The Characters We Build to Survive:

By Andrew Mullen

I believe growth requires vulnerability. To expand as a person, we have to be willing to expose parts of ourselves that feel uncertain, uncomfortable or unfinished. But not every vulnerable experience remains vulnerability forever. Sometimes we work through one area of our lives so thoroughly that we can speak openly about it without fear, while other parts of ourselves still feel exposed, fragile and deeply unfinished.

Maybe vulnerability is not a permanent state. Maybe it exists whenever we have not yet learned how to fully accept ourselves. A while, back I was asked by a doctor I work with and deeply respect if I would help with a presentation at the Sheriff’s Office. We would be presenting to law enforcement officers, correctional officers, probation officers and social workers about addiction, lived experience and mental health. My immediate reaction was, Holy Sh#t That’s terrifying.

The day of the presentation, I remember driving there feeling surprisingly calm. I thought, maybe this will actually go okay.

I arrived at the event, stepped out of my car and almost instantly felt anxiety hit me like a wave. My chest tightened, my thoughts accelerated, my blood pressure skyrocketed. One moment I felt completely fine and the next I felt overwhelmed to the point where I thought I might collapse.

I walked inside and immediately spoke to the social worker helping organize the event as if she were my counselor. “I don’t know if I can do this. I thought I had this figured out. I feel like I’m losing it.”  Like most people trying to reassure someone in distress, she calmly responded, “I’m sure you’ll be okay.” Part of me hoped she was right.

Shortly after, the doctor arrived and asked how I was feeling. I jokingly asked her to prescribe me some benzos. She asked if my blood pressure was up. Half-jokingly, I responded that it was skyrocketing. We laughed, but underneath the humor was genuine panic.

Then the presentation started. As the doctor presented, I sat in the front row internally battling myself. I kept telling myself, “Andrew, get it together, Focus. This is serious.” What fascinated me later was noticing the pattern that kept repeating. Whenever my attention naturally shifted toward listening to the presentation, my anxiety decreased. I became engaged, present and calm. I found myself genuinely impressed by the doctor’s depth of knowledge and passion for helping people struggling with addiction.

But every time I redirected my attention back toward myself with thoughts like. Get it together. Focus. This is serious. My anxiety surged again. Blood pressure up. Adrenaline up. Fear up. Eventually, I found myself asking, what is going on? Where are these feelings coming from? Then something unexpected happened.

My mind returned to a memory of me sitting in the back seat of a police car after being arrested years earlier. Suddenly, my reactions began to make more sense. I was about to stand in front of the same law enforcement officers who represented to me one of the most painful and vulnerable periods of my life. The fear I was experiencing while preparing to present felt very familiar to the fear I had experienced sitting in that police car years earlier.

My nervous system was responding to more than the present moment. It was responding to the memories attached to it. Although I was standing in a room preparing to share my story, another part of me was sitting in the back seat of a police car years earlier. The environment, the emotions and the memories had become linked together and my body was reacting to a threat that no longer existed.

Eventually, the doctor finished speaking and it was my turn to present. Oddly enough, when I first stood up, I felt calm again. Though looking back, I think I was simply exhausted from fighting myself internally for so long.

Then I stepped in front of the microphone. The first words out of my mouth were, “Bloody Hell.” To this day, I still have no idea why. What my boss jokingly calls my alter ego suddenly appeared, complete with a British accent. I immediately looked at the audience and said, “apparently I turn into a bloody British bloke when I’m overwhelmed.” Everyone laughed. And strangely enough, that moment helped.

As I began speaking, something unexpected happened. When I stopped trying to hard to control myself, the words came naturally. I was not forcing anything. I was simply speaking from lived experience. The presentation flowed effortlessly. 

Then another thought appeared. “Andrew, get it together. Focus. This is serious.” Immediately, everything changed again. My voice started shaking. I stumbled over my words. I became hyperaware of myself. The more I tried to control how I appeared, the more disconnected I became from what I actually wanted to say.

Then I noticed something psychologically important happening in real time. Whenever I became fully immersed in trying to perform correctly, my anxiety intensified. But whenever I relaxed into simply being present and speaking honestly, my body calmed down and my thoughts organized themselves naturally. At one point, I stopped internally and thought, “interesting, maybe this isn’t the serious life – or – death situation I keep telling myself it is.” Looking out into the audience, I realized something important. I was not back in the police car. I was not reliving my arrest. In the present moment, there was no immediate threat. Yet my nervous system was still scanning for the danger as though the threat were happening all over again. I wasn’t responding to what was in front of me. I was responding to what my mind and body had learned to anticipate. That realization shifted something. Not because the presentation itself lacked importance, but because my nervous system had interpreted the experience as a threat to my worth, identity and acceptance.

Then came the realization that changed everything. At some point during the presentation, I consciously tried to become the anxious version of myself. I intentionally attempted to recreate the panic.

Why? Because it felt easier to be the anxious version of myself than to allow myself to simply be me. But this time, something interesting happened. I could not get my nerves to come up. My blood pressure was not rising. My voice was no longer shaking. When I made a conscious decision to be that anxious version of myself it was no longer an automatic response. I made the decision consciously, meaning it was no longer being activated by years of preconditioning, no more automatic survival responses, just me now in a moment of time realizing. Realizing I have a choice, the choice to be me or the anxious self, when I made the conscious choice my nerves/anxiety would no longer come up.

And suddenly I realized, oh this is a character. Not fake. Not imaginary. And not something I consciously created. At one point, this response was real. My anxiety, fear, hypervigilance and need to protect myself were genuine experiences shaped through years of conditioning, self-protection and survival.

But somewhere along the way, what began as an automatic survival response slowly became an identity I unconsciously carried. I had learned how to become this version of myself. The anxious one. The hyperaware one. The self-monitoring one. The version of me constantly preparing for judgment, criticism, rejection or failure.

At first, I did not realize I was doing it. The response was instinctual. My nervous system reacted before I even had time to think about it. But the moment I became truly aware of it, something changed. What once felt inseparable from who I was became something I could observe. And in observing it, I realized something profound I could participate in it, reinforce it or step outside of it.

That does not mean the fear was fake. It means the identity built around the fear was no longer unconscious. What once felt inseparable from who I was began losing its power the moment I could see it clearly.

And maybe that is part of healing. These protective versions of ourselves were adaptations we learned in order to protect ourselves. They felt like who we were because we carried them for so long. But they were never the entirety of us.

Because beneath the characters, beneath the anxiety, beneath the performance, there was still me. Not a perfect me. Not a fearless me. Just a more honest one. A version of myself built around fear, self-monitoring and protection from judgment.

Because if people rejected the anxious version of me, it somehow felt less painful than allowing them to reject the real me. That was the deeper fear beneath all of it. Not public speaking. Not embarrassment. Not failure. Vulnerability. The vulnerability of being fully myself.

To be fully myself meant accepting the possibility of criticism, mistakes, rejection or imperfection without hiding behind a protective identity.  And maybe that is what vulnerability truly is. Not weakness. Not emotional collapse. But allowing yourself to be seen without needing to hide behind a performance.

I think for most of my life, anxiety/characters have become one of the ways I protected myself from that exposure. It gave me something to blame. Something to hide behind. A character to carry the shame for me.

But somewhere during that presentation, I briefly saw through it. I am not every fearful version of myself my mind creates. And maybe healing is not becoming fearless. Maybe healing is learning that I can be imperfect, vulnerable, uncertain and still be worthy of being fully seen.