The idea of showing up and being recognized as your authentic self has come up a lot recently; in sessions with clients and in my own personal life. What does it mean to be your authentic self? How can we discover that? And most importantly, in a world that often tells you to be someone else, how can we honor and truly show up as ourselves?
In order to discover who we are and what makes us unique, it requires psychological introspection and a desire to connect to your purpose in life. This can be quite challenging because we often have two voices in our mind; the egotistical voice and the inner voice-some may call this your true soul or intuition. How to know the difference? The ego voice is often critical, fear based and anxiety driven. It’s often accompanied by internal conflict and feels like this deep internal struggle that is often way too preoccupied with what other people are thinking about them. The inner voice is more gentle. It’s accompanied by ease and clarity and feelings of being at peace and aligned with your internal self and higher purpose is experienced.
For many of my clients, they have so much noise in their minds that distracts them from either connecting with their authentic self or accepting and loving their authentic self. This noise is often from social media, family members, self doubt or that annoying voice that often whispers the “shoulda, woulda, coulda”-basically an internal dialogue steering the mind to second guess itself based on some form of comparison.
How do we quiet that nagging voice? Is there a way to fight it? A way to get rid of it forever?
Therapy can be a healing space to explore ways to quiet the ego voice. Working with a trusted professional by using different techniques of exploration without judgement, fact checking and questioning or using mindfulness techniques to dive deep into the unconscious and re-wire those negative cognitions are just a few therapeutic techniques that might be utilized.
Once the inside work has been started in therapy, you and your therapist can work together to create actionable steps to help you align with your deepest self. Therapy is important. Attendance and being present in sessions is critical BUT the vital work of making a change happens on the outside, in your daily life when you come into constant contact with a world that is often trying to knock you off balance. Coming up with value driven steps and goals will help you stay committed to this healing journey.
Personally and professionally, I don’t think it is 100% necessary to get rid of that voice forever. It has a purpose. If you fall off the journey of being true to yourself-which is a very human thing to do and will happen to all of us-and start living in a way that feels conflictual with who you are (such as a resurgence of depression, anxiety *name any feeling of emotional discomfort or disconnection*), we need that discomfort to alert us as change needs to be made. A change that will bring us back to ourselves; back to our home base of peace, acceptance and connection.
Put it into practice:
If you’re called to take some action, try this journaling activity and be curious about what you might discover.
- Reflect, be curious (remember, not judgmental): recall any moments you can think of from this past week that you felt genuinely at peace or proud of how you showed up and handled a situation? Are there moments from this week that you wish you had handled differently?
- Reflect on what helped you handle things in a favorable way (maybe certain values came up) and reflect on what hindered you from acting in the way you would have liked to (was it fear based?)
- Take some time to visualize what it would look like to show up as your true self for this coming week. How can you show up for life this week and be proud of yourself-proud of showing up in a way that is true to you? Take time to hone in on your personal values (it might be family, health, spirituality *if you need some help, do a quick google search of ‘values’ and see what resonates with you) and set an intention to show up as your true self, to the best of your ability, and see if living in this way brings you more peace, clarity and meaning.
Disclaimer: Being your authentic self doesn't mean being selfish and only serving yourself. It means knowing who you are, what your values are, and uses this knowledge to show up for yourself and live a life of peace and fulfillment which will then allow you to show up for others and experience deep, meaningful connections and relationships in all areas of your life.
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