There’s a phrase that gets thrown around a lot in personal growth, healing, and self-help spaces that tends to make people cringe—especially people who have lived through trauma:

“Fake it till you make it.”

I understand the reaction. Truly.

For many people, especially those who have spent years dissociating, masking, people-pleasing, or contorting themselves to survive unsafe environments, the idea of faking anything feels wrong. It can sound like more lying. More pretending. More abandoning yourself. More performing instead of being real.

And if that’s what this phrase meant, I would absolutely toss it out.

But that’s not what I’m talking about here.

What I want to offer—through a somatic, trauma-informed lens—is a much deeper and more compassionate understanding of what “fake it till you make it” can actually mean when it’s used intentionally, consciously, and with nervous system awareness.

Because when approached this way, it isn’t disingenuous at all.

It’s practice.

And practice is how the nervous system learns.

Trauma Shapes Identity Through Survival

When you’ve lived in environments where your safety depended on who you were allowed to be, your personality, behaviors, and responses didn’t form around authenticity—they formed around survival. You learned what worked.

Maybe that looked like:

• Being agreeable so conflict didn’t escalate

• Being hyper-independent so you didn’t need to rely on anyone

• Being emotionally attuned to everyone else while disconnecting from yourself

• Being quiet, small, or invisible

• Being strong, capable, or “the one who holds it together”

None of this means anything is wrong with you. These were intelligent adaptations. Your nervous system did exactly what it was designed to do: keep you alive, connected, and as safe as possible in the conditions you were in. But survival strategies have a cost.

When they run your life long-term, they often become mistaken for who you are. And that’s where confusion sets in. Because when the threat is gone—or when you’re finally ready to heal—you may realize:

• You don’t know what you want

• You don’t know how you feel until it’s overwhelming

• You don’t know how to act without scanning for danger or approval

• You don’t know what “authentic” even feels like

So when someone says, “Just be yourself,” it can feel frustrating or even shaming. Because which self? The one that learned to survive? Or the one that never got to develop?

The Nervous System Doesn’t Change Through Insight Alone

One of the core principles of somatic healing—found in Somatic Experiencing (Peter Levine’s work) and many other body-based modalities—is this: The nervous system learns through experience, not explanation. You don’t heal trauma because you understand it intellectually. You heal because your body has new experiences of safety, choice, agency, and regulation. The same is true for identity.

You don’t discover who you are simply by thinking about it. You discover who you are by trying things and noticing what happens inside your body.

That might look like:

• Tracking sensations of expansion or contraction

• Noticing breath, tension, warmth, or settling

• Observing what brings relief versus collapse

• Paying attention to moments of aliveness or grounding

This is why authenticity isn’t something you decide—it’s something you feel. And when you’ve been disconnected from your body for a long time, those signals aren’t immediately clear. So again—we practice.

Why “Fake” Is the Wrong Word (But We’ll Use It Anyway)

I don’t actually love the word fake here, but I understand why people use it.

What most people mean by “fake it till you make it” is:

Practicing behaviors, boundaries, and ways of being that align with who you are becoming, even if they don’t feel natural yet.

That’s not faking. That’s learning. That’s neuroplasticity.

That’s your nervous system being exposed to new options and gradually building capacity. If you’ve spent years defaulting to people-pleasing, freezing, over-explaining, or shutting down, those responses will fire automatically. Not because they’re true. But because they’re familiar. Familiar often feels safer than unknown—even when it’s painful.

So when you begin to do something different—something that actually aligns with your values or your deeper self—your body may respond with discomfort, anxiety, or doubt.

You might think:

“This isn’t me.”

But more often than not, what your nervous system is saying is:

“This is unfamiliar.”

Unfamiliar does not mean inauthentic. It often means you’re stepping out of survival and into choice.

You Don’t Yet Know How the Real You Acts

This is something I say to clients all the time, and it often brings both relief and grief: You don’t know how the real you acts yet. And that makes sense. If you spent years being inauthentic—not because you were dishonest, but because you had to protect yourself—you didn’t get to learn who you are when you’re regulated, safe, and resourced.

That version of you hasn’t had much airtime. So we don’t expect it to show up fully formed. We experiment. We ask questions like:

• How does my body feel when I imagine being grounded and confident?

• What happens in my chest or belly when I picture setting a boundary?

• What sensations arise when I speak honestly but gently?

• What feels nourishing versus draining?

We don’t force answers. We track sensation. Because the body will tell the truth long before the mind feels convinced.

Practice Is Not Betrayal—It’s Skill-Building

This is the part that often needs the most reframing. Practicing a new behavior does not mean you are lying about who you are.

It means you are building skills you never got to learn. If you didn’t grow up with safe models for:

• Healthy boundaries

• Emotional expression

• Self-advocacy

• Regulated conflict

• Secure attachment

Then of course these things won’t feel natural at first. That doesn’t mean they aren’t yours. It means they aren’t yet embodied. Think about learning any physical skill. You don’t wait until something feels effortless to begin. You practice while it’s awkward. You wobble. You forget. You revert back to what’s familiar.

That’s not failure—that’s learning.

Old Patterns Once Kept You Safe

One of the most important pieces of trauma-informed work is honoring what came before. The habits you’re trying to change weren’t random. They protected you. They helped you survive. They may have kept you connected to caregivers, partners, or communities when other options weren’t available. So when you try something new and feel yourself snap back into old behaviors, it doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong. It means your nervous system is checking:

“Is this still safe?”

And safety is built slowly. With repetition. With compassion. With a lot of room for messiness.

Authenticity Is a Felt Sense, Not a Performance

Here’s the paradox: The behaviors that feel the most authentic to who you truly are may feel the least familiar at first. That’s because authenticity lives in the body, not in habit. When you practice being the person you are becoming—someone who is grounded, clear, responsive, boundaried, playful, or emotionally honest—you’re not pretending. You’re rehearsing a truth your body hasn’t fully caught up to yet. Over time, something shifts.

The behaviors that once felt effortful begin to feel natural. Not because you forced them. But because your nervous system learned that they are safe. That’s when the “make it” part happens. Not because you faked anything. But because you practiced until it became embodied.

A Gentle Reframe

So if the phrase “fake it till you make it” has ever rubbed you the wrong way, I invite you to hear it differently: Not as pretending to be someone you’re not. But as practicing being someone you are. Someone your nervous system didn’t have the chance to become yet. Someone your body is still learning to trust. Healing isn’t about becoming someone new. It’s about creating the safety required to become who you’ve always been.

And sometimes, that starts with practice. Awkward, imperfect, deeply human practice.