I write about what I see. And what I’ve seen for 25 years is this: people don’t usually struggle because they don’t know enough, work hard enough or care enough. They struggle because, somewhere along the way, they learned how to disappear.

Not the obvious kind. Not someone shrinking into a corner. I mean the quieter kind. The kind that gets rewarded.

I’ve seen it in boardrooms, leadership teams and conversations that were supposed to last an hour and ended up somewhere completely different. I’ve seen it in people who look successful, capable and entirely in control. And I’ve seen it in myself.

Looking back, I spent years being competent, capable and endlessly busy. Everyone could see me. But I couldn’t always see myself.

It doesn’t look like hiding

That’s the thing. It rarely looks like hiding. It looks like being dependable. Being the person everyone can count on. Saying yes when part of you means no. Checking your phone, not because anyone’s messaged, but because the room feels like too much.

It looks like saying, “I’m fine” so often that the words arrive before you’ve had a chance to think. Being known for one thing for so long that you forget there are other parts of you. Becoming the reliable one, the strong one, the sensible one, and the one who never makes things difficult.

At first it’s just for one room. Then it’s for every room. Then one day somebody asks what you want. And you realise you’ve become so good at being what everybody else needs that you haven’t asked yourself that question for years.

My Gran saw it before I did

In the mid-nineties, I was a new Mum, overwhelmed and trying to be everything to everyone. My Gran saw straight through me. We were in her garden, when she asked me a question. It wasn’t about work, or the baby. She looked at me and said:

“Are you looking after yourself?”

I remember pulling a face, because I genuinely didn’t know what she meant.

Then she said:

“It all starts with you.”

That was it. No framework, model, or methodology. Just one sentence. The older I get, the more I realise she was right.

Why nobody calls it hiding

Because most of the time it works. That’s why.

It helps you fit in, belong, avoid disappointing people, and sometimes it even gets rewarded. The hiding starts small. A compromise here. A role picked up there. A version of yourself created for a particular room that gradually becomes the version you bring everywhere.

Until something interrupts it. A redundancy, a relationship ending, a health scare. Sitting in the car for ten minutes before going into the house because you can’t quite face another conversation. Being asked a simple question and finding yourself unexpectedly emotional. Not because anything terrible has happened, but because something true has brushed against the surface.

Most people know something isn’t right long before they have words for it. The feeling arrives first. The language tends to catch up later.

What I know

I don’t think people lose themselves all at once. I think they lose sight of themselves in instalments.

One accommodation at a time. One expectation at a time. One role at a time. Then one day they look around and wonder why a life that makes sense on paper doesn’t feel quite right from the inside.

I don’t see this as a problem of becoming. I see it as a problem of remembering. Remembering what mattered before the noise. Remembering what you knew before you became responsible for everyone and everything. And remembering the parts of yourself that got left behind when life became busy.

Who you are isn’t missing. It hasn’t gone anywhere. It’s just been drowned out.

Remembering.

That’s the work.

A Hide and Seek Session gives us forty-five minutes to notice what you’ve stopped noticing.

Or start with Shine Softly – where I stop observing and start writing from inside it. Most emails tell you what to do. This one catches you in the act of hiding.