Becoming Your Authentic Self

Are you living an authentic life? Do you know who you are? Do you find yourself pleasing others, meeting others' needs and never your own? Do you struggle with establishing and maintaining healthy boundaries? What if you could find and live from your true authentic self today...freely, joyfully and peacefully. "Your Authentic Self is wise, knows the highest path for your life and has never been wounded." Let's begin!

Transcript

I am Anna Seewald and this is Authentic Parenting,

A podcast about personal development in the context of parenting,

Where I explore how you can find more calm connection and joy in parenting through the process of self-discovery and inner growth with a trauma-informed lens.

Today on the podcast,

We are exploring the notion of authenticity.

What it means to be authentic.

How you can find and connect to your authentic self.

Self with a capital S.

My guest is Andrea Matthews.

She is a psychotherapist,

A writer and a speaker whose unique brand of doing all three brings one central focus – authenticity.

Andrea is the author of several books including Letting Go of Good,

Dispel the Myth of Goodness to Find Your Genuine Self and Restoring My Soul,

Finding and Living the Authentic Self.

She is a radio host and she blogs for Psychology Today and I will have links for her website and of course I will have links to everything I mention in this episode.

Have you listened to the last week's episode with brilliant Mark Nebo?

If you haven't,

I highly encourage you to do so because as you listen to this week's episode and the one coming next week,

You'll discover a common theme.

It's kind of like mini-series.

We have explored the topic of authenticity on the podcast many times in the past and I'll link in the show notes to some of the past episodes like are you living an authentic life or in search of the true self?

And another one that comes to mind is are you stuck in the past?

All great episodes and if you haven't listened to them,

I would again encourage you to do so and if you have listened to them,

If you are a long time regular loyal listener,

Then I would encourage you to revisit them.

This interview with Andrea is quite different.

Andrea talks about the authentic self and the identities we acquire throughout our life and somehow we come to believe that those identities are our true authentic self and she enlists a few different identities and perhaps after you listen to them,

You may find yourself in one of them.

She poses a great question to ask in order to start connecting to your authentic self and what are the consequences of authenticity?

She believes that by connecting to your authentic self,

Being your true self and living your authentic self,

You gain more joy,

Peace and meaning in life.

Please enjoy.

Has this concept of authentic self been part of your parenting journey when you were young or you discovered this later in life?

It was a journey that started when my children were young and has just continued.

And why is this concept of authenticity so important for you?

Everything you write about,

It seems like it's a big theme.

I think it's important because it's the healer.

I think that what heals us is becoming true to who we are.

And I think what I've experienced in my own life and the reason why I began my own search for,

I didn't really even know that I was searching for my authentic self,

But it turns out that I was,

Was because I was in a lot of personal pain and I needed to find some way to help myself heal.

And the journey began with some of the work of Carl Jung who talks a lot about the self.

He just calls it self.

I didn't know then that there was a distinction that could be made between an identity and an authentic self.

I do now because I've experienced it in my personal life and I've worked with a lot of clients who also have experienced it.

And so I understand that.

And people who practice something called transpersonal therapy talk about that as well.

So I think that the reason why it's so very important is because it's the ultimate healer.

It heals us.

We get in touch with that part of us that's never been wounded and we begin to live from that instead of from the old wounded selves.

Wow.

And how can someone know that they're not living their authentic life?

They're not their authentic self.

They can go on with their life for years,

Right?

Without even questioning or knowing.

But as you mentioned,

There was some kind of yearning in you,

Some kind of signs that pulled you towards discovering this authentic self.

Can you tell a little bit more about that discovery process?

Yeah,

I think it begins with little awarenesses that,

For example,

If this is a thing that happens regularly for people,

Is that they begin to discover that they're in a job they really don't like.

They've been in the job,

They've been doing the job,

They've been working really hard at it,

They're motivated to do it,

They get up every day and they go in and they do it and they do it and they do it.

But then one day they become aware that they're not really happy with that job.

It's not really making them feel alive.

It's not something that really does match their passion.

And so that's one small awareness that says,

Oh,

I'm not living into what's real in me.

I'm doing what seems to be required.

We've got to eat,

Right?

So we have to make money,

But I'm not really doing what is real for me.

And so when people come to see me as clients and they talk about that job,

One of the things that I ask them,

And these are the kinds of questions that try to help people begin that process is,

If you could do it,

Forget about money,

Forget about ego aggrandizement.

If you could do just the tasks you love to do all day every day,

What would that be?

And very often people already know,

Oh,

I would be a potter.

I would be an artist.

I would be a doctor.

They know immediately.

Now sometimes,

Every now and then,

I'll run into somebody who says,

Oh,

I'll just kick off and do nothing.

And those are the people that are the most out of touch with their own passions,

The things that they would really like to do.

And so the work is harder for them.

But some people really already know.

But they just never did it because they thought they couldn't.

They thought it wouldn't work.

They thought it couldn't happen.

It was unrealistic,

Whatever.

And what I encourage them to do is to begin to do those tasks that they love to do in some kind of way,

Even as an avocation,

To do that art,

To do that pottery,

To begin to study,

Take a course in medicine,

Begin to do the things that are meaningful to them.

Yes,

Maybe they have to keep that job that earns them money for a while.

But they begin the process.

Another way is that sometimes when people are in a lot of pain and they're grieving,

It's an opportunity to get in touch with something more real because they can begin to dialogue with the pain.

That's one of the pieces of work that we do is we begin to actually personify that pain and let it talk to us about what's going on,

Anger,

Pain,

Fear.

We can talk to it and it can talk back and it can give us information about what's really going on and what it tells us is what the authentic self wants it to say.

And that's so very often very powerfully awakening for people.

The person who says,

I don't know,

I'll just kick back and relax and read books and do nothing with my life.

I don't want anything.

I just want to relax.

And so you say that this person is out of touch with his or her own authentic self.

Do you think that person needs some kind of awakening to come in terms with,

To start to discover or like I want to know from outside,

We cannot say,

Oh,

You're so out of touch with your authentic self,

Right?

How do you honor that in a person?

Does everybody find their own path or come to their own path?

I want you to speak a little bit about that.

Well,

I think everybody is on their own path and that's a real individual path and it's based on what an identity is formed out of is the need to survive.

When we're infants,

We are looking into the mirrors of our worlds.

And so it's like we come here asking,

Who am I,

Who am I,

Who am I?

And what happens is non-verbally our worlds kind of inform us of who they think we are.

And so if we're born to parents who want us to be tough and strong and smart and ahead of the game and all of that,

Then our parents,

We're going to see and feel that early in life and we're going to say,

Oh,

Well,

That's who I am.

And we're going to try to live into that.

And what does that mean?

It means that we're going to have to push away or repress anything that is not like that.

So I might be pushing away and repressing my authentic self while I live into an identity that cruises my family.

And we all do that because we have this deep-seated,

Very natural organic need to not only survive,

But to belong in that family system.

And we sense that our belonging is our survival.

And so we do whatever it takes to survive in that family.

And so however deep they want us to betray our authentic self,

And those words I use very loosely because they don't know that they're asking us to betray our authentic self,

But however much they are asking us to do that,

That's what we do.

So we leave the authentic self behind to become an identity.

And so then we're on a journey of the identity.

The authentic self is still in there.

It still has a voice.

It still talks.

We may or may not hear it.

So as time goes by,

The authentic self will kick in more and more to talk to us,

To give us information,

To tell us what it wants and what it wants to live into and how to really live as opposed to just surviving.

And so we are in a process already.

When people walk in the door to my office,

I'm not going to lay hands on them and heal them.

I'm not going to be able to do that.

What I do know,

However,

Is that they are already in a process.

And my job is to help them kind of turn and look at the authentic self as much as possible.

Some people are going to do that easier than others.

So for the person who,

As you mentioned,

Says,

I'm just going to kick back and do nothing,

What I might say is,

Well,

What does that get you?

My job is just to help them to begin to see if I can.

So I might say,

Well,

What does that get you?

When you kick back and do nothing,

What does that get you?

And I might get an answer,

Something I have gotten this answer before.

Well,

It means that I don't have to worry about anything.

And then I say,

So worry is one of the things that you're trying to overcome.

Oh yeah,

Worry is just to the constant.

I'm always worried about all kinds of things.

And so kicking back and doing nothing means I don't have to worry about anything.

And so now we're into an identity that worries all the time.

Well,

Now we can explore that identity and find out what started that.

Was it some kind of trauma as a child?

How did they get into the position of having to worry all the time?

And then as we explore that,

Then the authentic self has room to wiggle and maneuver and speak up and maybe it begins to talk more.

So I trust that process,

That there's millions and millions of people out there who never come to see Andrea Matthews and they're in their own process.

I just trust that each person has got their own process.

And maybe if they come see me,

I can help them sort of jar that loose a little bit.

But that's really all I'm doing.

The authentic self is really the one in charge.

Are there archetypes to identity,

Several types perhaps that you know of,

Or perhaps you have developed something in your work with clients that you see often people have masks or costumes,

As you say,

People wear to have certain identities?

Yes,

There are some.

In my first book,

Restoring My Soul,

I gave some of those labels and some of that has evolved a little bit as well.

But there's some of the roles that other people have stuck in our for example,

The Peter Pan syndrome.

I don't remember the author's name who wrote about that,

But he wrote a book back in the early 90s about the Peter Pan syndrome.

Peter Pan can also be called the King Baby.

Peter Pan is somebody who just says,

I won't grow up.

That's one of them.

Victim identity is now victim identity is very different from a victim.

A victim is someone who's been assaulted or raped or murdered or something like that.

And that person has been victimized,

But that doesn't mean they have a victim identity.

The victim identity says,

The world is against me.

It's too big for me.

I can't manage it.

You just don't understand how hard it is for me.

It's harder for me than it is for anybody else.

And there's a lot of yes,

Buts for every solution that's offered that can't do it.

What they're really hoping is that other people will take over and take care of them.

So that's one identity.

It's based in the need to survive.

They figured out that's how they would survive.

There's one called the clown.

You know,

That one is one that's just always trying to laugh his way through life.

It could be matched up to the Peter Pan,

But not necessarily.

There's the scapegoat.

I divided it into two different kinds of scapegoats.

And I was showing my soul book.

It's called one of them is the scapegoat black sheep and another one is the scapegoat priest.

The scapegoat black sheep is the child who's been told all his life and what either verbally or non-verbally that he's bad.

And that child grows up to believe that he's bad and has to do more and more bad in order to believe that he even exists.

So he might grow up to be a real criminal,

But he's doing that because he believes that the only way he can attach to family at all,

The only way they noticed him at all,

Even in a negative way,

Was when he was bad.

If he wasn't bad,

Then they didn't notice him at all.

So if he's not bad,

He's nothing.

And so he has to be more and more bad in order to prove to himself that he exists.

So that's the black sheep.

The priest is the person who has interjected a really deep sense of unworthiness,

But is trying really,

Really hard to be very,

Very good so that he or she does not feel that unworthiness.

So they're always going around serving others.

They're always feeling very guilty about anything they do that might not serve others.

They feel selfish any time they have a thought about themselves.

I wrote a whole book about that,

My latest book called Letting Go of Good,

Is all about that identity.

And in that book,

The publishers wanted me to call it the good guy identity because the scapegoat identity sounded too harsh and negative.

So they wanted to call it the good guy identity.

So that's sort of evolved now into a good guy identity.

And that book's all about that.

So if you're somebody who's feeling guilty all the time and feeling like you have to always take care of other people and it's your job to do that,

Well then you might want to read that book.

There's a superwoman.

The superwoman is the person who thinks she can take care of everything,

That she's in charge of everything,

That she's got to be super strong and tough and handle all the decisions and be in control at all times and that person.

And so those are several of them.

That's not all of them.

There's others.

But basically what it is is an identity that says,

This is how I choose to survive.

It's the only way I think I can survive.

And it's based in the projections of the parents.

The parent might project onto a child,

Say the parent is somebody who just is using drugs or something like that and is not paying the bills and not taking care of things and losing their job all the time and laying around the house and doing nothing.

And the child feels the responsibility for taking care of younger siblings.

So they may learn to cook.

They may even learn to pay bills.

They may learn to be really smart about how to take care of everybody else in the family.

And so they become the caretaker.

The caretakers,

That's their role in the family.

They get approval from the mother or the father because,

Yeah,

They're taking care of everything.

And that seems to make them think that,

Well,

This is the role I ought to play.

So they play it and play it and play it.

And then they begin to play it in their primary relationships with husbands or spouses or partners.

And they continue to do that until they just get so exhausted that they can't do it anymore.

And that exhaustion is a message from the authentic self that says,

Wait a minute,

There's another way to live.

Yeah.

So that's a good point to ask you then,

What are the heavy costs of not living your authentic life,

Not being your authentic self?

And you started speaking about it a little bit.

How can someone know,

Right?

It can be in your relationships,

It could be that sense of unhappiness.

But sometimes I think when you're too cut off from your authentic self,

Even when your authentic self speaks to you,

As you mentioned,

From time to time,

You could be so cut off that you wouldn't know whether to trust that voice or not.

Absolutely.

Right?

Absolutely.

And in fact,

You've been arguing against that voice all your life.

Yes.

Yeah.

So that's part of the work that I do is to try to help people turn around and look at that voice and go and ask it some questions so that it's not just something you dismiss offhand.

But yes,

There are consequences to living in an identity.

The shipper woman,

Her identity is going to probably make her physically ill because she's going to get exhausted and she's going to keep going anyway.

She's going to ignore herself and be very stoic about her own emotions and be very tough on herself.

And she can be pretty tough on other people too because what she wants is for them to step up and do their part.

But as long as she's doing their part,

They're not likely to do it.

What I find often is that opposite roles get together in partnerships.

So the woman might be being superwoman,

She's likely to marry or get involved with a Peter Pan,

Whether that's a male or a female,

Regardless of the sexual orientation,

The person might get involved with someone else who's a Peter Pan.

And the way that works is Peter Pan needs somebody to take care of him.

The superwoman is always taking care of everything.

So that looks like a deal to both of them.

Both of them are propping up each other's identities so they can stay in the identity.

And that makes them believe it's the right thing.

But actually,

Over time,

What begins to happen is she wants him to step up or she wants the other party to step up more and more and more.

And the other party's like,

No,

No,

No,

I'm not doing that because that goes against my identity.

And so then she might come to therapy and say,

I've got this partner who just won't step up.

And then we begin to explore,

Well,

What's that all about?

What's the dynamic?

And what we begin to discover is that she's doing all the choosing,

She's doing all the decision making,

She's doing all the washing clothes and the washing dishes and all the work in the house.

And she says she does that because he won't.

But actually,

She's doing it because she would have done it anyway.

So that's a good opportunity for her to start to wake up and go,

Well,

Why am I doing everything?

Why am I exhausted all the time?

Why is my blood pressure out the wazoo?

What's really going on with me?

But I'm doing this.

So what we want to do is look at yourself instead of the other party.

What people very often come into therapy to talk about with regard to relationship is I want you to tell me what's wrong with my partner.

I want you to tell me how to make them behave right.

I want you to tell me how to get them to do right.

And sometimes in couples therapy,

They come in to sort of tattle on each other.

They want to tell you what the other person's doing wrong.

So you'll judge the other person and correct them and make them do right.

But really what we want to do is help them begin to look at themselves and bring their authenticity to relationships.

So with Superwoman,

What I might offer is to facilitate her becoming more and more aware is to not do all the stuff that she's doing.

Kick out the chores around the house,

For example,

That she really wants to do and has a real desire to do and do only those and ask the partner to do those other things that she doesn't desire to do and then wait and see what happens.

She's bridging all the gaps in their relationship and he's not here.

She is not going to bridge their part of the relationship.

And so she needs to pull back and only bridge her half of that relationship.

And if she can do that,

Then she can sit back and observe not only what the partner's going to do,

But how she feels about it.

What's really going on inside of her?

How much of that anxiety does it create for her to not do all those things?

And that's when we begin to explore,

Oh,

Well,

This is how we got into that identity.

You got here because the anxiety gets pushed if you don't.

Have you noticed an age where people sort of hit a limit and say,

That's it,

You know,

That authentic self wants to come out at a certain age,

Let's say late thirties or forties or middle ages.

Is there correlation with age or no?

Well,

Probably you'll believe that there was.

And I do think that people start to become more aware as they reach to midlife.

And by midlife,

I mean,

You know,

Thirties,

Forties,

Somewhere in there.

Midlife is becoming later and later at least.

But I think that,

Yes,

People can start to become more aware.

They've got,

You know,

Their basic survival needs taken care of.

They've got a job.

They've got a significant partner.

They've got,

They've already established those kinds of things in life.

And now they're ready to look a little deeper.

They're ready to look a little more deeply into the self.

There's some people who say that's related to astrology when Pluto squares itself and things like that.

I don't know whether you know about that or whether that's interesting to people.

Some people say it has some kind of correlation with astrology.

I don't know.

What I do know is that I do see that the people that reach a certain age do tend to be more introspective.

However,

On the other hand,

I'm seeing more and more young people,

Millennials and those even younger than them,

That seem to be much more aware at a younger age.

And I think that's in part because so many parents,

I mean,

You're doing the Authentic Parenting Show.

I think so many parents are now raising their children to be more authentic,

That they're mirroring their children to be themselves instead of asking their children to be something other than who they are.

We have so many parents,

For example,

And the most,

Some of the more extreme examples who are making room for their transgender children to just explore that,

Making,

Allowing room for gay children to explore that possibility and not telling them they can't be that.

But in other ways,

Children are just growing up to be able to express their feelings.

They're growing up to be able to say,

This is how I feel.

This is what I'm thinking.

They're growing up able to explore their own original thoughts about such things as religion and things like that.

So I do see it happening in some people,

Not all people,

But in some people at younger ages.

I see,

Because as I aged,

When I hit my forties,

I feel like that changed,

Something changed in me.

I became bolder to be my authentic self and not even care about the consequences of that.

I became bolder to say no to people,

To things and to stand up for myself instead of pleasing other people and doing things out of guilt or obligation or things like that.

Shedding the identity layers.

I felt that I became bolder and more authentic with age.

That just an observation in my own self.

What I see in my work with parents is very cut off from her own authentic self because of trauma.

And it is so hard for her to raise a child who is an authentic being,

Right?

Pure,

Innocent,

Authentic being.

But this woman is having such a hard time.

There's always conflict,

Fights.

It turns into fights with the child because she's stifling him basically because of her own shortcomings.

What can you say about that when the parent is still stuck so strongly in her or his identity,

Doesn't recognize that,

Of course,

And is trying to parent a child who is an authentic being?

What can you say about that?

Yeah,

I think that's the big deal is when a parent gets triggered to some kind of fear inside of themselves,

What they tend to do is based on the child's behavior,

That what they tend to do with that is they tend to think the child is the one who has to fix that trigger instead of them being able to fix it.

So let's say my child wants to go to a party and I've got a big fear because maybe I was traumatized at a party.

I've got a fear of them going to a party.

And what I want to do is keep the child from going to the party instead of looking at my own fear.

And so the job there is to try to help the parent to begin to look at her own fear and to be able to sit with that long enough to ask it some questions.

And one of the ways that I do that is I ask the parent what might happen.

What do you think is going to happen to your child as it goes to that party?

And what would that do to you if that happened?

And then we begin to look at the fact that,

Oh,

Well,

I think the same thing would happen to my child that happened to me,

And therefore I can't let my child go to the party.

In reality,

That connection isn't a valid connection.

So we begin to tear that connection down and be able to say,

Well,

That happened to you,

Yes.

But did it happen at every party you went to or just one party you went to?

How many people go to parties and that happens to them?

So then we begin to go,

Oh,

That doesn't happen all the time.

It just happened to me that one time and it happened to be at a party and I've connected party to trauma.

And really it wasn't the party,

It was the person who traumatized me or the situation that traumatized me.

So we begin to explore it and sort of take down the mythology around it.

And that helps them to be able to sit with that trigger without putting the burden of it on their child.

Yes,

That's a very helpful questioning.

Oftentimes parents get stuck in their way and,

You know,

No,

You can't do that.

You can't do that.

You can't go because,

Right,

They're not aware why.

But like you said,

Once you start the questioning and going down and down and under another layer,

You debunk the myth,

Whatever that the person was holding.

And perhaps there was trauma around that as well.

Yes,

Very good.

Are there any questions or exercises someone can begin to ask themselves or do to uncover their authentic self?

Well,

Yeah,

There's a lot of questions that we can ask.

And there's a whole book on that.

That the first book I wrote is actually a workbook on finding and beginning to live from the authentic self.

It's called Restoring My Soul and the subtitle is a workbook to help you find and live your authentic self.

And in it,

There's lots of exercises that people can do to facilitate an awakening to the authentic self and to become more able to live within the sort of bones of the authentic self.

And but the central question is just to be with what comes up instead of trying to avoid what comes up to be with it,

To be present with what comes up and then to be able to sit with it long enough to let it inform you of what why it has come up.

So the unconscious is where the self usually resides.

If we're living into an identity,

The self,

The authentic self has been sort of shoved into the closet of the unconscious.

But it reveals its contents now and then to us or at least partial contents to us.

And we have an opportunity then to kind of go,

Oh,

What's this?

But what we do so often is instead we just dismiss it or we push it away or we pretend it's not there.

So a willingness to be present with what comes up is the biggest,

Most important thing we can do to facilitate an awakening to the authentic self.

And it is awakening and it's a slow awakening.

It doesn't happen overnight.

I say to people that,

You know,

When I'm on my deathbed,

I hope that I'll be able to say I finally got it.

I'm still working on my authentic self.

I've been working on my authentic self for probably 30 to 35 or six years now.

And you know,

I'm still working on it.

I still have things that come to my awareness that I just wasn't aware of before because the unconscious is an unconscious part of us and it wants to reveal itself slowly when we're ready for it.

And so I totally trust that process.

It will reveal when it's time to reveal.

Wow,

Very powerful stuff.

What can you say about meditation?

Do you think it could be a useful tool to access your authentic self if we practice meditation?

Absolutely.

Yes,

I really encourage meditation.

I practice it myself and I encourage it in others.

And I think it's one of the main tools,

Although I will say there's some stuff around meditation that's mythologized that doesn't help us.

For example,

When people say you have to sit a certain way,

Put your legs a certain way,

Be in a certain posture,

When people say that you're supposed to say certain words,

You're supposed to chant certain chants,

You're supposed to.

.

.

And what these supposed to's around meditation,

They form it.

They take its power away from it.

A lot of people teach that you're supposed to stop thinking when you meditate.

And I don't think our thoughts stop even when we're asleep.

Our thoughts are still thinking images and voices and stories even while we're asleep.

And so,

Our thoughts are not going to stop,

But we can watch our thoughts.

We can begin to sort of sit back from our thoughts and watch them as they go by and try not to attach too much to it.

Watch our emotions as they come up and try not to attach too much to it,

But just kind of watch it and observe it and maybe even take note of it to kind of go,

Oh,

There's a feeling I didn't know was there.

There's an attachment to that.

And what begins to happen is we begin to let go so that the thoughts can begin to inform us of what's in its contents.

And that,

I think,

Is a very helpful process with meditation,

Whereas trying to make your mind stop thinking is probably not going to be helpful.

That's what I hear the most from people.

They sit down for a minute and they struggle with trying to make their mind stop thinking and then they quit.

They give up.

They think,

Oh,

This is impossible.

I'll never do this.

Yes.

Yeah.

Well,

I agree with that.

You said that you've been working on your own authentic self for the past 30,

35 years.

What would your current authentic self say to your younger self?

If you met,

If they met at some point,

Are they two different?

Will they recognize one another?

What would your current self say to your old self?

Yeah,

That's a really good question.

I think mostly what my current self would say to my old self is that you will heal,

That you will heal.

And there's great peace to be had.

I think that's been the richest part of my experience with the authentic self is that when I experienced that really deep,

Amazing sort of peace,

It seems to pass understanding.

It doesn't seem to come from something outside of me that's working right.

It comes from deep within me.

And I really appreciate that kind of sort of connection.

It feels like I'm connected and grounded and really alive and free.

And I don't always have that.

I don't expect that I will always have that.

But when I do,

It's a real deep connection that offers me a genuine healing.

And so I think that's what I would say to my younger identity is there is healing possible and it's going to offer you great peace.

What have been the benefits for you personally in some major ways?

How has your life changed,

Would you say,

Because of finding and living your authentic self?

Well,

One of the things that I think happens is we tend to think that if I ever get into my authentic self,

I won't have any more problems.

And I think that's an illusion,

Another mythology that has to be debunked,

That some of the deepest struggles that I've had has rendered it possible for me to become more authentic.

For example,

I had to work under a boss for a couple of years who was asking me to do some things that were unethical and I wasn't going to do those things.

And I was worried that I would lose my job.

I was a single parent at the time and thought that I needed to be able to supply my kids with what they needed.

And so I was pretty anxious about it.

But because I happened to be in a position where there was right under that person in terms of the hierarchy of the organization,

I had to be the one who would speak up.

I even had staff come to me and say that he was asking them to do unethical things as well and that I needed to protect them from him.

So it was a very difficult position to be in.

But because I was in that position,

I learned to speak up.

Prior to that,

I've been able to just kind of slip under the radar and not be noticed much.

But I had to speak up and I had to speak up directly and forcefully and honestly and say what was really true.

And I did it over and over and over again.

And during the first part of that time,

I was literally shaking with fear about how that was going to turn out and whether or not I was going to get fired for doing it.

But I never got,

I didn't get fired.

And I was able to speak up and speak up and speak up and speak up until I finally found another job somewhere else and moved on to another job that paid better and didn't ask me to do any unethical things.

So I do think I changed tremendously during that time.

I became a much more assertive person,

Much more confident person,

A person who was much more able to be sure about her own stand.

And so that was a life changing event.

It was a very difficult event and it took two years,

But it was very helpful.

And I look back on that now and I'm very grateful to that person for putting me in that position,

That very difficult position because it changed me so much.

So we can go through troubles even after trying to starting to become authentic.

And those troubles will,

If we're open to receiving it,

Offer us a greater facilitation of the fluidity of our authentic self coming forth.

Yes.

These days,

This word authenticity,

Authentic gets thrown out there quite frequently and it's being used and misused in my opinion,

What I see in social media and how some people portray it.

What can you say about the misuse of the word authenticity,

Authentic self?

Oh,

I'm being my authentic self.

And they just air out all their dirty laundry or they become rude to other people.

They say,

Well,

I'm being authentic.

I would love for you to say a few things.

What do you see in our culture society these days that people use that term,

But in reality,

It's a misuse?

Yeah,

I'm really glad you asked that question.

Thank you for asking that question because that is a serious problem that's out there.

I think it's because we don't know the difference between identity and authenticity.

I think that there's so many people who are living into their identity so much that they think that's who they are.

They really do believe this is who I am and that's just who I am and just deal with it.

But actually they're living into an identity.

So when I talk about authentic self,

I'm not talking about living into the identity harder and louder.

So it doesn't mean living to the identity doesn't mean,

Well,

I should be able to wear blue jeans to work regardless of the dress code because that's my authentic self.

That's not what we're talking about.

We're not talking about cussing somebody out of your identity because that makes you feel tough and strong and it makes you feel like you're right and they're wrong.

No,

That's not the authentic self.

That's an identity.

The authentic self is your deeper self.

One of the evidences that I believe that we have of the authentic self is peace,

Deep peace,

Inner peace.

When we get to that kind of peace,

We know we've tapped into something that's authentic.

And if we're still just on the surface arguing with other people or trying to prove that we're right and they're wrong or we're trying to wear blue jeans to work even though the dress code says we can't or whatever that metaphor leads out to,

We are not being authentic.

We're just being the identity harder.

And so we really need to start asking some questions of ourselves that have to do with what's really genuine inside of us.

When we have an inner conflict,

For example,

Between two things,

I want to do this,

I feel like I should do this.

What is that?

Let's look at that and let's ask questions to both sides and let's see what's going on.

So just a clear example,

One of the most important aspects of authenticity is desire.

Now I'm not talking about ego and grand advisement.

I'm not talking about compulsion that says I want another drink,

So give me another drink.

I'm not talking about compensation that says I was poor as a child,

So I have to be rich as an adult.

I'm not talking about that.

I'm talking about true longing,

Something that really,

And we have a deep longing for something.

That's coming from the authentic self.

If I have that longing to do something and yet I have this other part of me that says I should do this other thing,

That's a conflict between my authentic self and my identity.

If I can begin to hear the authentic self's voice more and respond to it by saying yes to it,

Then what begins to happen is that old should begins to take a back seat and I begin to live from something more genuine instead of living from the shoulds,

The have to's and the ought to's in my life.

That's authenticity.

This other thing of shouting somebody else down or being cruel and being to somebody just to prove that you're the tougher guy,

That's not authenticity.

That's just living into your identity harder.

I like how you say that expression,

Living into your identity harder.

I see that these days,

Especially on social media,

And it drives me crazy,

Absolutely crazy.

People know that my podcast and my brand is called Authentic Parenting.

They usually would mention it to me or tag me on social media,

Bringing my attention to such things.

Look,

This is authentic,

This is authenticity.

I sit back and I laugh oftentimes.

What I notice also,

People confuse transparency and authenticity as well.

Can you say something about that?

Or maybe I'm not expressing myself clearly.

Maybe I am misunderstanding.

They may share something.

There's this artificial,

Let's share in order to connect.

We need to be vulnerable in order for people to accept and like us,

Especially in this social media age.

And what I see is people tend to be sort of quote unquote vulnerable or transparent,

Share something from their life and put hashtag authenticity.

And to me,

That is not.

Are you on social media?

Do you participate in any of this?

I try not to actually.

I do have some presence on social media,

But not a whole lot.

But I think it depends on what's in the window.

So if you think about transparency as a clean window,

You want to look through that window and see what's on the other side.

Right.

That's transparency.

But what's on the other side is is or is not authentic.

So what's on the other side may be authentic,

But it also may not be authentic and maybe just what's on the other side.

So transparency means that I'm revealing to you what is on the other side of my window,

But that might not be authentic.

I might be just revealing to you more of my identity.

So we think of transparency as revelation.

I think that's the best way to think of it.

But it doesn't mean that it's what's being revealed is authentic.

Yes.

Yes.

Very well said.

Is there any particular challenge or question or an exercise you would recommend for the listener to try today?

An exercise perhaps to solidify this information that you shared here,

For them to get closer to their authentic self just a little bit more.

Yeah.

I mean,

I think you could start tapping.

I think a real safe and well,

Not necessarily always safe,

But safer way of beginning to look at the authentic self is to look at desire.

I think desire is actually sacred and we've been taught to believe that it should be put on the back burner.

You know,

That desire is selfish and all the shoulds and have to's and duties and obligations,

Well,

Those are unselfish.

But actually what we find is people who are living out of the duties and obligations and shoulds and ought to's are often filled with resentment because they feel like nobody's ever caring about them because they're not allowed to fulfill their own desires.

So that's not genuine.

And so I'm doing all the good stuff,

But really inside I'm hating doing it.

So that's no,

That's not genuine.

So what I do is suggest to take the time when there's nothing else going on,

You're not at work,

You're not having to do some heavy parenting,

You're maybe basically alone and you can spend maybe two or three hours doing only what you want to do.

Little bitty things that you want to do.

Like do I want tea or coffee?

Do I want to take a walk or do I want to sit and watch the morning show?

Do I want,

You know,

What,

What is it that I want to do that I really would desire to do and experiment with it and keep experimenting for a period of time,

Maybe every day if possible,

But at least once or twice a week to continue to experiment with desire and to see where it leads you and see how much you can tap into desire.

And that will begin to open the door to the authentic self.

Thank you so much.

That sounds like a fantastic challenge.

I may have to post that in my private Facebook group where all the listeners gather and share and talk.

And I just want to thank you for this lovely conversation,

An important one,

As I think we have never talked about authenticity and authentic self on the podcast in depth before as its own topic.

So I truly appreciate your work.

I will have links in the show notes for people to find you,

The blog that you write for psychology today,

Your website,

Your books,

Your radio show.

And I truly,

Truly appreciate your presence and your sharing today.

Thank you so much,

Andrea.

Oh,

Thank you.

It was my privilege.

And that's it for this episode of the Authentic Parenting Podcast.

Thank you for joining us today.

I would love to hear what's your number one takeaway from this episode.

Let's continue the conversation in our private Facebook group that has a brand new community manager,

An amazing one too,

Lauren Thomas.

Lauren,

Thank you so much for being such a good sport and engaging this group and shaking it up.

I love it.

So if you're not in our group yet,

This is the time to join.

Lauren was on the podcast before.

In fact,

She did the first on-air coaching episode with me.

If you would like to listen to that episode,

It's titled Tips to Ease Parental Anxiety and Set Boundaries.

It's a great episode.

In fact,

It's in the top 10 list of 2018.

To conclude this episode,

I want to leave you with a little snippet from Andrea's blog post on Psychology Today.

She writes,

We've heard the words authentic self thrown about quite a bit,

With many out there urging us to do you.

But before we go there,

We must first understand that doing you doesn't mean doing the identity harder.

It means finding and beginning to live in and from the authentic self.

Until next week,

Connect to the present moment to yourself and your children.

I am Anna Siewald.

Thank you so much for listening.

Reviews

This was a fantastic discussion.i earned so much. Mostly the difference between identity and authenticity. I've been searching for my Self for along time ( I'm 54) in order to release from daily pain and struggle , this was by far the most useful talk ive heard. Very underrated advice here.

She shared so much fantastic information- thanks for having her as a guest speaker 🙏

Affirms my decision to resign from my job and cease living small and begin my quest for living large.

Transparency does not equal authenticity...."doing you" doesn't mean doing your identify harder...good stuff!!