When Pretending Stops Working: Awakening to the Truth Beneath Your Anxiety

There comes a moment in life when pretending stops working. Not all at once, not dramatically — but gradually, like a thread that starts to loosen and quietly unravels the fabric you’ve been wearing for years.

For me, it happened slowly. I began to realize that the masks I had worn — the teacher, the helper, the strong one, the calm one — were no longer fitting. They weren’t lies exactly; they were just not quite how I actually felt, or not quite true to myself. They were too much of a response to my surroundings, and they did nothing to help me understand how to break free from my chronic anxiety – in fact, they did the opposite.

The Moment Pretending Stops Working

For most of my adult life, I thought I was doing what everyone does: working hard, taking care of others, trying to be the best version of myself. But somewhere along the way, the striving started to feel hollow. I could sense something beneath all the effort — a quiet voice whispering, “This isn’t it.”

It’s easy to confuse that whisper for failure. To think, “I’ve done everything right. Why do I still feel so anxious, so unsettled?” But what I’ve learned — and continue to learn — is that this voice isn’t a sign of something wrong. It’s the sound of the soul asking for space.

I started to feel like I was unraveling; like I was letting go of a lot of things about myself that didn’t matter anymore. They did on the outside – in fact, up until that point they actually defined me to most of those around me, but I felt like I never actually chose them. And I started to feel like I could no longer do that.

I wanted to stop faking enthusiasm when I didn’t feel it; forcing smiles when my heart was tired; needing to prove I’m special, or right, or together. I felt really uncomfortable. But there was also relief in it — the kind that comes from finally telling the truth to yourself.

The Masks That Keep Us Trapped in Anxiety

For me, one of the first things to fall away was the hunger for approval. For years, I shaped myself around what I thought others wanted — in my teaching, in relationships, even in how I spoke about healing. Approval was my currency. If people liked me, I felt safe.

But slowly, that need began to rot in my hands. The praise that once felt sweet started tasting like dust. I found myself incapable of pretending anymore — incapable of saying what I didn’t believe, incapable of smiling when I wanted to rest. At first, it felt like rebellion. Then I realized it was liberation.

It wasn’t about arrogance or indifference. It was about finally touching a quiet sense of worth that didn’t depend on anyone else. The moment you begin to rest in that kind of worth — not earned, not awarded — something shifts. You stop asking, “Am I enough?” and start feeling, “I am.”

The Weight of Specialness

There’s a strange irony that happens when you spend your life trying to be unique — to stand out, to be significant. It’s exhausting. I used to crave being special. But the deeper I went into my own healing, the more that craving dissolved.

The more I relaxed into being ordinary, the more extraordinary life became. It’s a paradox that the mind initially can’t understand, but when you stop performing, your natural radiance emerges. When you stop trying to be wise, you begin to speak truthfully. When you stop trying to be spiritual, you begin to be real.

The Performance of Happiness

I’ve spent years studying the nervous system, breath, and the subtle ways we carry anxiety. And one thing I’ve learned is that pretending to be happy is one of the heaviest loads we carry. We’ve been taught to “stay positive,” to “focus on the good.” But real healing isn’t about bypassing pain — it’s about meeting it.

When I stopped performing happiness, I felt grief, anger, fatigue — emotions I had avoided for years. And to my surprise, they didn’t destroy me. They freed me. I began to understand that real peace doesn’t mean always being calm. It means feeling everything fully — joy, sorrow, fear — without pretending any of it should be different.

That’s when the nervous system begins to trust again. When you stop forcing yourself to be okay and simply let yourself be.

Letting Go of Certainty

Breaking free from chronic anxiety requires raw honesty and humility. I used to believe I needed to understand everything — to have a clear map of who I was and where I was going. But life doesn’t work like that. It’s more like a river than a road. When I stopped clinging to certainty, I felt terrified at first. Not knowing felt like falling. But over time, I realized that uncertainty isn’t emptiness — it’s openness. It’s mystery.

And in that mystery, there’s beauty. You start to see that every moment — even an uncertain, anxious one — is alive, fluid, and full of possibility. You stop trying to control the flow and start learning to float.

The End of Blame

When you live with anxiety, it’s easy to blame yourself — for being too sensitive, too intense, too afraid. But healing begins when you stop turning pain into punishment. You start to see that everyone, yourself included, is doing the best they can with what they know.

Blame is heavy; it keeps the nervous system locked in defense. Forgiveness — real forgiveness — is lighter. Not because the pain wasn’t real, but because you no longer want to carry it. You start asking, “What is this showing me?” instead of, “Who is at fault?” And that shift changes everything.

Returning to What’s Real

As this process unfolds, you stop using spirituality as an escape. You stop trying to float above life and instead sink deeper into it. You feel your anger, your joy, your longing — not as flaws, but as proof that you’re alive. You stop trying to become someone else and start remembering who you are underneath the noise.

Awakening isn’t about transcending your humanity. It’s about reclaiming it. It’s realizing that being human — anxious, flawed, uncertain — is not the problem. It’s the doorway. And when you walk through it with honesty and compassion, something luminous appears: a deep, quiet love that doesn’t need to be earned.

The Homecoming

I want to be clear that I don’t feel like I have it all figured out, and I certainly don’t always feel like I’m living fully and being the person I want to be. I still get angry and I still regret how I behave at times. But I guess that’s the point. We are never perfect, and we can’t expect to be. I remember reading Ghandi’s autobiography and he was frequently struggling and unhappy, and I was surprised at the time. But now I understand. He was fully present with his internal processes in a deeply authentic way.

What I fully understand now is that the path is really all about letting go. And at some point, the process of awakening — of peeling away the false layers — starts to feel less like loss and more like coming home. You realize that you were never broken, just covered in roles and beliefs that were never really yours.

What remains is simple, silent, and real. It’s the part of you that doesn’t need to prove anything, the part that breathes deeply, feels freely, and meets life as it is. This is what freedom feels like — not grand or dramatic, but intimate. Familiar. Like remembering something you’ve always known.