For the first 35 years of my life, I knew exactly who I was.
I was Daddy’s little girl. I was his tough cowgirl.
I was proud of it, and honestly, I still love that little girl. But somewhere along the way, a nickname turned into a job description, and it took me decades, and a lot of pain, to realize I’d been performing it.
How the Tough Cowgirl Was Born
My dad was a cattle rancher’s son from Colorado who never quite left the ranch, even in a three-piece suit and a cowboy hat at IBM. He fixed his own plumbing. He didn’t go to the doctor unless he couldn’t get out of bed. He was, in every way, a man who didn’t need anyone.
And I adored him. Until my teen years, there wasn’t anyone in the world I wanted to be like more.
I spent hours fantasizing about the ranch my grandparents sold. I learned my grandfather’s brand and studied how he started horses. My daughter and I eventually named our own horses after my grandfather’s and my dad’s horses. I wanted to live in jeans and boots, far away from the suburban cul-de-sac where I was growing up.
So when I tell you the identity wasn’t fake, I mean it. It was rooted in real love.
But it came with rules.
In our family, tough people ate red meat, barely cooked, and in large quantities. Toughness was tied to my dad’s masculinity and his identity as an American cowboy. He would have seen any other choice as an insult to our heritage. As I wrote in The Healed Table, this wasn’t just preference. It was who he was, who we were as a family.
So I defined myself inside that framework. Tough cowgirl. Hoover (a nickname I earned by eating two leftover half-pound burgers before my mother made it from her bedroom to the kitchen). Not a vegan, God forbid. For most of my life, I would have called vegans extremists, and I’d have defended that opinion hard, because it wasn’t really about food. It was about protecting who I thought I was.
What a Rigid Self-Perception Really Is
A rigid self-perception is a fixed picture of who you are and who you’re allowed to be. It usually sounds like:
- I’m the strong one.
- I’m not the type to cry / ask for help / need rest.
- People like me don’t change.
- That’s just who I am.
These scripts are rarely chosen. They’re inherited, absorbed from a parent, a culture, a church, a workplace, or a crisis we survived. And they usually worked. They got us love, safety, or approval at a time when we needed it.
That’s why letting go of them feels like betrayal. It can feel like abandoning a parent, a family, or the part of ourselves that kept us safe.
The Problem With a Performance
The trouble is that an identity you have to perform is exhausting to maintain.
I was strong in public and falling apart in private. At my heaviest and most worn down, I was struggling with my health and my confidence. And here’s the irony that still gets me: the girl who dreamed of life on horseback became terrified of riding. I’d lost my balance and my muscle recovery, and I fell repeatedly, something that hadn’t happened since I was a teenager learning to ride young horses. At one point, I thought I’d have to sell my horses.
The tough cowgirl was afraid to get on a horse.
If your own outward image doesn’t match your inside, you might know this gap. It’s the quiet distance between the person everyone sees and the one you actually are.
Performance Guilt: Why Letting Go Feels Wrong
When you begin to step outside a role, you’ll likely meet something I call performance guilt. It’s the sense that you’re doing something wrong when you:
- Rest instead of produce
- Say no to something you “should” do
- Let someone see your struggle
- Change an opinion or habit you defended for years
- Choose differently than your family or community would
Performance guilt isn’t evidence that you’re making a mistake. More often, it’s evidence that you’re leaving a script. Your nervous system learned that playing the role equals safety, so stepping away registers as danger.
For me, this showed up most strongly when I considered changing how I ate. In my family’s story, that meant betraying my dad and my heritage. It took significant emotional and physical pain before another choice was even thinkable. In fact, it took a lot of pain for me to let go of the tough little cowgirl who adored her cowboy daddy.
What I Found Underneath
Here’s what I didn’t expect: the cowgirl didn’t disappear. When I let go of the performance, the best of her stayed.
I still love horses. I still love hard work and open land. I still have my grandfather’s grit and my dad’s stubborn loyalty. Today, I live on a 20-acre homestead, grow vegetables, and my husband keeps bees. I didn’t lose the ranch girl. I just stopped needing her to prove anything.
What fell away was the fear, the need for approval, and the rule that I could only be loved if I was tough.
In my last year with my dad, I met the man underneath his armor. And without realizing it, I was meeting the girl underneath mine. We’re all more than the part we play.
Practices for Releasing the Role
- Name the script. Finish this sentence: I’m the one who ______. Then ask, Who taught me that? When did it start protecting me? There’s no shame in the answer.
- Thank it. Your tough, capable, never-needs-anything self kept you safe. You can honor that and still outgrow it.
- Ask the 5 Whys. When you feel guilt about resting or changing, ask why five times. You’ll often land on a belief about worth or belonging. (Here’s how the 5 Whys work.)
- Take a Steward’s Pause. When you feel the pull to perform, take one breath and ask, Is this my old reflex or my truth? Some days it’s both.
- Run a small experiment. Choose one place to be slightly less “on”: admit you’re tired, ask for help, change your mind. Notice that you’re still safe and still loved.
- Ask what you’d choose if no one was watching. What would you eat, wear, believe, or do? Your answer is data about your real identity.
- Get support. Identity work runs deep, and it’s easier alongside others. As I wrote in Why You Can’t Out-Think a Broken Identity, willpower rarely rewrites a story. Honesty and community do.
The Old Script vs. Your Authentic Self
| The Performed Identity | The Authentic Identity | |
|---|---|---|
| Motivation | Approval and safety | Alignment with your values |
| Feels like | Pressure, vigilance, guilt | Ease, honesty, steadiness |
| Response to struggle | Hide it | Share it with safe people |
| Response to change | Resist (it threatens the role) | Explore (it reveals who you are) |
| Source of worth | What you do and how you seem | Who you are, inherently |
Frequently Asked Questions
What is performance guilt?
Performance guilt is the uneasy feeling that you’re letting others down or doing something wrong when you step outside a role you’ve played, such as the strong one, the helper, or the high achiever. It often signals that you’re changing a long-held pattern, not that you’re making a mistake.
How do I find my authentic identity?
Start by noticing the roles and rules you inherited, then ask which ones still fit your values. Small experiments, honest reflection, and supportive community help you separate who you were taught to be from who you actually are.
Why is it so hard to let go of an old identity?
Old identities often formed to protect us or earn love, so changing them can feel unsafe or disloyal. Your nervous system may treat the change as a threat until it learns the new way is safe.
Can you keep the good parts of an old identity?
Yes. Letting go of a performed identity doesn’t erase your strengths, history, or loves. You keep what’s true and release what you only did out of fear or obligation.
What does “inherited identity” mean?
An inherited identity is a sense of self absorbed from family, culture, or early experience, such as “I’m the tough one” or “we don’t ask for help,” rather than one you consciously chose.
Boots by the Door
I still have a deep love for cowboy boots. They sit by my door, a little worn, a little dusty.
The difference is that I wear them because I like them. Not because I’m afraid of who I’d be without them.
If you’ve been carrying a role for a long time, whether it’s the tough one, the capable one, or the one who never falls apart, I’d like you to know that you can set it down without losing yourself. You may be surprised by who’s waiting underneath.
What role have you been performing, and what would it feel like to put it down for a day?
If this post stirred something in you, start with our free 7-Day Micro-Course. It’s a gentle first step toward rewriting the stories you’ve been performing. Or explore The Steward Within program to learn how the 13-week Rewrite → Rewire → Retrain method can help you become who you already are, underneath the armor.
