Taught to Perform
Instead of Feel

A Soft Story for the Girl Who Spun to Survive

You weren’t asking for too much.
You were asking to be held — gently — like this. Like a girl in a music box.
Spinning. Smiling. Staying small.
Not because she wanted to — but because it was what kept her loved.

She spun for love.
She smiled on cue.
She stayed in her little box — always perfectly posed.
And no one asked if she was tired.
No one asked if she was real.

“Be good. Be quiet. Be what they expect.”
Those were the silent rules.

Over time, she forgot there was life outside the lid.

The Music Stopped

Then something shifted.
One day, the music stopped.
Not because you broke.
But because you woke up.

The shoes didn’t fit anymore.
The rhythm didn’t feel like yours.

You laid them down — not in anger, but in peace.
As if to say, “I was always more than the role I played.”

A New Kind of Movement

Now, you move differently.

You stretch — not for perfection, but for presence.
You speak — not for approval, but from truth.
You are not performing.
You are becoming.

The girl who once spun for others now meets her own gaze.

She’s no longer trapped inside the box — she’s stepping into her own reflection, slowly, safely, on her own terms.

You might still keep that music box.
Tucked in a drawer.
A relic of who you once had to be.

But now, you open it differently.
You sit beside her — the little dancer — and you don’t rush to close the lid.

And maybe this time, you whisper:

“You don’t have to perform anymore.
You’re not a song in someone else’s story.
You’re a whole symphony becoming.”

Going Deeper: The False Self and the Mirror Stage

Sometimes, we don’t just perform.
We become the performance.

This connects with what psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott called the False Self — a protective identity built to survive. It’s not fake. It’s polished. Pleasant. Predictable. The version of you that kept you safe.

And it worked… until it didn’t.

Psychologist Jacques Lacan called this dynamic the Mirror Stage — the moment we begin forming identity by seeing ourselves through others’ eyes.

But what if the mirror was cracked? Or shaped by someone else’s pain?

• You saw yourself through someone else’s disappointment

• You shaped your value through someone else’s reaction

• You became who they needed — even if it wasn’t really you

That isn’t weakness.
It’s adaptation.

But healing is what happens when you finally stand in front of the mirror — no pose, no smile — and whisper:

“I’m here. And I’m enough.”

Spiritual Reflection: Climbing Out of Shame,
One Note at a Time

There’s a quiet kind of shame that comes from a life spent performing.

Not the loud shame — the one you can name and confront.
But the soft, hidden kind.
The kind that whispers:
“If I stop spinning… will anyone still love me?”

In the framework developed by Dr. David R. Hawkins, shame is the lowest energetic state of consciousness — the moment where we turn against ourselves and feel invisible or “less than.”

But the second we become aware of the pattern — we’ve already started to rise.

That moment of noticing? That’s consciousness lifting.

“In every moment, we have the option to choose love or fear. Clarity or confusion. The truth or the performance. The moment we choose truth, healing begins.”
— Dr. David R. Hawkins