What we’re constantly told is to get real, to be our true authentic selves, to reveal our genuine personality, to just be who we are. Why is it then so difficult to do so, to express our true identities. What are the forces preventing us from revealing ourselves.
What we all have is a blueprint, a path to our lives. Some will decide to serve others, while many will choose to just serve themselves.
Some will pursue money, others will pursue love. Some are creative, some are crippled emotionally, there are some who are genius. The sooner you find out the better.
Living a life then interferes as we’re faced with the pressures to gain status, along with generating a living.
Once this is established, however, what we do is self evaluate, and begin “fixing” things about ourselves we don’t like, what doesn’t fit.
We find annoyances and nuances about who we are, which doesn’t resonate with our values.
We begin to eliminate certain life paths, people, and tasks which restricts our success, and who we are as individuals.
The Issue With Trauma
Somehow, somewhere in our lives, almost everyone has suffered some type, certain levels of trauma or even abuse.
Be it behind closed doors at home, at school, among our friends or peers who bully us, or from the big bad violent world out there.
Absolutely everyone is guaranteed to have some scars, some deeper that others, and as a result we have developed defence mechanisms designed to escape, survive, to cope somehow.
These coping mechanisms then become a part of our lives, lasting years, at times decades after a traumatic event.
Life Beyond Our Control
We’ve all been confronted by issues because of who we are, such as someone hating us for our lifestyle choices, or because we’re too pretty.
We’re then forced to put up a fake persona, a shield to protect ourselves from experiencing the trauma over and over again.
The issue becomes who we really are as a person gets buried, suppressed, and we lose touch of our true identity.
What’s needed is you need to be brave and confront yourself, critique this false behaviour because of external pressure.
Exposing your true self is a difficult task, as the traumatic events will come storming back, stopping you in your tracks whenever you’re attempting to get real and identify yourself.
We Fall To Peer Pressure
We are told by our parents and our peers, how we’re supposed to act, jump, look, feel, and behave. All to fit into the well manicured mainstream culture.
The evidence is astounding, as magazine covers and media ads display thin beautiful scantily clad idealized people, someone you’re supposed to look like.
Social media tells us we should be bolder, smarter, appear more confident, eat the right foods, look younger, not look nervous, and every other behaviour in between.
Spiritually, we’re told to be a lot more grateful and forgiving, physically, we’re told to exercise more.
We need to get more sleep, love better, communicate better. We’re bombarded with a veritable set of “how to” instructions on how we should behave.
So how can you find your true self with all this external input. Act out who you truly are and make it visible to the world. Sculpt our lives to display our true selves.
We’re Stereotyped Into Our Gender Roles
We’re told early in life how boys and girls should act, behave, and treat one another. We then conform to these rules.
What’s constantly refined is a distinct divide, how men should behave under certain situations, and how women should react under the same circumstances.
We are led to believe men are logical thinkers, while women react more on emotion. That men solve the problems of the world, while what women do is complain about them.
Men can deal with pressure of being alone, while women deal with stress by talking or gossiping it out.
Men will feel accomplished once a goal is reached, while women feel accomplished once they’re loved.
We Live In A Do What I Say World
All these established cultural viewpoints, pointing out the distinct differences when it comes to men and women are predictable as they are invariable.
But these are just the scripts on how we’re supposed to act, and not who we really are.
Men are asked to be stoic, become aggressive, and essentially be anti-feminine. Women are stereotyped worse.
Women need to stay at home, raise your babies, cook and clean and please your man, to the grunt of female equalization.
There’s extreme pressure to conform to our gender roles, impacting us emotionally, physically, and fiscally, as we’re forced to contort to our traditional roles.
The Need To Be Rational
We need to think as critically as possible, to subdue our emotional minds once they get in the way, so we can think rationally.
This idealism bleeds over to conventional thinking, that we’re asked to think sensible, alienating our emotions when we need to react.
Our feelings, our emotions then become buried, but they still have their own substance.
We still become hurt once something or someone treats us bad, we still become angry when someone provokes our reactions.
We are asked to subdue these feelings however, but are unable to do so.
The Quest To Reveal Ourselves
Other emotions such as sadness or anxiety are also shamed, since they offer insight into what condition we’re currently emotionally in.
When it comes to difficult issues or conflicts, however, it’s our emotional reactions which needs the most attention.
There’s an insistence by society, that all our problems need to be resolved rationally and not emotionally, which becomes a distorted form of denial.
We’re constantly encouraged to act logical, at the expense of our emotional minds, which can become a dangerous health hazard if we’re wanting to reveal who we are.