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The most useful understanding of "Being Yourself" is cultivating the ability to feel all of your emotions authentically. Expressing your emotions honestly is a
by ada1981 10y ago
The most useful understanding of "Being Yourself" is cultivating the ability to feel all of your emotions authentically.
Expressing your emotions honestly is also a way to have antifragile relationships, but if you've built a relationship in which honesty wasn't valued and you have an agreement to hide the truth from one another, doing it all of a sudden would most likely be a pretty jarring experience and most likely result in many people leaving.
We live in a deeply codependent culture in which we are constantly trying to protect each other from our own experience (ie, not telling the truth for fear someone can't handle it) and so we walk around on egg shells.
I think it's worth the discomfort of working to be honest. It's difficult at times, and I surely don't succeed all the time, but when I do it is always worth it.
When I read this guys article what I hear is him saying "being myself is terrible advice" which is a common experience for many people, one that they are taught by their family and society in the earliest days of their life.
It's difficult and frightening to let go of that narrative and less frightening to simply pass it down stream to the next generation - through conscious means such as this article, or by unconscious means via shaming.
- morbidhawk 10y agoI think its extremely hard to know what your true self is. Like you said about codependent culture, it seems that there is a great deal of unhealthy social conditioning to unwind in order to understand what "Being Yourself" really even looks like. For me I've struggled finding the balance between not allowing myself to be walked on (due to my codependent tendencies) and being able to be vulnerable and open to hearing criticism about myself. In my mind it has been a struggle to determine whether my thoughts are codependent or authentic. "Just be yourself" is a little too simplified I'm afraid, my former self was people-pleasing and constantly seeking validation while avoiding emotions and conflict, not being vulnerable. That is not the person I want to be, to discover who I am I've had to recognize that there are new values that were deep inside me (authenticity, vulnerability, honesty) but that I had to dismantle a whole bunch of socially conditioned lies to get there as I had a misunderstanding of those values. I don't think I could have done this process alone, therapy has helped me a lot to recognize that I had unhealthy opinions.
- ada1981 10y agoI share a similar perspective and experience. Also agree that the simplicity of "be yourself" can mask the depths of it and the years of work required to find the Self. I certainly couldn't have done it alone, and can't imagine doing it without MDMA therapy in particular.