Why You Don’t Know Who You Are (And What Childhood Had to Do With It)

In this episode of It Was Never About The Food, Rob explores how childhood conditioning shapes adult identity — and what happens when you spend your life performing for love.

If you’ve ever felt like you don’t know who you are without the people-pleasing, perfectionism, or emotional masks… this one will hit deep.

We dive into:

• Why so many women feel like they’re “too much” or “not enough”
• How subtle emotional pressure in childhood creates performance-based self-worth
• What it means to take the mask off — without losing yourself
• The link between emotional safety and authenticity
• Why your eating habits, spirals, or self-sabotage were never the real problem

Whether you’re navigating emotional eating, identity loss, inner child work, or just trying to feel more like yourself, this episode will help you understand why you became who you became — and how to come home to the you underneath it all.

🔁 You don’t need to perform to be loved. You just need to come back to who you were before the world told you to change.

🎧 Press play.
📲 DM Rob on Instagram with the word podcast if this episode lands.

Transcript

0:00

When you were little, you didn't know that you were performing. You were just trying to be loved, trying to get the smile. Avoid the disappointment, keep the peace. Make mum proud, not rock the boat with dad. But this, this feedback that you got, it wasn't dramatic. It wasn't always trauma with a capital T. It was subtle. It will have been a raised eyebrow. When you said the quote unquote wrong thing, praise when you looked a certain way. Affection when you were quiet, but distance when you weren't. And then little by little you learned, you learned what parts of you were safe to show and which parts had to be tuck away. Welcome to. It Was Never About the food, the podcast where we go deeper than diets discipline or self-help fluff. I'm Rob, and I'm not here to tell you what to eat. I'm here to help you understand why you became who you became while you were trying to survive, because underneath every binge, every spiral, every breakdown is a story, and I want to help you rewrite it. Because the truth is it was never about the food. So let's start with this mask. The, I'm guessing you didn't even know that you were wearing this is what I hear all the time. Um, when people have a conversation with me for the first time, to me it's obvious 'cause I've had this conversation thousands and thousands of times. But to this person that I'm speaking to, which could be yourself. One day, hopefully sooner rather than later. Uh, everything seems to make sense at the click of a finger, because what happened was you didn't sit down one day and decide to become a people pleaser. That's insane. You didn't choose to disconnect from your emotions. You didn't consciously get your little notebook out being the little teacher's pet that you probably were. And said, you know what? I think I'll become the quiet good one. Dunno why I sounded like Stewie Griffin. Then, um, or I'll be the high achiever so I never get rejected. It, it, it doesn't work that way. That's not how a child learns. A child doesn't learn intellectually, they learn emotionally like they feel things and then do stuff off the back of it. So it just happened bit by bit. Smile by smile, correction by correction. And that's the wild part. Most of us are not even aware that we're wearing a mask because we've been wearing it since we were five. Right? So there's a message beneath the performance here. Here's what you were really learning. I am not enough, just as I am. Love is earned not given. Safety comes from being what others need me to be. So these, these messages, they weren't spoken out loud, they were felt. They were absorbed, they were written into your nervous system, like emotional code. And so you started shaping yourself not based on who you are, but based on who you needed to become to feel loved. So guess what? Fast forward 20. 30, 40 plus years, and you don't know who you are without that mask anymore. You've played that role so well for so long. The role of the responsible one, the one who has everything else together. But when it comes to food, it's a completely different story. The kind one, the successful one. The agreeable one, the one that gets everything done right? This is where you probably think I'm in your head and now all of that's you are left. You are left wondering. But what have I take it off? What's underneath? And here's the terrifying part for probably all of the women that I've spoken to about this. You don't know. You don't know the answer to that question. How could you, because this performance has become your identity. And here's the thing, the mask works, doesn't it? That's why you've kept doing it. It works. You get approval, you get promoted through it because you are the reliable one. Your friends come to you. That strokes the ego because you are the one that they need to come to when they feel they can't go to anyone else. You keep the peace, you stay in control, but, but, but, but, but it's fucking expensive, like. This is the part that I think most people, um, not necessarily forget, but the ironic byproduct of this trauma is that you don't notice the cost, because guess what? Your role isn't to look after yourself and look at the cost that it hits you. Your role is to look at the cost. Of what's to happen to everyone else if you are not there for them. But in doing so, it costs you authenticity, it costs you intimacy. Let's just call it what it is. It costs you yourself. You end up with this life that's built on being palatable. Do you honestly, if you were to speak to that little girl inside you, do you honestly think if you were to speak to her, she's right next to you and you say, sorry, sweetheart, our job is just to be palatable. I hope that breaks your fucking heart because it does To me, when I did that to myself, you're not here to be palatable. You're here to be real. I hope. I hope that wakes you up a little. We have to understand that. We have to have empathy for that because that kind of life, it feels safe, doesn't it? But you gotta decide, am I here to feel safe? Or or to to live. You can't have both. You cannot have both. There's a cost either way. You gotta choose which you pay. All of it feels safe until it starts to feel empty. Let me ask you something. What version of you did you learn to become as a child? Who did you have to be to feel loved, wanted, or safe? And how is that mask still showing up in your life today? Be honest, you are not being judged. Put it in a diary. Put it in a journal, but we can't be avoidant anymore because that's what you have been up until this point. Be honest. Face the truth. Because here, here's, here's my version of the truth. You're not broken like literally. You are not broken. You are just tired of being who you had to be. That that takes its toll, that has its consequences that you've been experiencing for quite a long time now, I'm assuming. So you are just tired of who you had to be. And there's another version of you underneath all of that. One who didn't get enough air time growing up, one who got quiet because it was safer. If I had a penny for every time I heard someone say, but it's just me. I'm just like a quiet person. No, you learned to be quiet. It's your, it's your defense mechanism. It's your way of feeling loved. And connected because in your experience, it's the only way that you can be accepted. You're still waiting for permission to show up fully, but you don't need to keep waiting. Relating this to myself, for me, the, the mask looked like. People pleasing performance. Um, and what was hard for me was I, I, I, I failed at that as well. So a lot of you might have, uh, still gotten the grades. I didn't, I, I didn't. Um, the goal was to do well, to achieve. Um, and that's part of what, um, hurt me so much, managing other people's emotions, um, keeping things in control. Even when I was falling apart inside. That's what alcohol gave me. Um. And that's how you go through stages with a form of addiction. 'cause at the start, it isn't chaos. It's quite the opposite. Finally, it doesn't feel chaotic. It gave me control over how I felt. It's, it was a performance tool to escape the pressure of, um, performing all the bloody time. And when I took that away, when I walked into that first meeting, when I truly decided that enough was enough, it wasn't just alcohol that I was detoxing from. It was years of pretending that I was fine and actually starting to believe it. It was. Years of showing people the polished, ver polished rather version of me, you know? So I didn't scare them off with the, the messiness of me and the truth of me. And do you know what I found? Once I stopped putting this performance on, not rejection, not abandonment, I finally found peace. Because the people who stuck around, they saw the real me and they didn't fucking flinch. Jess is probably the main person in that. She's the reason that, uh, I'm even having this conversation with you right now. She's the one who pushed me to help me be as authentic as I. Um, as I possibly can be. So let's be real as well. You, you don't have to rip this mask off in one go. Um, that's probably too scary. Um, it, it can work, but it depends. Um, that's not what we do. Um. Yeah, we take a, a slower approach really. Um, sometimes when you try to rip that mask off in one go, that can almost be self-destruction itself, and that's not what this is about. It's about self return. And in my experience, that's a bit more delicate. It takes time. We start small, you know, tell the truth in a conversation. You let yourself be a little more emotional than usual. Again, if I had a penny for every time I heard someone say, I've always just been told I'm too much good. Be too much. Be too fucking much, and fuck everyone who doesn't wanna stick around for that ride. Because for every person, the quote unquote rejects you. There is another person who wants that version of you. Imagine just saying no to somebody without actually explaining it. Terrifying, right? But that's where the gold is. You find who your tribe is. Not just your tribe but you. You find who you are. Let someone see you a bit unsure or angry or messy. Because every time you do that, you are, you are sending yourself a message, and that's what all of this is about. It's not about whether something makes sense or it's the right timing. It's nothing to do with that. Every single choice that you make sends a message, and that's why it's so important if you do those things, you are saying to yourself, I'm not here to perform anymore. It's gonna be me finally. And then the people who can't handle that. Well, they weren't loving you anyway. They were loving the mask. Think about that. Are you trying to keep people around that love you in air quotes when it's not even you? Doesn't make sense, does it? So why do it? So if this, if this conversation hit deep, if you are realizing you've been performing for decades and you just don't wanna do it anymore, message me on Instagram with the word podcast. Tell me what your mask has, has looked like. Tell me what version of you you're ready to meet again. You don't need a breakthrough right now. You just need like permission. And permission starts with telling the truth, my friend. This is, it was never about the food. And today we talked about, um, not your childhood, but the story that you built from it. The good news about that is that you get to rewrite it as long as you choose to. So I shall see you guys next time. And remember, the mask kept you safe, but it is not who you are. It never was. And.