When Did You Lose Your Authentic Expression?
A Bittersweet Memory of Having My Face Painted
Yesterday, I stumbled upon a photograph of myself from when I was a kid having my face painted in primary school…
All the boys in the class chose the more “masculine” tiger, emblematic of what they’d be expected to get, but there was something about the butterfly that drew my attention.
The memory could have been a happy one, and yet it’s one of many memories from my childhood that is bittersweet. I remember distinctly how everyone laughed when the teacher asked who wanted to be a butterfly and I was the only boy who put his hand up.
It’s hard for me to look at the photograph without feeling sad for the boy who couldn’t understand why people judged him. It was in those moments of pain that I began to learn I couldn’t and shouldn’t be myself; when I started to believe something was wrong.
The photo is a relic of sorts to me. It’s a reminder of a time that I was courageously myself — before the pain took hold and I locked the boy away.
Authenticity as a Core Need
Gabor Maté refers to authenticity and attachment as two of our core needs growing up. Whilst attachment refers to our connection with others, authenticity is our connection to self, and it’s this relationship to self that dictates how we show up and move through the world.
I believe we’re all born authentically inclined. Babies cry, they laugh, and they express anger if and when they need to. They’re authentic, and whilst we must learn to regulate ourselves as we grow, that doesn’t mean shutting out our authenticity completely.
Only some of us learn it’s better to be quiet than to speak up. We learn to be ashamed of ourselves, and over time that shame becomes toxic until it starts to smother us — our inner child locked away in our unconscious from fear of what might happen if we let them lose.
When we lock our childhood selves away, we lock away our authenticity, and we adopt the harmful qualities of those who hurt us. It doesn’t matter then if we continue to get hurt, because we are now the one who shames, criticise and harm ourselves.
This is all incredibly painful.
Inner Child Work: Trauma Recovery
Just as we’ll grieve lost relationships with others, to heal wounds of self-expression we need to grieve the loss of our authenticity. We need to go back and look at pictures like this and feel through the emotions we experience, and work with therapists to uncover trauma from our past.
Whilst it’s painful, it’s necessary.
As children taught to be inauthentic, it’s likely we had no one around us to help manage the difficult emotions we experienced at the time, which is why it’s so important we do that work as adults.
It’s strange for me to look back on this picture and sit here crying. That was over two decades ago now, and whilst the memories are blurry, the emotions are still very real.
And to me, it’s no wonder. I never truly got to understand or feel the pain I experienced. I learned to dissociate and ignore them instead.
Inner child work to me is the act of re-integrating the child qualities I locked in my unconscious back into my daily awareness. It means letting the child I locked away come back because it is safe for him, too, now. It means saying sorry and grieving the times I pushed him away, when all he wanted was to be himself.