We are not taught to be ourselves. We come into this world with a nature, a pre-wired set of behaviors and strategies that are completely unconscious to us, and these raw nerves invisibly extend and draw information from the world we experience and tell us the story of who we are in it. We arrive as ourselves, untainted, unshaped, ready to explore the world and find our way in it. And if we are lucky, we can regain a semblance of that original rawness again as adults.
I am deeply interested in the nature of these stories. The stories we tell ourselves about who we are, who we were, who we aren’t, and what our potential is, or never could be. I’m curious about the influences that shape our identity and motivations. The truth is that collectively, in 2021, we still know very little about how this happens and what drives us or shapes us. The different sciences that help us to understand ourselves have not, thus far, interacted with the public in a way that informs us about ourselves in a way that is practical and useful. Perhaps it is because they might know something we don’t – perhaps we are less teachable with information only and we require many more repeated stimuli to make behaviour changes.
The story of who we are is inextricably linked to our sense of authenticity. It isn’t as simple as “be who you are” or any other Instagram motivational quote. Authenticity is immensely complicated and most of the time who people think they are is simply a mask they have tailored to their environment. Although we say we are leaving our comfort zone, it is challenging to step outside of ourselves by intentionally challenging ourselves.
A humorist I like said that people are climbing up massive mountains or walking around with 30kg backpacks for exercise to “challenge themselves” and to “find out what they are made of”. Her response to this was that the things that are truly difficult are not physically difficult, and it is so much easier to do a physical challenge than to challenge ourselves emotionally or socially. Bragging about your thirty day trek in the desert is a lot different than forgiving and speaking to a parent you have ignored for ten years. Real pain and discomfort isn’t physical, and I’m not saying that to minimize physical pain at all, it’s excruciating – but it is unavoidable. Emotional pain and doing something about it in a way that actually changes behaviour or opens new doors – it is optional, and that choice is what makes it intricately human.
If a horse falls down a ridge and breaks its legs, it is in as much agony as a human experiencing the same misfortune. Horses (unless they are a cartoon) don’t generally sit on a couch to discuss their feelings for an hour a week with a specialist listener. The person doing that chose to do this and it is important to not understate this: they decided, whether encouraged or not, to willingly investigate their emotions and to engage in their own self-awareness. There is an immense bravery in acknowledging that it is time to start looking deeper into your story and behaviour.
Sitting down with someone and engaging with our sense of authenticity, about who we think we are, is a relatively new idea. As we called it, “the talking cure,” implied that to do this was to admit that one is ill. If this is not an indication of just how maladjusted society was at the turn of the 20th century was, to be so rigid in their sense of priority and social norms that to require something to talk to is considered medical, then I don’t know what is. But this is an inherent contradictory aspect of being human – we have a deep rooted need to belong as well as being acknowledged. We will suppress or practice ignoring many wants and thoughts to feel acceptable by the group, and secretly crave individual acknowledgement. We want to matter, but we want to belong – and herein lies the conflict of individuality and authenticity.
We want to be accepted – but by whom? Who do we really crave acceptance from and who are simply proxies or stunt-doubles for the real person we needed love and acceptance from. Who do the people in our world represent to us? This question does not mean: “Who are they?” It asks us to look at how the people in our lives help us to engage with the people in our minds.
A daughter who was ignored by her father might seek men as an adult to get the acknowledgement she was denied from her parent.
A son who was belittled by his mother will either seek a woman to belittle him or find a woman to belittle.
The examples of this unconscious pairing of our innate desires that have been denied of us with who we are magnetized to are too many to mention. In this way, our search for what we were denied becomes our motivation, it becomes the journey. We either received too little or too much of something that altered the way in which we see ourselves, and in so doing we have accepted an authenticity that does not truly reflect us.
So whose story are we playing out? Our own, or the story of what we were not given and are seeking? How do we begin to unravel the motivations of what we want from who we are?
I once was doing a workshop with a group of women and one of the participants has been raped by her older brother. Today she is fiery, strong and independent, she is the kind of woman who thrives on proving you wrong about what you think of her. My conversation with her was about how much of the pain of what she experienced finds her way into her anger and resentment that drives her to do what needs to be done in her life. Is she doing it for her, or is she doing it because she is being told she can’t? Soon in our time together we got to a place where she began to engage with the question: “Would I be as potent and capable if it wasn’t for that pain? Is my pain my way of overcoming?”
This, for many of us, can be critical to whether or not we seek authenticity to begin with. Because, the interruption in our development – the trauma, the abuse, the un-acknowledgement, the lack of support and love – for some of us becomes the fuel to our success in life. We might not be pleasant, but our pain makes us effective. Our coping mechanisms have served us well in our studies or career, so why give it up? Why do the work to heal if it could lessen our advantage? Is my advantage who I am or because of what I was done to me? Am I successful or have I only learnt effective strategies to avoid that thing happening to me again?
