Photo by Benjamin Shanks on Unsplash

“Your Soul is the place within you that is timeless, ageless, and eternal: it is the ultimate core and essence of who you truly are.”
~ Mateo Sol

Think about the times when you feel the most like yourself.

Isn’t it the best feeling when we can just relax and “let our hair down?”

What do you think it is about those times that allow us to be truly ourselves? From my experience, it’s the belief that no matter what, the person we’re with will not judge us. We can allow ourselves to be vulnerable, trusting that we won’t be criticized.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to get more of that feeling of authenticity in our lives? Although choosing supportive friends may be a good place to start, there is internal work we can do to help us feel comfortable revealing our true selves to others more readily. For some suggestions, try these 6 Steps to Help you Discover Your True Self.

 As children, we’re greatly impacted by the environments we’re born into, especially to the way our parents and loved ones relate to us and the messages we receive from them.

As adults, our true selves can be overshadowed by the personality traits we acquire when we’re very young, and of which we’re likely unaware.

Nature may dictate traits such as our energy level, level of sensitivity, etc., but nurture (how we are raised) determines a great deal of our relational personality. No parents are perfect, of course. Based on the way they respond to us and our requests for attention, we take on various beliefs, the most common of which is that to be valued and admired we have to do something or be something. We can’t just be.

We begin to adopt one persona or another—whatever works with our parents, and later our teachers—in order to be accepted. We may become overly conscientious, perfectionistic, or bossy. Or turn into an entertainer. Even if we’re born with some of those tendencies, they will become more exaggerated in response to our early lives.

All humans unknowingly have as a goal to ward off emotional pain or fear.

We react by developing coping mechanisms that serve to keep us safe emotionally. For example, if your parents were self-involved, you may have become super independent very early on. If they tended to fight at the dinner table, you may have become a joker as a way to distract them. You developed a false front that served a particular purpose, and over time it became a part of you.

We’ve talked about wearing a mask before—it’s a layer of personality that exists on top of our pure essence. We use it most often when we’re at work or school, where performance can get us something we want, like a promotion or a good review. Or with strangers, when we’re wary of them. The false front also plays out in close relationships, and is the reason some of us find ourselves married to someone seemingly quite different, as their true self emerges, from the spouse we first met.

It is when we are our most authentic that we feel truly happy and free, unencumbered from the work of keeping the mask on. The psychological work I spoke of can help us get closer to our unconditioned essential spirit—our true selves.

Toward that end, a couple of weeks ago a group of friends and I started studying a psychological model called the Enneagram. Your Enneagram “type” is determined based on the results of a personality test (similar to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, with which many people are familiar).

The concept was originated in Argentina the late ‘60s by Oscar Ichazo, but it is based on ancient traditions. It has been used by people in all walks of life, from spiritual leaders to business leaders. There are nine personality types in the Enneagram model, each of which has a number, label, and description associated with it. For each type there is a central desire and central conflict.

Curious about your personality type? You can take a free test here. (None of us is a pure type, and in fact we have some bits of each type within us, but one or two areas are typically strongest for us.) If you want to learn more, you may be interested in a book recommended by one of my friends called The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery.

Using the information provided to us in the results, we can reexamine our childhoods to see how specific traits may have developed to help us defend against our fears and bring us closer to our basic desires. One benefit of the Enneagram is that it offers suggestions for growth based on our type which may involve shedding the aspects of our personalities which are no longer serving us. Another benefit is furthering our understanding of other personalities and their challenges.

I’ll use my own results as an example of how it works. According to my test results, I’m a Type 2, which is labeled “The Helper.” (No great surprise here—I’ve mentioned before that I’m a reformed people pleaser.)

This is my own brief summary of my Type 2 Description:

Your basic desire is to be loved, and your basic fear is being unworthy of love. Your coping mechanism is to try to control your shame by working to get other people to like you. You crave validation and appreciation. Because you’re such a giver, you often feel disappointment at not being loved enough in return. The people pleasing part of you represses your resentment, however, so as not to upset people, but by putting others’ needs ahead of your own, you cause yourself significant stress.

 I’ll have to say, my type and the description of it rings pretty true for me. I bet some of you fall into this same category. I know some of my best friends do. The Enneagram for each type describes how we can appear in the best of circumstances and how we react when we’re stressed, which may help explain some of our overreactions in response to others.

My test results are a good reminder for me that to the extent that I remember to curb my people pleasing tendencies, I feel more true to myself, and more at peace. I value the act of helping, and I like helping, but I don’t need to exhaust myself doing it. This cements a central lesson I’ve previously learned in therapy: to challenge my false belief that if I did not put other people first at all times, they would like me less.

Further study about the ramifications of this trait also helped me to understand that even though helping is generally a kind act, there’s a downside to offering too much. However well intended, it can send the wrong message to people—causing them to feel inadequate, resulting in lower self-esteem. This concept will help give me pause in the future when my urge to help is strong, but possibly misguided. I’ll remember to do a check in with myself first to see what’s driving my desire.

I love learning, and enjoy the process of assimilating each new piece of information into my knowledge base. I’m curious to see what you think of this model, and if you decide to take the test, what insights you’re able to gain from it.

 As you do the work to get closer to your true essence, remember this sentiment from our beloved Dr. Seuss:

“In all the world over,
This much is true:
You’re somebody special.
There’s only one YOU.”

Affectionately,

Elaine