How Can I Overcome My Fear Of Being Known?
This post answers questions for The Council from a reader named, Saturn.
Saturn: Hi. I want to ask about how to heal my reserved side of myself. I’ve always been very closed off and scared when I meet new people. This frustrates me as my personality is not actually like that, and people usually misunderstand who I am because I’m unable to express my true self.
Council: Your true self is to be quiet and not express yourself a lot. It’s your purpose in this lifetime to accept yourself the way you are, and not try to change and be the way different people want you to be, so you can be 10 or 20 people fulfilling everybody else’s thought of who you are. So we would say, relax into you, being quiet, being reserved. Accept yourself. It’s a wonderful place to be.
And we would also like to put out there that being this way, you will teach other people about how others are that are reserved and quiet, who they truly are. That they are nice, or they are mean. You will teach them. And that’s the purpose that you have all agreed to. So whoever you meet, you have pulled in to show them that perhaps being quiet is a nice gift.
And if you accept it, and can smile, and talk when you feel like it, others will see how true that is. Being quiet is a nice gift. And they may want to get to know you better, but not forcefully. They will learn to accept what you have to offer.
Saturn: This might be because I grew up in a strict childhood environment, and trauma caused me to be repressed. People sometimes think I’m too serious or that I’m judging them, even when I’m not.
Council: So can you accept them? Let them think what they want. Let them judge you. That’s none of your business, what they think about you. You are only to be who you are and accept yourself, and then they will learn to accept you.
Saturn: I have no intention of making people feel hurt or uncomfortable…
Council: That is a good thing.
Saturn: …yet I still am, with just my presence of being too distant and cold. But I remember even before that as a very small child, or even as a baby, I have always been afraid of people truly seeing me. I feel this fear to the depth of my soul, as if it is me, but I know it’s not. I wonder if this issue is due to past lives, and how can I be more open from now on?
Council: So yes, we would say the discipline and being afraid of showing yourself has popped up for you in quite a few lives, but that was all created to bring you to this point. And so, an enemy, from a soldier, from an authority figure when you were young, and so your thought is to be quiet and to hide. Well now your job is to sort of connect the dots and know that was then. These feelings are here for you to heal them, but the feeling of being afraid and having to hide is not now. That was then. Connect the two lives, and when you do that, you will see a change happening.
Bob: Any more advice on how Saturn can be open from now on?
Council: A little at a time, but don’t do it under pressure. When you start to accept yourself, you will come out of your shell, you will be able to talk more, to communicate more, but it must come from you first accepting yourself and knowing it’s okay to be the way you are.
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