When Hiding Is Not Healing: Dissociation, Protection, and the Wisdom of Rumi

There’s no integrity in hiding. And yet, we all do it. Sometimes we go silent, step back, disappear. Not because we’re at peace, but because we’re afraid. We dissociate not out of stillness, but out of fear of being fully seen.

But here’s the nuance: not all dissociation is the same.

Some of it is sacred. It’s our body saying, not yet, or not safe. It’s a nervous system doing its job to preserve us. That kind of silence can be healing. That kind of space can be protective.

But when dissociation becomes habitual, a place we hide rather than a space we restore—it becomes a prison. We go inward not to meet ourselves, but to avoid the world. We abandon the moment. We silence our own expression before anyone else can.

Rumi reminds us in The Guest House that every emotion—whether joy or shame, sorrow or malice—is a visitor with purpose. These emotions are not to be feared or exiled. They are to be welcomed, entertained, even when they rattle the walls of our inner home.

“Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows…

treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out

for some new delight.”

So ask yourself gently:

• Am I retreating into stillness, or hiding in avoidance?

• Am I creating a space for my emotions to visit—or boarding up the windows to keep them out?

• Is this silence making me more whole, or more hollow?

Healing begins when we meet ourselves without resistance. When we greet the dark thought, the shame, the awkwardness—“at the door laughing”—because we know that the real work isn’t in fixing ourselves, but in hosting our full humanity with compassion.

Let us remember, in the words of Rumi:

“Be grateful for whoever comes,

because each has been sent

as a guide from beyond.”

The guest is never the problem. The closing of the door is. Keep it open. Let yourself be seen. Let what arrives reshape you.