29 - The Chameleon Effect

TRANSCRIPT

I still remember a time in college when I told a friend that I was sad or depressed, and her answer was “I’m sorry,” or “I wish you weren’t sad or depressed.” to which I responded “I’m sorry. how do you want me to be?”
Her reply was: "I just want you to feel what you’re really feeling, or be who you really are.”
And I had absolutely no idea how to do that, because all I knew how to do was be a chameleon.

I’m Mary Young. Thanks for joining us on another episode of the Like Driving in Fog podcast. Today’s episode is talking about what I like to call the Chameleon Effect.

So what is the chameleon effect, and what does that have to do with emotional healing or emotional health?

Well, the  chameleon effect is the tendency that some of us have to be whatever the people around us want us to be; to feel whatever the people around us, or however the people around us want us to feel, instead of acknowledging our own feelings. We paste on a smile, or instead of being happy we pretend to be sad. Whatever we have to do to fit in with the people that we’re with. To be loved by the people that we want to be loved by; to be accepted by the people from whom we need acceptance. It could be feelings or it could be behavior. Either way. But any time that you are not being your own authentic, true self, then you’re being a chameleon.

That explains what a chameleon is, but why are we chameleons? What brought us to this point of wanting to be anything other than who we truly are?

There are probably as many answers as there are people listening to this podcast, because each one of us is unique and therefore each one of us has our own unique reasons for doing things; reasons for behaving certain ways. For me it goes back to childhood. I didn’t know it growing up, but one entire side of my family was alcoholic. And sometimes when I ponder it, I think that I became a chameleon just trying to survive life with that half of the family. Then again, growing up I never felt like I fit in with the neighborhood kids, with the school kids, with my classmates, so maybe I became a chameleon to try to fit in with them.

I remember never feeling like I knew what I was supposed to be doing, or how I was supposed to be behaving, and so I would take my cues from the people around me and act like they did or behave like they did. But along the way, trying so hard to fit in, I lost me.

And then we get to that point in college where I’m 20 years old and my friend says “I just want you to be yourself,” and the only answer I had was “I don’t know who that is. I don’t know how to do that.” it’s not something I had ever done before, and saying that makes me sad.

There are so many different emotions inside me right now as I’m thinking about that conversation with my friend, and that reality about me as a college student, and it’s just sad. I’m sad for the younger me that had never been encouraged to find out who I was, what I thought, what I believed. Instead I had been encouraged to think like the family did, behave like the family did, do what they told me to do. And I had never been encouraged just to take time to figure out who I was, and what did I really want, or how did I really feel, or what really mattered to me. And I lived my life like that for decades.

I don’t want you to do that.

I don’t want anybody to be a chameleon because they think they have to fit in order to be loved. I want people to be free to figure out who they are, and what they think, and what they believe, and how they really feel about something, instead of being told by somebody else how they should behave, or what they should think, or how they should feel. And I gotta tell you... sometimes it’s hard figuring that stuff out, but I will take the real me over the chameleon any day the week.

I remember back in my freshman year in college, I did a lot of writing back then. That was how I processed things. And a lot of what I wrote was poetry, and I remember writing a free-form poem about self-identity or something like that...self-description maybe. But one of the phrases that I used to describe myself was a “nonconformist desperately trying to fit in,” because as a chameleon I needed to fit in and I needed to change my color to match my surroundings. But as a nonconformist, I couldn’t fit in. I didn’t know how to reconcile those two pieces of my personality, and I didn’t know how not to be a chameleon.

I recognized at some point that I was being a chameleon; that I was putting on a costume to match whatever group I was with.

How did I stop being a chameleon, because I’m not one today? I have to say I’m not really sure. This is one of the things that changed for me as I was healing in other areas. I was in therapy dealing with repressed memories; dealing with family dynamics from those repressed memories; dealing with codependency; dealing with 40 years of not remembering what happened to me when I was four; and along the way as I healed in those other areas, I found that I was no longer a chameleon.

If I were to give advice on how to not be a chameleon, or how to move away from the chameleon effect or counteract the chameleon effect, it would probably be things I’ve already said in different episodes. First and foremost is sit down and have a conversation with yourself. Figure out what matters to you. This comes down to why do things matter. I have friends who got college degrees because their parents pushed them to college, and I have friends who got college degrees because they wanted to get a college degree. It was something that mattered to them. That’s the kind of thing I’m talking about.

It basically comes down to

• listening to yourself
• trusting yourself
• examining yourself
• examining your beliefs
  • Why do I think this?
  • Why do I feel this?
  • Why do I feel like I have to wear a mask?
  • What would happen if I didn’t wear that mask?

And folks, I gotta tell you. If the friendships that you currently have depend on you wearing a mask, that’s not a good friendship. True friends accept us for who we are. We don’t have to wear a mask with our true friends. you may feel like you need to wear a mask with your family, but you’ll find as I did, that the more you focus on determining who you are/what you care about/what matters to you, the harder it will be to wear that mask around your family. Especially if you’re a survivor of childhood trauma, because it’s easier for families to pretend that never happened, and people will always take the easy way out. And you have to ask yourself what matters most to you. I know some survivors who no longer have relationships with their families. They basically divorced their families of origin.

When I was seeing my therapist in Texas and first coming to grip with these memories, I knew I did not want to divorce my family. I took a break from them, but I did not want to divorce them. I just needed a break so that I could figure out what I really believed as opposed to what I’d been taught and told my entire life, and so that I could come back to them in a different dynamic. Instead of always feeling like I was the youngest child, I wanted to cut those apron strings and establish that grown-up relationship. And we were able to do that to a degree. Probably not as much as I wanted with my parents, but certainly more than I ever expected we would be able to do.

The chameleon effect is real.

• It comes from not knowing that you are enough just the way you are.
• It comes from thinking that somebody else has to define you or accept you.
• It comes from not being comfortable with yourself, with who you really are.
• It comes from feeling like you have to fit in, and fear of being shut out.

You are enough.

You are beautiful.

You have value just from the fact that you exist.

And if somebody doesn’t think the way you do, or they don’t behave the way you do, that doesn’t make you wrong or bad. It makes you unique, and that’s what we need. We need everybody to be the unique person they were created to be.

So promise yourself to not be a chameleon for the rest of your life.

Promise yourself to start figuring out who you are, what you believe, what you think, what matters to you and why. And start showing the rest of the world the beautiful creation that you are. There’s enough chameleons, there’s enough copycats out there. Let’s all start showing our uniqueness, and valuing that uniqueness.

Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next time.

Go make a great week