Choosing Yourself: How to Break Free from Self-Suppression and Reclaim Your Life
Disclaimer: This post is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional advice. Take what serves you and leave the rest.
For most of your life, you’ve probably been trying not to make waves. You’ve walked on eggshells, careful not to upset anyone or be labeled “too much.” You followed the rules, did as you were told, and tried to fit into the culture around you. But somewhere along the way, you likely felt a growing sense of agitation — like a small rock in your shoe that you can’t quite ignore.
This agitation is your inner self trying to get your attention. When our true selves are suppressed, our minds and bodies compensate, often through feelings of depression, anxiety, exhaustion, anger, or irritability. While painful, these signals are our guides showing us that we are off track.
As one expression goes, “Depression is the stop sign of the soul.” It’s a sign that something inside is saying, “No more,” and halting forward motion. Rather than ignoring or numbing this signal, we want to listen, because it is revealing to us where we’re out of alignment.
Our deeper selves actually know the direction we’re meant to go in, so it’s our job to listen. The true self speaks through feelings, sensations, and inner stirrings of truth that feeling energizing — even if our conditioned mind believes we should steer clear of them.
Understanding the Conditioning That Made Choosing Yourself Feel Dangerous
You have likely been conditioned to prioritize everyone else’s needs over your own. You’ve done this because it was the only option you had at a time when your survival and wellbeing were dependent upon how your caregivers felt about you (or so it seemed). This tendency to prioritize others is a nervous system response to relationships that have historically felt chaotic or unsafe.
I like to remind the women I serve that this nervous system response is automatic. Our survival strategies are hardwired inside of us to override our conscious minds in order to preserve our safety. If a car is driving toward you, you run — you don’t stop and think about how that driver might be feeling. You just act.
Prioritizing others needs over yourself is largely due to the same survival mechanism. An angry parent could easily be soothed by you dropping your needs and preferences and attending to what was happening inside of them.
Choosing yourself can feel wrong because you’ve been told it’s selfish. Over time, you learned to play the supporting role rather than the main character in your own life and it has come at a great cost to your wellbeing.
Infants Know How to Choose Themselves
All humans are born with the capacity to feel fully. Infants naturally express their needs without reservation. They have no other choice but to give into their own signals of need and so they do. They cry out to the world, demanding caring attention until their needs are met. Pretty badass.
This capacity for self-expression is innate, but eventually the child learns that there are rules to the game of life — especially the game of their family of origin — and begin to suppress and distort their true selves so that they don’t get exiled.
Learning to Suppress Your True Self
At some point, you likely learned that having your own ideas, feelings, or desires was unsafe or unacceptable. Your caregivers may have needed you to be an extension of themselves, placing their preferences above your own, and putting you in positions to carry out their vision of you. Your independence, then, became a source of tension or threat and it began the slow descent into the shadowy part of the psyche, where the parts of ourselves deemed unacceptable go to live.
As children, we have very few resources to support ourselves. There’s no one we can call, no bank account we have access to, and no route to stand on our own, so we learn to adapt. Survival often means adapting to our caregivers’ needs, which can come at the expense of our own authenticity.
The brain is not interested in making us happy, it’s interested in keeping us safe. But this poses a deep internal conflict because we are also beings attempting to individuate — to find ourselves amongst the noise of our surroundings and the pressures of our peers.
We are constantly looking for ways to evolve who we are, but our survival instincts tend to dominate and urge us toward maintaining the status quo at the expense of our authentic self-expression.
The Nervous System and the Fear of Authenticity
When you start stepping into your true self, your nervous system is going to respond with discomfort. Imagine wearing a bright red dress after years of dressing in grey — it will feel daring, thrilling, and perhaps even a little bit wrong. It goes against all the years you’ve worn grey and challenges that old identity.
The ego is ruthlessly attached to who it thinks we are. If you’ve worn grey for 20 years, then it thinks that’s who you are. The moment you put on red, your ego flags it as a betrayal, a signal that you’re off track. But you’re not. There is nothing inherently wrong with you wearing red, it’s just new. And the ego does not like new unless it fits within its purview.
Even though the fear or discomfort of becoming more authentic feels real, it is more often than not a memory than an actual reality. Imagine if you tried to grow a palm tree in Antarctica. Do you think it would thrive? No. But let’s say you decide to uproot it and replant it in its native habitat. What do you think would happen? It would thrive. It would grow tall, its fronds would sprawl out and become vibrantly green, and it may even grow you some coconuts. This is because it’s in its authentic environment.
Remember: You are no longer in the same environment you were as a child. You have the capacity to thrive now. Your adult self has resources like better self-awareness, the ability to assert boundaries, and problem-solving skills that can meet challenges and work through them.
Discomfort is not the same as danger. Growing into our authentic selves, as adults, may feel uncomfortable, but that’s because we’re unlearning old scripts and allowing for something new to take place. And remember — the ego doesn’t like the new, but that’s okay because new is not new forever.
Recognizing Old Patterns
Holding ourselves back from who we really are can manifest in familiar patterns, but the most common ones I see are:
Avoiding conflict by suppressing your real feelings
Over-functioning in your relationships out of habit
Delaying personal goals because you believe you’re not ready yet
Dismissing your needs out of fear that they’re “too much”
These strategies were once survival tools during a time when you had no other options. But now they hold you back and prevent your real self from emerging. Recognizing them is the first step toward change.
Common Patterns That Keep You From Choosing Yourself
Many of us unconsciously rely on self-protective habits that keep us from choosing ourselves and prevent action toward the lives that give us greater depth and meaning. Some of these include:
Minimizing your feelings: “Other people have it worse.” This is a type of self-negation that evaluates your feelings against the conditions of other peoples lives. It doesn’t make any sense because everything we feel is relative to us, however since it is a defense mechanism we have come to use as a way to keep our truth from being seen by others, we engage with it out of habit.
Overworking or over-functioning to earn validation in your relationships. This may be at the core for survivors of early relational trauma, because that is what your caregiver expected from you. They were the victims of circumstance, which meant you had to be their savior. You learned that the only way to get any recognition was to take on this overworking role, and even then the recognition was sparse.
Postponing dreams due to self-doubt. I see this time and time again. You have a spark of an idea, a nudge that keeps nagging you toward something bigger, but then doubt creeps in and tells you that what you desire is not really for you. That you can’t do it, that it will be too hard, or that others won’t like it. Self-doubt is the ultimate suppressor of dreams because it takes us out of our embodied desires and puts us into our heads where we end up overthinking the thing until there’s nothing left.
Suppressing anger or disappointment to avoid conflict. I understand that conflict can be challenging, but it’s nothing compared to what happens in our bodies when we keep denying and suppressing our feelings of anger. All feelings will find a route for expression one way or another, and if we continue to deny our emotions their right to exist, they will come out in other ways. Anger does not have to be explosive — and in most cases it isn’t. Anger can be a calm presence, asserting a boundary, claiming a need, and communicating something important in relationships. Feelings are catalysts that promote more freedom in our systems and support us in meeting our needs.
Perfectionism to avoid taking risks and being vulnerable. Perfectionism can be insidious, showing up as overworking, over-preparing, and getting stuck in behaviors that look like progress, but are really painstaking avoidance strategies. The way out of perfectionism requires that we become more willing to be seen as flawed human beings who are also doing our best. This is where freedom lives — the more we can let go of perfectionism in favor of allowing ourselves to be whole, flawed, but still worthy, the less fear we are going to experience overall.
These behaviors were once adaptive, but they can now limit your life. The key is awareness and stoking the fire of your will to override them for something more true to yourself. When you see how these patterns cost you energy, joy, and authenticity, motivation for change naturally arises.
How to Make Choosing Yourself Feel Safe Again
This is a muscle. Think of this as going to the mental and emotional gym every day so that you can get stronger. To reclaim yourself, it’s essential to create an internal safe space because this is where our sense of belonging and power actually lives. Here’s how to start.
1. Recognize Your Feelings
You’ve heard the statement, “validate your feelings,” well I want to take it a step before that, which is that you need to start by recognizing your feelings. Do you know how you feel when you’re angry? What does sadness feel like in your body? When you’re on the right track, how does that show up somatically, energetically, and emotionally?
When we can recognize that we’re having an emotional response to something — good or bad — then we can get into the practice of validating. To validate means we give credibility to what our feelings are telling us. We see them as signals coming from a deeper wisdom within ourselves and give them the respect they deserve.
If you’re out and about and someone approaches you, there might be a flicker of fear that shows up in your stomach and a sense of dread in your thoughts. Perhaps the old way would be to ignore those sensations so as not to offend this person, but the new way could be hearing the call of your feelings which would be to remove yourself from this person and disengage completely.
This is an example of validating your feelings in action. It can also happen in smaller ways too like noticing when you’re tired and prioritizing rest over engagement or feeling an urge to connect with a loved one and making the time to give them a call.
2. Separate Your Worth from Others’ Opinions
An opinion is not a fact, it is a collection of thoughts and perspectives coming to form an idea about something. When you base your self-worth on other peoples opinions of you, you’re forgetting that your self-worth is actually innate. You don’t earn self-worth because it is a given.
This mindset might register as false right now, but that is because there has been a disconnect from this awareness. When a baby is born, are they worthy or do they have to earn it? Does your opinion of them determine how you care for them, or do you simply care for them because it is the right thing to do?
We are all born worthy — it’s just that as we grow older, we forget this fact because we've been conditioned to believe it comes from what another person thinks of us.
You have to recognize that another person’s opinion has absolutely nothing to do with you. We form opinions based on our own subjective experiences, not on objective facts. So, someone’s opinion is more reflective of their inner states and beliefs than it is about you. Come back to that awareness again and again.
3. Practice Self-Support
Relying on our trusted relationships for support is a wonderful thing. I do not want to dissuade you from seeking support from the loving people in your life. However, if you are not in a situation where there are loving others around you, then it’s important you create a practice where you start to give that support to yourself.
There are many ways you can do this:
Journal your thoughts out — ask questions of yourself, evaluate your beliefs, get to the root of what is actually true versus what is a habit of mind
Engage in a dialogue with yourself, exploring your needs and feelings so that they have a place to be expressed
Speak to an active part of the self from a place of compassion, curiosity, and interest so that you can increase your own self-understanding
Focus on how you can met your own needs in a way that is honorable, safe, and loving
Turning toward hobbies or activities that support you in this moment (it could be reading, meditating, going for a walk, taking a breather, etc.)
At the end of the day, self-support is about how we meet our needs, feelings, and preferences from a place of kindness so that we can begin cultivating that internal space of safety and trust.
4. Start Small
Choosing yourself doesn’t have to be dramatic. It can be as simple as asserting a boundary in a low-stakes relationship, making time for you to engage with your hobby, or expressing your true feelings in your journal to actually experience what it’s like to know yourself in that way.
You don’t have to go galavanting into the unknown just because you think that is what you should be doing. Focus on what’s right here — what needs your attention right now?
If there are bigger things you want to be doing, break those up into smaller pieces too. What would be the first step you’d need to take toward that larger goal? Sometimes that small step is actually the biggest hurdle to overcome and the actions we take afterward can feel much, much easier.
Something I like to do is journal out this new thing I’m wanting for myself, imagining that I’m living a reality where that new thing is fully formed and expressed. This can be really fun and you tap into your imagination, which is where we get to connect to our capacity to create and fulfill our desires. Play with that and see what insights emerge.
Seeing Fear as a Signal, Not an Alarm
Fear is natural when stepping into uncharted territory. But it’s crucial to differentiate between true fear and habitual fear:
True fear: Protects you from real danger and is fast-acting.
Habitual fear: Rooted in past experiences, assumptions, or conditioning.
When habitual fear arises, notice it as evidence that you’re challenging old patterns. Pause and hang out with that awareness for a little bit. Breathe through the constriction in your chest, speak words of truth to yourself like, “I am choosing to be myself over keeping myself imprisoned by outdated beliefs,” and celebrate your newfound sense of self that is beginning to emerge.
Actionable Steps to Start Choosing Yourself Today
Here are some practical steps to reclaim your life:
Identify a pattern you want to change. Notice how it shows up in your day-to-day life and what it costs you when it dominates. What does it look like when you’ve overridden that pattern? What emerges?
Journal about what feels most alive inside of you without judgment. Don’t censor yourself, just write freely about what you want, need, or dream. Make it specific, vivid, and clear. You can dial it up a notch — write as if those wants, needs, or dreams were already here. You were already living them. What does that look like?
Set small, concrete steps that allow you to actually make progress toward your desires and goals. I used to dislike this suggestion because I wanted the thing to happen NOW as if I could wave a wand and poof it into existence. But, the reality is that we have to start small otherwise we’ll overwhelm our systems and revert back to the old ways of being. Break it down into manageable steps — maybe the first step is going to therapy to look at these patterns, the second step is speaking up in your meetings at work, and the third step is doing an Instagram live talking about your experiences.
Practice saying “no” in low-stakes situations. Each “no” strengthens your individuation and independence and reminds your psyche that boundaries are allowed. If a friend asks you for coffee and you really don’t want to go, honor that. Say, “Thanks so much for the invite, but I’m not feeling up for it today,” and feel the relief that comes when we express our truth.
Build supportive relationships that honor your authenticity rather than demand conformity. This is going to be a game changer. As social beings, we need healthy relationships to lean on. We live in an age where you can find your people with far more ease than was available to us in the past. Join a gym, an online membership, a yoga studio, a meditation class, a weekly book reading at your local library, a hiking club…anything that connects you to people who lift your spirits and are seeking a similar way of life.
The Long-Term Benefits of Choosing Yourself
The journey to authenticity isn’t instant, but the rewards are profound:
Greater self-awareness and clarity
Increased resilience in the face of challenges
Improved relationships based on mutual respect
A sense of purpose and alignment with your inner values
Freedom from self-suppression and habitual fear
As you consistently make choices aligned with your true self, your confidence grows, and the “rock in your shoe” of agitation gradually disappears.
Conclusion: Awakening Your True Self
You don’t become your true self through sheer willpower alone. It’s about awakening the dormant voice within you and giving it permission to guide your life.
Every small act of choosing yourself strengthens your internal compass. Habitual fear may accompany you, but it becomes a companion rather than a barrier and simply serves as reminder that you’re stepping closer to a life of value. Each step across that threshold brings resilience, purpose, and clarity.
Now is the time to wake up to your own potential. Begin today by noticing where you’ve been suppressing yourself—and take one courageous action to reclaim that part of you.