't build something meaningful and simultaneously guarantee everyone understands it. You just can't. You can't trust me when I say that, because people will have their opinions. And I will tell you, I'm I'm certainly not big enough yet that I'm I'm hearing those opinions through social media, but I am hearing them um outside of it, you know. But most of it, 99% of it, is really good. Because once you start to realize that you cannot be authentic and completely control the response, you know, you you start to ask yourself whether you're willing to be misunderstood sometimes. And I think being willing to be misunderstood is is a superpower because you don't owe everyone a defense story, right? Like you don't owe everyone an explanation or the reason why you keep repeating something or doing something or falling down and keep getting back up. When you release that need to be understood at all times, your life, I mean, it becomes limitless. You just really start navigating life with what is the best for you and your family and the people who are important to you. And it I'm like realizing this in lifetime. Everything that I've heard, all these motivational speeches, speeches, um, the deeper dive into certain practices that I'm learning now, it's all starting to make sense. And man, that statement really is too by um Carl Youngman that you know, life starts at 40 and everything else is just research because I'm just imagining my own life as we speak. If I a hundred percent, you know, being okay with people misunderstanding me sometimes, like how much that would change? What I stress about, what keeps me up at night, the decisions that I make. I mean, something I think that would come to mind is finances, like this mask of having it all together all the time. And and it's not like I just all of a sudden woke up and just said I'm gonna destroy everything. And I'm not saying I have destroyed everything, but I have certainly have a very good reason why financially things are a bit different. But the more open I am about that, and it's not like I'm shouting down Main Street what my financial situation is, but I'm be certainly being a lot more honest about it and just letting go what people think about that, right? I'm not some some unemployed loser who's just not making any money and sitting on the couch all day long. I'm I'm working, I'm building something, I'm I'm trying my hardest. And that's where if people misunderstand that, then honestly, it's none of my business. I don't care. It's not my problem. I I really don't anymore. And there's moments where that care will come back and I will nip it in the butt again. Because being fully seen requires accepting that being seen and being understood are not always the same thing. But then there's another side of visibility that really surprised me. The fear isn't always that people won't like what they see, it's more the fear of success. So we talk constantly about the fear of failure. I'm very I'm very familiar with the fear of failure. Um, but why don't we talk about the less obvious question? What if it works? What if the business grows? What if the podcast reaches more people? What if people start recognizing your work? What if people want more from you? What if an opportunity arrives that's bigger than what you've done before? Because with success, success creates responsibility, it changes expectations. Um I can really speak to that. Sometimes myself and most of the time I'm saying it to my my fellow um, you know, people in who are sober and in in recovery and understand how that change can change, you know, the expectation change, how much that does affect us. Because there's sometimes, I will be honest, when I'm just really tired and I don't want to look in the mirror, and I don't wanna I don't want to face anything, I do say, man, I wish I could just go back one day to nobody expecting anything from me. But what would that require? It would require me becoming egocentric again, only caring about myself. Um but it would also that would make it so I wasn't living authentically. Because even though I knew people didn't expect a lot from me, deep down inside, and not even deep down, it was basically the surface level, even still. I I wasn't happy with that. I didn't like that person who I was that people didn't expect anything from me. I like to be dependable. I like to show up for people. I like to follow through on what I say I'm going to do. And that's why I think, you know, as I struggled with this summer and just really being able to get myself organized and being able to show up in ways that are not just all financial, right? Just buying everything and making everything and showing up with all the stuff. Like, how do I show up as me? And and that I think is what comes from this type of work too, is that what is our, you know, what is that success or what is that worth tied to? Because success can change relationships as well, of course. Success can make you visible to people who weren't paying attention before. I've met so many new people, and so many people are watching my story, which feels amazing, but can also feel scary, right? Because when they come in and they say, like, oh yeah, you were supposed to do this, yep, yep, that went a little sideways. And that's okay. Um because when we have that feeling, it be I mean, staying small feels safer because small is familiar. It's the same thing as our comfort zone. This is where it is. We're safe here. Nothing's gonna happen to us here. If we go out there and we open ourselves to other people and their thoughts and their ideas and their comments, like that's it's a scary place to be, but it's not as scary as we make it out to be. Because, you know, when you think about something that you want to do and something that you're dreaming of, when you leave it just as a dream, dreams are safe when they're hypothetical. You're still in the hope factor. There's a lot of people who come through here and they end up coming up in the dreamer archetype pathway, and a lot of them are stuck there. Why is that? Why is it that when a dreamer is in the dreamer pathway, they tend to be there for quite some time, more so than the other archetypes. And I think it's that it's that exact statement that dreams are safe when they're hypothetical. Because when they're then they're in our heads and in our mind's eye and they're in the clouds or wherever they are, we don't bring them forward yet. They're still just dreams. You can still talk about them, right? Someday, someday. But if you say, hey, someday is today, and I'm gonna start taking steps to make that dream become a reality, we become very vulnerable in those moments. You know, like I said, it's one thing to say someday I want. It's a completely another thing to stand inside the beginning of it. And when you feel that fear, it doesn't mean to stop. I mean, it can definitely keep check of where that fear is because that might be your body telling you something. But sometimes fear appears because something matters. I think of that when I get nervous. You know, when I feel nerves, it means that whatever I'm going up against means that much to me. It's that important that if it doesn't go the way that I've been working towards having it go, then that's really gonna affect me. But then, you know, if you're working, if the thing that you're working towards actually succeed in, ask yourself, what uh what about that success would scare you? Because for me, I mean, I'd be scared of how it would affect my relationship, my relationships with others. I'd be fearful of time, right? Success can tend to pull you in different directions. Um, it expands your reach, so it's more people, more chances of what if I say the wrong thing to them and they don't heal the way I'm hoping they will heal. But that's why I think that fear, right? And and what about success that would actually scare us? I think that's why visibility and vulnerability are almost impossible to separate. Because even the vulnerable side of guiding somebody through their healing is just that that I'm guiding them. The person that is going through their own healing journey has a responsibility. And for me, I am not in a position to take on that responsibility. And if I don't take on that responsibility, then I'm not getting it wrong in a sense, right? Why am I so fearful of saying the wrong thing? Or, but if I work with people who are actively participating in their healing journey, because when we talk about that, that how much vulnerability is required in visibility, it goes on both ends of that. The person that's, and I know I'm getting a little more specific here, but in any interaction, it's it's required on both sides. And again, I'm not talking about it's not only visibility, it's not only posting your face online. Think about sharing your work. Sharing your work is vulnerability, saying what you believe is vulnerability, asking for something is vulnerability, launching something, applying for an opportunity, creating art, writing, loving someone openly, all of these things they require so much vulnerability. And if you think about what I just said, right? What you do for work, not for work, sorry, sharing your work. Um what you believe, applying for an opportunity, creating art, writing, all, all, every part of what I just talked about is such a such an intricate part of our soul coming from inside of us to the outside world. And that I remember reading one of my poems. I wrote a poem for my auntie Rainey, who passed away a couple years ago, unfortunately, um, from Parkinson's. And I had been writing poetry, um, like some of you may know, since I first got sober. And I wanted to write a poem for her. And that was my way of grieving and starting the healing healing journey of losing her. And I told my dad I wanted to read it at her at her funeral. And it wasn't until I got there that I realized this is the first time I'm gonna read one of my poems out loud to more than, you know, just my mom or my dad or or or somebody close to me in a circle. This was the first time I was gonna really um say it in front of a lot of people. And that was one of the most vulnerable things I had done because it was, you know, this aunt was, she was a very beloved aunt, and this was a very painful um, it wasn't tragic. We knew it was coming, but it was still extremely painful, extremely painful. And to process that, that's you know, I had to take part of my soul and put it out to the world. And and what I felt after that was incredible because I had a lot of people coming up to me saying, I wouldn't have had the strength to do that. I can't believe you went up and read that. But then other people, right? So you're you're getting some of that validation, I think is nice. Like it don't let it go to your head, don't let the ego get inflated. But I think sometimes having the validation feels nice when we do something that's really hard and then we hear how strong we are to do it. Um, but then I also heard other people talking about their own writing and how they've been wanting to get into poetry. And so that inspired them. And those are only possible, those conversations are only possible when we're being vulnerable. But when we, you know, saying this matters to me gives someone the opportunity to reject it. What happens if I went up there? I mean, given the given the situation. I doubt anybody would. But say, replace my aunt's funeral with an open mic night, right? Say somebody comes up to you and says, oh, that poem was terrible. Right. That's that's such a vulnerable thing to have to hear. Um, you know, when we when we take something outside, you know, from inside of us and bringing it to the outside world, and especially something that's as intimate as poetry or something that we create, right? But it doesn't mean you have to listen to that person, just a reminder, right? We don't have to be everybody's cup of tea. And not everything that you put out, everyone is going to love. So when we see somebody reject it, right, that's where the fear starts to come in and where we're afraid to be vulnerable. Because it's easier to pretend something doesn't matter. If we never fully try, failure has an explanation. There was so much of my, even within my own healing journey, that I wouldn't give something 100%. Because if I didn't give it a hundred percent or I didn't do all the work, you know, whether it came from even the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, I wouldn't even touch them because it gave me still an excuse of where I could, you know, allow those parts of me, right? Not really putting myself out there, not really allowing myself to be fully vulnerable. It was giving me the reason to say, well, well, the reason I can't do that yet is because I haven't done this or I haven't done that, right? We say a lot, I wasn't really trying, or it was just an idea, or I didn't put everything into it. Because if we fully show up, it removes that protection. And when we talk about how vulnerable it is to care deeply, right? And when we care, that's giving someone or a situation the opportunity to have access to our heart strings. Because when we caring isn't embarrassing, and trying isn't embarrassing, and wanting something isn't embarrassing, and being passionate is definitely not too much. Because sometimes the scariest thing isn't failing, it's letting people see how much we wanted it. And that's why where authenticity becomes something much deeper than simply being yourself. Because authenticity isn't performing authenticity. Remember that. We spend so much of our lives performing. I'm still working through that, as I said now. I'm taking mask after mask after mask off. I'll tell you honestly, I didn't realize I had so many layers of masks. Because when we think about it, we say that word pretty easily, authenticity. It's become a buzzword. And especially when we look at the world that we are with the social media, that can turn authenticity itself into a performance. We come back to this conversation time and time again. Because how much of your life is being performed versus being actually lived. And when we use that as a performance, we can almost fool ourselves. Look how vulnerable vulnerable I'm being. Right? I'm starting to learn that real authentic authenticity can be quieter. Saying no, changing your mind. Here's a good one for me. Admitting you don't know. That I need a little bit more practice on. Letting something evolve. Not feeling the need to explain every choice. Saying what you actually believe. Allowing yourself to outgrow an identity. Being authentic does not mean sharing everything. And that is another lesson I'm learning as well. Because privacy and authenticity can coexist. And and I'll I promise you that boundaries matter. Boundaries matter more and more the further into your healing journey you go. Because being fully seen doesn't mean everyone gets full access. Think about the protect pillar here. One of the biggest parts of the protect pillar is boundaries. Because authenticity is choosing what you share from truth rather than fear. And you can still have parts of your life that are private and it's not hiding. Just like you can have boundaries without shrinking. Because the important distinction there is that being fully seen does not mean being fully available. This is something I have definitely started to learn more these last few weeks. Honestly, it's not something that I'm beginning to learn more these last few weeks. It's I'm really starting to understand that lesson these last few weeks. I've kind of had a feeling that being as visible as I am and as authentic as I'm trying to live doesn't mean that gives everybody 100% full access to me. I can build things in quiet and I can make changes in quiet. But maybe the deepest part of this conversation is what happens when we stop waiting for permission to become who we're becoming. Right? And as we come to an end of this episode, because again, I'm trying to keep track of the time, but I have a way of rambling. I know that in myself. But on that note, let's talk talk more about stop. We want to stop shrinking before anyone asks you to. I am constantly worried about that. I talk too much. Because I do talk a lot. But when is it too much? And there's times it is. And I'm learning to find that balance, but for myself and understanding situations, not for anybody else. Because think about that in your own life. How often do we reject ourselves first? Don't post it, don't say that, don't apply, don't launch it, don't wear that, don't be too excited, don't talk about the dream yet, and certainly don't take up too much space. Sometimes nobody has even actually told us to shrink and we start doing that. Because we've learned to do it preemptively. We anticipate reaction and we reject ourselves first. And this honestly, all it does is create the illusion of safety. Because if I never step forward, nobody can push me back. But nobody can meet the fullest version of ourselves either. You can't have the good without the bad. And it's not saying, like even with what I just said, it's it's it's not bad. We're just showing the parts of ourselves that are not perfect. Because there's no part of any human being that's perfect. And the the sooner we learn that, the easier our healing journey and just being human will be. Um, but talk about, let's talk about allowing yourself to take up appropriate space, right? I just mentioned how I do talk a lot. So in a moment where I could be stealing somebody's thunder, I want to take up the appropriate amount of space there. I don't need to be the center of attention. But I also don't need to change who I am. I'm just respecting the space. Because visibility, when it comes down to it, it's not ignorant, it's not arrogance. Um, and when you have confidence, it's not superiority. Being cocky and having confidence are not the same thing. The same as sharing your work isn't believing you're better than anyone. And I have certainly learned in my own life, um, and certainly more recently, that sometimes visibility is a service. Because people can't connect with something they never know exists, and your work can't reach people if you continually hide it. So I want you to ask yourself this question as we start to come to a close. Where are you making yourself smaller before anyone has actually asked you to? And I think this brings us right back to becoming the sanctuary. Because what I want us all to feel is to feel safe enough to be seen. Becoming the sanctuary isn't about becoming fearless. You can feel vulnerable and still show up. You can care what people think without allowing every opinion to direct your life. You can be misunderstood and remain grounded in who you are. You can succeed without apologizing for taking up space. You can protect your privacy while still being authentic. You can change. You can outgrow versions of yourself. People who knew an older version of you may need time to understand the new one, and that's okay. And some people may never understand, and that's okay too. But that doesn't automatically mean you're on the wrong path. I want you to return to yourself. Ground into who you are, cleanse what no longer fits, protect what deserves boundaries, nourish what is growing, and align with what feels true. Visibility becomes less about convincing everyone else and more about remaining connected to yourself while be you're being witnessed. And maybe the goal isn't reaching a point where we where being seen no longer scares us. Maybe it's becoming safe enough within ourselves that fear no longer gets the final vote. Because there will always be people who understand you and people who don't, people who celebrate your growth, and people who preferred an earlier version of you. People who connect deeply with what you create, and people who scroll right past it. And the truth is, you cannot control any of that. But you can decide whether you're going to spend your life editing yourself in anticipation of somebody else's reaction. And maybe one of the most vulnerable things we can ever say is, this is who I am right now. This is what I believe, this is what I'm building, this is what matters to me. This is what I'm becoming, and I'm willing to let you see it. Not because I know you'll approve, but because I no longer want fear of your reaction to decide how much of myself I'm allowed to become. Well, thank you for spending another Friday with me. I never take these conversations or the time you choose to spend here for granted. This week, pay attention to the places where you instinctively make yourself smaller. The sentence you don't say, the thing you don't share, the opportunity you almost don't take, the excitement you immediately downplay. Ask yourself, am I protecting something that genuinely deserves protection? Or am I hiding because being seen feels vulnerable? You don't owe everyone access to you. You don't need everyone to understand you, but you do deserve the opportunity to experience what happens when you stop hiding from your own life. Until next week, be gentle with yourself. Take up the space that belongs to you, let yourself be witnessed, and remember, becoming the sanctuary also means becoming a place within yourself where the fullest version of you is finally safe enough to exist.