How to be true to yourself

A quick guide to being more authentically you.

Image by Kathy Büscher from Pixabay

When I was a teenager my mother used to tell me and my sister that there was 'no mystery about us'. What she was trying to tell us was that she felt no man one would want us because we were too open and, more importantly, too irreverent because we laughed out loud, made jokes about all sorts of things and to her didn't have a filter for polite company. I am proud to say that I am still like that in many ways and I haven't lost my irreverence it is just a little more self-aware.

What my mother was displaying was her expectations and those expectations contributed to my later insecurity. They also were something that restricted her and for many years, for fear of rejection, me.

Tell me who I am supposed to be.

For a large portion of our lives, most of us are passive participators. What I mean by that is we function in response to the world around us. This starts in childhood with our attachment to our caregivers and continues throughout life was we try to fit into the mould that was created for us.

Here's a little scenario for clarity. Think of when you were a child and how the reactions of the people around you shaped your responses to them and then later others. Imagine you have done an art project in primary school. Your untrained eye and the praise of the teacher makes you think it is amazing. You bring it home and try as they might your family can't hide their sniggers at your less than perfect artistic endeavour.

The first time this happens often leads to confusion and self-doubt. You don't question those around you, you question yourself. You might lose trust in your own judgement or start to doubt the people you once trusted, your parents and your teacher. Over time this shapes not only your thinking about yourself but also how you show up in the world.

You start to hide your artwork, or maybe preface every display with self-deprecation and statements about not being good at art. Eventually, you convince yourself that you don't like art as subject and reject it as you go through the rest of your schooling.

Now, if the opposite happened you may have decided that art is your thing. If you are lucky and you are actually good at it then you might be able to pursue it further. If you are unlucky you will be confused every time someone rejects it or worse end up in a reality show with all the rejects who think they are awesome and who years later still get laughed at on YouTube.

This feeling of having to behave in particular way to be loved or accepted is what causes insecure attachment. Attachment shapes us in more ways that we recognise. The trust or lack of it in our primary relationships shapes how we view ourselves. It also shapes how we view the world and what we imagine the world expects from us.

What if I am not that.

One of the hardest parts of growing up is trying to fit in. As teenagers we often try to rebel against our families and create a new identity with our new tribe. We choose clothing, music and hobbies to align with those we admire or those we want to emulate. We become fearful of being rejected or of not fitting in. This sets us up for years of passive behaviour in response to the world around us.

Stop for a minute and think of how many times you have said or heard someone say, 'you can't do that' or you have thought that you couldn't do something because of how other people will react or how you might make other people feel. I bet you, more than once, chose to do something that would not upset others despite that fact that it was something you actually wanted to do. I bet there a million things you didn't say for fear of how another person might have responded.

I have often had clients who were afraid to ask their partner something or discuss a particular topic for fear that they would not love them anymore. However, the research tells us that if you can't ask your partner about certain topics then you are probably not a good fit because you will spend your time modifying who you are to be with them. If you present yourself warts and all, and they stay, then they're a keeper.

Many people have a realisation when they get older and suddenly decide they are fed up being what everyone wants them to be. For women, this often happens around perimenopause when their body lets them down and they realise they have spent years trying to look, or be, a certain person to please everyone else or to live up to some societal standard. The outcome is often some unhappy family members and more than likely several arguments because you no longer want to do the thing everyone has always done and they are not happy.

Image by Angela Huang from Pixabay

Being an active participator.

When a person gets to the stage where they are brave enough to break free from the rules and expectations of their childhood and those around them, they are left with a choice. Who am I going to be now? In Constructive Developmental Theory by Robert Kegan, this is called the Self-Authored Mind. Not everyone has the privilege to get to this stage of development but those who do start exploring their values, what matters them, and thinking about what parts of their own behaviour and thinking they want to keep and which bits do they want to leave behind.

It's the person who no longer people pleases and feels okay disappointing others. It's those who change jobs or start travelling or who seem to be less concerned with what you think of them and more focused on what they think of themselves.

It is not unusual to find these people as more sincere, kinder but also more boundaried. They say what they mean and mean what they say. When the commit they follow through and they rarely blame others when things don't go their way.

Living actively and not passively means choosing who you are based on your values and what matters to you. It means authoring the story of who you are not because of what people expect from you but because it is the right thing to do.

A person who actively chooses who they are rarely feels the need to defend themselves because they have reflected deeply and can stand over every decision and every reaction, and when they get it wrong, their ego is not so fragile that they can't hold their hands up and take responsibility.

How to choose who you are.

When I work with clients I often help help them explore who they are. It often starts with them not wanting to be the person their family or other people expect them to be. This initial phase starts as a reaction. They react to other people expectations and do the opposite or they know that what they want is not that but they are not sure of what they do want. This is where values exploration comes in and unravelling the messages that their attachment figures used to shape who they are.

When you experience insecure attachment you are likely to have known you were loved to but never really felt it. This is what they call a lack of attunement. You parents clearly loved you and they fed you and kept you safe but somewhere in there, there's a feeling of not being good enough or feeling you have to hide part of yourself to be loved.

When you start to choose who you are, you have to create that attunement with yourself. You can't beat yourself up for your mistakes. You have to learn to be understanding and curious, and focus on getting to know why you go the things you do and what purpose they serve.

If you have an agenda of needing to fix yourself then you are not in the right place. Accepting yourself, warts and all, means not hiding the fact that you are human being who makes mistakes. I used to cringe when I'd see typos on my posts or blogs and now I say 'fuck it!' I am someone who makes mistakes and if you are expecting me to be perfect you are going to be disappointed because I am not.

In my own process of choosing who I want to be I have discovered that I am happy when I know that I have tried. I try to do my best, to be kind, or respectful and to work hard. When I get things wrong I know it isn't because I didn't try, it is usually because there was something that I didn't know. I don't beat myself up about it. I just make a plan to try harder next time.

When you choose to be the person you want to be then things get easier. Relationships become more authentic. Your personal and professional lives start to align with your goals and values and you become less focused on keeping others happy and more focused on being authentically you.

The next time you find yourself wondering what other people might think or trying maintain some level of mystery (according to my mother), ask yourself is that for you or them? If the answer is you, then you are on the right track. If the answer is because that's what you are supposed to do or that's what will keep other people happy then take some time out to reflect. When you can defend or explain the exact reason why you do what you do and how it aligns with your values then you are choosing to author the person that you are and in that moment you will get the unconditional love that you always deserved. Not from others, from yourself.

Thanks for reading. I hope our paths cross again in the future. If you are interested in coaching then get in touch.

Love,

Elfreda