Have you ever encountered someone who seemed impossible to understand? They don’t play games or try to be mysterious. They don’t hide information to look more interesting.
The truth is more complicated and, frankly, heartbreaking.
These people learned early in life that understanding means being vulnerable to hurt. This can lead to rejection, criticism, or worse, showing their true selves. So they built walls. Not because they want to, but because they have to.
I spent years becoming one of these people without even realizing it.
Growing up as the quieter sibling, I became an expert at avoiding personal questions and keeping conversations on the surface. It was not a conscious choice. It was survival. It took me years to realize that my inability to let people in no longer protected me. It isolated me.
It becomes dangerous when understood
Think of a child who shares his excitement about something he loves, only to be ridiculed or rejected. Or someone who makes their feelings known and then takes up arms against them.
These experiences teach a brutal lesson: visibility equals vulnerability, and vulnerability equals danger.
a study he co-led Yale researchers found that among people with PTSD, recalling traumatic events elicited significantly different brain activity compared to memories of sad or neutral experiences, suggesting that trauma may disrupt the connectivity of memory processing.
This disorder doesn’t just affect how we remember things. It fundamentally changes our relationship with the world and the people in it.
When your brain learns that recognition causes pain, it develops sophisticated strategies to stay hidden. You become a master of bending. You learn to give answers that seem to make sense but show nothing. You perfect the art of being present without actually being there.
The invisible armor we wear
I remember sitting in a coffee shop with a friend who asked me a simple question about how I felt about my recent breakup. My immediate response? A joke, then asked about the work project.
It happened so naturally that I didn’t even realize I was doing it. This is what protective illegibility looks like in practice. Not dramatic. It’s slim, automatic, and incredibly effective at keeping people at arm’s length.
These protective mechanisms manifest themselves in countless ways. Maybe you’re the kind of person who always takes the conversation away from you. Or you share stories that sound personal but are carefully crafted to reveal nothing important. Maybe you’re great at reading others, but you’re completely unreadable yourself.
In my book, Hidden Secrets of Buddhism: How to Live with Maximum Impact and Minimum EgoI explore how Buddhist teachings help me understand that this kind of self-defense, while understandable, often becomes our prison.
The walls we build to block out pain also prevent connection from entering.
Pattern recognition
How do you know if you’ve developed this protective dyslexia? Some of the symptoms I have observed in myself and others are:
You feel tired even after socializing with your loved ones. This is because maintaining the facade requires a lot of energy. You don’t just chat. You control the information, direct the questions, and control how much you expose yourself.
You may find that people often misread your emotions or intentions. They don’t fully understand you and their guesses are often wrong. It’s not because you’re complicated or mysterious. This is because you learn to mix signals.
Relationships can be superficial, even long-term. Although people know the facts about your life, they don’t really know you. They know your favorite movies, but not your deepest fears. They know where you work, but they don’t know why you chose that path.
You may also find conflict particularly threatening. When someone gets angry with you, it’s like they’re breaking down your defenses. The idea of him being angry at the real you, not just the version you present, is terrifying.
The value of secrecy
There is a price for living this way. The energy needed to maintain these walls can be used for actual communication. The loneliness of never really being seen can be crushing.
I spent my mid-20s feeling lost and anxious, doing things “right” by conventional standards, but feeling completely disconnected from my own life. After I started writing, first for myself and then publicly, I began to understand the weight of what I was carrying.
Writing has been my testing ground for vulnerability. On paper, I could try to appear face-to-face without the threat of judgment. It was safer, but still scary.
The interesting thing about introducing a weakness in one area is that it starts to spread to others. As I became more honest in my writing, I found it difficult to maintain facades in my personal life.
Learning to lower shields
If you recognize yourself in this business, know that change is possible, but it’s not like suddenly becoming an open book. That would be neither safe nor smart.
Start small. Choose someone you trust and share something real. It’s a feeling, not a fact. Not what happened, but how it affected you.
Watch out for the urge to spread or minimize. When someone asks how you are, pause before giving your automatic response. What if you told the truth, even a small truth?
Practice sitting with the anxiety of being seen. It will feel wrong at first. Your brain will send alarm signals. This is normal. You spend years rewriting your programming.
Remember that borders and walls are different things. Boundaries are conscious choices about what to share and with whom. Walls are automatic defenses that keep everyone out. You can have strong boundaries while still being authentic and readable to people who have earned that privilege.
The way forward
Through studying Buddhism and mindfulness, I’ve learned that our suffering often comes from clinging to expectations, including the need to protect ourselves at all costs. But there is a middle ground between full disclosure and complete concealment.
The goal is not to be completely transparent. You should have a choice in your appearance. You forget that they are there so that you can let people in whenever you want, and not lock yourself behind the walls you built long ago.
In my book, Hidden Secrets of Buddhism: How to Live with Maximum Impact and Minimum EgoI discuss how mindfulness can help us observe our protective patterns without judgment, creating space to choose differently.
Last words
If you’re someone who learned early on that understanding is dangerous, I want you to know that your defense mechanisms make sense. They’ve got you covered when you need them.
But maybe, just maybe, you don’t need them that much anymore. Perhaps there are people in your life now who will carefully control your truth. Perhaps the danger you are protecting yourself from is more of a memory than a present reality.
The journey from illegibility to curated visibility is not about becoming someone new. It’s about slowly, carefully learning that it can be safe to be who you’ve always been.
You don’t have to do it all at once. You don’t have to do it with everyone. But imagine how it feels to actually be recognized by a person. Getting someone to see not just your carefully crafted exterior, but the real, messy, beautiful person underneath.
That possibility alone might be worth lowering your shields a bit.
