InnerSelf.com

Do you know who you are? I mean, who you REALLY are? Or do you just know the summation of your patterned behaviors, words, thoughts and feelings? Typically we think we know ourselves, and we call our patterns a personality. But often this personality is really just an identity — a mask, costume and role that we’ve lived into for so long that we think it is who we are.

Who Are You, REALLY...

Frequently, when I ask a client to describe himself, he’ll say something like, “Well, I think I’m a caring person. And, um…I think I’m a good person for the most part, because I try to do the right thing most of the time.” This person is defining him or herself by the so-called good deeds he does. But if I were to ask him how he feels about the good deeds he does, he might say something like, “Well, you gotta do what you gotta do, you know. People need you and you just have to be there.”

Further exploration might yield the uncomfortable reality that he spends considerable time and energy on his resentments, which stem from the fact that he does many things he has no desire to do and has little time or energy left to do the things he genuinely wants to do. This fact is evidence that he doesn’t really know who he is — he only knows who he is supposed to be and so he tries hard to live up to that standard.

Getting To Know Our Truest Self

Most of us have not been mirrored, and assisted in coming to know our truest selves. In fact, though we may have heard the old adage “To thine own self be true,” yet we know that we are really being taught something more akin to: Don’t be who you are, be who we need you to be.

The fact is that most parents don’t even know how to mirror a young child so that she is able to see herself and be that self with confidence. In fact, we carry some deep archetypal fears about what we might find in the self if we go looking for it. For so many centuries we’ve been taught that we are basically bad or evil people who were born into what is known to most in the West as original sin, and most in the East as blindness or illusion.

Being Good: The Fear of Being Bad

Most of Western religion has promulgated the notion that at our core we are evil, and we must strive to be good. In the Eastern religions, there is a belief that at our core we are Divine Self, but we are blind to that and see ourselves as separate from the Divine. Either way we are often striving to be good, in order to connect with the Divine, or at least to feel good about ourselves. And either way, we are not ourselves.

For example, if I’m striving so hard to be a good person, then I’m likely to repress those things that I consider to be bad for fear that the bad might define me. And so, in the example given above of the client who defined himself as a caring person but is filled with resentment, there was a striving to be a good person who does the right thing, but he is largely unaware of his resentments, or if he thinks of them at all they are considered to be bad and so he must put away that resentment—i.e., repress it.

Being Bad: Being Visible

On the other hand there are those among us who strive to be bad because to do so means that they will be visible. Over time they may have to up the ante over and over again to gain the visibility they seek — for to not be visible is tantamount to a death. So, our notions about so-called good and bad factor into our ability to find out who we are as we constantly measure ourselves against a standard of some type, rather than finding out who we are.

Further, we are also taught in all kinds of dysfunctional family dynamics to put on a mask and costume that seems to fit the needs of the family for what family systems researchers call homeostasis or balance. If for example, a parent is a bully he may need for the children to play the victim role and this role in turn might keep the child safe, as she tippy-toes around on eggshells trying to avoid the father’s rages. This polarization of roles creates a balance in the home. And while it is certainly not a healthy balance, it is balance of some sort. So many of us wear masks and costumes and play out certain roles in our families-of-origin for so long that we totally identify with the role, and define ourselves completely by it.

Existential Crisis: Who Am I?

Eventually however, we reach a pivotal crisis in which the role no longer works, or we develop so much pain that we have to consider the possibility that this role will not continue to work. This is what is known to many as an existential crisis, because it causes us to ask the question “Who am I?” While this is usually a very uncomfortable time, it is also an extremely hopeful time, because when we ask that question, we are closer to getting its answer than at any other time in life.

The next question becomes “How do I find out who I am?” And there are many ways to do that, but all of them require that we begin to pay more attention to what is going on inside than we do what is going on outside of us.

How To Find Out Who You Are

Looking at some of our projections, paying attention to our desires, noticing our so-called negative feelings — and allowing them to inform us of what we are doing that is inauthentic, looking at our original belief systems — as opposed to just accepting what we’ve been taught — these are all methods by which we can begin the journey to the inner terrain and the authentic Self.

We’ve been taught that the inner terrain is a rocky road that only the most holy of men (or women) may walk without going crazy or stumbling into the evil core. But if we are dedicated to walking the inner terrain, we will find ourselves, for the authentic Self is not a passive or silent partner. And it wishes to be found.

This article is a brief overview of the concepts found in the book:

Restoring My Soul: A Workbook for Finding and Living the Authentic Self
by Andrea Mathews.

Click here for more info and/or to order this book.

---

About the Author

Andrea Mathews is the author of The Law of Attraction: The Soul’s Answer To Why It Isn’t Working And How It Can, (Sept. 30, 2011, O Books), and Restoring My Soul: A Workbook for Finding and Living the Authentic Self (2007, iUniverse), as well as several published articles and poems and a blog in Psychology Today Magazine called Traversing the Inner Terrain. She is a practicing licensed psychotherapist with over 30 years experience, a corporate trainer, motivational and inspirational speaker and the host of the highly successful international internet radio show called Authentic Living on VoiceAmerica.com. You can learn much more about her at http://www.andreamathewslpc.com.

More articles by this author.

Share this article