Earlier this year, I felt a slow-burning anger coming to the surface. Not the explosive kind, but the kind that simmers: irritability, constant frustration, impatience, judgment (mostly with myself), and subtle resentment way out of proportion to whatever was happening in the moment.
The kind that makes you wonder, Why am I so angry, and where the hell is this coming from?
Around the same time, a friend suggested I start recording morning VoiceNotes. Journaling had always been something I felt I should do, another requirement on the perfect-morning-to-have-a-successful-day list. And, to be totally transparent, writing can stop me in my tracks. Being seen, taking a stance, expressing myself freely wasn’t particularly safe for me growing up.
Speaking is different. Put me on a stage, and I’m in my element. Put me in front of a blank page and apparently all bets are off.
So I started setting a timer for 20 minutes and talking about everything and nothing at all. Meandering. Letting whatever wanted to bubble up, bubble up.
One morning, I heard myself say something that stopped me cold:
“I’ve learned to mask that feral little child. Which is why I think I’m so angry.”
I could see her: a feral little girl in the corner of a dark room, clothes tattered, hair scattered, ready to lash out at whatever came toward her, even help, kindness, or care.
Scared. Small. Unsafe. Fierce and protective as hell.
As I sat with that image, I began to see the mask for what it was: performance. And performance is exhausting. Like, bone-tired exhausting.
That exhaustion had been fueling my anger, much of it directed inward like a red-hot laser. At myself, for not doing enough, being enough, being too much, trying too hard and somehow not hard enough…all at the same time.
She’d been silently influencing my adult life.
The more I sat with her, the more I began to see where she was still showing up, keeping me “safe” in ways I hadn’t recognized before:
Performing instead of risking being fully seen.
Refusing to appear weak instead of asking for help.
Staying busy instead of creating and sharing.
Researching instead of publishing.
Protecting rather than participating.
And I started to wonder if maybe anger wasn’t the problem I’d made it out to be. Maybe it was information. Maybe it was showing me just how exhausted I’d become from protecting, editing my truth, checking my tone, and pretending I was fine. Maybe the anger had been trying to tell me something all along.
When I paused long enough to get truly curious, this came to me:
The body learned safety long before the mind learned strategy.
And that changed the questions I was asking.
If she was still making decisions for me at 61, what else had I never questioned?
What had I mistaken for “just who I am” that was actually protection?
What if anger wasn’t the beginning of the story, but the end of a much older one?
The more I stayed with those questions, the more three patterns emerged.
Awareness | the Pause
When I loosened my grip on the anger long enough to get curious about it, I began to see something I hadn’t seen before.
The feral little girl wasn’t the real insight.
Recognizing that she was still running parts of my adult life was.
And she wasn’t only protecting herself from pain. She was protecting herself from being perceived.
I started noticing how many of the things that triggered my anger and frustration had something to do with visibility: writing, asking for help, making sales calls, monitoring my tone, showing uncertainty.
They all required the same thing.
Someone else had to see me.
That’s what the Pause gave me: enough space to see the pattern instead of simply continuing to live inside it.
Without that space, anger was just anger. Frustration was frustration. Avoidance was another thing to judge myself for.
Once I could see the thread connecting them, I had something different to work with.
Awareness reveals the pattern.
But seeing the pattern only led to another question:
How did those experiences shape the way I learned to move through the world?
Conditioning | the Lens
This one was especially eye-opening for me; the more I noticed the patterns, the more I could unhook from them.
I can’t tell you how many business owners I’ve heard say, with deep frustration and more than a touch of self-loathing, “I know what to do. Why am I not doing it…what’s wrong with me?!”
I’ll admit, I’ve asked myself that same uncomfortable question far more times than I care to admit.
What I’ve discovered is that conditioning is relational, not a personal flaw, even though it can deeply feel like one. The ways we learned to override ourselves didn’t happen in isolation; they happened in relationship.
I didn’t wake up one morning and consciously choose those conditions. I learned, interaction by interaction, what brought connection and what threatened it. What earned approval…and what so clearly did not. When it was safer to speak and when it was better to stay quiet.
Family, culture, community, religion, school, work, gender norms—all of it contributes to the relational calculations we made about how to stay safe, belong, be loved, or remain accepted. This shows up in boundaries, too. It’s hard to hold a boundary around your capacity, with a client, colleague, or even a friend, when you’ve learned that disappointing someone threatens connection or belonging. It can be just as hard to speak up when experience has taught you that disagreement comes with judgment and consequences.
Which shifted the question again.
Instead of asking, “What’s wrong with me?”
I started asking, “Where did I learn this?”
I needed context to understand how strategies that once helped me navigate the world had become so familiar I’d mistaken them for character flaws, or simply who I am.
And that brought me to a harder realization: I didn’t invent these strategies. I learned them.
Conditioning explains why we often can’t ‘see’ it.
Choice | the Path
Choice becomes possible when the automatic is no longer completely invisible.
Seeing and understanding the pattern didn’t make it disappear. It gave me enough room to respond to it differently.
In fact, just a few weeks ago, a friend generously offered to mention one of my articles in her newsletter and link to it. My automatic reaction was frustration.
Well, really, it was shame.
I’d started a handful of articles with her help and hadn’t finished any of them. Her thoughtful offer triggered that feral little girl—for about a minute.
But this time I could see it for what it was: shame dressed up as frustration. And because I could see it, I could more readily choose a different path. The defensiveness shifted to compassion for myself and gratitude for my friend.
In the VoiceNote I mentioned at the beginning, I said I wanted to “bring that feral little girl out and love on her and show her that it’s safe.”
Which is exactly what I did.
Once something can be seen and understood, it’s easier to question more intentionally.
Not erased.
Not judged.
But held differently.
Now, when I catch myself getting angry, defensive, or what I like to call “a snaggled-tooth grump,” I know there’s a good chance I’m reacting rather than intentionally choosing.
That’s where a little agency returns, and life opens up.
The conditions haven’t disappeared. I can see more clearly when an old protection pattern has muscled its way in. And choice doesn’t have to be some gigantic act of courage. Sometimes it’s simply recognizing that old pattern and asking whether I still need it or if it’s time to let it go.
Choice isn’t about becoming someone entirely new. It’s about deciding whether old strategies still deserve to make today’s decisions.
She’s still with me
She’s still there; she probably always will be.
I’m still going to feel her anger. She’ll still protect. The difference is that her protection no longer automatically determines what happens next.
I can notice her protection without allowing it to define me .
It’s not that everything is healed; it’s that she no longer has to hide.
When I sense myself masking, performing, or editing my truth, I ask (with compassion and without judgment):
What if, instead of judging what I’m doing, I get curious about what taught me I needed to (do it?) [ or what taught me I needed to do it in the first place]?
What if the thing you’ve been judging in yourself has been trying to tell you something all along?