I recently reread a blog I wrote about ten years ago and found something I'd completely forgotten.
At the time, I was applying for a promotion and a mentor at work had said to me:
“We know you’re capable, but stop being who you think we want you to be and be yourself.”
I wrote that I couldn't make head nor tail of the advice for ages. I thought I was being myself. Reading it again now, with everything I've learned over the last decade, I understand it very differently.
I was capable. People could see that. I had a successful career, was progressing and clearly doing enough for someone to encourage me towards promotion.
But perhaps being recognised for what you can do and allowing people to see who you are aren't quite the same thing.
When Being Capable Becomes the Safe Option
I've spent a lot of time recently writing about my identity as the capable one. I know how to do capable. Give me something to organise, a problem to solve or a responsibility to carry and I'll probably find a way through it!
There's safety in that for me. Capability is measurable. You can point to the result, the job you've done, the problem you've solved.
Being seen feels different; there's less to hide behind. I think that's what my mentor had recognised all those years ago. I was showing people what I thought they needed to see, and I was good at it. I could perform competence. What I found harder was trusting that I was enough without adapting myself to the room.
Success Can Hide Us Too
We tend to imagine hiding as making ourselves small. Sometimes it looks exactly like that. We stay silent, avoid opportunities or don't put ourselves forward...and sometimes, we hide in plain sight.
The high achiever can be incredibly visible. She's the one delivering, progressing, collecting qualifications and reaching the next goal. Everyone can see her success, while very few people see how much of her sense of worth has become attached to achieving it.
The good girl knows how to read a room. She understands what's expected and has become very good at meeting those expectations. She may be admired for being dependable and easy to work with, while editing the parts of herself that might disappoint, challenge or inconvenience someone else.
A people pleaser can look warm, generous and wonderfully supportive. She remembers what everyone needs and is often the person others turn to. Yet she may have become so accustomed to accommodating other people that she's stopped asking herself what she actually wants.
And then there's my familiar territory: the capable one. Give me the responsibility, I'll sort it. I can be very visible through everything I'm doing while keeping the parts of me that need support safely out of view.
These strategies can take us a long way, that's partly why they're so difficult to recognise; they work.
Protective Strategies can help us build careers, relationships, reputations and lives that look successful from the outside.
The question I've become more interested in isn't whether the success is real; of course it is. It's whether we're allowing ourselves to be seen alongside it.
Who Gets To See You?
When I wrote that old blog, I talked about being much more myself at home than I was at work.
At home I trusted my instincts. I was happy parenting against the flow and making decisions that worked for us, even when other people might have chosen differently (and all of this is still true).
At work, I described myself as tense, disconnected and lost.
Same woman, very different experience.
I've thought about that distinction a lot since. Perhaps we don't simply have an authentic self that we either show or hide. Different environments can bring different protective strategies to the surface.
In some rooms, we feel free to speak; in others, we find ourselves editing before we've even opened our mouths. We read the room, work out what's expected and decide which version of ourselves will fit. When we do that for long enough, it becomes difficult to know where adaptation ends and you begin.
Being Seen Requires Something Different
Last week I wrote about stepping into the Arena before you feel completely ready.
But entering the room is only part of participation. You can be physically present and still stand at the edge of your own experience. I know I have.
Being seen asks something more of me.
It means sharing an idea before I've worked out exactly how everyone will respond to it; saying what I really think when it would be easier to offer the acceptable answer; allowing someone to help rather than maintaining the impression that I've got everything covered. Sometimes it means admitting I don't know.
For someone who has spent a significant part of her life being the capable one, that can feel surprisingly exposing, and yet I think this is where genuine connection happens.
People may admire the polished version of us, but in reality, they can only really know the person we allow them to meet.
Ten Years Later
What strikes me most about that old blog is how much I wanted to be authentic. I thought authenticity meant having the confidence to show people who I really was. Ten years later, I think there's another layer.
I've had to become curious about who that person actually is.
- Which qualities feel genuinely mine?
- Where am I adapting?
- When does my armour arrive?
- Am I choosing how I show up, or am I slipping into the version of myself I think the room will find easiest to accept?
I don't have perfect answers to those questions; I don't believe we're supposed to, but I notice them now and that gives me far more choice about who gets to walk into the room.
What Might You Be Protecting?
Writing this has reminded me how easy it is to turn these strategies into identities.
I'm just a people pleaser.
I have always been an overachiever.
I'm the capable one.
Except I'm becoming much more interested in what sits underneath those labels.
When does that particular version of you appear? What does she help you avoid? What might she be trying to protect you from?
Because once you begin to recognise the strategy, you have more choice about whether you need it in that moment.
I've created a Protective Strategies Quiz to help you explore which patterns you tend to reach for and what might be sitting underneath them.
If you've been recognising yourself as you've read this, you can take the Protective Strategies Quiz here.