Who Did You Learn You Needed to Be?
For over 10 years, I tried to like downhill skiing. I'd married into a family that skied, my husband had skied his whole life, and it was a big part of his childhood. Everyone kept telling me, once you get the hang of it, you'll love it. So I listened to them. I let their words override what I was feeling.
I am petrified of heights. Not just scared but petrified. When I was a kid I was on a "mini" big wheel ride at our local fair, probably only 30 feet high, and they had to stop it and let me off because I was freaking out so badly. So when it comes to sitting on a chair lift as it takes you up a very high mountain, then standing at the top knowing you somehow have to make it down in one piece with two long planks on your feet, it's not what I'd call enjoyable.
When I was backpacking Australia, I was feeling pretty adventurous, so I signed up to go skydiving. I thought it might cure my fear of heights. Well, I did it, I jumped (or maybe was pushed) out of a plane at 14,000 feet and made it to the ground safely. Did it cure me? No. I think it actually made me worse, haha.
Anyway, I digress. One day in therapy we were talking about the things I was doing in my life, and skiing came up. She asked me if I enjoyed it, and I admitted I actually hated it. So she said, "Why don't you just stop?" I didn't want to upset my husband or his family. I knew my kids would be skiers, since they'd be born into it, and they were. Both of them were on skis by the time they were two, and both have a passion for it. My therapist reminded me this wasn't about anyone else except me. If I wasn't enjoying skiing, why not stop?
In that session I realized I had been lying for a very long time. Not to them, to myself. I eventually had to ask myself: when did I learn I had to be a people pleaser? That I had to be compliant, not rock the boat?
Most of us didn't choose these roles the way it feels like we did. Somewhere back there, something happened that needed a response, a season where you had to be the reliable one, the easy one, the strong one, the one who didn't need much. You found something that worked, and it worked, so you kept doing it. You adapted. And at some point it became a pattern, and maybe even an identity. You stopped feeling like something you were doing and started feeling like who you are.
That's how identity gets built when nobody's watching.
I wasn't a woman who loved skiing. I was a woman who'd learned that belonging had a price, and I was paying it on repeat. Skiing was never the point. The point was the rule underneath it, one I'd never actually agreed to, just absorbed.
I think almost every woman I talk to has a version of this. It's not necessarily skiing, or some other activity, sometimes it's the job you keep saying yes to more of, the family tradition you dread and never miss, the version of "fun" you perform because it's easier than admitting you don't want it. The specifics change. The pattern underneath is almost always the same: a role that made sense once, worn so long it started to feel like a face instead of a mask.
I'm not asking you to rip it off today. Awareness doesn't mean you have to immediately change the behaviour, noticing is the whole first step, and it's enough on its own for now.
Instead, I invite you to notice. The next time you're doing something and you catch that flicker of dread, ask the question before you push through it. Who taught me I needed to be this? And was I actually ever asked, or did I just adapt?
I'm teaching a free, live and interactive masterclass on exactly this, how these patterns get built, how they're still running your life even years later, and what it actually takes to trace them back and put down the ones that were never yours.
Where Did I Go?
Monday, October 5th at 7pm ET.
Online via Zoom
If this is resonating with you, I'd love to have you there.
Mel x
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