A person can vanish from your daily thoughts while remaining built into your assumptions.

Someone can stop being in your thoughts and stay in your architecture. You no longer think about them, and you still avoid a certain topic, still expect a certain reaction, still measure a certain kind of success by a standard they set. Influence sinks below the level of attention, which is exactly what makes it hard to notice.

Take a rule you follow without examining it and ask whose voice it originally was. If someone comes to mind, that is worth sitting with. You can keep the rule if it serves you, and it should be yours rather than inherited.