When Being Yourself Never Felt Like an Option

A comment in my recent post got me thinking about how much our capacity for healthy relationships depends on our capacity to see reality as it is. And perhaps one of the first places where we learn either to see or not to see is our relationship with our parents.

As children, we cannot always afford to see our parents clearly. If the people we depend on are emotionally unavailable, unpredictable, frightened, unable to reflect on themselves or simply unable to meet us where we are, seeing the situation accurately may be far too threatening. A child cannot easily conclude that the environment they depend on is incapable of providing what they need. There is nowhere else to go.

So another conclusion becomes possible: maybe the problem is me.

There is a strange kind of control hidden inside this conclusion. If my environment is the problem, I am powerless. But if I am the problem, I can change myself and make this work. I can become quieter or louder, easier or stronger, more useful, more interesting, less sensitive, less needy. I can watch carefully, experiment, adapt and become whatever seems most likely to restore connection.

And somewhere alongside the belief I am wrong grows shame.

They make a powerful pair. The belief creates the endless project of changing oneself, while shame makes it increasingly difficult to step outside the project and look at what is actually happening. Instead of being able to say, this environment is hurting me, the experience collapses inward into there is something wrong with me because I am hurting.

Sometimes the environment reinforces this conclusion even further. A child who already believes they are fundamentally wrong may begin behaving against their own nature in an attempt to become acceptable. They experiment because they have no idea what the correct version of themselves is supposed to be. And then they may be punished, rejected, shamed or met with anger for the very behaviours that arose from trying desperately to solve the original problem.

It creates quite a Wild West of possibilities. If being myself is apparently wrong, almost anything else becomes worth trying.

This brought me to a part of myself I have recognized for a long time: the chameleon.

I have always had an extraordinary capacity to adapt to different people, places and situations. It happens so quickly that it has rarely felt like a conscious choice. I do not decide to become someone else. Something in me simply reads the room, reads the person, reads what is possible here, and changes colour.

I used to see this mostly as a characteristic of mine. Now I wonder whether the chameleon was born precisely here.

If the first conclusion is who I naturally am is somehow wrong, the next question becomes: Who, then, should I be? What form will be accepted here?

And so the experimentation continues. Who am I allowed to be with this person? What makes someone come closer, what makes them withdraw? Am I too loud here, too sensitive there, too needy, too strange? Should I become funny, capable, invisible, interesting, helpful, strong? When there is no reliable answer, becoming extremely adaptable is an ingenious solution.

Do not commit to one form. Learn to change form.

There is something heartbreaking to me in recognizing how intelligent that adaptation was, because it also helps me understand why seeing myself has been so difficult. If attention is constantly directed toward who do I need to be in relation to this person?, there is very little space left for the much quieter question: Who am I when I do not need to be anything for anyone?

For the first decades of my life, I was extraordinarily good at becoming something other than myself. And every successful adaptation could take me a little further away from knowing what was actually mine.

This is why the path of self-knowledge has become so important to me. Not as another project of self-improvement, another attempt to finally become the correct version of myself, but almost the opposite: an excavation. A gradual removal of what was learned, performed and adapted in order to discover what remains when I stop arranging myself around other people.

I do not see the problem being that the chameleon could change colour. There is beauty and intelligence in that ability. Sensitivity, perception, flexibility, the capacity to move between very different worlds. The problem was that the chameleon had forgotten it had a colour of its own.

And there is another consequence to this that feels important: if I cannot see myself, it becomes incredibly difficult to choose differently.

How could I know whether a relationship is right for me if I immediately begin becoming the person who can survive inside it? How can I recognize what I want if my attention automatically moves toward what the other person wants? How can I notice that something violates my nature if changing my nature has always been the solution?

This is where I think shame and adaptation can keep each other alive for a very long time. Shame says, there is something wrong with you. Adaptation replies, then I will become something else. Every new form takes me further from myself, making it harder to see what is happening, and therefore harder to make a genuinely different choice.

I think this can travel surprisingly far into adult relationships. We can meet someone who is unavailable, inconsistent or unwilling to look at themselves and immediately begin working on ourselves. I need to communicate differently. this is my trauma. I need to become less reactive, more understanding, more compassionate, more patient. Is this relationship activating something because there is something here for me to heal.

And sometimes there is.

But activation does not necessarily mean that a relationship is meant to be continued. A wound surfacing may be an invitation to heal it, not an instruction to remain with the person who keeps reopening it.

I have begun to wonder how often we unconsciously look for our parents in intimate relationships, hoping to bring an old story to a different resolution. Maybe this time the unavailable person will meet me. Or perhaps this time the person who avoids themselves will finally turn around and look. And if I remain loving enough, conscious enough, patient enough, I will finally experience the ending I wanted from the beginning.

But there is another possible resolution to the story.

I can stop auditioning for the role.

Part of that, for me, has meant allowing my parents to be who they actually are. Loving them wholehearted and accepting them in their rightful place. Not who I needed them to be, not who I have imagined they could become, and not the healed versions of themselves that might exist somewhere in potential. Seeing them clearly does not mean that everything that happened was acceptable. It means no longer requiring reality to become something else before I can accept that it is real.

There is grief in that. Fantasy often survives for a reason. The imaginary parent preserves the possibility that one day the original longing will finally be answered. Letting that fantasy die means encountering what was actually available and what was not.

But there is freedom there too.

My mother can be my mother. My father can be my father. Their limitations can belong to them. I no longer have to find new versions of them in intimate relationships and try to persuade those people to finally give the old story its missing ending.

For me this seems to be one of the foundations of healthy relationship: the capacity to see another person without immediately turning their limitations into our project. To recognize potential without falling in love with it. To let people show us who they are, and to become capable of believing what we see.

And this requires learning to see ourselves at the same time. We can be clear mirrors to each other.

Instead of automatically asking what is wrong with me?, I can become curious about what is actually happening. What belongs to me? What belongs to the other person? What is old, and what is happening right now? Am I changing because something in me genuinely wants to grow, or because some ancient part of me still believes that if I can finally find the right form, someone will be able to love me properly?

Curiosity creates distance where shame creates fusion.

And in that distance, choice becomes possible.

Maybe healthy love begins there. Not with learning to tolerate more, understand more or love more blindly, but with becoming capable of seeing ourselves, our parents and the people we choose exactly as we are.

With our eyes open.