THE COST OF HIDING: THE SOMATIC STORY OF A LIFE LIVED OUT OF SIGHT

There is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from hiding.

Not the simple, everyday guard we all carry.

But the deep, cellular kind - the hiding you learned before you could speak.

The hiding that became your way of existing in the world.

For many people with complex trauma, hiding isn’t a behaviour.

It's a survival strategy written into the tissues.

It's an exquisite vulnerability that was never allowed to be visible.

The parts of you that needed warmth, attunement, or holding were the very parts you learned to tuck away.

What most people don’t realise is that hiding has a somatic shape.

It has sensations, impulses, micro-movements.

It has a posture, a velocity, a rhythm.

And when you begin to see it clearly, you also begin to see the extraordinary intelligence behind it.

The First Rule of Hiding: Stay Small Enough to Be Safe

The earliest form of hiding happens inside the body long before it shows up in behaviour.

A slight collapse through the sternum.

A pulling in of the belly.

A narrowing of the throat.

A softening of the gaze until it blurs.

These are not signs of weakness.

They are signs of a nervous system that had to make itself small in order to remain connected.

In homes where anger erupted without warning…

In families where emotion was too big or not allowed…

In environments where your needs were too much for the adults around you…

Your body learned a quiet truth:

Visibility is dangerous.

Vulnerability is forbidden.

So you disappeared — not fully, but just enough.

Enough to avoid punishment.

Enough to avoid overwhelming the people you depended on.

This is where the lifelong hiding begins.

How Hiding Becomes a Personality

By adulthood, hiding rarely looks like hiding.

It looks like withdrawal — the kind where you turn inwards so far, even you can’t find yourself.

It looks like deflection — the quick joke, the gentle pivot, the skill of talking without revealing anything.

It looks like humour — bright, warm, disarming, used like a shield.

It looks like intellectualism — mastering knowledge so you never have to show softness.

It looks like arrogance — the puffing up that covers the collapsing in.

It looks like being the expert — helpful, competent, always the one who knows, so no one ever thinks to look past the armour.

Hiding can look like kindness.

It can look like caretaking.

It can look like confidence.

It can even look like expansiveness.

But inside, the body stays folded in.

Inside, the vulnerability remains untouched, unseen, unspoken.

The world might admire you.

The world might rely on you.

But the world doesn’t meet you - not really, because the you that longs to be known is still behind the protective veil.

The Pain of Hiding Isn’t Just Emotional - It’s Physiological

People often say, ‘It’s exhausting to pretend.’

But the truth is more biological than that.

Hiding is a full-body contraction.

It is a freeze response braided together with fawn.

It is vigilance running in the background even when nothing appears wrong.

This constant low-level protection tightens the jaw, the diaphragm, the pelvic floor.

It restricts breath.

It narrows the field of vision.

It changes the cadence of speech.

It interrupts sleep.

It makes joy feel suspicious and connection feel dangerous.

This is why people who hide often describe a feeling of living behind glass, close enough to others to see them clearly, yet unable to let themselves be touched.

It’s not lack of willingness.

It’s lack of capacity.

Your body hasn’t forgotten what happened last time you were visible.

The Moment Hiding Breaks You Open

Sometimes the hiding starts to crack for reasons you can’t name.

You might notice a tremor in the chest when someone cares for you.

You might feel a heat in the throat when you try to speak a truth.

You might feel grief rising with no story attached.

These are signs that the body is tired not of you, but of carrying the weight of invisibility.

Trauma doesn’t only come from what happened.

It comes from all the parts of you that had to be exiled in order to survive it.

When those parts finally begin to stir, the body sends signals:

A sudden collapse of energy.

An ache behind the heart.

A trembling in the hands.

A restlessness that won’t settle.

You are not falling apart when this happens.

You are beginning to unfurl.

Why Hiding is So Hard to Let Go Of

Hiding kept you alive.

It protected you.

It created predictability in environments that were anything but.

It allowed you to function in the world when you had no other tools.

Your system doesn’t release something that important easily.

Even when you want to be seen, your body hesitates.

Even when you try to open, something closes.

Even when love arrives, you doubt it.

The body isn’t resisting healing.

It' checking for danger.

You don’t undo a lifelong survival strategy with force.

You undo it with safety - consistent, gentle, embodied safety.

The Somatic Pathway Out of Hiding

Healing begins with recognition.

The first step is noticing when hiding happens in real time:

the way your shoulders lift,

the way your belly draws back,

the way your voice shifts into competence or humour.

You don’t force yourself to be visible.

You simply observe the moment you start to disappear.

Then you offer your body the one thing it never had:

a sense that what you feel is allowed.

A hand resting on the sternum.

A slow breath into the sides of the ribs.

A quiet internal acknowledgement:

‘I don’t have to hide from myself.’

Visibility doesn’t begin with other people.

It begins with you staying present to your own sensations.

Only then does the next step become possible:

letting another human being see something small, tender, true.

Not everything.

Not all at once.

Just one clear thing your body can tolerate sharing.

Healing doesn’t demand exposure.

It invites emergence.

The Tender Truth

The parts of you that learned to hide are exquisite.

They are fierce.

They are loyal.

They carried the weight of keeping you safe long before you had words.

Hiding was never the problem.

It was the solution.

The healing isn’t about stripping away that strategy.

It's about expanding your capacity so the strategy is no longer your only option.

And slowly, with patience and kindness, a new possibility arrives:

You can be seen without being destroyed.

You can be vulnerable without being punished.

You can stay with yourself while staying with another.

This is the quiet miracle at the heart of trauma healing —

the moment your body realises visibility is no longer a threat,

but an opening.

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