You Were Never Just a Role: Breaking Free From False Identities & Living Authentically

Ep 124. 

Are You Living Under a False Identity? So many of us—at every age—struggle with feeling different, like the black sheep, the outsider, or the misunderstood original in a world that demands conformity. We say we want to be “unique,” but what we often mean is: we want to be free. This deep inner tension is not rebellion for its own sake. It's the natural, human desire to grow—to separate from the roles and identities we’ve inherited. Roles like caregiver, provider, parent, or problem-solver. These roles may serve us or even protect us at one point, but they can become cages. And eventually, something inside us starts to shift. Our perspective changes. Our desires wake up. What once felt comfortable starts to feel confining. We begin to question: Who am I outside of what I do? What if there's more? This episode explores the spiritual and psychological journey of shedding false identities, embracing your true self, and stepping into the life you were meant to live—not the life handed to you. These invisible ceilings? They’re not real. They’re often installed by fear—ours or someone else’s. And we can break through them. You are not too late, not too old, not too lost. You are simply being called to remember.🔥 Let’s explore how to break through self-imposed limitations, transcend outdated roles, and live a life with no ceiling. Your authentic life begins the moment you stop asking for permission. You won’t be qualified before you start. You’ll be qualified by doing. Come as you are. Walk well. 

Transcript

Welcome back folks to episode 124 of the Running Man Self Regulation Skills Project podcast with me, your host, Dr. Armando Dominguez, PhD in Health Psychology, licensed professional counselor, and an adjunct professor at a local community college. What we're going to be discussing today has to do with the concept of living a life without a ceiling. Now that's really what we would call hyperbolic. Can we do that? Probably not in the true physical sense, but the idea, the concept of this is really, really important.

Because often we hear people lament and this is something that that are Lamentations of people not necessarily that struggle with like Addictions and that sort of stuff but just people in general where they're trying to live a life. They're trying to find themselves in quotes

And also trying to realize what it is that they can do, try to adventure and try to find out whether or not there are things that they like, they don't like. At some point we all walk this life with no idea as to what it is that we really like or want to do. Some of us have an idea, but generally it's kind of amorphous and without shape. And often we don't have a vector or direction in which to move. So the importance of this discussion today, life without a ceiling, we have to determine what it is that gives

me shape to my direction one two

those interests that I may have that may or may not be small passions or even life guiding passions. And those aren't things that we are born with necessarily that we might actually acquire actually along the way, but don't always know them when we're young. Some do. Those are very small numbers, outliers of anything, but a lot of that has to do with environment that one is in, what one is shaped by as far as external environment, parenting, rearing education, but also

armando (02:31.633)
the genetic factors we may have inherited our endowment as human beings that we got from our family. Those aren't limiting factors per se, but they can be seen that way and often they're spoken of that way when people get this really high-minded idea of where they're at in comparison to the rest of the pack. And when we start doing comparisons, we start falling into bias, categorical bias if anything. Where we start putting people in boxes to make sense of them in our world and how they fit there and also to make sense of where I'm at and

maybe give myself a false ego boost. Now we may be good at what we do and there's nothing wrong with being convinced and honest about what you're capable of doing. If you can do what you speak, then it's not bragging, correct? Or so they say here in Texas anyway.

But fact of the matter is there are many that like this concept this social concept that there's a distance between me and them I'm somehow above and I came from below or I've been always above it all somehow but there's always this sense of struggle in the direction of finding not only who I am but becoming the person that I'm supposed to be and That is a self-realization task that Abraham Maslow talked about but many other psychologists have as well And this isn't just something about

Because mind you, these are concepts and ideas that have stood the test of time. If you read Marcus Aurelius, if you read Plato, and these are the Grecian

wise men of old that we still kind of speak about today and they drive movements of not only conception self-concept, but also the deception of self-concept and not buying too deeply into it and how we can also access better performance. How can we become better in our lives? And even though we use the term performance, generally speaking, this isn't always a competition, me against them or me against what my idea of

armando (04:28.385)
success is but rather me racing against the idea of who I was yesterday and will I evolve if anything so it's a more organic process but our terms tend to recognize a sense of competitiveness almost and we tend to default into a language that sounds almost like an us versus them idea and it's not always that. So with these ideas to start life without a ceiling where do we get these concepts and ideas of ceiling?

limits if you will and did I impose them on myself?

Or did someone else give them to me? Or as a young person did I see this repeated enough in my environment such that I assumed them, I took them. Not meaning to, not foolishly, but just because everyone else did that. And that is part of our adaptive process as a human biological creature and nature does this. We took on the camouflage, so to speak. Like the little baby I've spoken of before, whenever dad was psychologist and had someone with a camera over his shoulder, baby one

minute old.

And he's sticking his tongue out at baby over and over and baby starts repeating the same. People used to very flippantly speak and say, babies can't see, they can't tell, and they can't think and differentiate. But there was definitely some cognitive process going on there. Mirror neurons, right? Something that we didn't know so much about back then. And this film was probably out about maybe 25 or 30 years ago. And since we've gotten a lot better with that from fMRI technology and being able to neuro image and see what's happening when we're thinking.

armando (06:05.241)
things, of course, we're not going to get to the point where we can map consciousness, nor match it, because AI is good, but it's not that good. And I don't think it'll ever get there. There will always be a glitch as far as being able to do a human mimetic such that, you know, it is really a similar lacrim or an actual copy of what humans do. And we're seeing things where we're growing brain tissue that is able to think and play pong, if anything. And these are just brain cells.

Where do they get this capacity to learn? So there's a whole lot going on but what we're doing is hijacking what's already there and we're copying what's already there and This plays very well into what it is that we're talking about now about life without the ceiling because if I'm trying to live my life and become the best that I can be Being myself or just becoming my most authentic self most of us don't get that idea till much much later then

the better I get at it, the faster I get at getting better at it, the more effective I am in my life and the less hang of so to speak do I develop in the process. what is it that is my limit that I have imposed?

by let's say my environment in this sense where I grow up let's say I grow up in a more rural setting out on a farm or a ranch where you can go walking for long distances without seeing your neighbor and being out in the woods and maybe being around animals or even out in the wild for that matter where you might have to hunt for food there are definite rules and guidelines that might seem harsh to somebody that's a city slicker living in town and never seeing a creek bed or animals running in

wild or even hunting for their own food. And of course, if we were to bring them into the woods and transplant them there and have them live and have somebody kind of guide them, it's a culture shock, but it's also a mind shock. There's also a shock of being because I've never seen this before. So there's an adaptive process. There's a vicarious learning quality. If you're in an environment where you're trying to teach somebody how to get along and there's a learning curve and sometimes it's uncomfortable. Now there is a very physical

armando (08:18.963)
physical field to the learning that we do, and this is quite related to self-regulation, because self-regulation is a learned skill. Some of it is a biological neurological level skill that we have, and some of it's a pre-programmed capacity. So it's not really an earned skill, but it's one that we've kind of inherited. And most of that is subcortical in the sense of below the level of prefrontal cortex. And these are things that run at

neurological signals to get us out of danger for instance and these things are what we'd call subliminal to the conscious level and we may be able to Report what happens after the fact of we're in a stressful environment because we have the recording so to speak but we may not be able to control it such as something as a startle reflex a sudden loud sound and your Spinal reflex causes you to do what to startle go into mortal reflex or to go into the fetal position to cover your head because it's too sudden to

And the speed of onset of perception has a lot to do with whether or not I may gain limits or maybe exceed limits that otherwise I may have conceived of or brought myself to think and reason into being. One may be able to think that, I can't climb that tower. I can't rappel down that rope. And I remember having very similar thoughts whenever I went into the military many years ago, went into basic training and I wound up doing some pretty seriously dangerous stuff by my eye.

going into it that otherwise I wouldn't have tested heights

I realized I wasn't liking heights. wasn't terrified in the sense that I was frozen at the peak of a climb height. But I did realize I have a great deal of respect for them and I can actually move under duress and follow instructions and do what I have to do to get myself safely from point A to point B. So sometimes we break our limits and realize our ceilings, our glass ceilings, their conceptions, their merely ideas that we kind of lend emotional quantity to in the sense that we have feelings about the

armando (10:22.461)
we build up over time that may be based more so on a rationale and a reasoning perspective versus actual evidence. And this is where we start to exaggerate and become hyperbolic sometimes wherever things are too big. We become descriptive in the sense that we use absolutes and we might believe what it is that we speak. So often whenever we have limits imposed upon us when we're young, they're imposed upon us with the idea of keeping us alive and keeping us safe. Remember the person

that grew up in the woods. Don't go near that creek.

Don't go near that area because there are snakes and don't go out at night because you could get picked off. So we do have bear here, this sort of thing. And those are things that we learn and they're not unreasonable, irrational fears, but rather guidelines and respect that we learn for nature or even going out swimming for that matter. Cause you can die in the water. Water does not kill, but many people die in the water because they don't respect what's going on or they overestimate themselves or underestimate the environment.

things are real and real things happen to people. And sometimes people don't make it as a result of those things. So guidelines, what are those ceilings? Are they really ceilings? Are they boundaries that limit me from becoming the best me I can be? Well, no, they actually might get you to the next right now so that you can become more of yourself by not letting you perish in the woods, in the cold, in the grasp of an animal that's really hungry whenever maybe you shouldn't be out there at night without some sort of

firearm, for instance. So these ideas, when we think about limits, kind of rouse the rabble whenever you think about people.

armando (12:04.723)
that really try to figure out what's going on with them and they really are tied on to their sense of ego. This ego sense, this idea of who it is that I am and you press people in question for instance, who are you? And they tell you what they do. Well, I work here and this is what I do. This is what I like. These are my values. They speak around the idea of self, but they've never really come to know who it is that themself is. In many cases, some do and I will speak

rather in a broad brush perspective to make the point, but not everyone does that inner work to get acquainted with themselves. Some people spend a lot of time with themselves and they develop a sense of distance that's comfortable. Some people spend a lot of time with other people and they develop a sense of relative distance with others that's comfortable. But often they find identity within that, not realizing that that is a role that they play, that they assume that they take on or that they become so they can encourage the possibility

of getting whatever nurturance they need to survive, food, water, shelter, safety, protection, warmth, this sort of thing. And we tend to measure these with what we call personality tests whenever there's a distinct difference that somebody may be behaving within that our responses that are environmental programs that one has developed to make sure that one is safe and that one lives and makes it into the next right now. So what does this have to

do with living a life without a ceiling. Sometimes we impose limits on ourselves because we are told you can't do this because I haven't done this so therefore I'm telling you you shouldn't or you can't or you won't and those are really uncomfortable things to hear. somebody is not a good thing. We tell someone they should for whatever reason other than the fact that maybe the individual speaking it is insecure and maybe they're projecting their insecurity. That's not

healthy. That's not a good thing. That's a ceiling being imposed upon you, especially if you assume it and somebody speaks it to you from a point of authority and you're too young to question it or don't have the general wherewithal or worse yet. You get threatened physically with the organismic.

armando (14:22.057)
Wherewithal being harmed as a result of not listening or doing what you should be doing. And that can create catch 22 things that make it very, very hard to be adaptable and adaptive in a healthy sense. So you can grow. So these are all qualifying things that I'm speaking about and they have everything to do with what we call self-regulation, what this whole podcast is about. Because often when we go into the marketplace, when we go into public, these are the things that are at play.

Whenever we interact with people, when we want to socialize, when we want to be sociable and find ourselves unable to be sociable, unable to be within the social milieu and be comfortable and to be self because we become self conscious and they told me I was dumb. They told me I wasn't smarter. I'm not good looking or I'm not pretty. I'm overweight, underweight. I'm to this or not enough that. And those are the programs that play that often are given to limit somebody sometimes

given to protect somebody and may be given with a good heart or with a good intention if anything, but done harshly or clumsily. And those are the limitations that can become painful. These are the things that me working as a counselor, as a therapist, as a psychologist have to work with people.

working through themselves even as adults. Adults that are in their the latter half of their life that haven't worked these things through because one they didn't have somebody that could make them feel safe to be able to discuss it or if they did they just didn't want to do it and view or in earshot of somebody because they were afraid of being judged or they felt that they were dumb and often the people that may have imposed these ideas upon them may be long gone. They may have passed. They may be deceased but

yet they still hold on to these things because there's a sense of loyalty and the idea wasn't the person that passed but yet there is a connection to that person and there's also a sense of betrayal when one starts changing one's mind. Some say well whenever I left home I did everything different than mom and dad because I was mad at them and I didn't like how they raised me not realizing that many of the things that they're doing to feed themselves, clothe themselves, this sort of thing are things that they learned at the feet and knees of mom and dad even though they're mad at them.

armando (16:38.731)
And we have to recognize where it is that the limits came in and what it is that we assumed and what it was that was imposed upon us and learn to recognize what is it that is in my best interest that I want for myself and it's okay to do that. Usually in our teen years that we grow up in a healthy environment, we differentiate. We start becoming ourself. We start trying on roles in junior high and when we think back about it's kind of gross and embarrassing when we think about it and we laugh. Some of it's very clumsy.

Some of it's really embarrassing things, but we won't discuss here on the podcast, but you get the idea and it's okay to have those feelings of shame and guilt and and doubt in oneself. It's okay because that's part of the growing process because we're doing things without that sense of knowing. Sometimes we have a very heroic sense of I'll try anything to determine whether or not it works and a lot of the things that we do these social experiments called growing up are failures. True failures in the sense that that didn't work.

have heartbreak, we have embarrassment, we have shame, and we have this, I'm never going to do that again. Sometimes we have injuries or worse, but that's part of our growth process as we develop as humans. Now, whenever we have somebody try to impose limits upon us, let's say we're adults now and we're at work and we have somebody judging what it is that we do as work to make pay, those things can be very uncomfortable, especially if you're well aware of what your capacity is, but

you have to earn and maybe somebody is in a position where there's a sense of authority above your position and we can respect that position and some people

take that as I am better than you versus I have or occupy a position because of experience or knowledge. It's not necessarily evaluation of the individual in magnitude. They're more valuable and you're less so, but rather they may treat it that way. They may not have known how to relate to that. They may have been put in a position that was power over people, so to speak, at a young age before they learned how to generate a good character as a lead. And those things can become very uncomfortable.

armando (18:50.883)
But as far as living life without a ceiling, how can I limit myself is a question, self-directed question. How do I limit myself? And what are the things that I want to accomplish and do? What are the things I'm not doing that I want for me, but I stop or I hesitate or maybe I don't do because I'm afraid and there is fear. Here I am talking to you and I remember doing my first podcast and I go back and listen to episode one and it's

cringe-worthy because it wasn't terrible but yet the information is good. It's really good actually but

I hear myself. It's like, I didn't have my podcast voice then and I've developed when I feel much more comfortable doing this. And whenever I start doing interview format, that's going to be some more growth and that's okay. I'm not afraid of it in the sense of injury or illness or threat to my body, but yet there is an apprehension and a fear and that's okay. It's okay to have these things. We're going to grow. And the reason I mentioned this in the way that I'm talking today is because we never stopped growing and I'm encouraging you all

today to do those things that you want for you. doesn't matter how old we get. There's a lady that I met many years ago. She was in her seventies whenever I was going to grad school. Lovely lady. And she was hoofing it in grad school. This was important to her.

Talk about courage. She didn't listen to everyone else. Well, you're at end of your life. She'd relax. You should just be resting and doing whatever it is. Older folks do. She had nothing to do with that. She wanted to go to school. You know what she did. She finished well. Top of her class. I was really kind of proud of her and God knows it was an honor to know her. Sweet lady. I don't know whatever happened to her, but those sorts of things. We're in this life and we never stopped growing. Physiologically, our brain never stops healing itself. All glial cells are always

armando (20:40.641)
cleaning up the mess in our brain and we start generating new brain cells. We're neurogenic at night. Even whenever somebody suffers with things like dementia and Alzheimer's, really seriously demyelinating disease that once it starts demyelinating the structures that are autonomic, one starts to pass at that point due to organ failure, this sort of thing. But the fact of the matter is even down to the last, our brain is always fixing itself, making new brain cells.

this will to live and this will to life is also the will to death in the sense that we know that there's an eminent end, but it's also a sense of wanting to drive until the end and not letting it go because we know it's coming. Once again, the life without a ceiling, we don't have one. We have physical limits, yes. We do have limitations to what it is that we can do and that's not what I mean, but the capacity to be able to dream, to conceive of the fact that there's more and

we can do more. It's just a matter of wanting it. There are some people that give up and say, you know what, I've lived a life. I've heard too much. I've listened to too much. And that's a real shame. I hate to hear that. And I don't usually use the term hate because I save that for the enemies that would harm my family. But otherwise I tried to love and be compassionate and understanding. But I also understand that also running against the wall and not having any remission in resistance can make one tired. But as long as

has a goal, an idea, or a sense of wanting to experience moment to moment, we can live down to the very end. And yes, are exceptions, there are qualifiers such as extreme pain, chronic pain. I understand that. And that can make our organism want to give up and our brain will reflect it. But fact of the matter is the rest of our life up until those points, wherever we deal with the physical chronicity of pain, hopefully that is not in your future, we do have the capacity to

to of ourselves become the most of who it is that we are and to not live by any imposed limits by others or even the limits that we impose in ourselves by virtue of our hesitation and fear because we believe what it is that we tell ourselves when in actuality we're living now fearing what happened yesterday and not wanting tomorrow to turn out like yesterday and robbing ourselves of what's going on in the immediate moment so for now that's been a lot in a little bit and I appreciate your time thank you for listening to me on this lovely

armando (23:10.281)
Thursday evening and I want to tell you I look forward to hearing from you if you have any feedback for me please Send it to the email at running man get skills project at gmail love to hear from you and also I am taking donations and That kind of thing just kind of helps me with equipment and paying for what it is that we're doing as far as developing This program I say we as in me myself in Armando. I certainly appreciate those that have been helping. Thank you and

if you go to YouTube, please like subscribe and share. want to see that channel grow. And those of you that listen on all the podcast platforms, continue. Thank you. I appreciate that. Those are exciting numbers. And I believe just on the podcast platforms, through Buzzsprout, my numbers have hit about 5,000 and that's pretty nice. And there are more through YouTube and those are a little harder to quantify, but I'd like to see my subscribers go up. think

I'm at 99 on YouTube, but I have many more listeners globally, and I just want to say thank you Appreciate you, and I want to hear from you Let me know what's going on because we've turned that corner got the equipment now. It's just a matter of shaping it up and getting ready I'm getting my calendar ready for guests that I'm going to be inviting to do in the interview format with and They're gonna be some exciting folks to visit with I love you listeners Thank you for being part of my life and being part of my my web in this lifetime and

Really appreciate your time once again. You take care. Live life without a ceiling friends. Walk well.