Hi, welcome to Unfuck Yourself with Kat Alexander.
It is July 2nd.
Woohoo!
I made it two days in a row.
And you know what?
It is a little tougher than I thought and I knew it would be tough.
But I don't have a regular workflow yet.
So and then I remembered after I got everything posted I didn't do an intro or an outro and
bear with me while I get the hang of all these things.
But like my mentors have said, just start getting it out and you'll learn by failure
and you'll correct.
So today's topic is of course authenticity and I'm going to give you a brief description
and then I'm going to discuss why it's so scary for us.
Okay.
Hang on.
Sorry, I have two cats crawling all over me so I need to move.
Okay.
So authenticity, one definition, says it involves being true to one's own personality, values
and spirit regardless of external pressure.
It means expressing honestly and transparently embracing one's true self and acting in alignment
with one's core beliefs and values.
Means what's coming from in you truly.
Not what society tells you, not what YouTube, Instagram, Facebook tells you, not what the
movies tell you, certainly not what the false fakes celebs and influencers tell you when
you find out they're full of it.
Not what your upbringing tells you unless it resonates with you.
Now why is authenticity scary?
Okay.
There were several reasons that I came up with and when I talked to some of my friends
they came up with several.
So I think there is a total of 22.
The first one came up is fear of rejection.
Being true to oneself might lead to being rejected by others who don't accept or understand
the real you.
I mean, that seems to be the core one.
Isn't that what we're afraid of if we speak up in class when we're younger, kids will
laugh if we bring up a point at work, maybe somebody with more seniority or a higher education
will shoot us down.
Maybe we've just never spoken up for ourselves.
It also involves vulnerability.
That can be really uncomfortable because we are afraid to expose ourselves to potential
hurt or criticism.
Everyone has been stunned by people's negativity, whether it was a look, a laugh, a comment,
a gossip, misinformation, misunderstanding.
And once you've been stunned enough, unless you grow a really thick backbone and learn
to let it roll off, it hurts and it makes a lot of us just shut up and not know who
to open up to.
Being authentic opens us up to judgment of other people.
We see this all the time.
We do it all the time.
Everybody has opinions.
And when we personalize other people's opinions, we sometimes fear their judgment or the negative
thoughts and feelings and actions.
Loss of relationships.
We fear that we could lose our friends, our family members, our significant others, colleagues
who don't align with our true self.
Perhaps we're part of a religious community where there are certain tenants that we don't
understand or this really can't accept.
It doesn't make sense to us.
But to speak those out, maybe people would stop being our friends.
Social pressure.
Society has norms and expectations that conflict with being authentic.
That leads us to feel like we have to conform and fit in.
Number six, fear of failure.
I know a lot of people who fear failure.
We're afraid we're going to disappoint ourselves because maybe we're not as good as we hope
we are.
We're afraid that others who are critical of us when we were younger might be proven
right.
Maybe we aren't gifted or skilled.
Maybe we never will get it.
Number seven, uncertainty.
When you're authentic, it leads you on an unpredictable path.
It can cause anxiety about unknown outcomes.
When you blend in with everybody, you pretty much know what to expect in a lot of areas.
But when you step out, you don't know if success is coming and, good God, what could
that bring into your life and how will you handle it and will people still stick around
you or what if there's failure?
You just never know.
Authenticity.
It's scary because of personal growth.
We have to confront uncomfortable truths about ourselves.
Things that we've believed all along, maybe they weren't true.
Maybe they are true.
I know a lot of things that I grew up, I'm 55, a lot of things I grew up believing are
now found to not necessarily be true.
In the world and with better access and more communication to global knowledge, these things
are changing rapidly and that can be uncomfortable.
A change in identity, number nine, that can be scary.
Many people have come out of the Christian faith and other faiths.
It happens when we deconstruct our faith.
Meaning, we look at the foundation beliefs and we look at what is reasonable to believe
and what isn't.
What is the truth about other documents that have been around longer?
The truth about how long documents have been around?
And do you come out of a faith or to switch from Republican to Democrat or whatever to
become transgender to do any of these things and take on a new identity?
It forces changes in how we see the world.
It forces changes in who we relate to and how we relate.
That can be scary and uncomfortable.
Number 10, personal risks.
Sometimes when we're authentic and just being ourselves, we might be seen as unprofessional.
There are certain professions, let's say, where people can cuss.
It's just true.
And then there are other places you just do not cuss and it would be seen as unprofessional.
You know what I mean?
And maybe withholding curse words is not being inauthentic.
Maybe it's succumbing to being appropriate.
But on the other hand, people can also carry that too far and be like, well, that's who
I am and that's how I talk and you could lose career advancement.
Just saying.
There are other reasons.
Number 11 is fear of conflict.
Being afraid that if we speak our truth or how we see the world, our views, our dreams,
our goals, it may come into disagreement with others who have different beliefs.
Again, it's a fine line with being polite versus being fake.
Where I was serving in ministry for many years in and out, I have a lot of friends who are
still believers.
And when I'm around them, I am appropriate.
I don't say things to try to sway them to my side of belief.
I don't condemn what they think.
I'm being polite and I'm not hurting other people.
However, if I am scared to lose them and they ask me questions, say, like, don't you agree
with the Trinity, Father, Son, Holy Ghost?
If I am inauthentic and too scared of rejection, I'll say, oh yeah, totally.
But the truth is I don't believe in it.
So being authentic in a case where somebody asks you, don't you believe blah, blah, blah.
Being authentic is speaking your truth, even if it's contradictory and could cause conflict.
It's finding a way to be polite about it and not break the relationships.
But we don't have to be so scared of conflict that we always agree with people.
We're going to discuss that in a later episode because number one was fear of rejection.
And the number one thing people do when they are afraid of rejection is they people please
and people pleasers are completely scared of conflict.
So we will address that later.
But getting back to why it's scary.
Number 12 was exposure of weaknesses.
None of us are perfect.
None of us have everything thought out thoroughly.
Everybody smarter has read something else that might make us think in a holy way or poke
a hole where we had belief in something before.
There are weaknesses and imperfections.
Okay, exposure of weakness.
Okay, and this goes with fear of rejection too.
How many people do not expose themselves in a bathing suit because they've got cellulite
or their body isn't like the totally surgically uplifted Kardashians?
You know what I mean?
I remember I weighed 220 pounds several years ago.
I was quite heavier.
And my son was young and we were in California and I took him to the beach.
But I had weighed 287 at one point so I was happy with my 220.
So I wore a tankini and went to the beach and played in the ocean.
But I can't tell you how many women were probably a size eight or smaller on that beach that
had those wraps around their waist and thighs so they couldn't be seen.
And they walked the beach like that and they even like laid out and covered themselves
slightly.
And they were beautiful, gorgeous, model worthy women.
But because of societal pressures and standards in California, they did not go in the ocean
and play with their kids.
They wouldn't be seen dead like that.
And it's very sad.
But that fear of exposure that I'm not perfect.
Number 13, breaking expectations.
For fear that if we're authentic, maybe we're going to disappoint somebody or surprise somebody.
We'll talk about that later.
There's a whole bunch of ways we are afraid, especially when we're afraid of breaking our
parents' expectations.
And that leads into number 14, which was put a little different way, cultural or family
expectations.
How about another reason that it can be scary to be authentic?
This is economic or social consequences.
You could face job loss or social ostracism.
Again, lose your social group because you don't share the same beliefs anymore.
Or I'll look into that one more.
What else would that be?
Economic and social consequences?
Well, okay.
So some people, years ago, it used to be called stepping out of the rat race and going off
grid.
There's a lot of money to be made in corporate work.
And if you go off grid and just farm your land and didn't have a ton of money put away,
you may be incredibly happy.
But you're going to suffer economically.
And you have to be prepared for that.
And so there are people who would love to live that way.
But they're just scared they can't do it because they want a certain lifestyle or that's always
been expected for them.
Number 16, self-doubt.
Doubts about one's own worthiness, fears of inadequacy can make it difficult to embrace
authenticity.
Am I doing the right thing?
Am I enough on my own?
Are my thoughts and ideas valid?
Otherwise, maybe I'm just not going to speak up and be authentic.
I'll just blend in.
Number 17, loss of control.
When we become authentic, we are taking the mask down.
The mask or multiple masks that we wear every day for maybe we have a mask for our family
and a mask for our 12th step group and a mask for our religious group and a mask for our
friends and neighbors.
When you take those masks away and just start being yourself, you no longer control what
people think about you.
They're going to have new thoughts about you.
When we put a mask up, we are manipulating others into buying into what we want them
to think about us, how we want them to view us.
When you just let it go, it's scary wondering what will they think.
Number 18, fear of change.
Being authentic is going to bring changes into your life.
It just really will and all kinds of changes.
I don't know a lot of people who like change.
There are some adventurous types, but not everybody embraces change.
Number 19, emotional labor.
It can be taxing on you if you're not going to be valued and supported once you begin to
be authentic on your new journey.
When you get backlash from others or go it alone and have to find a new support group.
Also when you're doing the digging to find out what you really believe and what you really
think, that takes digging.
It takes honest questions and evaluations and looks.
Some people would rather just continue to play the role they've always played because
they know it well and they know what to expect.
It's less emotionally daunting.
There is also number 20, fear of isolation.
Fear again that if others don't resonate with you, you're going to end up alone.
Not true.
There are 8 billion people on the face of this planet and there are always ways to connect,
but it does take effort.
Number 21, past trauma.
Getting hurt in the past can make us fear it will happen again.
If we were really honest with people and were rejected, how do we know new people won't
reject us?
Remember what I said yesterday about, I don't remember the exact things.
I think I may have said apples and oceans.
Not everything is meant to be a pair together, but there are 8 billion people.
You will find your tribe and I promise you will feel so much better with your tribe that
loves you because they really know who you are than you ever were pretending and playing
a game and walking on eggshells and pins and needles for other people.
The last one that they came up with is people with complex identity.
That is a whole different thing.
I don't know if I'll ever get into that.
I think I would like to substitute that one for complex trauma, but we'll talk about that
eventually when we get to that.
I'll make a note and we'll go over that.
Anyway, so real briefly to recap the reasons why authenticity can be scary.
We fear rejection.
We fear being vulnerable.
We're scared of judgment.
We don't want to lose relationships.
There's social pressure to conform.
We're scared of failure.
I would add success.
We do not like uncertainty.
Personal growth is uncomfortable.
It's hard to change an identity.
Personal risk is not something people like to do.
We all kind of seek comfort, fear of conflict, exposing our weaknesses, breaking expectations,
whether it's society, culture, our own or family, economic or social consequences, self-doubt,
loss of control, fear of change, dealing with emotions or emotional labor, fear of isolation
and being alone, past trauma, and complex identity or complex trauma.
So there you have it.
We'll look into these more.
Maybe you relate to some of them.
Maybe not.
Maybe some of those are things that when I said that, you went, yeah, I get that.
So as we go through this, maybe make a note to yourself mentally or somewhere and maybe
journal about it sometime.
This blah, blah, blah is holding me back from being honest with people, just being me.
I'm scared of blank.
Let's look at it together.
Anyway, I hope you had a very great day and maybe, maybe we can do this three days in a
row.
ーI won't lie now but, at least I made a comment pretty soon and I'd be the last to
read them.
I'll leave you guys with this, too.