The Joy of Hiding

Getting lost and found in our own solitude and, hopefully, the love of another

A favorite quote of mine from D.W. Winnicott:

It is a joy to be hidden and a disaster not to be found.

“Why do you think that is?” was a recent topic of conversation around here.

I posited solitude as described by Rilke, the kind that feeds the soul and nourishes the heart; the joy of being alone with the best parts of you, the parts others either can’t see or can’t understand with the full scope, breadth, and depth that those parts deserve.

Whether unseen or misunderstood by others, there are moments when taking your aloneness into your own hands allows you to relish in the parts of you that might well be your favorite, without feeling judged, disconnected, or distracted by another set of eyes.

To giggle at my own observations, to feel deeply into my emotional experiences, to observe an inner monologue or dialogue is to truly be free and in love with life.

But for no one to come looking for me at any point along the way? Tragic.

Aloneness is only sustainable when it's not the only state. While relationships may be complicated, they are also needed. To be sought is one of the many acts of love.

And to seek back is, as well. Solitude is special and alluring. And as much as there ought to be space in intimate relationships for solitude, shared solitude is not quite the same as intimacy.

That was one way I responded to and held the quote.

Then the heartbreak of discovering one’s own alienhood.

Someone else in the discussion shared similarly that their favorite parts of themselves, unique to themselves, were a joy to keep hidden and preserved, but the disaster was in imagining parts of them to be universal only to discover they were his and his alone.

It is tragic, by his explanation, to grow up having internal experiences that he thought others would understand but then realizing, one misaligned conversation after another, that he was quite alone.

That can be a disorienting coming of age; one where you question either your own rightness or your own fitness for relationship. Having to choose between values and perspectives that are deeply meaningful to you or people that you care for but feel alien to.

Another aching interpretation.

Then I think of my eating disorder.

I tend to find the biggest differences with eating disorders arrive in one’s relationship with their weight. For example, anorexia can include both food restriction and binging, but elimination or compensatory behaviors are used to remain below a healthy weight. Bulimia can also include both food restriction and binging, but elimination or compensatory behaviors are used to maintain a healthy weight. Binge eating disorder can also include both food restriction and binging, but typically there are few or no elimination or compensatory behaviors to manage weight.

Save for a brief period when I was bulimic, I’ve mostly struggled with binge eating disorder. Consciously or not, gaining weight in a society that shames it has its purposes. In my graduate thesis, The Hungry Feminine and a Patriarchal Gag Order: Binge Eating in American Women, I considered myself to be hiding in plain sight as a means of self-protection. Warding off unwanted advances from predatory men, passively rebelling against a society that tells me I should look a certain way, and/or building a metaphorical moat around me to keep at safe distances in relationship.

Hiding in plain sight has been such an important part of my life, whether hiding under my weight or maintaining an “acceptable” weight so that no one knew how much I was suffering. However safe that has felt, it is deeply lonely. And most people don’t know how to compassionately approach those with food- or weight-related struggles because everyone struggles with those things a little bit but not everyone is equipped to confront it.

In this way, I tend to feel unfound, and even untethered.

Then I think of childhood.

Of course, Winnicott was a pediatrician so his offering here is in the context of a young developing mind. To be a child playing hide and seek is to be so exhilarated, overrun by excitement and fear as they combine into a sensation that nearly makes you pee your pants.

But as time ticks on and on and on and silence grows, no one appearing to find you, you may begin to consider that either you’re too good at hiding, or they’re too disinterested in finding you. Either way, you may fear being on the precipice of evaporation.

Was I left behind? A painful question for anyone to ask. But for a child, this lack of attunement is frightening. Survival depends on someone being responsible enough to come find you.

Of course, some of us had caregivers that relied on our affection and developmental inertia for their own security and self-worth. In these cases, hiding could be conflated with individuation, and the process of individuating could return the consequence of abandonment from caregiver. Out of their own resentment or pain, they may cease to come find you, meet your needs, or tend to the relationship. In this case, it can feel like punishment.

I deeply resonate with that sensation of fear around being left behind. I can't help but wonder, then, how this scared inner child might still live in me today. As much as this quote takes on layers of meaning in adulthood, and can indicate an anxious or avoidant attachment style, the meaning it may carry for the child in my nervous system, the cushions of my body’s soft tissue, my emotional reflexes and fear of abandonment, how might this all need healing still?

What does this quote stir up for you?