A:  Let’s start by talking about what it is not.  The Authentic Self is not the “personality” as we typically think of it.  All the idiosyncratic behavior, thought and attitude, which we typically call the personality, may be coming from a mask and costume we’ve worn since we were so small we can’t even remember it.  The Authentic Self is not all the little things we do and say about which we generally say “that’s just me.”  The Authentic Self runs much deeper than these modalities of expression.  It can be compared to the roots of a tree, in that while the tree may be experiencing wind, rain, lightening, and people carving their initials in it, the roots are doing just fine—thank you very much.  The Authentic Self is a raw essence of vitality that is experienced internally, if it isn’t overly repressed, before it is consciously expressed externally.

Q:  Well if that is true, then how would anyone ever begin to connect with it, much less begin to, as you put it, “live it out?”

A:  Most of us have some access to the Authentic Self, through our feelings, just one of several  internal avenues to authenticity.  For example, I might come to resent the fact that I am always there for my friends but they are not there for me.  That feeling of resentment, believe it or not, could be a message to me from the Authentic Self that I am going about my life in an inauthentic way.  It could be one link in the chain that binds me to a role, or mask and costume that I put on when I had to be there for family and parents even though they weren't there for me.  For the most part, however, we ignore these feelings until they erupt in a crisis.  This crisis becomes the challenge to move beyond the mask and costume into something more real.  When we are in crisis, or in pain of any kind, we tend to take on a more internal view of our lives, becoming more aware of our feelings, our beliefs about life and ourselves, and the barriers that keep us from having a good life.  However, while we may become aware of these things unless we know what to do next, we will generally just berate ourselves and slide into the next groove of the record that is stuck repeating the same old song.

The way out of this, of course would be to learn a new song.  When we try to do this through the old identity however, we just end up “doing the same old thing and looking for different results,” AA’s definition of insanity.  The only way to really sing a new song is to know the melody and lyrics.  In order to do that, we’ve got to go to where that new song is being sung.  We have to go to the Authentic Self, the only place where we will find any real music at all.  That would mean finding and beginning to live out of entirely new identity, one that is more real and doesn’t leave us with feelings of dissatisfaction and lack of fulfillment.  An identification with the Authentic Self allows us to make wise choices, it allows us to take really good care of ourselves, it allows us to deal with our fears and put to rest our anxieties in a way that we can trust, for it comes from someone we will learn to trust—ourselves. 

The problem for most of us is that we don’t know how we got into the messes of our lives in the first place and we don’t know how to get out.  Restoring My Soul: A Workbook for Finding and Living the Authentic Self addresses both of these concerns.

Q:  Okay, what is the mask and costume then and how do we put it on in the first place?

A:  Infants and children are looking for mirrors in which they can see themselves.  Everything in their world becomes a self-definition.  Therefore, when they look into the faces and at the actions of their parents or primary caregivers, they see themselves.  Add to that the fact that most of us were raised by parents who, often with the best of intentions, unwittingly and often non-verbally told us, "don't be who you are, be who I need you to be."  Sometimes they needed for us to be "good" so that we didn't embarrass or shame them; sometimes they needed for us to be "bad," so that they would have somewhere to put their own "bad."  Sometimes they needed for us to relate to them by rescuing them.  Sometimes we were the funny ones, who kept things light.  Sometimes we were the ones that they needed to constantly baby, so that growing up became very difficult for us.  Sometimes they bullied us, so that we began to see ourselves as their victims, or perhaps we donned the same bully identity in order, as we saw it, to survive.  That's just a few examples, of what it takes to build the mask and costume.  But once we put it on, we begin to identify with it, hang our name tags on it, so that we literally think that it is who we are.   When we have lived out this role for many years, it becomes very difficult to hear the voice of the Authentic Self under all the cacophony of the role. 

Q:  Well if that's true then, how does one begin to hear that voice, as you put it?

A:  There are certain very definite and practical methods used in Restoring My Soul:  A Workbook for Finding and Living the Authentic Self, which allow the reader to become very well acquainted both with the role, its thoughts, behaviors and mantras, and with the Authentic Self. 

Q:  It sounds like one would have to be pretty vulnerable to others when one becomes authentic.  Is that true?

A:  That's exactly what we fear, and why we put on the mask and costume in the first place.  But the truth is that the Authentic Self is wise, very lovingly protective, and knows exactly what our next step needs to be.  We don't become more vulnerable to others when we begin to live authentically, we just become more aware of ourselves.  In fact, we are more vulnerable to others when we live out the role, because we attract the people that will both enable us to maintain the role and at the same time damage us with it.  But this damage has never been complete for the Authentic Self has never been wounded.  That's right.  Never.  Like the roots of the tree, when someone puts a nail in the bark, the roots have not been wounded.  Rather they just know to send more energy to the tree.  We don't typically know this about ourselves.  In fact, we think that self-revelation is the same as self-exposure and that self-exposure will damage us to the core.  But this is not really true.  When we reveal the Self to ourselves, we are taught by that Self how to use our own wisdom and self-love to run our own lives.  This means that we learn to pick and choose to whom we will relate at all, and then with whom we will be vulnerable.  We learn the natural mechanisms of the Authentic Self that allow us to put up boundaries, and decide in favor of ourselves when it is necessary.

Q:  What are the other benefits of becoming authentic?

A:  Bottom-line, the benefit of living authentically is that we can begin to live, instead of just surviving.  We begin to live more authentically in the three biggest areas of adult life:  relationship, career and spirituality. Believe it or not, it is possible to live happily in each of these areas.  But we can't do that when the most authentic part of us is pushed away into the closets of our existence and only allowed out unconsciously.  The truth is that many, if not most, of us have been making all of the choices of our lives out of an identity that was once necessary for our survival as children, but is no longer necessary and, in fact, has now become the albatross around our necks as we walk the planks laid out for us by the roles we play.  Many of us keep finding ourselves in the same old plight over and over again, wondering how in the world the cycle keeps repeating.  The way out of that plight is not to talk our partners and spouses, children and parents, jobs and bankers into behaving better.  The way out is to see clearly how we got into it in the first place and then take a completely different path.  The way we got into it was to don a mask and costume through which we, ever after that, orchestrated all of the decisions of our lives.  The completely different path is not, as is typically thought by traditional clinicians, to circle the wagons, stop the forward progress and leap backward in time to experience all of those memories we've been running from all of our lives.  Having worked with survivors of sexual trauma for years, I've found that that method only serves to re-traumatize people.  Our life energy is not in our pasts.  It is inside of us, right now.  And we don't find authenticity by looking backwards; we find it by looking inward and listening, both to the mantras of the role and the messages from the Authentic Self.  Once we've learned to differentiate the two, we can then integrate our own authenticity.   Truly, the only way to live happily is to find happiness within ourselves.  It absolutely can be done!