Ways We Exclude Ourselves (Without Meaning To)

Recently, I found myself tangled in a familiar heart-knot. I had been invited to a birthday gathering — a celebration of someone dear to me. But when I learned that among the guests would be someone who, in every past encounter, had offered me only coldness and distance, something in me recoiled.

A quiet discomfort settled in my body. I began scratching at the surface of my thoughts, trying to decide: Do I go? Do I stay away? Should I tell the truth — that I’m uneasy around this person? Should I excuse myself with the weight of my workload (which, truth be told, is heavy)?

Or do I show up while building walls around my heart, limiting my freedom just to be? Endless inner conversations bloomed, and none of them led to peace.

We Often Exclude Ourselves Before Anyone Else Does

Social connection is not a small thing in my life right now. Having recently moved to a new country, I’m still planting the seeds of community, still seeking kindred spirits in unfamiliar soil. I need these moments of gathering. I need these chances to connect. And still, I heard the inner whisper: “Maybe you shouldn’t go.”

It felt contradictory — even confusing — but familiar.

So, I started to gently unravel it. And what I found was this: I’ve done this before. I’ve held myself back, not just from birthdays, but from expressing my art.

From entering public and virtual spaces. From sharing my thoughts too openly, too emotionally, too “much.”

Each time I told myself I was being “too” something — too sensitive, too dramatic, too dark — I was turning the volume down on my own voice. I was quietly stepping out of the room before anyone asked me to leave.

These Patterns Don’t Begin Today

In reflecting on this one birthday invitation, I saw a whole pattern emerge. A story I’ve carried for years, maybe even decades. A story seeded during war and dislocation, when my family wasn’t included in aid or safety. A time when not belonging wasn’t a feeling — it was a reality.

Back then, silence was survival. But as the years passed, that same silence became self-erasure. I learned to withhold, to filter, to tone myself down. And without even noticing, I began doing it again — here, now — by telling myself why I shouldn’t go, why my presence might not matter, why my voice might not belong.

But Here’s the Truth: Every Story Matters

What I’ve learned — and what I’m still learning — is that our power lies in reclaiming the stories we’ve been taught to hide. We get to transform them. We get to write new endings.

No one else needs to give us permission to belong. That permission is ours to give. And in offering it to ourselves, we build a different kind of community — one where all of us, and all our messiness, have a place.

This piece of writing is not polished. It is tender and a little tangled — like life. Like healing. But within its texture is a truth I am learning to live by:

We do not need to shrink ourselves to fit into the spaces we enter.

We can be fully here — messy, radiant, honest.

We can go to the party.

We can speak our truths.

We can let the public space be ours, too. We belong — because we choose to.