We spend most of our lives becoming someone. The dependable one. The strong one. The one who has it all handled. We build these versions of ourselves carefully, because they once earned us love, safety, or a sense of belonging. And then one day, we catch our own reflection and realize we are not entirely sure who is underneath. This episode is an honest conversation about that moment.

Host Rasmeet sits down with Thomas R. Wilson, founder of R&H Creative Advocacy and Storytelling, to explore what happens when the roles we play stop being protection and start being a prison. Thomas shares his own journey from a childhood shaped by neurodiversity, misdiagnosis, and systemic failure, to the identity rebuild that began in his late twenties. This is a conversation about patterns, self-worth, the quiet courage of self-examination, and what it means to finally stop performing and simply be.

About the Guest:

Thomas R. Wilson is the founder of R&H Creative Advocacy and Storytelling LLC, a writer, mental health advocate, peer specialist, and storyteller based in Colorado. With over a decade of experience in the neurodiverse and mental health community, Thomas uses shared storytelling, empathy-based care, and community facilitation to help people find and raise their own voices. He is the author of Glimmer of a Soul, a poetry collection exploring mental health, and Reverie of the Lost Notes.

Key Takeaways:

• The roles we perform — the dependable one, the strong one, the problem child — were often intelligent acts of survival. They are not flaws to be ashamed of. Understanding where they came from is the first step to choosing differently.
• Functioning and deeply unwell are not opposites. Thomas spent years appearing capable while carrying shame, self-hostility, and unprocessed trauma underneath. Many people listening will recognize themselves in that.
• The hardest patterns to catch are the ones that sneak up quietly: the moment a small frustration tips into a spiral, the quiet voice that says good things won't last, the belief that you don't deserve what you have built.
• Healing is not linear and it is never fully done. The goal is not to be cured. The goal is to become your own emotional lifeguard and know when you are slipping before you go under.
• A strength-based mindset is not optimism. It is the active choice to challenge toxic self-talk with evidence of who you actually are, not who you were taught to believe you were.
• What the self underneath has been waiting to hear is simple: you are enough. You matter. You do not need to be everything for everyone.

Connect With Thomas R. Wilson:

• Website: www.rhcreativeadvocacyandstorytelling.net
• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/thomas-wilson-42762927b
• Instagram: @rhstorytelling
• Email: [email protected]

Episode Chapters:

[00:00] Opening — If You Set Down the Parts You Perform, Who Is Still Here?

[03:30] The Unmasked Moment — What Thomas Does Just for Himself (approx.)

[08:00] The Role That Became a Self — From Prodigy to Problem Child (approx.)

[16:00] The Pivotal Shift — One Teacher Who Chose Compassion Over Control (approx.)

[22:00] Everyday Patterns — Where Old Roles Show Up Without Warning (approx.)

[27:00] The Sneaky Ones — Why Subtle Self-Sabotage Is the Most Dangerous Kind (approx.)

[30:00] What the Self Underneath Has Been Waiting to Hear (approx.)

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00:00:08 Rasmeet: Welcome to Soul Mirror.

00:00:10 Rasmeet: I am Rasmet and this is the show where we look past the surface, past the roles we play and the mask we have worn so long that they feel like skin towards the self that has been there the whole time. Tonight is a conversation about patterns. The quiet ones that shape life and what begins to shift when we finally see ourselves clearly. So take a breath, soften your guard a little and let us look into the mirror together. So today I am joined by Thomas Wilson. It is a real gift to have you here.

00:00:44 Thomas Wilson: Thank you for having me on.

00:00:47 Rasmeet: Yes, Thomas, it's my pleasure. So before we go into the deeper layers, Thomas, I would love to start somewhere. You know, human and simple. So when you're not performing any role for anyone and no one is watching and no one, you know, needing anything from you. So what is something you find yourself drawn to? Like just for you and it's for no one else.

00:01:12 Thomas Wilson: I love that question. Um, so honestly, for me, one of my favorite things to do is. that I truly love to do is go back and watch some of my favorite shows or movies. I know a lot of people do this, but I really do believe that there is something beautiful about taking the time to revisit something that brings you joy, that brings you laughter, and something that may even make you a little sad. Um, when I do this, my main focus is to be able to turn off some of my brain and to be able to, in a way, spend some time with some old friends, depending on the show and how much I love the show. The other side of it is really just to, um, and I think you said this very well, like to drop the mask and not have to be performer Thomas or educator Thomas. Um, I also find that doing this is one of my favorite meditative activities because it allows me to not have to be there for anyone other than myself and to genuinely sit, be silent, and not have to say anything for a little bit. And I find that very restorative.

00:02:38 Rasmeet: Mhm. Right. So, uh, Thomas, I want to begin with your own story, you know, rather than the idea of it, because that is where the mirror is the clearest. And take us back to the role that you played for so long that you genuinely mistook it for who you were. And how did you overcome to wear it, and what did it give you in the years you needed it? And when did you first sense that it might not be the whole of you?

00:03:06 Thomas Wilson: Definitely. And I'll try to be quick on this. So I talk a lot on podcasts about this. But when I was very young, I Was like very, very young, like four or five years old. I was told I was a prodigy. I was very creative. I was very mindful. Um, this was before my neurodiversity, my mental health and my other stuff really started kicking in. And I spent a lot of my life in that time not really believing it to begin with. I had some very rough influences, even at a young age that really took away from that. But when my diagnosis is really kicked in after I lost somebody very near and dear to me, um, and I never really give who that person is just out of respect for the other people in my life, um, who may not want their stories told. Um, but my diagnosis is really or diagnoses really kicked in and my perception of the world for once shattered. Uh, and two, I wasn't really taught how to Explore and explain and understand those very complex images. And a lot of the people who are supposed to support me, like in the school system and otherwise, they responded with a lot of anger and aggression and a lot of insults and mockery. I remember by the time I was in fifth grade, I had a teacher. I'm not going to say her name just out of respect for everyone as well. Um, but there was, I remember a day in particular, I was having a really bad anger day. And, uh, she screamed like she buckled, like bent over on my desk and just yelled in my face that I was going to go to jail. I was a monster, all kinds of things. And I, it wasn't until I was older that I really understood that at school, it was far easier to make me the problem than to address what was actually going on with me. And they tried. They brought on a few people. It got better from time to time, but even through middle school and a good chunk of high school, it just it was very isolating. But it also became really easy for me to believe that I was that monster and that I was a problem, that I was a mistake. And I really absorbed and developed a very deeply toxic opinion of myself, something I still really struggle with to this day. I, I like myself most days. I can't say I always love myself, but I'm working on that on a daily basis. And it wasn't really until I was in my sophomore year of high school where I had a day where I raged. And I'll be honest, I didn't make things easy on anybody. And for a while I do think I had a deeply unhealthy tie to my anger, because it was easier to be angry than to actually process some of the things that were going on with me. Um, but I had a teacher who showed an immense amount of compassion to me on a day where I was raging one of my worst rage days. And I apologized to him directly. And he looked at me and I and I loved to say this point, and I say it so often on podcasts, but I think this is something that will really resonate with people. And that was he looked at me and said, Thomas, do you remember when you were first here and you wouldn't talk to anybody and you wouldn't answer questions? All of kinds, all of these things? And I said, yeah. And he said, I would rather have you rage and be angry and mad and share your true self or a side of you we don't get to see then quiet and alone. And that that was really the pivotal, pivotal shift shift, um, in my day to day. And that school really worked very hard. um, to help me understand my own diagnosis, but also help me to see that I was not the problem that I was, um, after that, I was the first person to graduate from that program in my area. They like to tell me that I was the valedictorian of that that year. Um, and I had really close connections with my principal and several of the teachers by that time. And it took a lot of work. Like it was not easy. It was not this instantaneous change. Um, and I ended up going to college, something people told me I never would. I honestly say I went to college kind of out of defiance to the people there because I wasn't the biggest fan of college. Um, um, and then I entered into adulthood. I'm going to summarize a really good chunk of these experiences, but I started to explore myself in my late twenties, um, ended up in health care about ten years ago where I ended up as a mentor and an advocate and many other roles. And then in twenty twenty one, I opened my business and I had that was at a point where I was depressed and I was unwell, very unwell, and I had to reset my life yet again. And I asked myself what I wanted to do and what I'm doing now, being a storytelling, being an advocate writer, all of these many, many roles like educator, community facilitator. That's what I wanted to do. And I think it really wasn't until that point that I started to question who I was and to let go of that pain and that misery. And I was deeply unwell. Traumas. And I'm proud to say, you know, I'm not cured. I think a lot of people like to put the cured mindset on trauma. I'm not cured. It's a daily part of my life. It's a daily struggle. I have to confront a lot of things, and instead of just letting them simmer and I'll be honest, I'll be fully transparent. I spent a lot of time in therapy doing some very intense, very vivid kind of breakdowns of what I had throughout my life. But I am the best version of myself now than I have ever been. And one of the best parts about this journey is it's not just for me, it's for my community. I get to help people. I get to help them raise their voice. I'm not healing them. I'm not curing them. I'm just helping them find their voice and what they want to do. And the second best part of that is I now have a better understanding of who I want to be for myself now, for my community, and for my future. And am I terrified from time to time that things are going to go away? Yes. But I also do that as a very human thing. And I think that's also a testament to how beautiful my life is now.

00:10:17 Rasmeet: Yes. Right. And Thomas, the version of you that lived underneath that role the whole time, what was it quietly longing for?

00:10:29 Thomas Wilson: I think for me, it was empathy and it was compassion, and it was understanding. And I think we were I think a big part of me was trying to keep that from myself, even from myself. And I think especially as a kid who is really struggling, who was met with a lot of anger as well, and a lot of judgment and a lot of, um, um, hostility. I think I just, I really needed a safe place to be myself and express myself and understand my own journey. But I will also say I was definitely one of the bigger composers of that hostility and misery upon myself. And now I like to say that now that I get to be this version of myself, I look back on what I need, and I find that a lot of people need those exact same things. And I think that's the beauty of what guides my work is a lived experience through some very awful things, to be that person for other people.

00:11:38 Rasmeet: Right. And there is something tender in what you just said about a role that, you know, protected you for yours because before it started to confine you. And we rarely choose these selves consciously because we grew into them, because they worked. And I think a lot of people listening just felt a small ache of recognition, you know, realizing how much of who they think that they might be, um, in a costume they put on a long time ago. So moving to next question, Thomas, I want to bring this into the texture of an ordinary life, because the patterns we are talking about today do not stay abstract. They shape how we love, how we work or how we rest. So in your experience, what are these everyday places that these old rules show up the most? And the moment where you know someone is performing a self without even realizing that they have slipped into it?

00:12:34 Thomas Wilson: I, and I can definitely speak from my own experience here. And I think as somebody who, um, I'm trying to think how to say this without triggering people, I think I've had a very hostile, angry and even malicious relationship with myself. I think the easiest places where I slip and I falter is when I get a little too good at justifying bad things happening, as well as justifying and kind of trying to convince myself that things are going to go away. And I say that because I spend so much of my life believing I didn't deserve good things, that now that there's more and more good things happening, um, it becomes very easy in my day to day life to go, oh, well, this is going to be gone or you're going to say something you're going to regret or cancel culture is going to come for you. And all it takes sometimes is a simple, not intended to be mean comment, or it takes a little bit more anger than I should have in a situation. Or realistically, it can be a really hard week and it can become really easy for me to slip back into some very toxic mindsets. And I think I think that's true for a lot of us, especially because so many of us are programmed to just carry those kind of mindsets even when things are going well. Um, but for me, what I have to do to challenge those, and I don't think it's optimism because I think optimism has its own faults, just as pessimism or realism does. Um, but I have to apply a strength based mindset and I have to step into those moments and kind of be my own emotional lifeguard and pull me out of those because I know myself and I will slip into some very dark places very easily. And I think the same thing for a lot of us. I think this is very true. Um, undoing shame and trauma and misery and self-imposed thoughts. It's not something that's ever completely done because we can relapse so easily in a world, especially in a world where there's so many things that seem designed to push us back into those mindsets.

00:15:14 Rasmeet: Right. And which of those moments do you think is the hardest one for people to catch in themselves?

00:15:23 Thomas Wilson: Um, I would love to distinguish one, but I think that's person to person. Um, I think, but I think the easiest for human beings in general are the ones that sneak up on us and the easiest, the ones that start to impact our, um, our perception of ourselves, the ones that maybe if something goes wrong, it gets a little too easy for those whispers of hostility to kick in. Um, or even the ones that I think person to person, um, um, really start to challenge and eat at the idea that we deserve good things. And I think that really is, that can be so many things for me. I have a really hard time believing that good things are going to keep coming. And I'm very good at getting caught in a deeply anxious kind of mindset that bad things are going to happen automatically. And it's a defense mechanism, but it's also a really toxic kind of trap I put myself in. Um, um, and so that's for me, but I think that can look so different and be so many different things for other people. But I do think the sneaky ones are the dangerous ones.

00:16:43 Rasmeet: Right? So, uh, if you looked into the mirror tonight and saw not the roles you play, but the self that has been there all along, What is the one thing you think that self has been waiting to hear for you?

00:16:59 Thomas Wilson: I love that question. And I'm gonna say, um, I think it's going to be you are enough. You matter. And you do not need to be everything for everyone.

00:17:16 Rasmeet: Yes. Right. And if someone listening have lived so long inside a role that they have lost sight of who they are underneath, what is the one thing you most want them to walk away with today?

00:17:33 Thomas Wilson: There are so many things I could say, but I'm going to say, um, the thing that I would recommend to most people walking away with is to remember that none of us, no matter our past experiences or our our pains, our worries, our stressors. Nobody deserves to live in those things. Nobody deserves to fester in them. And I would recommend to everyone to think about what you most want in life. And if that is healthy, that is positive, that is good for the people around you, not just yourself. And I would encourage people, especially if you're struggling with this right now, to think about in a very honest conversation, what is the thing that is telling you you don't deserve that the most and have a conversation with that? Like, really talk to yourself, talk to your emotions and understand where that comes from and why it's there, and work to make the first step to getting past that.

00:18:49 Rasmeet: Yes. And if someone listening has lived so long inside a role that they have lost sight of who they are underneath, what is the one thing you most want them to walk away holding?

00:19:03 Thomas Wilson: Um. I want them to walk away holding the belief that they are special. They are matter and they don't have to live that lie for other people.

00:19:17 Rasmeet: Right. So Thomas, where can our listeners find you and your work if they want to continue this journey with you?

00:19:25 Thomas Wilson: Definitely. So you can find my email. And I have said this in so many podcasts this week alone. Um, but my email is n d t r p g at gmail. I'll make sure everything is in the show notes because I set things kind of up weird. Um, but you can always email me and reach out and you'll. And will be able to have conversations. Additionally, you can go to my website, RH Creative Advocacy and Storytelling dot net. And I know that's long. I didn't realize how long that was until I started sharing it. Um, but you can also find me on LinkedIn, Thomas Rodey Wilson. You'll see my face on there. Um, you can also find my link in, I'm sure in the show notes. Um, and then the other thing I encourage people to do, um, if you find me anywhere, like on Instagram, RH storytelling with a shield logo, you can find me there and ask me questions. Um, but I love questions. I love to have these conversations. I love to explore how we can support each other as a larger community. And even if you just want to follow me or, or see what I'm doing, that's perfectly fine.

00:20:40 Rasmeet: Okay. So thank you. Thomas. This was the soul mirror at It's honest and the kind of conversations that does not describe the self, but generally invites it backs into the room. What they're saying with me is your reminder that, you know, the roles we play were once intelligence act of protection, not flaws to be ashamed of. And to whoever is listening right now, especially the one who is no longer sure of who they are beneath everything they perform. I will leave you with this. You are not parts you play to keep everyone comfortable. You are the quiet presence underneath them, the one that has been watching this whole time. Patient and unchanged. You are allowed to turn towards it and tonight, even for a moment, you are allowed to simply be who you already are.