Why We Choose Invisibility even When it Hurts us Financially
One of the things I teach and help people break through is the Vow of Invisibility.
The vow of invisibility is a vow we make in childhood/teens/adulthood or past lives not to show ourselves and/or not to be seen. It can also be an ancestral vow.
The vow of invisibility is not just about physically showing yourself. We can be comfortable standing in front of a million people and still be invisible, because we’re curating what we show people and are hiding our truth, that truth that we want to live or we know could change people's lives or our life.
More often than not though, the vow of invisibility, especially for women of color, plays out as us hiding our brilliance, our knowledge, and our light because we’re scared that it's not safe to show ourselves.
Just to be clear - this applies to both men and women. Vows and trauma affects us all regardless of race and gender.
Being truly seen can feel unsafe
Our mind and our nervous system is hardwired to keep us safe.
For example if we experienced:
⭕ Constant criticism from a parent/adults and nothing was ever good enough (my hand is raised 🙋🏿) - we learn to avoid anything that can bring us criticism
⭕ Bullying at school (🙋🏿) - we learn to hide ourselves to stay safe, so we stay away from anything that shines a spotlight on us or brings us conflict
⭕ An insecure partner or friends who would put down our every achievement - we learn to keep ourselves safe by not shining or hiding our successes
⭕Vicarious abuse of an adult who was thriving by other adult (s) who demanded financial support from the thriving adult - we learn that making money or others seeing us make money is unsafe and leads to financial abuse (🙋🏿)
(Vicarious abuse is abuse we witnessed happening to another person.)
⭕ Men who hit on us and sexualised us from a young age - we learn that being sexy and visible in our own bodies is unsafe so we stay safe by hiding ourselves and denying our sexual energy, which is attractive/magnetic energy and has an impact on our money (🙋🏿)
⭕ Being sexually abused and then being made to feel like you asked for it (applies to both men and women)
⭕ Constant inter-generational oppression and even death because of what we looked like. If our ancestors were persecuted because of how they looked or what they believed - we may carry an ancestral vow to hide various aspects of ourselves in order to survive
Most of these scenarios would make us feel physically unsafe, especially in childhood.
Most children don't have the resources to process such trauma; these events would overwhelm most children’s nervous systems as such remain unprocessed in the nervous system and our energy system.
We hide/invisibilize ourselves in order to protect ourselves
In order to protect ourselves we would conclude that it isn't safe to show our light and our brilliance and our inner child and inner teen will choose to be invisible in order to keep us safe.
As we grow older, this belief that being truly seen is not safe, keeps getting reinforced by various events in our lives.
By the time we’re adults, this vow is firmly in place and our nervous systems are hardwired to keep us safe by ensuring our invisibility.
We learn to keep quiet on things that matter, because speaking up is not safe and could bring up conflict, which feels like death to our inner child and is registered as such by our nervous system.
We turn down career and media opportunities, because we may be criticized and judged and told that we’re imposters, liars and not enough...
This judgment and criticism, whilst logically understood by our conscious mind, is registered as almost deadly by our nervous system...because inner child/past life/ ancestral trauma...
So even when we want to speak up, be seen or shine, we just can't because we’re hijacked by the parts of us that feel unsafe.
How does your vow of invisibility affect the way you show up in your career/ business?
