I had some expectations before this trip. I thought I was going to feel inspired and creative – I expected it to be a brief hiatus, a change of scenery, to help finish the projects I had started back home.
But of course, things never go to plan.
I never know how I am going to feel in a week, in a month, or tomorrow.
An emotional low can emerge at the most inconvenient times. It happened throughout the entire human design conference last year (my mind was so pissed). It happened again on this family trip to Seattle.
this was not how things were supposed to go!! we were supposed to be happy and enjoying myself and productive and and and
we weren’t.
It often takes me a minute for me to accept this. To accept the fact that things will not go to plan, or match my expectations, or be the imagined fantasy my mind cooked up. No matter how long I’m in my experiment, this seems to be a consistent theme I’m dealing with—managing expectations, accepting the reality of an experience.
There is nothing like being back in the family group dynamic to bring up all your shit. Habitual patterns resurface. Pain-points are prodded. The residue of conditioning still lingers, despite how much you were convinced it was gone.
I am currently being forced to re-confront parts of myself I would rather turn away from. Parts I have consciously turned away from, hoping if I ignored their existence, they would disappear on their own.
Right now, I am feeling a concoction of fear, uncertainty, and the sickly warm discomfort of shame.
I was Facetiming an old friend the other day, someone who has known me through several different phases of my life. We have both watched each other through the tumultuous era of our early 20s, the coming-of-age movie you don’t want to show your parents. We share a friendship which has survived multiple bond-breaks (she is also a 3/5) and yet, we seem always come back to each other. She doesn’t care at all about human design by the way. I think it’s important to keep people in your life who don’t.
Talking to her on the phone helped to piece together this mishmash of feelings which have been surfacing since visiting family. She said to me, lovingly, after I was crying for what seemed the hundredth time of feeling like a disappointment, comparing myself to my peers, and wistfully wishing I were somewhere else other than here (paraphrased):
“Chiara, I have known you for a while and I have seen you go through many iterations of this over the years. You have a prickly core of shame, and that may take some time to untangle.”
I sometimes wonder if the more I’ve leaned into my “projectorhood” if it has exacerbated these feelings of shame. In a way, human design gave me an excuse to hide even more, curl into a ball and disappear into the shadows, until someone would hand me the golden invitation served on a silver platter. I don’t think this strategy has worked for me. I don’t think that day is ever coming.
I think the invitation is usually not what we expect it to look like, and that our idea of what it should look like often prevents us from seeing when it’s clearly staring us in the face.
But anyways, I digress. That is an essay for another day.
***
I have gone through most of my life feeling embarrassed of who I am.
I felt ashamed in the classroom of raising my hand, of speaking up, of getting things wrong because I didn't want to look stupid.
I felt ashamed when I didn’t have my first boyfriend during high school. Nor university. Or now, being well into my mid 20s, still yet to have that experience.
I felt ashamed of how drunk I used to get to suppress my social anxiety, never knowing when enough was enough, waking up with no recollection of what happened. Or worse: knowing what did.
I feel felt ashamed for not working these last two years1. For living off inheritance money. For not having a stable job and “falling behind” my peers.
And I know none of these feelings are particularly unique. I know it’s common to be feeling all of this and more during your 20s. Or at any age for that matter, a result of being human.
And whilst it would be nice to have someone validate me for my decisions in life, to tell me I’m doing a good job and I’m heading in the right direction, sometimes that isn’t going to happen. Sometimes nobody is going to give me a gold star.
Maybe this is what adulthood is: realising that the person who needs to validate us is ourselves. Realising it takes courage to take up space in a room where nobody might “get” your decisions in life. Because if you cannot stand for yourself, it doesn’t matter if you received all the attention and recognition and validation in the world. It’ll all be framed through the prism of your self-perception.
I would be lying if I said I don’t care what people think about me. I do care what my parents and family think2. I do compare myself to others. I do feel sensitive to comments or criticism or people not understanding or agreeing me. I am still terrified when I put myself out there on the internet, subject to either the dopamine rush of approval or trial by public opinion.
Yet, when I look over my life and short 26 years, I have always experienced the most growth when I am pushed out of my comfort zone. When I teeter on the edge of discomfort and fear, I have no choice but to step into a stronger version of myself. I have nowhere to hide. It feels like ripping my skin off, but it is the only method which has built any resilience.
Third line resilience and third line shame — how interesting these are core tenants of the third line personality, the double-sided coin, perhaps one always circling back into the other. An experience or mis-take leading to shame, but the exposure of shame leading to resilience.
***
These feelings have been reminding me of something I went through a few years ago.
Back in 2018, I applied to go on a journalism internship in Indonesia for credit towards my bachelor’s degree. I was accepted.
I don’t remember going in with many expectations. It was the first time I was travelling alone overseas, without meeting friends or family on the other side. Mostly, I was excited.
However, in the first few weeks of my program starting, I felt consumed by an avalanche of social anxiety and shame. Everyone who was also accepted into the program were incredibly smart and intelligent, seemingly more confident, and eons more accomplished than me. They had already done their internships with the ABC or SBS3. They had already been published and paid to write. Or were the editor of their university newspaper. Or anchor of their student radio show.
They all seemed to know what they were doing. They all seemed to understand politics, which I felt (still feel) like I’ve never been able to wrap my head around. I did not feel like I belonged there. I wanted to disappear.
The first two weeks, all I did was cry and call my mum and self-isolate from everyone else. I remember walking out of the classroom one day with no warning, sitting on a plastic chair outside on the balcony, trying to calm myself down through box-breathing to ward off a panic attack.
It took about three weeks until I started to adjust, both emotionally and culturally. After what initially felt like agonising torture, drowning in the seas of my own self-criticism, I eventually started to relax. I began to enjoy myself. I started to make genuine friendships, many of which have left deep impressions on me to this day.
Applying for that internship turned out to be one of the best decisions I ever made. The experience was beyond rewarding, but it was not at all comfortable. It was incredibly emotionally challenging. Not because the work itself was particularly hard. But because it dug up all my shit and all my shame. And I had to confront it, expose it, and continue to move through it, even when I felt like my vulnerability was too much to carry.
The point to sharing this anecdote—and how it relates to my current experience—is realising this:
in the spaces of emotional discomfort, I tend to grow
when themes of shame resurface, I am reminded they still exist within me (and can influence my decisions)
when I am surprised by an experience turning out differently to what I thought, I know it’s exactly what I need at that moment in time
***
So often, we have to confront the same stories of conditioning over and over again. None of the above is particularly new for me. The mind is repetitive. The ingrained grooves are well-worn pathways. Naturally, we are made to revisit them each time they become activated.
But the intensity lessens with each revisit. I am not entirely convinced these feelings will ever disappear. Yet, I think I can live with that. Maybe I’ll learn to laugh at them too.
In a way, I am grateful. I am grateful for being reminded these deep-seated fears and anxieties still exist within me. I am grateful for being shown the ways I still hide from others out of shame and embarrassment. I am grateful when things don’t go to plan. I am grateful when my expectations aren’t met. I am grateful for the emotional lows. I am grateful for awareness.
Living as yourself does not mean things will always be easy. It does not mean you will never be afraid, or experience challenges, or be moved towards the edges of your own discomfort.
It means you most definitely will. And as painful as it may be, I will continue to show up anyway.
*Correction: I felt ashamed my “human design business” failed. Even though I was technically self-employed, I spent 90% of the last two years crying and watching Netflix and sitting at parks and listening to Nirvana. Not that this is a bad thing — I wish I knew this back then.
In a family where most of my cousins are studying to become doctors or lawyers or teachers, I have most definitely gone rogue.
The public broadcasting services in Australia i.e. the state-funded news channels.