There is a world beneath our words.
When we interact, it’s brilliant. In every moment, we translate our internal universe into a form that people around us cannot only understand, but also accept. We take thoughts, feelings, and perceptions and wind them into words and expressions; we fit our language to the environment, swearing around friends but not our boss. We make meaning out of the chaos of our experience. We are consciousness made comprehensible.
Not only are we brilliant, we’re also adaptable. We’ve had to be. In ancient human society, those who didn’t fit into their tribe could be ostracized – forced out, to fend for themselves in the unforgiving wilds of an untamed land. We learned to do and say the things that would make others want us around. We learned conformity to survive, and we learned it so well that now, much of our brilliant adaptability happens unconsciously.
This is well and good. But, what happens when we start wanting to be our Authentic Self?
When we start paying attention to the little tensions and uncertainties that tell us we’re not quite following our hearts?
When we start wanting to, well, throw off all our clothes and dance on the table at that board meeting, rather than nodding our heads one more time at the boss’s jokes? (Or is that just me?)
What Makes Us Tick?
In 2013, a nurse in a terminal palliative care chronicled the top ten regrets of the dying. Of these ten, three were wishing to have spent more time connecting with people they loved. Three were wishing to have lived more authentically to their true selves, rather than what others expected of them. And the last was, “Happiness is always a choice – I wish I had known that a lot earlier.”
Happiness is a choice. And, how much we are able to be our Authentic Self, in connection with others, seems to have a huge effect on our happiness. There’s a famous study, known as the “Grant Study”, that followed 268 men for 72 years, from the time they entered college until the time they died. The study took physical measurements, emotional status, family histories, interview data, and much more, trying to find what truly determines our health and well-being. The results? The study’s interpreter, George Valliant, summed up one of his findings in a March 2008 newsletter. He was asked, “What have you learned from the Grant Study men?” Vaillant answered: “That the only thing that really matters in life are your relationships to other people.”
The relationships these men had at age 47 predicted their health and happiness later in life better than any other variable, save one (the quality of their psychological defenses). And, the 58 men who were most advanced on measurements of “warm relationships” earned an average of $141,000 more per year, at the height of their career, than the 31 men who scored lowest.
It seems like we should put some attention on our connections. But, how do we attain both connection AND authenticity?
If I need to adapt to survive, adapt to connect, connect to be happy, and adaptation means that I deny some part of my authentic self to fit in…can I be honest without losing myself OR my connections?
I think it’s possible. I’ve seen it happen. Creating authentic connection is possible, but it takes work.
I can easily be “authentic” – dancing on tables and seducing every man at the bar, or sitting in the corner refusing to talk, according to my desire – and I can easily be “connected”, putting on a pleasant face for my friends and neighbors to enjoy. “Authentic connection” requires revealing not only my words, my expressions and desires, but also the motivations behind those. I have to reveal the context to my truth. I have to share a vulnerability that others can connect with. My truth, at the level where others can feel their own.
To be authentically connected, I must know myself. If I’m aware of all the layers of my being – my desires, my motivations, my fears, my deeper truths – I can speak from places that naturally call forth empathy, because others know what it’s like to feel as I do. The only way out is through. To attain authentic connection, I must be more authentic than I’ve ever been.
This may seem hard, but don’t worry – like anything else, communication can be learned! We’ll look at some examples of how authentic connection can occur, and what keeps us from connecting this way all the time. And, I’ll tell you why – to me – this kind of authenticity is important for a better world.
Creating Authentic Connection: A How-To Guide
The more practice I have in making myself understood, the more of myself I can bring into a conversation. I can express my authenticity AND be received.
Here’s an example.
I’m talking with my boss – or a friend, or a lover – and I think that what they’re saying is unconsidered and dumb. Of COURSE womens’ suffrage was a good thing, and no, I’m not a “man-hating bigot”! Really? Are we going to get into this again?
Maybe I know how this conversation goes. If I get angry, my partner withdraws. If I get rational, my partner gets defensive. If I walk away, the connection is broken.
I start to feel trapped, like there’s no right way to show up in this situation, no frame I can adopt to create connection rather than dissonance. And it matters to create connection. It’s in my own best interests, if this is somebody I’ll have to or want to interact with again.
Here’s where the “world beneath our words” comes in. Remember that phrase? From the first line? I was proud of it, personally.
The world beneath my words is all the things that just went through my body-mind. It’s the context of WHY I’m interacting (because I care about this connection, it matters to me to retain). It’s the recognition of who I think I have to be around this person (not angry, in the particular way I get angry; not rationalizing; not withdrawing). It’s the emotion I’m feeling (trapped), the concept I have of myself in that moment (“I don’t know the right way to be”), and how I’m feeling about that (maybe self-judgmental, confused, and angry – which, whoops, I can’t show anger; back to the trapped).
Want to know the craziest thing?
My partner probably has no idea all this is happening.
He or she is trapped in a world of his/her own – aware, on some level, that there are emotions, thoughts, self-concept, and context happening beneath the words; but, like me, not aware enough to say them. We’re having a conversation, but neither of us are talking about what’s going on.
No wonder we feel like we can’t be our “authentic selves” around others. We live our life talking from one level above who we are.
Why is this? Why not just share the world beneath the words, why not say “I’m afraid of saying something wrong right now and having you withdraw” rather than “I’m not a bigoted asshole, and here’s why!”
I think there are three reasons why we’re scared to reveal the process of our self.
Reason Number One: We don’t know it.
In my work, I meet many more people who have trouble identifying exactly what they feel, need, and want, than people who have it all figured out. In fact, I don’t know if I’ve ever met someone who falls fully into the second category. Knowing ourselves takes WORK. It takes courage and patience to question our souls for their motivations. And chances are, by the time we get those answers, they will already be in a process of change.
Uncertainty doesn’t mean that the questioning isn’t worthwhile. I think one of the most useful things we can do with our time is seek to understand ourselves, so that we can choose how to relate to the world, and use our energy on connections and purpose rather than pushing boulders of doubt ahead of our action. The practice of circling has been most helpful for me in this.
Reason Number Two: The more vulnerable we are, the deeper we can be hurt.
Think of people as onions. We’re born green and raw, full of needs-to-be-met, covered in dirt and making people cry. (I think I’ve taken this analogy far enough!)
Because the world isn’t perfect, and we are vulnerable to it, at some point a need – maybe touch, maybe love, maybe safety – doesn’t get fulfilled. Perhaps my mother isn’t there when I cry. So, I build up a layer of self-protection. I tell myself:
“I don’t need love, I’m okay on my own.”
“The world isn’t safe anyways. I’ll seek out every challenge, so I always know I can prove myself – or, I’ll become hyper-conscious and guarded, so I can’t get hurt.”
Then, that defense gets questioned. Perhaps loneliness, or a good partner, shows me that I’m not all happy on my own. Perhaps caution gets boring, or testing my own limits verges on self-hate. I begin to wonder about the defense I formed, and maybe even about the many layers that might have grown up overtop: “I’m not happy on my own, but I’m not happy alone, so I’ll let people in only so far – but now I still feel lonely and I also don’t have good relationships, so I’ll try [insert coping strategy here], but only forever.”
This goes on until I really take a look at myself. Why am I doing what I’m doing? What am I actually feeling? In what ways do my wants, needs, and feelings fit, or not, with the world I’ve created for myself?
In this place – where the outside world and my inner world begin to clash – I am very vulnerable. My defense is being challenged, and the need underneath, of which I may not even be aware, is starting to show. That need comes to light less frequently than the defense. Like skin under a bandage, it is new, young, and easily hurt. If it gets hurt, I get hurt, because I’m not defended in this place. I’m the thing that needed defense.
Why show that self? Why leave myself open to pain? Taking an authentic look at myself can not only help re-center me into what actually makes me happy, it can also open me to much greater connection with others. This self-of-vulnerable-needs, personal as it is, is more universal than my defenses. Other people can relate more deeply to me in my vulnerability because they share the same needs. One of us just has to be brave enough to take the bandage off.
Reason Number Three: We might not agree.
When we get right down to it, you and I might just have different opinions on the world. We might share the same needs and desires, but want them expressed in incompatible ways. My very personal self might feel pain and disconnection when connecting with yours. I would be vulnerable, and I would hurt.
This pain is inevitable, to some degree. Being my authentic self means that I’m less likely to conform with communal opinions that we might have shared. But here’s the upside.
This “disconnection” tends to happen, in my experience, at the top and mid-levels of relating.
At the surface we have a difference of opinion (“Supporting womens’ suffrage makes you man-hating bigot,” “No it doesn’t and also you’re stupid”).
A level down, we have different defense mechanisms, or views on the world: “I can’t trust people because they can be hateful and bigoted,” “I can’t trust people because they can believe stupid things like universal generalizations, and an irrational world is unsafe.” We’re still disagreeing here, right?
At a deeper level, though, what both of us are really saying is, “I want the world to be a safe place. I want being with other people to feel safe. I’m not sure you’re safe. And I’m scared of that.”
Imagine getting to that in a conversation.
Why You Should Bring Who You Are
When we bring our authentic self to the world, we are committing an extraordinary act of courage. We’re opening ourselves up to be hurt. We’re risking not knowing our truth before we speak it, discovering it while we speak it, or being wrong. We’re confronting the layers of disconnection that we might have to travel through to find shared reality.
But, by being authentic, I make myself a gift that nobody else on earth can give. A world in which we all conform to frames and norms is a world without creativity. Without individuality. Without you. It is a world in which we live a general complacency, in place of building rockets to the stars.
When we reveal deeper layers of our truth within connection, we open the space for others to express, discover, and create their truth as well. We become the heroes of the present moment – the ones who are brave enough to speak up with our own vulnerability, so that others see the potential to speak up with theirs.
Finally, when we speak up from our truth, what we get is freedom. We get to be our full fucking selves, expressed all the way down to the deepest levels of our souls. We get to show up with our true needs and desires – the things that motivate everything we do – and actually make space for them to be met, sometimes for the first time in memory.
My truth is a gift.
We are gifts.
And for love of the world in which I want to live…I want you to give yours.
Sources:
http://www.hospicepatients.org/five-regrets-of-the-dying-bronnie-ware.html
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/06/what-makes-us-happy/307439/