The Surrounding Bricks are not a Castle

Tearing down false selves in pursuit of authenticity and joy

This essay is from the archives, and was originally published in May 2023. Want to access all of my archives? Become a paying supporter of this newsletter and you can read over three years worth of writing (and also see all of the different iterations of this newsletter, which is fun on its own). A year’s subscription is only $38.

I grew up in a house full of self-help books.

No, that’s a lie. I did not grow up in a house. We lugged the books from apartment to apartment, packing and unpacking boxes of flat paperbacks with pastel-colored covers and titles about the healing power of crystals, finding the light, and finding your purpose, along with mass market copies of Dianetics, Self Analysis, and The Way to Happiness.

You Can Heal Your Life and Your Erroneous Zones were standards on my mother’s nightstand, along with the true crime books she loved.

There’s no such thing as a dead end, only a border.

I grew up convinced there was something wrong with me. It wasn’t just the books, but my mother herself, whose rages were unpredictable and terrifying. It wasn’t always me she was mad at, but it was always me who was there, so I took it in.

Like the perfect receptacle, I held it all.

Her rage sometimes manifested into physical abuse, but it was often words, which stung more and, unlike physical wounds, lasted forever. I transmuted everything into: there must be something wrong with me.

I transmuted everything into: I am a bad person.

My mother called me many things. Selfish; fat; disgusting; annoying. We moved often. Sometimes, I’d confide that I was having trouble making friends and she would comfort me. I’d let my guard down and tell her everything— how the kids made fun of my falling-apart shoes or the cigarette smoke that clung to my clothing. How I’d once again said or done the wrong thing.

Over time I’d feel nauseous during these confessions, but I couldn’t resist her embrace. Her love. I wanted it so badly. Nausea was my body’s way of reminding me of the repeating pattern: I confess and confide; my mother comforts me. Then, when I inevitably set off her rage, all of my vulnerability is turned against me. Red-faced, my mom told me exactly what was wrong with me: didn’t I understand that those kids would never be friends with someone as selfish and stupid as me? If I weren’t so fat and ugly, I’d have an easier time making friends.

All of these things happened before I was ten. Before I was eight.

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I recently read the book Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents. I didn’t like it at first: it’s rhetoric felt too pathological, categorizing people into behaviors. But I kept reading, and after implementing some of the practices I learned quite a bit, which surprised me.

After thirteen years of therapy (some before my mother’s suicide, most of it after) I’ve spent over a decade unearthing buried selves and sifting through my past in order to become more present. Much of my personal work has been about letting go of dysfunctional coping mechanisms that had kept me alive through intense trauma. Specifically my bulimia and indoctrination into diet culture. An internalized core belief (and delusion) that thinness equaled happiness (spoiler, I’m fat now, and much happier than I have ever been).

The author, Lindsay C. Gibson, writes about the role self that we develop during childhood in order to please our parent(s) and keep ourselves safe. I think, to some extent, every child has a role self, but when someone grows up in a home where their parent is dangerous, untrustworthy, prone to abuse or neglect, or too passive, the role self becomes the whole self, and one’s true self gets lost under so many layers of protective armor.

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For the past few months I’ve been telling my therapist that I am scared of people.

Don Quixote’s extraordinary battle // Walter Crane // 1900

I tell my therapist I’m scared of being hurt and deceived. This feeling was initially triggered after a bad roommate situation in autumn 2022, and via my PhD program, which had shuttled my little soul back to high-school; a deeply traumatic and lonely time.

This fear is real, but it’s also not real. It was real in the past, when I was a child and teenager. Much of the fear I experience now arises from past experiences, but also: as an autistic person who was shamed for so many behaviors as a child, my fear is less about people hurting me and more about being found out.

I have been scared of being seen. Of having strong opinions. Of hurting people’s feelings. Of saying no. Of being ridiculed or duped into loving someone when they really want to hurt me.

Gibson writes about three selves: the true self, the role self, and the healing fantasy.

In one exercise, she asks her reader to compare their “true self” to themselves now, indicating that one must look at themselves before the age of nine, and sometimes earlier.

I remembered myself as a five year-old— how bubbly and excited about everything I was. I remembered moments of being shamed for my enthusiasm, for my joy and need for attention. Not only shamed, but abused. Physically pushed away. I remembered learning to stuff those beautiful and complicated parts of myself way, way down. To hide them from everyone. I replaced my enthusiasm and joy with a persona of nonchalance that always felt inauthentic.

When I was twelve years-old I stood in front of the bathroom mirror practicing my scowl; frowning and knitting my eyebrows. I embodied that expression like a force-field. Honestly, I needed it. I ran away for the first time at twelve years-old. I’d spend part of my adolescence living on the streets. So the scowl served me in many way, but it also concealed my true self: a soft and tender child who longed for love and connection.

In Every Tree He Could See There Was a Little Child // Charles Robinson // 1913

That love and connection became my healing fantasy, which Gibson defines as a kind of fantastical future self a child invents. This is a survival mechanism. I imagined myself as thin and beautiful. I imagined fame and fortune. Then I would show them all: my mother, the kids who taunted and made fun of me; my absent father. I’d show them that I was worthy of thier love. Because at the moment I couldn’t prove it to them, and was not wholly loved by them.

A sign of growth is the discomfort I feel when I’m out of alignment with my needs and desires. If I can’t express myself authentically to others, why am I in relationship with them? Why sacrifice myself for others instead of making space in my life for people who will love me as I am? Gibson writes:

“Your true self keeps pushing for your expansion, as if your self-actualization were the most important thing on earth…it has no interest in whatever desperate ideas you came up with in childhood regarding a healing fantasy or role self. It only wants to be genuine with other people, and sincere in its own pursuits. Children stay in alignment with their true self if the important adults in their lives support doing do. However, when they’re criticized or shamed they learn to feel embarrassed by their true desires. By pretending to be what their caregivers want, children think they’ve found a way to win their parent’s love. They silence their true selves and instead follow the guidance of their role selves or fantasies.” -Lindsay C. Gibson.

There are a couple ways these dynamics can manifest as adults. We can blame everything on ourselves (which is what I often did and sometimes still do) or on others. Gibson calls this internalizing and externalizing.

I have always been hungry for people to tell me what’s wrong with me.

Bonkers, right?

But it’s true.

Maybe this is because of the self-help books I grew up with. Maybe I construed my mother’s constant criticism and abuse as love, and so that feels more like love than…actual love.

Probably both.

There were many times that, as a teenager, people criticized something about me and, instead of assessing their criticism (and them as people) I recalibrated myself in the hopes that they’d love me.

If someone criticized me I hungrily asked for me so I could further manicure myself. I vividly remember the visceral, embodied pleasure I felt when someone told me what was wrong with me. A painful pleasure, tingly and sharp. It made me want to hide for a little while, but only so I could transform myself. I was a chameleon.

I also lied.

Because of our transience, and because I was homeless for part of my adolescence, I learned that it didn’t matter who I was. No one knew me, really. I didn’t grow up with constant friends or companions. I composed fantastic stories about myself. In my late teens, I told people that my mother and I had traveled the world. We moved all the time, I said, neglecting to tell people that I had never left the country, except for Canada. I’m sure some people saw through my lies, but they probably felt sorry for me, just as I feel sorry for others who I catch in their own lies.

I knew on some level that my lying separated me from the relationships I truly desired. The lies were like a hand held out flat; a stop sign signaling: go no further. But I longed to be seen.

I built a wall around myself.

To understand this now— to see the wall so clearly, is both wonderful and incredibly painful. At forty-two, to realized this wall still exists? that I still hide? Not through lies (I am brutally honest now) but through people-pleasing.

The wall itself is unsafe. It’s not others who are unsafe, but being found out.

I’m scared of disliking people and scared of upsetting people. I am terrified of conflict. I have spent my life focused on making sure I am liked, rather than asking what I think about others. I wasn’t allowed that when I was younger— I wasn’t allowed to choose friends. I had to take what I could get. The pickings were slim.

And my mother? For whom I first began constructing the wall? I am still scared of my mother, and she’s been dead for over twelve years.

So, I hide. I don’t tell people what I really think. I agree with them. Still.

The surrounding bricks are not a fucking castle. They are a prison.

Am I surrounded by the massive brick wall of my late teens? No. But there is still a wall. It’s there. And I am ready to knock it down, brick by brick.

A short, demonstrative story:

back when I was twenty-eight, I left an abusive relationship and moved in with a bunch of bike messengers in Denver, CO. I was an absolute mess. I got fired from several jobs for not showing up; I did cocaine often; I drank a lot. Every day.

I was lost and sought answers at my church: the self-help section of Barnes and Noble. where I bought the book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and went to work improving myself.

I sat at the rickety fuchsia dining room table and spread my notecards out so I could see all the quotes and goals I’d written down. My roommate, an older bike messenger whose coke habit was worse than mine, came in for coffee. As he waited for it to brew, he asked what I was doing.

I’m trying to make myself a better person, I said, completely serious.

You don’t need to do that, you know, he responded, picking up an index card and reading it. There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re just going through something. You don’t have to fix yourself. You’re fine.

The moment was profound. At the time it didn’t absorb, but I return to it often.

There is nothing wrong with me.

That’s my mantra, right now. I have spent almost my entire life trying to be someone. That someone was based on external factors. How could I please the people around me? How can I keep people from hurting me? How can I hide these parts of myself that were so long ago relegated to the shadows?

Brick by brick, I tear the castle down. The castle is a prison. I catch glimpses of the other side with the help of my therapist and some dear friends. Someday the whole castle will be rubble and the other side will be everywhere.

I may spend the rest of my life learning to fully receive love and joy, but it’s a worthy pursuit. Knowing others and being known. Letting myself be fallible, wrong, and messy. Being unstylish and complicated and mistaken and needy for attention.

To say: this is what I want. Or: I didn’t like that. Or: I’m lonely. Will you be with me? To say it no matter what comes after, on the other side of the saying; because it’s true, and needs to be said.

Like I said. It’s a worthy pursuit.

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Tell me about your castle. We’ll help each other take them down. <3

You are never alone.