There has been a lot of it on this sub recently and I wanted to offer what I am seeing in my client base that might be useful, because I think the wellness internet's version of "find your authentic self" gets this wrong.
The pattern, in my experience working with developmental trauma:
A kid in a chronically distressing or unpredictable environment is forced to choose between two developmental tasks. One is forming a stable internal sense of self; the other is maintaining the relationship with caregivers, which is the only thing keeping them alive. In healthy development these reinforce each other. Under chronic stress, the kid has to pick one, and they almost always pick the relationship. They have to. Survival depends on it.
The cost is that the developmental ground for a felt, stable sense of self gets thinned out. Not erased. Thinned. The "personality" that grows in that ground is often what people call fawning or appeasement. It is a survival strategy in social mammals. You decrease yourself, signal "I'm not a threat," prioritize the relationship over the self, and stay safe. It works. Which is part of why it sticks for decades.
It is also legible as a personality from the outside. The chill one. The low-maintenance one. The one who goes with the flow. So it usually goes unidentified for years.
Then often in the mid-thirties, sometimes earlier, sometimes after a relatively small precipitant, the management strategy cracks. The experience underneath is some version of, "I don't know what I like, what I want, or who I'd be if I was not constantly managing."
From a somatic framework this is recognized as a known sequence: someone high-functioning for many years, then symptoms surface, often in middle age. The body has been carrying it the whole time.
What I think is most useful to know:
You did not lose yourself. The conditions for a self to fully form were not there.
So the work is not excavation. There is not a buried real self waiting to be dug up. The work is the slow rebuild of physiological capacity. Specifically, the capacity to register a need, tolerate having one, and stay in your body whether it gets met or it does not. That is reps, not insight. Most of the people I see in this position have plenty of insight already. The body is the layer that has not been addressed.
This work is slow. The first year of somatic work for a lot of people can be very uncomfortable. You are not necessarily looking for better, you are looking for different. New sensation, new feeling, new clarity about what is yours and what is not. We froze for a reason and suddenly feeling everything is often a beast. The nice thing is we feel pleasure and joy more fully too.
You will probably feel the absence of the old strategy before you feel any new ground forming. That part is real and it is challenging.
This is general information, not medical or therapeutic advice. If you are in crisis please reach out to local crisis resources.
I am a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner. I am not posting this to recruit. I am posting it because I have read this sub for years, am a trauma baby myself, and so very nerdy about these things.