how can they know you if you’re hiding

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey, how y'all doing? This is Brianna, and this is the Divine Intervention Podcast where I try my best to make space and learn how to take up that space. And today I'm here. If I'm being really transparent, because last week I filmed like 40 minutes and the mic wasn't on the whole 40 minutes, so it's just me talking and like no audio. But also, because the way I've started to operate in this whole podcast thing is I've noticed that whenever my film or like my video or audio messes up, it's typically when I wasn't being the most comfortable on the mic, anyway. I have this thing a lot of times when I'm talking, and I try to be very politically correct, and it's not I don't know when I started doing it, if I'm gonna be honest. I like to be very careful with my words because I feel like words are powerful, but also a lot of times it's hard for me to get across exactly what I'm trying to say, and so with that being said, I am happy to refilm this episode because the topic that I was discussing is something that really hits home for me, and it is searching for the words, it is stepping out of my expectations for myself and people's expectations for me. And really to just not try to get too deep into trying to explain it, I can just tell the story. When I was really little, um, I said it like I'm not still a little person, but when I was younger, I really struggled with my anxiety. And oh, pause, go back. I really struggle with anxiety, it is not mine, I do not take ownership of that. And it was always because I there was kind of this fear, a fear that I could never explain where it came from, which is why I'm a really big believer in just generational trauma and like healing generational trauma, because I truly believe I just inherited my nervous system, and when I tell you your girl was shaking, like shaking bad, and it wasn't until about third grade that I met my English teacher, and I'm not gonna name drop because I don't know if she's comfortable with that, but I actually went to see her recently and I thanked her because I was just a little a little bundle of shakes and shivers, and I didn't like talking to people, I didn't like answering questions, I didn't like asking questions. Quite frankly, I just wanted people to leave me alone. And she would sit with me and she really brought me out of my shell. I had a very hard time not second guessing myself, second guessing my gut, my intuition. A lot of times, especially in school, I didn't realize how bad the fear was not only impacting like me academically, but me socially. I couldn't really talk to people, I couldn't really engage because I was fearful of what I couldn't tell you. Maybe it was of somebody hurting my feelings, because I've always been a sensitive shoddy. My feelings get hurt very easily. That's neither here nor there. But it wasn't until she sat me down and she really taught me breathing exercises. That was the first time that I was introduced to a form of wellness. And it tremendously impacted me, me academically, socially. I still struggle to talk to people as the whole learning how to talk to people thing, that has been a very long battle. I think I've I've gotten better, but it's it's been a long battle. Um and when I started to perform well academically, that's when I ran into a whole nother I don't want to say an issue or a problem. But my whole life I've always struggled with boxes and expectations. And I always have because even in conversations, and this is how I would feel whenever I would talk to adults, like they tell you, you don't have to feel that way, you don't you don't have to feel like there's expectations on you. Like they say all that, they don't mean it. They they still very much have very heavy set expectations on you, and when you step outside of that box, you do get the repercussions of when you did not operate or function the way that people or society would have assumed for you to operate, which is also why, whenever even in college, I have this conversation with people about like society, and like I really I'm gonna get real transparent. I have always struggled with perception, and I've always struggled with perception because ever since I was a little girl, I pay a lot of attention to details. I'm very I observe everything, and I noticed even as a little girl, how people would care more about how things look than how they actually functioned. And so now that I'm an adult, I've realized that I still struggle with that. Like I really struggle being in situations or being in um community or especially in academia, because I think this whole conversation is gonna loop me back to school. How people talk like there isn't this status quo upheld by society that obviously is, and how that not only consciously but subconsciously impacts you in the way that you show up, in the way that you navigate spaces, in the way that you make decisions, it impacts us deeply. And so for me, after I got my anxiety, the anxiety, it's a learning process, after I got it somewhat managed, you know, um, still struggled with it. But over time I realized that I loved books, I loved reading, I love writing, I liked writing about my day, poetry, short stories, song lyrics. Like I just I loved to write. And most of the time it would be stories and things that are kind of like they would grow from my experiences or like my interactions. Um, because I've always been the type of person that I learned a lot through the lens of like other people, and so since I was such an observant child, I kind of I deeply watched everyone around me, and so I had an idea of how things work, but it was primarily through other people's experiences rather than my own. Um, because like I said, I was scared to talk to people, and you can't really have experiences when you're scared to talk to people. Um, and I had to learn that, and I was like, Bro, you're not gonna live life unless you go and you talk to folks. You can't be scared of everything all the time. Even in the worst case scenario, time is gonna pass, and that thing's not really gonna matter anymore. Um, I'm getting off topic. Back to I guess the topic at hand with boxes and expectations. After I learned how to manage, manage the anxiety piece of things, then the school piece of things popped up. Because I didn't always, whenever I do a time marker on like my academic endeavors, I always say I didn't start to really get my stride in school until probably like sixth grade, like early junior, high, middle school type vibes. Like that's when it clicked, and I was like, oh, I'm smart. But it really was because I I started to love reading. That's kind of when I fell in love with books, and so I was just always in books, I was always reading. I was a nerd, and I was just for me, I looked at it as me getting to do what I loved. But I think the other side of that was definitely the academic succeeding part, and over time I started to realize how much of a hold and how much of a large chunk of my identity that not only that I started to take up for myself, but for other people. It started to be the only way that people saw me. Like I wasn't, I was just the kid in school, like there were there was no other like additional factors or like additional pieces to how a lot of people interacted with me, and I really struggled with this because even in my current day in life, I tell people all the time that it's not that I am not aware, I'm very aware, but I don't see my academic performance as my main course meal, it's not like the entirety of how I see myself. I see it as more so like a like a you know how you cooking dinner and you have your main thing and then you have your sides, and the sides are really there to what's the word? Amplify the taste of the main thing. So to me, academics was like my mac and cheese, but it wasn't like my baked chicken, you know, it wasn't like the main thing because to me, my primary one of the things that I think is the most beautiful about myself is my character. I take a lot of pride in my character because that's something that I wake up every day and I choose. It's not something that was it, it's not a gift that I was I'm trying to find the words. It is a gift, but it is a gift that I have hand molded, crafted. It's a representation of me waking up every day and actively making the decision to pour into myself in that way. That is a gift versus academia for me. It's more so of like a because school didn't come naturally to me. I started, I needed like tutoring and everything, and like from the tutoring, I developed like my studying habits, and then from there, it was really discipline, if I'm gonna be honest for me. Um, because I do think that some things came for me naturally, but other things not so much, and over time, my discipline kind of just allowed me to like hone in on my skills or whatever you want to call it. But to me, school wasn't necessarily the main course meal of me, it was a side, yeah. And so it was very hard for me to navigate when I interacted with people, and it was it was the only thing they asked me about. Like it's the only thing that people would talk to me about. Like, even when people would talk to me, I could tell that in their head they're like, let me think of like a book or something, or let me think, let me ask her about like her grades or something. And it's like, dang, you can't ask me my favorite color. Like, at this point, I love gymnastics. I was like, you can't ask me my favorite flip or something, like every it got to the point where my the only thing people would talk to me about was school, school grades, school grades, school grades. I can't even tell you, like, if anybody asked for my like what was my favorite color for real. And at this time, I was really just struggling to it's really hard to make sense of yourself outside of something when it's literally the only thing about you that gets any type of screen time. And for me, in about seventh, eighth grade, that's when I realized, like, Brie, you don't even this isn't even really how you see yourself, this is just how everybody sees you. And for me, academia was also just an outlet, like it was, it was I we couldn't really afford for me to do the things that I was actually more so passionate about, and school was free, so it was it was kind of like one of those things where it's like we can't afford gymnastics, we can't really afford yoga classes. We we so okay, fine, let's just school is kind of the only thing I have at this point. Um, which is probably also why I struggled so long with this idea of everybody just primarily seeing me as just like academics, academics, academics. It just it was not the main way that I saw myself at all. Um, and then even a lot of my interests like can school weave into it, yeah, but that's just because I'm a nerd, and when I like things, I hyper-fixate on them. That's a whole nother conversation. We're not getting into that today. But taking this back to this idea of like expectations, one of the hardest things for me to let go of was this desire to I don't want to say succeed academically, but to just be the at the top. Like it was it was one of those things where and people can say whatever they want to say, they can sit and have talks with you, and be like, well, we really we don't want this to become one of the main things that you we really don't want this to bother you, and then they will simultaneously do actions that go completely against every conversation they've ever had to show you how they actually feel. It's kind of like one of those dynamics, and so by the time I hit seventh or eighth grade, I was just like, Look, Bree, forget what everybody else got going on. This is UV U. You know how you feel about this stuff for real. Um, and after like eighth grade moving on, I kind of made a vow to myself. I was like, Bree, you will not stress yourself out about school anymore. Like it is what it is, um, and it's gonna be what it's gonna be. And so, even as like a grown adult, I often found myself in college having to like remind myself that like, no, you're not, you're finna go to sleep. That can wait until tomorrow. I had a running joke that after 10 o'clock ain't nothing else getting did. Like, I had to really pump the brakes and get a hold of myself. Because, like I said, people will talk to you and they will tell you that these things don't matter, and they'll still support, and people will say all of that, and the second you get an award, that is the the only thing that they will talk about for the next two, three weeks. Like, people, uh, the thing I've always struggled with, even when I talk to like peers, is for me, especially with expectations, it's really society and people have this thing where it's what sounds good when it comes out your mouth, and then it's the truth. And it goes back to my battle with perception. At this point, I'm just brain dumping, I'm not trying to sound politically correct anymore, I guess. I guess people care more about perception, and so they will look you in your face and they will tell you, you don't have to be at the top, you don't have to this, you don't have to that, but will simultaneously set that expectation, will simultaneously I noticed when I was probably in about junior high middle school that whenever anybody wanted to insult me, that would be the primary thing they would insult me about. Like it would people would skip everything else and go straight to intelligence. And I always found it to be kind of ironic, especially because most of the people, I'm not gonna say that, that's me. Um, but they would skip straight to intelligence, like straight to, well, you're not that smart. Well, this person's smarter than you, or this or that, or they would skip automatically to like, well, you might you might be good in books, but like you're not good at this other stuff. And it would, it would always, it just became such a large part of how people even engaged with me, that I would sit and be like, it's hard for something not to become a centerpiece of how you view yourself when it's the centerpiece of the way that everybody engages with you. And so much so that even getting to college, being out of college, I am a 23-year-old grown woman, and I still have instances where adults look me in my face and play the well, I know that you were acting like I can tell you were at the top of your class card. Like it's it's one of those things where it's infuriating because it's not even the primary thing that I think of myself when I think of me, but it's the thing that people associate me the most with because when someone when someone really doesn't take the time to get to know you, they grasp for the things that feel obvious and the things that they feel like is openly visible, and I feel like I've always struggled with that piece of things because it goes back to perception, and it to me always traces back to this idea of not doing the work to get to know someone for real. There is surface level getting to know someone, and there is truly getting to know someone, and I think that going back to the idea of boxes and expectations, excuse me, when you really get to know someone trying to find the words, the mask, even I don't even want to call it the mask, but everything falls away. You're less likely to even put a stereotype or to put a primary thing. I'll put it like this I have my friends and I love my friends dearly. There is not one friend where I can tell you one thing about them, that's the primary thing about them because I understand that they are multifaceted, amazing human being individuals who have such a large array of like things that they care about that to pick out one thing honestly will be the hardest thing I would have to do. I just I don't know. And for me, I think it even took to it took me becoming this grown woman for me to even realize that I had to release, and it wasn't until my senior year of college that I really realized that I was like, Bru, you have to release the hope that people will understand you because they're not going to. You have to release the uh I really think it's just that like you have to release the hope that people will stop peopling because people always gonna people humans at the end of the day are just creatures that for them are looking to understand the world, and for a lot of people it's a survival mechanism for them to just place you in a box, even if it's not a genuine reflection of who you see yourself to be, it to them helps them better understand the world around them. It's like a coping mechanism, and it took me until my senior year of college to realize that Brie People are gonna continue to operate in the societal structures and the thinking patterns that are the most comfortable. For them, until they realize they're in a pattern. And you can talk to people until you turn blue in the face. But until they reach a genuine desire to want to view things differently, then the conversation will stay the same. I was really proud of myself when I decided to create this podcast, primarily because I knew that it would be a space for me to be unfiltered, raw, authentic in a way that I often struggle with because of fear. Also understanding that I can't expect for people to ever understand if I'm not unraveling more than the pieces that are already obviously visible. Fighting the urge to say if that makes sense, because yes, it does. I came to the realization that you cannot expect people to see you if you're continuously hiding. You can't expect people to understand you if you are not creating a space or being yourself. Not saying that I wasn't being authentic, I think I was very being very authentic, but I do believe that growing up I created this mold or this protective armor where I just didn't really want to engage with anyone that I didn't perceive to be safe. Not saying that's a bad thing, but there also comes to a point where you can't expect people to know you if you're not opening up. And I had this realization at the end of last year because I'm young, I am 23, I have my whole life, and I don't want to spend my whole life fighting to get out of a mold or a box that I allowed myself to be put in, in so many words, because I I think another big part of a lot of the work I've been doing on myself lately is realizing how much I have control over, because I also used to have a very bad habit of hyperfixating on things that I had no control over, but I think moving forward, what I'm trying to say on the point of this video is that in order for me to truly be able to see myself, I have to for one release not only other people's expectations of me because I don't think that's particularly what I've had a problem with. I think it's releasing my expectations on myself, but then it's also taking myself back to that little girl that grew up in the Delta that created a system to help her maneuver or navigate life. And I kind of allowed her to take the lead, even once I got to spaces and places where I wasn't required to be that particular person anymore, and I had the freedom to figure out who is the me that I know myself to be now, and so yes, I think that's all that I have to say. I wish that I had like some genuine like wrap-up or something, but I think this was pretty much just a brain dunk. If you stay this long, I hope you have a lovely day. Go water a plant, drink some water, because you you if you ain't drunk water today, you probably need some.