“You don’t have to share.” - This is something a lot of people have told me over the years. Family, friends, practical strangers, really, a lot of people have told me this. “You don’t have to share.” “You don’t have to share so much of yourself/about yourself.” “You don’t have to put that out there for everyone to know.”
I had a health flare start in October 2020 and I struggled in the winter. I took a whole month off totally by my own choice too. But in that month and in the rest of winter I found many people telling me those phrases. Just in the past week I've had a few people say it to me.
Beings that it’s recent and fresh on my mind I thought I’d share about this.
Health, Spirituality, Personal
Not only have I had people tell me this about my health, they also say this about my spirituality too. Really, it’s been a theme in my life since I was in the single digits that a lot of people tell me, “You don’t have to share…”
I assume for many it comes from a good place of wanting to reassure me that if I feel obligated to share, I don’t have to. I don’t have to share if I don’t want to. I shouldn’t feel forced to share. I assume that’s what they mean. I can’t know for sure though because no has ever clarified.
I would guess that some people may be taking an angle of wanting to protect me too. Knowing that the things I share could open me up to getting hurt, they encourage me not to share as a way to try and protect me.
What people don't know...
What people don’t know, because I never have shared this, is that when people tell me things like that, although I can logically rationalize what they may mean, to me it feels different. It feels like they’re actually saying, “You shouldn’t share. It would be better for everyone if you just keep that all to yourself. I and everyone else will like you more if you just keep quiet.”
Now, the reason I internally feel that way is because when I was very young I did have people say that phrasing. Also when I was young I tried to tell a few peers about my spiritual connection and it was not received well. So I closed up. Then in my teens when I got sick I tried to open up to friends or new friends, and everyone always just left right away. The evidence I’ve been shown in life is that people DO like me more when I don’t share about who I really am.
Not only that, but I went to a private school for 12 years and I would get in trouble for speaking up or questioning things. What school taught me was that being quiet and obedient is what what’s good, that’s what everyone wanted from me.
I’ve always been quiet. I was always a quiet kid. But no one asked why I was quiet.
What people don’t know is I’ve practically spent my entire life staying quiet because I felt like I had to, because this is what everyone wants and likes. This is what’s accepted. This is the only way I’ll be accepted — if I’m quiet and obedient and don’t voice my opinions and don’t share who I am and show that I’m different. It’s better if I shut up and blend in. Be normal, do something normal with my life. That’s what I’ve been taught by the world.
What people don’t know is that being quiet (as I’ve always been) hurts me, down to a soul level. That isn’t me. That isn’t authentic to who I am to just silence so much of myself.
What people don’t realize is I’ve always wanted to share. I’ve always wanted to show who I am, but every time I’ve begun to tons of people just rush in giving some form of the same sentiment, “You don’t have to share.” It happens every single time.
I have more to say that what I speak
I do think I’m naturally a soft-spoken person. I can be a person of few words depending on the situation. But what I think comes loud and clear through the way that I write is there is so much more that I have to say than what I physically speak. I write far more than what I speak.
Writing has been a sort of safe-haven for me, a place where all of my thoughts are free to live. Because if I’m being honest, I have never felt fully free to speak.
Part of why I got into blogging and YouTube and sharing about my health and healing journey, and eventually sharing about my spirituality too, is because I’m pushing myself to share. I want to share, I’m just scared to share because I was taught by so many that I’m better liked when I’m quiet.
It’s sometimes a challenge for me to share because I’ve been so frequently discouraged from sharing, because that voice of criticism, one that is not my own, is just so loud and feeds my fear. And I do have my own fears too.
From the time I was in single digits I knew I was different. I could tell that I saw and felt things that others didn’t. That did scare me, but being encouraged to be quiet is really what fueled that fear.
I don’t feel like it’s safe to be myself or show who I am, because so fucking many have discouraged me from it. The evidence I’ve been shown is that they’re right.
But on the other hand, I also have seen a ton of evidence that my courage to speak about things has touched a lot of people. With my health and mental health advocacy I’ve strived to educate, to validate, to comfort others and let them know they’re not the only one going through this. And I’ve done that. Sharing was also for me too, and it has been healing for me.
Spiritually, I haven’t seen as much positive yet because I’ve only just dipped my toe into sharing.
Why do I want to share?
If I’m to get deep into the psychological question fo “why” I’ve always wanted to share, and if I peel away all of the years of trauma I’ve had revolving around this, if I look back to who I was as a toddler, I don’t think it’s that complicated. I think I simply just wanted to shine my light, be myself, do things I enjoyed, share about what excites me. I think for a lot of us that’s true too. I don’t think it’s instantly some super complex thing.
I don’t think as a toddler I was seeking validation, or acceptance. I can persoanlly remove those variables because I knew my family loved me. Home was really the only place I felt safe to me myself. That's really always been true. It's the only place I've ever been loud, or talked a ton. My family are the only people who know how much I actually talk. I'm naturally quite a chatty person. Or I was, I guess.
It was just with time and with more people (and school) discouraging me from being myself, it’s like it was drilled into me that I should care about validation, and acceptance of others. And that’s when life got fuzzy and I started to lose sight of who I actually am.
Authenticity
One of my words for the year of 2021 is authenticity. For a long time actually I’ve looked back on who I was as a toddler as my sort of “north star” for this whole authenticity thing. Because back then it wasn’t complicated and there wasn’t tons of voices drowning out my own inner voice yet. I was just me. It was that simple.
I'm figuring out what authenticity looks like for me now, but it's hard. It's hard because those old voices are still in my head though, because there's so much noise and bs blocking me from...me.
Sometimes I get bummed that I've allowed myself to stay so small and so quiet for so long too, but that's a venting session for another day haha.
Point Being
To tell someone not to share because others won’t agree or won’t accept them is shit advice. Of course not everyone will agree. If the rule is to only share if everyone will approve of what you have to say then you would never speak.
Unfortunately… I spent most of my life just accepting that, that I would simply just never speak.
And I've been working for years on undoing this shit.
Trust me, I don't share if I don't want to. But I'm trying to no longer not share because I think others don't want me to. That's the undoing.
