The Incredible Human Ability to Hide From Others What is Going On Inside
Among the most incredible skills of adult humans is to be able to hide, completely, from others, what is going on beneath the surface.
And, closely linked to that, to be able to shift untold turmoil beneath the surface so that it can move from completely occupying to less than background noise.
No matter what is going on for us, most of us have examples of thinking about or speaking about terrible news in our lives and then going to a coffee shop or a supermarket and interacting with a barista or cashier as though nothing was going on.
The amount of progress created by this ability is… if I slow down to comprehend it… mind-boggling.
My ability to feel stressed, anxious and/or upset about something and - sometimes using a set of activities developed over many years - and sometimes more mysteriously move that out of my system enough to function in the day-to-day is responsible for much (if not all) of my work.
As I started to write this article, I realised I wasn’t sure if there was one ability here or two.
My three-year-old daughter seems very clearly to be doing the thing I wrote about in the second paragraph. She moves from tragedy back to normal in a second. The suggestion that something could be a game can often end tragedy and bring back excitement. She isn’t hiding or pretending; she has just processed and moved on.
This is available to us, at least partly, as adults, too. We can choose far more of our in-the-moment experience than we usually remember. On some level, we really do have the power to choose how we feel.
But present in my mind is that first ability, too. The ability to look completely normal to those around us even when we feel different.
A less-obviously-fruitful exercise, and one with obvious costs.
I’ve written before, for example, about Robert Holden’s idea of dysfunctional independence. And our expert abilities to hide our struggles even from those who know us well prohibits new levels of interdependence, partnership, help and love.
But not with no benefits.
It seems clear to me that our ability to seem fine is an adaptive super-power. Early in life (and earlier in our evolution as a species), showing our vulnerabilities all the time can carry many risks.
The ability to manage ourselves is fundamental to fitting in, developing releationships, being invited back to play again, creating community and functioning as a society.
We’ve all met the child (and adult) who can’t manage themselves. It makes things difficult for them.
And yet like all parts of ourselves, all the things we have learned, we have to be careful.
Too much of anything can be lethal.
Where does our ability to seem fine cost us?
What happens if we don’t gently unscrew the lid on the fizzy drink bottle that is our self and safely release some of the pressure?
Where does our unwillingness to be a burden on someone else hinder those we love from loving us?
These are the questions that we can ask ourselves as we seek to transcend and include the necessity to hide, and give ourselves the power to choose here, too.
To choose, sometimes, to share.
And, sometimes, to be strong.
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This is the latest in a series of articles written using the 12-Minute Method: write for twelve minutes, proof read once with tiny edits and then post online.
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