How Much of You is Really You?

I just sit for a while.

That’s usually how these blogs start. I sit with my coffee and rack my brain thinking about all of the things that have had my attention. I think about conversations I’ve had, moments that stuck with me, feelings, gratitude, joy, hurt, whatever has moved through my life over the past week. And then I search for the thing underneath all of it.

The low frequency theme that is just vibrating.

Yesterday, I had Phil Rivera on North of Normal, and after the show was over, we kept talking. This happens all the time. We’ll spend an hour recording a conversation, microphones on, everything being captured, and then something will be said five minutes after I turn everything off that hits me differently.

It’s almost like the universe saying, Amanda, you have to remember this with your brain. You can’t just record it. We’re not going to make it that easy for you. You actually have to pay attention.

Anyways, Phil and I started talking about sound frequencies and the way we can tune into certain frequencies that help us, hurt us, isolate us, or connect us. It made sense that this conversation would happen with Phil because he is so interested in audio and has spent most of his life around sound.

But I have been thinking about my own frequency ever since.

Something has been moving itself around inside me over the past week, and I have hesitated to put a label on it. I’m becoming more careful about labels because as soon as we name something, we attach everything we already believe about that word to it. Sometimes that helps us understand something. Sometimes I think it stops us from getting curious.

The word I keep coming back to is trauma.

Even writing that makes me hesitate. Trauma is such a trendy word. And it immediately screams “I’m a victim.” 

When I talk about repeated trauma, I don’t mean that the same terrible thing happened to me over and over again. What I’m beginning to understand is that I was an extremely sensitive child. I am an extremely sensitive adult. I feel things deeply. I notice things other people sometimes don’t notice. I think differently. And I think being that sensitive created a lot of potential for hurt.

I think that hurt accumulated.

Nobody sits down with an eight-year-old child and says, “Okay, Amanda. We want to prepare you for your life. You’re going to feel things deeper than a lot of people. You’re going to notice things other people don’t notice. You’re going to receive information differently than other people. Sometimes you’re going to feel like an outsider.”

Imagine how helpful that would have been.

Instead, we’re kids. Things happen, we experience them however we experience them, and we figure out ways to keep going.

I’ve spent a lot of my adult life talking about personal growth. Becoming more self-aware. Learning from mistakes. Changing patterns. Becoming a stronger version of myself.

But lately I’ve been wondering if some of what we call growing is actually just remembering.

Phil and I touched on this during the show. We were talking about his career in radio and events and what allows him to create the experiences he creates for people. His answer kept coming back to being himself. If you can be yourself, he said, you don’t have to worry so much about everything else.

I told him that I feel like I’m in this strange in-between place where only a couple of years ago I started realizing who I actually am, and now I’m coming into more of an understanding of myself. At the same time, I’m also realizing that the world is not necessarily structured to reward people for being themselves.

That conversation stayed with me too.

Because how do we “be ourselves” if we don’t know which parts are actually us?

There is a picture of me as a little girl that I use as the background on my phone. I see it every day. I’m wearing an Easter dress. My hair is done. I’m standing in a field in my church shoes holding dandelions.

The picture is blurry, but I can tell I’m smiling.

I love that little girl.

I’ve been looking at her differently lately.

A message came across my Facebook feed a few days ago that stopped me long enough to take a screenshot. It said, “Nothing is scarier than waking up one day and realizing your whole personality was just a trauma response. That your calm was actually suppression. Your independence was built on not being able to rely on anyone. Your perfectionism was just fear in disguise.”

Yikes.

I’m not reading that and deciding that every part of my personality can now be explained by trauma. I don’t think it works like that, and quite frankly, that feels like another way of rushing to put a label on something before understanding it.

But it did make me ask some uncomfortable questions.

What parts of me developed because they are truly part of who I am? What parts developed because they helped me survive something? What behaviors have I been proud of that may have actually been ways of protecting myself? And if I no longer need all of that protection, what is underneath it?

I don’t know all of the answers yet.

I do know that protecting ourselves from hurt makes sense. Especially when we’re young and we don’t have the tools, language, control, or understanding that we have as adults. We do what works. And sometimes what works becomes so familiar that we stop recognizing it as protection. It just becomes part of how we describe ourselves.

Independent.

Calm.

Strong.

Responsible.

Careful.

Whatever the words happen to be.

And I’m starting to wonder whether understanding myself now requires more than looking at the person I have become. Maybe it requires remembering the person who was there before I became so good at adapting.

I think it’s good to do a regular remembrance of who we are.

And when I say that, I’m not talking about opinions. I’m not talking about which political party you belong to. I’m not talking about which religion you identify with, your sexual orientation, your job title, your business, or any of the other categories we use to explain ourselves to other people.

I mean you.

Who are you when you pull all of that away?

Who were you before somebody hurt you?

Who were you before you learned what made other people uncomfortable about you?

Who were you before you learned which parts of yourself were easier to hide?

I keep looking at that little girl with the dandelions.

She had no idea what was coming. She didn’t know yet which experiences would shape her, which ones would hurt her, which ones she would carry for years, or how hard she would eventually work to understand herself.

She was just Amanda.

And I think maybe part of what I’m doing now isn’t about becoming somebody better.

Maybe I’m trying to remember her.

Not so I can go backward. Not so I can erase everything that has happened since that picture was taken. I have done amazing things with this life, and every version of me that came after that little girl got me here somehow.

But I want to know what was there first.

I want to recognize the difference between who I am and the things I learned to do because I was afraid of being hurt again.

Maybe that’s something worth doing every once in a while. Not asking what we need to fix next, how we need to grow, or who we’re supposed to become.

Maybe asking who we were before we got so good at protecting ourselves.

Before we learned which parts of ourselves were too much, too sensitive, too different, or easier to hide.

What was there before all of that?

I don’t know what your version of the little girl standing in a field holding dandelions looks like. Maybe it’s a photograph. Maybe it’s a memory. Maybe it’s just a feeling you haven’t thought about in a very long time.

But I wonder what you might remember if you got quiet enough to look for it.

Not the person you think you should become.

The person who was already there.

-Amanda

Amanda McKeen is a Littleton-based writer, business owner, and host of North of Normal, a radio show and podcast exploring the people, places, and ideas that shape life in New Hampshire’s North Country. Catch up on past episodes at clearviewadvantage.com/podcast.