We talk a lot about how bias affects other people, and we should. What we talk about a lot less is how our own biases quietly run our lives, not by making us cruel to others, but by making us small.
The Stories We’re Telling Ourselves
Every day, we’re carrying around beliefs about what certain kinds of people are like, what they’re capable of, what they deserve. Most of the time we don’t even notice we’re carrying them. They just feel like facts.
Here’s the part that catches people off guard: sometimes we are the “certain kind of person” our own bias has a story about.
The career change you keep putting off? Maybe somewhere along the way you picked up the idea that people in that field are “too aggressive” or “not the settling-down type,” and some part of you can’t picture yourself belonging there.
The relationship you keep avoiding? Maybe an old, unexamined idea about what “compatible” is supposed to look like is quietly ruling out people who could actually be good for you.
The version of yourself you’re afraid to become? Sometimes the belief blocking you isn’t about a career or a relationship at all. It’s about an entire identity you’ve already decided isn’t for “people like you,” without ever checking whether that’s actually true.
Evidence vs. Prediction
Here’s a question I come back to often, with clients and with myself: is this belief something I have real, current evidence for? Or is it a prediction I made once, usually from a moment that actually hurt, that’s just been running on autopilot ever since?
“People like that are selfish.” “That life isn’t for someone like me.” “I could never be one of those people.” None of these feel like guesses when you’ve thought them a thousand times. They feel like facts. But a thought repeated a thousand times isn’t more true than the first time you thought it. It’s just more familiar.
Real evidence is worth listening to. It’s information. An old prediction still running because nobody ever went back to check it is something else entirely. It’s a story, and stories can be revised.
The Cost of Believing the Story
When we shrink ourselves to fit an old, unexamined belief about what “people like us” get to be, we pay for it in a few real ways.
We trade authenticity for a script. Living by someone else’s idea of who you’re allowed to be creates a low, constant hum of disconnection from your actual self.
We miss what was actually ours. The very thing you’ve been avoiding might be exactly where your strength was waiting.
We teach the people watching us to do the same. Whether that’s a kid, a friend, or a client, people learn what’s possible partly by watching what we’re willing to risk.
Checking the Story
You don’t have to disprove every fear you carry to loosen its grip on you. You just have to ask, honestly, whether it’s still true, or whether it’s just old.
Start with radical honesty about the automatic thoughts you carry, about other people, and then turn the same question back on yourself: where might this same belief be quietly running my own choices?
Sometimes the thing we’ve judged from a distance is the thing we actually need to let ourselves become.
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My course and coaching program built for queer and trans folks doing this exact work.
The version of yourself you’re afraid to become might be the one you’ve actually been waiting for.
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