Hiding our Inner World
One of the most damaging inner conflicts many of us often find ourselves in is the feeling of needing to hide our emotional state from others. The feeling that if people saw us fully, they would reject us. This feeling might arise when we approach someone we’re attracted to, when we enter a room full of people we don’t know, people we do know, or maybe even when we step up to the counter at the gas station. There are many situations in which we find ourselves instinctively forcing facial expressions and gestures, feigning interest in things we don’t care about, and otherwise projecting a false sense of “I’m happy to be here” to the outside world.
Though this might allow us to function better in a society that supports superficial interaction above intimacy and vulnerability, it is a tiring, costly façade, and actually has raises stress levels in the body, which overworks the immune system.
Most of us do not feel happy to be here all of the time. While the answer in those moments of depression and inner turmoil may not be to pour our hearts out to every stranger we encounter, neither is the answer found in hiding our truth. There is a way for a person to honor their inner state without making it other people’s problem. It is a skill that can be learned.
Though this skill takes effort and practice, it truly is rich territory to reside in. There is a freedom in setting down the armor, in letting go of the need to cover up our sadness and our anger, in showing up in the world saying “Yes, I am angry and I am sad, and there is nothing wrong with that.” Our health improves when we are no longer spending so much energy trying to cover up how we feel.
This does not mean we are throwing our emotional baggage on other people. It simply means we refuse to continue to view our current emotional state as wrong or bad. It is what it is, and if we can accept that, we might find that the connections we make from that grounded place of really allowing our sadness and anger are far more rewarding, far more nourishing than the connections we manage to make through forcing a false sense of happiness.
No matter how much people like the “I’m always happy” version of ourselves, we will never feel truly whole in those connections, because we know there is a shadow side of our experience that remains hidden away and unintegrated. Conversely, if we are all of a sudden disliked for bringing our truth to the table, we know which relationships to let go of.
