When Your Soul Wants Impact and Your Body Wants to Hide

What do you do when your whole soul wants to create impact…

and your whole nervous system wants to disappear? 

Because that’s where I’ve been. 
And maybe you’ve been there too. 

Recently I noticed myself sinking into a confusing but very familiar space. 

As I downsize and try to “stay small” to wrap up some projects before stepping into my next career era, I watched myself move through a few phases: 

1. An antsy desire to just do the fun things instead of the necessary things that felt boring, tedious, and uninspiring. 

2. Chasing dopamine: wanting to create new things, get “bigger,” help more people. (Ideas are never an issue for me.) 

3. Holding myself back on purpose, because I understood the greater goal… and then feeling a little down, with a side of shame. 

4. From there, a desire to get much, MUCH “smaller” — to disappear completely. 

What a fascinating tug-of-war on my psyche. 

Get big out of service! 
No, out of discomfort! 
No, get big because it’s fun! 

No, no, no, stay small. Be wary. Don’t trust yourself to stay small. 

Now feel shame and disappear before the shame is seen by others. 
Disappear completely because what the hell were you thinking?! 

I kept shrinking — pulling back, going quiet, slipping into social media, numbing out — all while judging myself for it. 

Essentially, my brain kept saying, “You’re wasting your precious life,” while my body kept saying, “I need to disappear. Now.” 

The wild part? 
This wasn’t laziness, and I wasn’t uninspired. 

This was deeper — and it led me to reflection. 

The deeper insight 

What I eventually realized is this: 

Part of me wanted to be impactful and of service to others (which requires being visible)… 

Another part of me knew I needed to stay intentionally small enough to finish the foundational things before launching new ones… 

And yet another part of me has learned — over time, through family patterns and life experience — that shame equals hiding (or being small)… 

So: small must equal shame. 

Therefore, if I’m small, something must be terribly wrong. 

Friends, sometimes the desire to disappear doesn’t come from lack of ambition. 

Sometimes it comes from: 

• a lifetime of being needed 

• a lifetime of being watched 

• a lifetime of performing strength 

• a lifetime of being exceptional in order to belong 

• a lifetime of pressure to make your life matter through service 

At a certain point your nervous system says: 
“I can’t be on one more minute — I need to vanish to survive.” 

So you disappear to protect yourself… 

and then feel shame for disappearing… 

and then disappear further to cope with the shame. 

Does this “fear of success / fear of failure” dynamic sound familiar? 

So what’s the way through? 

Here’s the insight that shifted everything for me: 

The goal isn’t to disappear less or show up more.

Even the idea of “shame vs. mission” was a false dichotomy. 

The goal is to build a life where being fully yourself is safe. 

A life where: 

• visibility doesn’t consume you 

• rest doesn’t erase you 

• depth doesn’t trap you 

• slowness doesn’t mean you’ve quit trying 

• finishing things doesn’t cost your freedom 

A life where you get to stay big and stay free. 
Where being in service doesn’t require self-erasure. 
Where being visible doesn’t require performance. 
Where your presence is enough — not your production. 

The new truth I’m practicing 

It goes something like this: 

I don’t disappear when I get focused — I become unmistakable. 

I’m letting myself: 

• simmer instead of sprint 

• finish instead of chase 

• protect my aliveness instead of numb it 

• trust my impact instead of feeling driven to prove it 

• choose depth over frenzy 

I’m not getting smaller. 
I’m getting concentrated. 

I’m not fading. 
I’m refining. 

I’m not disappearing. 
I’m distilling my magic into something that will last.