How Authentic?

There is a growing narrative about the importance of embracing our greater authenticity in our professional lives, because this is what allows for deeper and more meaningful human connection, where caring, trusting and loving relationships unfold.

Embracing greater authenticity is something I continue to move towards, and it is a quality of being that I mindfully support others to connect with, embrace, accept and express in the name of peace, love and happiness, and sometimes, in the name of authenticity it is important to ask, ‘How authentic’ shall I be?

Personally, authenticity at one level, has meant daring to connect with and accept the swirling currents of my emotional world, a realm I had barricaded myself from during my teenage years and well into my twenties due to multiple traumas. In the beginning, this move into healthier emotional connection meant braving some big fears and unknowns and then, with time, allowing curious self-reflection to awaken my depths, bringing about a greater felt sense of presence and allowing for emotional fluidity to flow through my daily life. I started to feel more me, more real, and more powerful because I was present, here and now, owning my truth about my thoughts, feelings and emotions, which empowered to me to express them when needed. Professionally, especially as a coaching psychologist, this enabled me to show up, in the present, with my clients, with all that they were thinking and feeling and all that might arise, and with confidence, knowing I could be with what is and what might come up, because I can be with myself. It was essential work for my whole life and it made me feel so much stronger, confident, and alive!

This authentic emotional presence eventually empowered me to begin stepping into my greater possibility and potential, because when you own your emotional truth; when you acknowledge how you are really thinking and feeling and you respond to this with your deepest truth, beyond the barricades of fear, doubt and worry, you stop living a lie, you stop walking in the shadows of other people and you stop living the life of someone else’s dreams. Through embracing authenticity, you know who you are, what matters to you, how you feel how you want to be and what you want, and it is this honesty with self and presence with self that allows you to make changes that honour the person you really are and the life you truly want to live.

In tandem, authentic presence demanded that I relinquish certain aspects of my identity; the perfectionist, the multi-tasker, the efficient organiser, the woman ‘coping’, to allow the deeper truth to rise up and been seen in the light of day; the anxious woman with low-self-esteem, striving and often struggling to achieve, while battling overwhelming self-doubt, worry and fear, and instead, begin to embrace my truth and my vulnerability. Through acceptance of my deeper truth, and those areas I would hide, I was able to begin working on myself, giving love to the areas that needed it the most, evidenced most in an emerging internal voice of loving kindness, grounded in some big brave actions while standing before some great fears. This led to a relaxation into myself because I no longer needed to uphold a mask, to pretend, or to try to do ‘everything’, because of the new narrative I was creating: ‘I’m okay with me’, ‘I accept myself and my story’, ‘I am enough’, ‘my truth matters’ and ‘I can do this!’!

This is top-level authenticity. I’m just sharing the tip of the iceberg to build a connection with you. Perhaps you can relate?

The question is, how much more dare I share, how deeply do you want to connect, how deeply do I want to connect, how vulnerable dare we venture into the truth inside of us?

All I have shared is that I was not as together as I some people told me I appeared to be, and that I have allowed empathy and compassion to grow me towards making more loving choices about how I respond to myself and how I live my life, in doing so, moving towards more authentic presence, and a more authentic lifestyle because I was aligning with my deeper heart-truth.

What I have not shared is why I made the shift, what propelled the choice to love more, what was happening at the time, how I was thinking and feeling, what helped me brave fear, doubt and uncertainty, and where I am at now in my process. Why? Because this is where it begins to get uncomfortable.

If I am feeling uncomfortable with me, perhaps I create discomfort for you? We don’t want to make other people uncomfortable, do we? But, what if you are okay with you and the depths of your truth, and my discomfort is being projected onto you? And what if I am in full acceptance of me and at peace with my true story, and you are the one in discomfort, will my shared acceptance heighten that discomfort or could it invite you into a greater love story?

This is the essence of questions we often ask ourselves when approaching uncomfortable or emotion fuelled conversations with other people, and when we wonder ‘how authentic should I be, or want to be?’ from behind our so well-crafted constructions. We do this under the guise of ‘protection’, but what are we really protecting ourselves and each other from?

The answer is simple; we are protecting the truth because it comes with feelings of vulnerability.

The reality is this: we have to allow feelings of vulnerability if we are to allow the truth.

The illusion is this: Because we so often deny our vulnerability, the whole truth about how we think and feel and live, we have constructed a false belief; that vulnerability means weakness because we believe we are stronger when we hold the truth at bay. We are not stronger in our suppression of we, what we are actually doing is creating a false sense of being in control.

The truth is: Vulnerability is uncomfortable because we are not used to it, but it is not weak, it is powerful and when the choice to be vulnerable is made, you are fully in control, because you made the choice and you decided you are brave enough to embrace whatever the unknown brings you.

Sometimes, through embracing vulnerability it can feal like you are breaking, but you are only breaking the outer shell that was upholding a false façade, which is uncomfortable, but once you arrive in vulnerability, you feel strong in it. It’s the fear of vulnerability and not vulnerability itself that keeps us disconnected from ourselves and each other, because we are all vulnerable in one way or other anyway, it is the nature of being alive.

Fear is the challenge, not vulnerability: Fear of vulnerability can trigger thoughts of weakness, fear and shame, but vulnerability is not weakness or shame. The truth is, owning your truth, and sharing your truth, in the face of these powerful inhibiting beliefs, is incredibly brave.

Authenticity is a choice of the brave, because it requires that you get uncomfortable and move through conditioned fear-based beliefs that can feel so real, even when the truth stands before them with great conviction to shine a loving light on reality.

A deeper truth …

When I decided to connect with my emotional depths, and I faced the fear of overwhelm: a fear that allowing emotions to be felt would be too much and that I would fall into a great depression, forever, I had to rationalise my catastrophic thinking, and delete the word ‘forever’, because I already knew that was not true.

The next step in embracing authenticity meant accepting that I would be walking in unchartered waters, with the knowing that I needed to do this, because suppression was not working for me, and that doing so would set me free, because I would no longer fear myself and this would surely grow my self-confidence and a true sense of inner peace.

I knew it was the loving choice to make, and so I simply made the intention to connect, to feel and to summon my truth. It was this process that led me to unveil a deep and powerful anger, deep because I had buried it for so long, and powerful because in the presence of my anger, feeling it and owning it, I suddenly transcended the fear that had held me in chains; I was no longer afraid to accept that: ‘I feel angry’, or to be with my anger and to state exactly why I felt angry.

I became able to own my truth and in doing so, I felt myself arise and grow in strength because I had just grown above fear; now I could look fear in the eye and say ‘I have nothing to fear’, ‘I did nothing wrong’, ‘my anger is valid’, and ‘I am okay with me and my story’. I accepted my deeper truth, and in doing so I ignited a stronger flame of love.

I used to fear anger, in myself and others, today, I embrace it, I encourage it, and I support it, I help my children to name it and be with it and move through it, learning and growing along the way and I facilitate my clients to connect with anger, embrace it and express it in loving ways. The key learning that enabled me to do this was understanding and experiencing that anger doesn’t need to be violent, as I had grown up knowing, in truth, anger is a powerful energy that arises from within when someone or something has stepped on our heart, disrespected our boundaries, or acted in a way that hurt us or someone we care about. It is information that gives us a big burst of energy to allow a strong response, be that demanding respect, asserting a boundary, or healing the wound created, which over time, with understanding, acceptance, compassion, kindness and then forgiveness; often a huge emotional investment, allows for our love to continue to grow.

Owning my anger gave me the power in my life to step out of the silence, stand up to bullies, walk away from people and places that were toxic for me, to bravely move towards a more soulful space and to authentically support others in owning their anger and applying it lovingly.

The thing about supressing anger is that it tends to suppress your passion and energy for new creation. So yes, I grew passionate, I re-focused my life on some big and exciting heart-centred dreams and within a few years I had brought them to life – I attained new degrees in psychology and mental health, set up a private practice, bought my home in the sunshine, became a single mother by choice to two beautiful boys, birthing at home naturally without pain relief and with respectful and supportive midwives in honour of my truth, and I published my first book – ‘Grow your love your grow you -discover your power, purpose and possibility’.

I could take authenticity to another level; I could share stories relating to the anger suppressed, the passion unleashed, the traumas lived and healed, the big dreams in process and the deeper truth unveiled, but this will require more of your time and mine, and now it is not the time.

Authenticity is first of all about being true to yourself, to your dreams, you values, your feelings and emotions, your time and energy, your values and your well-being, to what you want to say and what you choose to hold onto, be that in the name of fear, discomfort, self-preservation, or because you will share the greater truth in your next book.

Own your truth, choose what you share, what level you share at, with whom you share, when you share and know why you share. All of this is owning your truth. There is not right or wrong way to be authentic, just be true to all that you are, and at the deepest level of truth, where you are aligned with true love, the purest essence of your being, and then be true to yourself about how and when and with whom you share your truth. This is love. And if you hide, for self-preservation or because you are not yet ready to connect, I respect this, and I encourage you to nevertheless be true to yourself, be authentic about what you are thinking and feeling, own your values and your dreams and always listen to your heart, because this level of self-love is the power that will one day, when you are ready, allow you to shine brightly.