I'm 66 and the thing I regret most isn't the marriage that failed or the job I quit - it's the fifteen years I spent pretending to be someone my father would approve of instead of becoming the person I actually wanted to be - Silicon Canals

I'm 66 and the thing I regret most isn't the marriage that failed or the job I quit - it's the fifteen years I spent pretending to be someone my father would approve of instead of becoming the person I actually wanted to be - Silicon Canals

Briefly

"The thing I regret most is the fifteen years I spent, roughly from my mid-twenties to my late thirties, living a version of my life that was designed to make my father nod with approval. The career I chose. The way I carried myself. The opinions I held. The things I pretended to care about and the things I pretended not to care about. All of it was a performance, and the audience was one person."

"Self-determination theory, developed by psychologists Edward Deci and Richard Ryan over four decades of research, identifies three fundamental psychological needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. When these needs are met, people thrive. When they are thwarted, people suffer. And autonomy, the experience of acting with volition and integrity, of feeling like the author of your own choices, is the one most directly undermined by the kind of parental dynamic I grew up with."

"Introjected regulation is when you have taken in someone else's values and expectations, but you have not truly made them your own. You follow the rules not because they make sense to you, but because you have internalized the pressure to comply with external demands as if they were your own internal values."