Dropping the performance
The terror and relief of showing up as our true selves
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A song I’ve been enjoying:
I started writing an entirely different piece yesterday and just deleted 1600 words, so here I am with a blank page again. What I was writing about yesterday just doesn’t fit what I’m feeling today — a reminder that it’s okay to start over when something more aligned or in tune is calling to us. Even with writing. Even with anything.
The other day on Instagram, I shared that I’ve never made six figures in a year and other notes on being a person. I got more messages than I have in a long time on that platform (including many who are shocked I haven’t used my platform to make more money) and it made me wonder why simply sharing the truth about ourselves seems so profound, so vulnerable (even when it isn’t vulnerable for us), so revolutionary.
I’ve been writing honestly in public for years now, and it never ceases to amaze me what happens when we choose to just say the thing, just tell the truth, just let our humanity exist out loud — when we practice letting go of performing some ideal version of ourselves and instead allow others to see us for who we truly are, even when who we truly are doesn’t seem as enticing or cool or admirable as the ideal avatar we think we’re supposed to be.
Our world has set us up to perform. It’s set us up to feel like we aren’t living up to what could be when our lives and selves don’t look like that ideal version. It’s set us up to compare, to think bigger and more is better, to extract everything we can from others and the earth, to believe surface-level relationships are all we can expect, and to see performed perfection as impressive instead of seeing the full humanity of others and ourselves as enough.
I’ve always been wary of this, since I was a child. The emptiness of having to perform gratitude when I didn’t feel grateful, or pretend I was something I wasn’t, or yearn for things I wasn’t supposed to yearn for gave me such a distaste for our collective inability to be with what is real. I constantly desired realness. I desired to know how people were really doing, what they truly wanted, what lit them up and angered them and made them want to keep going. I wanted to really know others — not just the social performance version, but the full one. And I so rarely got to see the full version of anyone. I still don’t get to see it often because of this conditioned performance we’re all doing all the time.
It isn’t lost on me that we miss out on so much by doing the thing we think will get us true connection, true intimacy, true belonging. We edit and mold and morph ourselves into that ideal version because we think it will get us the things we’re yearning for, when those things will never even be possible unless we are real. We’ve been set up to think we’re supposed to be perfect while we quietly hold contempt for everyone we assume is perfect. We’ve been set up to perform for belonging, all the while never trusting our belonging because we never feel seen for who we actually are. What a trap.
So when I write, I do my best to write from a real place. From a place that isn’t performing vulnerability or authenticity but is instead just being myself, which sometimes includes sharing things others assume is “vulnerable”, and other times includes sharing beautiful photos, and other times includes sharing so many parts we’re taught to hide or keep secret. And it sadly goes against what we’ve been taught to do, which is why so many think it’s vulnerable or “brave”.
I’ve spent my whole life being a secret as an adoptee — I’m still a secret to my birth father’s entire family — and it is painful and leaves a hole where wholeness could be; I have no interest in increasing the hole. I want to increase seeing each other. I want to increase the relief that comes from saying what’s true. I want to increase our collective capacity to hold each other in honesty instead of distancing ourselves from one another with the endless performing. I want to increase intimate relationships instead of relationships that never get past the masks we’re wearing. I want to increase our ability to move beyond shame, move beyond fear, move beyond being who we think we need to be to belong instead of trusting our innate belonging to ourselves and the world. I want to increase the relief of being seen for who we truly are, for the tattered and torn bits, for the successful bits, for the cool bits and dorky bits and uncertain bits and expert bits and scared bits and fearless bits and everything in between.
It’s hard to be our true selves in a world that doesn’t always make it safe or possible to do so out loud. It’s hard to be our true selves when we are surrounded by performed ideals, by masks and surface-level interaction and pseudo-”fine”ness. It’s hard to trust we can just say what’s true when everywhere we turn is another person sharing their Before and After story. I sometimes feel like it would be safer to just perform some ideal version of who I am, forgetting that comfort doesn’t always equal safety and discomfort doesn’t always mean we’re not safe. It’s hard to believe it’s okay to live in our full complexity when we’re taught to keep it all together, to be one thing, to hide, to make our true selves fit into a tiny box for the comfortable consumption of others.
Yet when we choose to slowly dip our toes in, to slowly practice saying what’s true instead of performing, to slowly reveal what is underneath the surface and trusting we won’t get swept away… the felt sense of true intimacy and belonging becomes more possible. The depth of connection we crave becomes more reachable without needing to perform. The capacity to show up fully in our lives as who we actually are becomes less scary. Maybe not all at once — not in every way — not in every place — but inch by inch, which is much more than never dropping the performance at all.
May we be like trees in Autumn, dropping what isn’t needed.
May we feel the weightlessness of being seen for who we truly are.
May we embrace the hard parts of performing less and being more.
May we believe in what is possible when we show up honest.
May we see ourselves in one another as clear, real mirrors.
May we trust we all arrived here belonging already, no masks needed.
May we stay honest about the difficulty of letting our true selves out.
May we notice when the performance arises and be kind to ourselves.
May we sense the safety felt with those who truly see us.
May we slowly and tenderly put down the skins of our performed selves.
May we let go of the judgment we feel towards others who practice being their true selves out loud, who practice saying the thing, who practice being real.
May we let go of the judgment we feel towards those who don’t yet know how to drop the mask, who don’t yet feel safe to show up honestly, who don’t yet believe they can.
May we allow the path toward showing up as ourselves be as rocky and messy as it is without thinking that means we’re doing something wrong.
The truest version of you deserves to exist in the world. The truest version of you is enough. The truest version of you belongs. The truest version of you has so much to offer, to receive, to teach and give and love and witness and be held and experience and exist. I am inching toward letting that version of myself out, slowly over time, as hard as it feels some days. The performance creeps in sometimes not because I am bad but because I am human. Yet the slow inching toward letting my truest self exist in the world feels like the deepest breath in the freshest air, and I truly believe we all deserve the relief of a deep breath in the widest meadow in the most beautiful place on earth.
△ Who Is Going to Therapy in America?
△ This beautiful essay by the incredible Rebekah Taussig
△ The sweetness of this song and video:
△ The Outcry in Iran Over the Death of Mahsa Amini Is About More Than Just Grief
△ Should I bring anything to dinner tonight, or just my crippling anxiety?
△ This playlist
△ Creative rituals to welcome fall, from Becca Piastrelli
△ One of the local farms near my house always feels like a hug from the land
With care,
Lisa
😭💛😭 Lisa, this is such a beautiful and profound share, thank you so much.
I have CPTSD and I am deep in the depths of my healing journey and one of the things I have had a hard time being compassionate towards, is having to show people my sadness, dissociation, flashbacks, suicidality, because there is simply no hiding it, it is all too loud. I am unable to perform and put a mask on. BUT I HATED it, I hated that I couldn't hide it. I used to be SO HAPPY, all the time. So where was this all coming from? I am much more compassionate now, but it still pains me to think that I can't always be the sunshine in people's day like I used to be; actually, I often feel like a rain cloud on people's day, especially my friends who I have needed to lean on through all of this.
Something I have learned from you though, something that has helped me be more compassionate towards all of this is our sadness, our grief, and the deep numbness I feel (and I'm sure others feel too), actually lets me know what matters most. I also share a deep desire now to know how people are REALLY doing, I don't want to hear the performative "good" that we all think we have to say. Or my favorite is when someone says, "living the dream" I actually think these people are probably having some of the worst times haha. I want to hear someone tell me that they are having the shittiest day, not because I want them to be having a shitty day, but because they one feel comfortable enough to share that with me, but are also being freaking honest.
And Lisa, I think that is why so many people love your writing, because it is so honest. So thank you, thank you for continuing to practice showing up as yourself. Thank you so much for this warm embrace, it was much needed.
Thank you for writing from a real place, Lisa. Thank you for putting words to feelings. I always thought that I was a socially anxious person because I would dread gatherings that were built around these surface-level performance relationships that you speak of. They drain me to my core. My body tells me before my mind that I am uncomfortable by producing painful knots in my neck and setting my jaw in a rigid hold. I have to spend the whole next day unraveling the tightness and then filling myself back up with things that feel soothing and real- reminding myself that I am real. I have come to realize that this thing I have labeled as social anxiety or feeling like I am missing something that everyone else has might just be my yearning for realness. I am actually pretty comfortable and relaxed when I feel safe enough to drop the performance and when I am surrounded by people who are speaking and acting from a place of truth and essential humanity. My hope is that I can carve out my little corner of the world that I can retreat to when the performance of life feels overwhelming. My even bigger hope is that more and more people will start to feel safe enough to drop the performance and just live in the space of imperfect vulnerability- embracing and encouraging their own and each other's messy realness. I do think it is happening. People are exhausted. Thank you for the soothing balm of your words to our tired souls.