Not living by hidden virtue, on the other hand, ensures that your role in a family or culture is assigned at birth (or even conception), with predetermined expectations about how you should and will function. Your days become filled with stressful attempts to please those to whom you’re biologcally related. You experience the nagging self-criticism that you’re disappointing a parent or grandparent, along with unsettling desires to be free of the pressure of your gender or placement in a designated family. Trying to operate within this belief system can consequently keep you trapped in an
...more
