5 Things That Will Happen If You Stopped Believing The World Is Out To Get You

photo by Toa Heftiba

We learn at a very young age that in order to win at the game of life, we need to protect our true selves. As toddlers, we studied the faces of our caregivers and measured their behavior. We instinctively understood what it took to be safe and loved and we adjusted our behavior accordingly. More or less, we did what we had to do in order to keep the people who fed and loved us happy. Hiding true selves became a tool for survival.

Fear, generational curses, pleasing, and silencing ourselves are useful coping mechanisms we employ to get ourselves out of childhood alive.

We learned to interpret every sigh or minute inflection in our parents’ voices. We knew what brought a smile to our friends’s faces. We learned how to avoid the bully. We adopted attitudes, beliefs, and actions to fit in. Our truest selves were all but buried in the process. We put on masks to fit in at home, school and in the world around us, and we became disconnected from our true selves.

We arrive in adulthood believing it is safer to wear the mask and play nice in the sandbox than it is to risk ridicule or alienation. Our inner selves atrophy. We no longer trust ourselves. We grow resentful.