To Be or Not To Be Yourself?
What does it mean to be yourself? Are we ever not ourselves? And if so, is that really so bad? I say yes, and here’s why.
In this piece, I write about what it means to be yourself and why it matters. I do not write about how to be yourself. Why? Because I am still personally figuring it out, and much great stuff has been written elsewhere anyway, like this article on how to overcome trauma, or this beautiful poem or this elegant list. Consider this article a pitch for why we should care about being ourselves in the first place.
What does it mean to be yourself?
I have been curious about what it means to “be yourself” for years. It seems so elusive. Some say that a self doesn’t exist at all. Philosopher John Locke reasoned that we are born as “blank slates”, and our selves are simply the sum of our experiences. Many spiritual beliefs hold that there is no such thing as an individual self, but that we are all expressions of a universal existence that might be called God.
In psychology, however, it is common to talk about the self as something that exists for each individual. This is who we are effortlessly, without having to adapt to the expectations of others. It’s about being authentic. Dr. Gabor Maté calls authenticity “the quality of being true to oneself, and the capacity to shape one’s own life from a deep knowledge of that self”.
To me, this seemed both simple and extremely difficult. It’s a tautology. I would have to figure out what being authentic is in order to be myself, but to be myself I would have to be authentic. What?
Doing some more research, it seems that authenticity boils down to who we were as children.
Children are themselves effortlessly. They have not learned to shun, mold or adapt themselves to expectations yet. Sooner or later, we learn to adjust some parts of ourselves so that social interactions can run smoothly.
Importantly, this socialization is not really about changing who we are, but rather changing how we behave with others given who we are. Anger, for example, is an emotional response calling for self-preservation. It can be a response to injustice or misunderstanding, and is an important feeling. Well-socialized individuals with authentic selves recognize their own anger, and while respecting others, they may assertively let others know what bothered them. Under-socialized individuals might throw temper tantrums or silently plot revenge.
What does it mean to not be yourself?
What do I mean by “under-socialized” and “well-socialized”? To me, these words symbolize the degree to which we were recognized, seen, heard and accepted for who we were as children. Sometimes, parents and other authority figures may value societal conformity over self-development, leading to under-socialization. Dr. Alice Miller writes:
Often a child’s very gifts (his great intensity of feeling, depth of experience, curiosity, intelligence, quickness — and his ability to be critical) will confront his parents with conflicts that they have long sought to keep at bay by means of rules and regulations. These regulations must then be rescued at the cost of the child’s development” (p. 96).
Under-socialization, then, leads to a feeling of not being good enough as we are, of being fundamentally flawed, which causes a false self to emerge. As with “the self”, the “false self” is also readily documented. “The Jungians call it the ‘persona’. The TA people call it the ‘adapted child’”, writes Dr. Bradshaw.
He points towards toxic shame as the killer of authentic selves. These are internalized demeaning messages coming from under-socialization — to socialize at the cost of the child’s self. This leaves the child believing that it is not just their actions that may be inappropriate, but that they, at their core, are bad.
“Years later the layers of defense and pretense are so intense that one loses all conscious awareness of who one really is,” writes Dr. Bradshaw.
When this has happened, people can live their whole lives suppressing their authentic selves without even knowing it. They may, for example, lash out, be busy all the time, act dark, withdraw or people-please, all the while being convinced that this is just who they are. No wonder I was confused about what it means to be yourself.
How to know if you are being yourself
It is not easy to “diagnose” somebody for not being themselves. It’s not like a skin rash, a fever or even depression — it’s subtler than that. How to know?
As a teenager, I was preoccupied with truth. I had a lingering feeling that something was fake, and I wanted it to stop. Was it me, was it the others, was it the world? That I could not pinpoint. But there was certainly something sketchy going on, of which I was so convinced that for my 16th birthday, I proclaimed only a general wish for “truth” and hung it demonstratively on the door to my room.
I think this feeling of “something being off” captures the sense of not being yourself quite well. I have heard it referred to as “if the world exists behind a film” or that “there is something more, but I don’t have access to it”, or even “there must be a life before death”. One woman said: “I wish I dared to change and to speak out without fear of being judged. I think the fear of even strangers judging me limits my life. It limits me.”
It is, indeed, a tragedy to chance upon the extremely unlikely probability of being born, only to never truly live.
I think it is easy to not take this tragedy seriously enough. Sometimes it can seem like “being yourself” is a privilege; at the top of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, only for the wealthiest who can afford meditations retreats and coaches.
But this is wrong — to be able to live authentically free of persistent fear, guilt and obligation is crucial to everyone of us. As Bronnie Grace wrote in her interviews with the dying, the most common regret on the death bed was:
“I wish I had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me”.
In “Running on Empty”, Jonice Webb lists common conditions for people who experienced emotional neglect in their childhood, and so lost themselves; feeling empty, unrealistic thoughts about oneself, guilt and shame, self-directed anger, convinced of having a fatal flaw, difficulty nurturing self and others, and so on…
This is a painful life. It is like being prisoner to oneself, dominated by a harsh inner critic, subjected to a tyrannical set of beliefs that one is unworthy and never good enough, always having to prove oneself to impossible standards. “One may have an all-pervasive sense of never quite belonging, of being outside looking in. The condition of inner alienation and isolation is also pervaded by a low-grade chronic depression,” writes Dr. Bradshaw. No wonder, this condition often leads to self-medication and addictions.
What happens if we are not ourselves?
A question. When you receive critique, is your first instinct to (a) become offended and possibly criticize the other person back, (b) take it to heart, feel like a bum and possibly give up what you were doing, or (c) thank the person offering critique, contemplate its validity and maybe change something accordingly? If you chose (a), you might be an externalizer, if you chose (b) you might be an internalizer, and if you chose (c), chances are that you are neither, but that you are secure in yourself.
Externalizing and internalizing are two ways of coping with living as a false self to manage toxic shame. Many horrors stem from this way of living. From violence and crime due to a sense of rage, to continuing generational trauma and cycles of abuse, to not showing up for loved ones, to hurting and limiting oneself and even contracting illness. As János Seyle said:
“Most of our tensions and frustrations stem from the compulsive needs to act the role of someone we are not”.
How can not living authentically cause such horrors? Because living as a false self is an attempt to cover up for what is (wrongly) believed to be a flawed true self. It is painful. To cope with this pain, people develop coping mechanisms, also called “addictions”. These can be very harmful. Gabor Maté writes:
“When it comes down to it, all addiction’s incentives can be summed up as an escape from the confines of the self, by which I mean the mundane, lived-in experience of being uncomfortable and isolated in one’s own skin. Underneath however many surface layers of ‘normal’ functioning, that alienated discomfort can be disturbing to the point of torment: a persistent sense of being abnormal, unworthy, deficient” (p. 220)
Dr. Bradshaw agrees, listing several types of addiction beyond drugs and alcohol. One could be addicted to power and control (of which narcissism, eating disorders and self-harm are examples), to rage, to caregiving, to excessive work, to rational thinking, and so on.
These coping mechanisms stem from not being ourselves, and they cause harm.
Why? Because people who live with a false self dread exposure. If they are at risk of being exposed, externalizers will blame others and internalizers will blame themselves. While externalizers tend to be grandiose and authoritarian, internalizers tend to be people-pleasing and self-sacrificing. This is not a black-and-white thing — one person can have both internalizing and externalizing tendencies — but we tend to gravitate towards one end. Both are harmful.
It is easy to see how externalizers’ coping mechanisms might cause problems. They judge others, may dehumanize, and could become emotionally or physically violent. Dr. Huseby observed that many men in his therapy who suffered from toxic shame said they could understand the mental state of the Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik, who killed 69 people in 2012. They emphasized that although they would never personally commit such atrocities, they could understand the rage from whence his actions came. When a person becomes driven by fear and shame, the road is short to develop thoughts and feelings that may again lead to violent behavior.
Internalizers are less obviously violent. Still, this way of coping is just as problematic, despite internalizers often having qualities that we tend to value in our society. Gabor Maté lists some of these traits:
— An automatic and compulsive concern for the emotional needs of others, while ignoring one’s own.
— Rigid identification with social role, duty and responsibility.
— Overdriven, externally focused multitasking hyper-responsibility, based on the conviction that one must justify one’s existence by doing and giving.
— Repression of healthy, self-protective aggression and anger.
— Harboring and compulsively acting out two beliefs. “I am responsible for how other people feel” and “I must never disappoint anyone”.
The problem is that internalizers direct their violence inwards, onto themselves. In 1987, Dr. Lydia Temoshock observed a set of character traits that occurred consistently in people with melanoma (a type of skin cancer), namely that of being “excessively nice, pleasant to a fault, uncomplaining and unassertive”. Gabor Maté similarly notes that through his practice, he sees this group of people more often suffering from autoimmune diseases, skin conditions, migraines, fibromyalgia, endometriosis, chronic fatigue syndrome (ME) and other conditions. Internalizers suffer doubly, both from toxic shame and from the backlash of their coping mechanisms. This is nothing short of tragic.
To conclude, the phrase to “be yourself” is not just a catch-phrase of our era, where individualism rules and personal growth is trendy.
To be able to live our authentic selves is as fundamental as the difference between living in a democracy or a dictatorship.
To be yourself is to have permission to be human, with all its oddities and limitations. The fear, shame, self-censoring and alienation experienced by people who cannot be themselves is torment. On top of that, they develop coping mechanisms that lead them to hurt themselves and/or others. This is not only a problem for individuals, but also a political and economic problem for our society.
Article 3 in the Declaration of Human Rights reads: “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person”. Does this include the right to be yourself? I think it should.
I wrote this article in relation to the article “To Bloom in the Right Soil”, which argues that the environment matters in the question of thriving, because “the self” and “the structure” work together. The structure represents the expectations we are presented within a given setting — be it a dinner party, a workplace or a relationship. Here, I have explored the first axis of the two-by-two table; the self.
Thanks to Anna May, LC Lynch and Shelia Regita Pasaribu for their insightful articles which I have taken the liberty of referencing here.
References
Bradshaw, J. (2005). Healing the shame that binds you: Recovery classics edition. Health Communications, Inc.
Huseby, T. (2015). Alene naken: hvorfor er vi redd for å være oss selv?. Cappelen Damm.
Miller, A. (1997). The drama of the gifted child: The search for the true self, Revised edition (p. 136). Basic Books.
Maté, G. (2022). The myth of normal: Trauma, illness, and healing in a toxic culture. Penguin.
Ware, B. (2009). Regrets of the Dying. Bronnie Ware.
Webb, J. (2012). Running on empty: Overcome your childhood emotional neglect. Morgan James Publishing.
