As children we played games, and if we got bored of the game, we stopped playing and moved on to something else. If we really loved what we were playing, we’d keep playing it for hours and hours, time flew past and was of little concern.
We based our decisions on what was working and what wasn’t, what was fun and what wasn’t.
A game of hide and seek could go on for ages if someone found a particularly great place to hide. Those doing the seeking might get a bit bored of hunting and declare the game over so that we could all start again or move onto a different game. The call would go out : ‘The game’s over, it’s safe to come out now’. Do you remember?
As we start to grow up, the games that we played as children are used in different contexts.
We start to play hide and seek with our behaviour, our emotions, thoughts and feelings.
It was important to have friends to play with. We learned how to interact, to share, to stand on our own two feet. We laughed and cried together, got into mischief, and had great giggles and delights. We liked being liked and we’d either feel sorry or laugh at the person who didn’t have friends. Billy, or Bunty, no mates. The laughter and mocking was the very start of our own personal hide and seek game.
We learn to adapt our ways of being to be sure that we are accepted by the group, by our peers, by our partners, work colleagues, family and friends. We start to hide the parts of us which we deem unacceptable, or have been told are unacceptable.
We often forget to query the reason this is the case, and those parts of you go into hiding with nobody ever calling : ‘You can come out now, the game’s over, it’s safe to be the real you.’
This adult game of hide and seek is akin to wearing a mask, never showing up whole and in our true colours.
We are afraid that we will be caught out and lose the game. The truth, of course, is that everybody’s been doing it to one degree or another. Can we honestly remember who won the games of hide and seek when we were children? No, of course not, it doesn’t matter any longer. Did we let the person who was so good at hiding stay hidden and stop us all from playing another game – most often not. We would call to them, or we’d would get bored and come out anyway.
The same is true in an adult’s personal hide and seek. We get tired of hiding, it’s lonely, we feel cut off from the whole, we know that there could be a much better game to play if all the parts came back together and chose a new game.
Our relationships are the very places in which we find parts of ourselves scurrying off to play hide and seek the most.
These relationships can be:
- Partner
- Parents
- Children
- Other family members
- Work Colleagues
- Friends
- Self
Our relationship with ourselves is the epicentre of every relationship we have with anyone, and anything else. That includes eg
- Money
- Career
- Love
- Health
- Happiness
- Confidence
- Opportunity
When we start to hide little bits of ourselves, to make us acceptable to others, we stuff our emotions down so that nobody can see how we feel. We start to build a brick wall around us so that no-one can penetrate our defences to gain an upper hand, or find an opportunity to hurt us. The real me becomes a lost and hidden wee soul.
In all the years I’ve been working with people in the field of relationships, there has never yet been a client who could tell me exactly which part of them they were looking for. In most instances, they didn’t know there was a part of them missing because they’d got so used to living without it.
When there are parts missing, it means the rest of has to work overtime to make up for the missing bits.
That means the overworked bits get tired and grumpy. We start to find ways to cut corners so that we can achieve more in less time and feel less, more of the time. With our energy sapped and leaking, we become hardened. Life isn’t easy or in flow.
In this hardened, non penetrable state, things can feel a bit bleak and hopeless. Perhaps you will recognise some of the following very common scenarios?
- What I thought was my strength had become my weakness.
- I wanted to be loved but was scared I might get hurt.
- I wanted to ask for help, but was scared of being rejected.
- I wanted to say what I needed but was afraid that it might leave me alone and abandoned.
I can’t think of anyone who hasn’t gone through all of this one way or another. Our hidden bits are longing for us to reunite them so that together as a softened and pliable whole, we find new energy, new perspectives, true strength and a new game to be played.
It is in the softer, lighter and more vulnerable whole person, that we will find the success we have been looking for. Our health improves, we start to look younger, we reduce our stress levels, and we find that loving relationships are really easy when we turn up as ourselves, with nothing to hide or be afraid of.
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When you’ve let this article really soak in, permeating your depths, you might recognise it’s time to stop playing games and take up the baton to being yourself, learning to love yourself once and for all. My work is specifically geared to helping people do just that.
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