Are You Someone Else Because You’re Not Being You?

Are you someone else because you’re not being you? Put another way, are you a person who lives and breathes to please others, and as a result, has lost all sense of self? 

Michelle Rene Hammer can relate. This Maryland-based Pastoral Counselor and Psychotherapist grew up with an alcoholic parent, and like many with similar childhood experiences, the straight-A student tried to please everyone, finding it hard to say no to others’ wants or voicing honest opinions, motivated by a desire to avoid friction.

And in the process, Michelle betrayed herself. When just a preteen, she bowed to peer pressure to attend a party where a much-older boy raped her. She would spend the next decade overcome by crushing depression. Psychosis. Panic attacks. Anxiety. 

Hers is a cautionary tale especially if you can answer yes to a simple question she posed when we spoke several weeks ago.

Are you someone else because you’re not being you? 

Michelle’s story ends well, and that’s why I wanted to share it. She did find her authentic self. She learned the importance of knowing her limits and setting boundaries. She figured out where she ended, and where others could begin. 

And she couldn’t have done it without God.

Michelle as She Is Today

I can’t remember how I met Michelle. Social media? More than likely. During an initial meet-and-great many months ago, we discovered a few commonalities. Both of us grew up in Maryland . . . she outside of Baltimore (her accent a dead giveaway) and me outside the nation’s capital.

Michelle immediately impressed me. Before opening her private practice, Turning Leaf Counseling and Consultation, she’d started a mental health outreach program in Baltimore City and several community-based psychiatric rehabilitation programs serving the Baltimore metro area. 

Since then, she’s become a motivational speaker and host of Breakthrough Today, a WinWinWomen Network program examining practical solutions to everyday problems. In late 2021, she released Boundaries for Breakthrough: Live as God Designed, a book that explains why people must set boundaries for emotional health.

“Everyone struggles. Everyone has a faith journey . . . Without skills to navigate life’s storms, we are all like ships without a rudder,” Michelle wrote in her book. “I have been that ship. I have watched countless others travel through life without a rudder too. Without a rudder, chaos ensues. With it, we find order.”

God and boundaries, she insists, “are our rudders.” 

“You Must Choose”

Michelle didn’t know boundaries when the sexual assault occurred. 

She was just 12-years-old. On that night, when she was supposed to be roller skating, she and an older classmate went to a party in the woods instead. 

“In my soul, I knew this wasn’t a good idea,” she told me. But she complied and lost more than just her innocence. Little did she know then, but her desire to please had set her up. Afraid of rejection, she put herself in positions and places that God never intended for her. As she said, her people-pleasing had gone too far.

But as she told me, God hadn’t left her. Despite her subsequent emotional unraveling, God pierced the fog and commanded . . . “‘You must choose.’” 

Michelle’s Life’s Mission

Her choice has become her life’s mission. 

Though her road to recovery would take time, she chose to please God and not mere mortals. Like a man profiled in December, she would no longer seek human approval because she feared rejection. She began setting boundaries and learning the effects of growing up in an alcoholic family.

“God has completely revolutionized me,” she said. “If I’d had a different story, a different life, I would have had a different calling.” Her trauma forced her to consider an essential question . . . are you someone else because you’re not being you?

And that’s the question she asks you. Perhaps you, too, must make a choice.

~~~

Always Think of Me took years to write and now it’s officially finished . . . for me, a dream come true. A sneak peek and links to all major online bookstores are available here.