When I think back to my childhood, I realise that I felt invisible, most of the time.
There, but not there. Me, but not me.
I picture an evening around the family’s dining table.
My father, mother and brother at their usual seats.
At my seat—no one.
I was there, but the seat was empty.
I’d left years before.
Not physically, but emotionally.
Having not felt seen, heard, held.
Having not felt wanted.
I disappeared.
I put on a mask.
And stepped into the role of the person I hoped would be wanted.
Someone who could earn love, belonging, approval.
Someone who’d be enough and compare favourably.
But here’s the truth:
I was trying to be wanted, because I didn’t want myself.
When you abandon yourself, you will always feel abandoned.
No amount of praise can fill the void left by your own rejection.
You can’t experience a sense of worth from a place of inner emptiness.
And so I kept finding situations that confirmed the lie:
You don’t matter. You’re not enough. You don’t belong.
Until one day, I stopped performing.
I took the mask off.
I faced the pain, the shame, the self-judgement.
I sat with them. I let myself feel them.
The brokenness II felt for who I was. Or for who I’d never given myself the chance to be.
I looked at myself, with radical honesty, and I let myself step out of hiding.
And move from being invisible to others, to being visible to myself.
I faced the girl I had left behind.
And I chose to see her.
Not for who she was supposed to be.
But for who she was.
For who I am.
And that’s when the healing began.
Not when others saw me—
but when I escaped the prisons of my own mind and became visible to myself.
~ ~ ~
This is what I teach inside my free two-day masterclass: Freedom From Self-Doubt and Overwhelm. If you want to learn how to break free from self-doubt and overwhelm, leave the prisons of your mind behind, and build a life that makes you feel alive, reserve your spot now: www.pavlina.me/inner-freedom