There was a time in my life when I used to find the phrase “be yourself” really confusing. What did that even mean? How do I even know what “myself” means, and even if I did, how do I flip this imaginary switch to suddenly “be myself’? Not to mention this sort of advice usually came from mostly Western media – movies, TV shows, tumblr posts, etc. where all these people seemed to have distinct ‘traits’ and personalities that they kept insisting everyone can find for themselves.
I didn’t know how I could manufacture this unique personality for myself from all my fractured and diverse interests that ranged from music to mathematics. I would be upset that I couldn’t “stick to” any of my interests long enough to call myself a singer or a writer or a poet or a reader. I was confused and scared that I wouldn’t be able to find this template that would perfectly fit me.
Whether it’s in my practice as a therapist or in my relationships or other realms of life, this ‘template matching’ has kept popping up – “This post may not ‘fit’ on a therapist’s Instagram”, “You shouldn’t talk about this kinda stuff with your partner coz it’s taboo”, “You can’t ask your friend for this kind of help coz that’s not something you ask a friend”. More and more, I started realizing how restricting these templates are in terms of the choices I can make or the actions I can take.
Instead of feeling free to “be myself”, this whole endeavor had me trying so hard to find a mould for myself that I could somehow find existing out in the world. Recently though, this phrase has begun to take on new meaning for me. Instead of finding a shape that I can pour myself into, I started to wonder how much I can stretch and change shape. How much can this blob of a person extend and contract and squish and stretch?
Although, I found that I have to ask this again and again – every time conflict arose in my relationships, every time life decisions hung around my neck, every time I heard that voice in my head that goes “This is how you should act in this situation”, I had to ask myself if I can stretch what I am a little more, if I can act a certain way even though I don’t think that it ‘fits’ society’s or my own image of myself. Honestly, it seemed tiring, and at first, counterintuitive because of the discomfort that arose with these inner conflicts.
But every one of these times – when I told my partner something I’ve been thinking that made me feel guilty, when I chose to bring up conflict with a parent instead of suppressing it, when I chose to do that new thing that I always thought “wasn’t for me” I also felt incredibly free. Wondering what feels authentic to me in each of these moments freed me from being confined to a mould that didn’t really fit me. It still doesn’t make the initial discomfort go away, but every one of these actions has made the next one somewhat more bearable.
Authenticity is not about comfort or safety. It is about freedom. And this freedom will eventually bring comfort and safety to spaces and ways of existing where they were not present before.
Posted to Instagram on May 15, 2023
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