🌱 This Role Used To Protect You. Now, It Just Feels Heavy.
On exploring the identities you present and unpicking the ones you no longer need.
Hi, welcome back to Edit Your Life!
Last week, we looked at the disconnect between who we are and who we’ve been told we should be. We explored how early praise, family patterns, and cultural expectations can shape your story before you’ve even had a chance to write it. Oof.
This week, we’re digging deeper into that story, specifically, the roles we’ve learned to play.
Because most of us aren’t living as some false version of ourselves. We’re just playing roles we learned to survive, belong, and be accepted. And for a while, those roles might have served us. Until they didn’t.
Why We Perform Certain Identities
Here’s the thing I keep coming back to in my own life and work:
Every role we perform started as a form of protection.
Being “the fixer” might have helped you feel useful in a chaotic household.
Being “the high achiever” might have won you love or stability.
Being “the one who’s fine” might have helped you feel safe when expressing emotion wasn’t allowed.
These roles aren’t inherently bad. The problem comes when we start mistaking them for our personality.
What Parts Work Teaches Us
In Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS), there’s a helpful idea that we all have different internal “parts” - inner voices or roles that developed to protect us.
Maybe your “pleaser” part jumps in when you sense tension.
Maybe your “overachiever” part drives you to prove your worth.
Maybe your “caretaker” part keeps showing up to keep the peace, even when you're running on empty.
These parts aren’t bad. They’re trying to help.
But they can drown out the rest of you when they're over-functioning.
Parts work invites us to befriend these roles, understand what they’re trying to protect, and make space for other parts of ourselves to emerge.
You don’t have to get rid of the role. You just don’t have to let it steer the ship forever.
This Week’s Edit: Let’s Name the Role
Try this short reflection without judgment or urgency. You’re not planning to drop every mask overnight; you’re just exercising a bit of curiosity.
🟡 What roles have you learned to play?
This might include:
“The helper.” “The good girl.” “The calm one.” “The funny one.” “The smart one.” “The overachiever.” “The reliable one.”
🟡 What did that role offer you?
What did it help you avoid or protect? What did it win you—praise, love, safety?
🟡 What is the cost of still performing it?
Does it drain you? Make you feel disconnected? Stop you from being fully honest or asking for what you need?
🟡 What would it look like to loosen the grip?
Not erase it entirely. Just soften the edges. Maybe speak up instead of smoothing over. Maybe ask for help. Maybe say, “I don’t know.”
This doesn’t have to be dramatic. Small shifts count.
Quick Edit: If You Do Nothing Else, Try This
💬 Instead of repeating: “This is just who I am.”
✨ Try sitting with: “This is who I’ve had to be, and I’m allowed to explore something else.”
That’s it. That’s the shift.
What’s one role you’ve taken on that once helped you but now feels like it’s holding you back? For me, it’s the “people pleaser”.
Hit reply if you’d like to share. You’re never too much, and you’re not alone. I read every email.
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See you next week. Thanks for reading.
Warmly,
Beth x
PS. Next time, we’ll look at how to start making decisions from a place of alignment, where your yes feels like a yes, and your no feels like peace.