Leverage Your Feelings to Find Your Authentic Self

There is a common perception that women tend to share their feelings more than men, but I’m not sure I agree. If anything, I’d say we tend to share what we think is socially acceptable, rather than even acknowledge our true feelings.

Acknowledging how I actually feel puts me in a position of vulnerability, and that often seems unwise in our society. Given that I grew up learning what I wanted was really not relevant to my survival, it has taken me a long time to realise the purpose of that survival was to get me to a place where I was then in a position to thrive.

I’m probably two to three decades beyond where that could have first occurred, but early survival meant taking on a lot of concepts that weren’t mine, like – for example - despising people who behave in a lazy, selfish, non-committal, unresponsive or inconsiderate way, and it really obscured my view.

It’s taken quite a few relationships and roles to begin to see patterns that make me look in the mirror and really question my own beliefs about things. I’ve had to start to own my true desires and figure out how to do that without feeling like a bad person.

If I take my little list of despised behaviours, while these were not things I was particularly berated as being, certainly I heard judgments about those around home; condemning them in others. This left me in no doubt I did not want to become those things.  

Taking lazy as an example, I’d look at lazy people in disdain. Yet what was my definition of lazy? Really it was someone who was less busy or productive than me. So in a work environment, if your diary wasn’t as full as mine I’d think I was working harder than you. Of course I may have been right, but the other person may just have been working smarter.

When I really look at the word lazy, and take out the judgments, what I felt was “why do you have more down time than me? I want to relax and recharge too”. But I didn’t really feel I could do that because I’m a chronic overachiever, always trying to stay one step ahead of those expectations about who I should be in order to avoid trouble.

There’s the root of my true feelings on most of those things. I didn’t want to be the bad girl, so I became the perfectionist, the over achiever. Those are some hard habits to break as they were also highly prized and regarded with praise and positive attention.

When I suffered a fourth failed pregnancy and a colleague suggested going to see a therapist I was offended. What I felt he was saying was “you are over emotional and it’s affecting your work, you need fixed.” When I went to see the therapist (I really felt I had no choice as work paid for it and it was in work time) he said “do you think you could be a perfectionist?” and I felt insulted.

Being a perfectionist carries the same sort of stigma as being lazy, they are both adjectives used to describe behaviours that are usually associated with weaknesses in our society. I feel one indicates I’m spending too much time and attention on something, the other indicates I’m not spending enough time and attention on it.

Weak is not something I want to feel, I like to feel strong – as we all do. Strength and vitality are, I believe, our true nature and that is the issue. Not having had any real opportunity to explore my true nature as a young infant and child, I was instead cast into a mould of what was deemed good and strong in order to survive in our family and society.

Said another way, instead of being fortified from the inside out, I stepped inside a suit of armour. While that presented a strong front, it lacked inner strength and resilience, it lacked vitality.

To figure out who I was beneath that armour, I had to use my feelings to guide me. Having strong feelings about things didn’t tell me what I liked and disliked, as I first assumed, it taught me about what I’d never really owned in myself.

The things that I despised in others were really a list of things I had within me, but the same is true of things I admired about others. Both are hard to accept in their own way. Owning both creates anxiety around feeling worthy because of all the feelings I’d attached to them.

I remember back in my early thirties, I used to watch all the Trinny and Susannah What Not to Wear programmes. I used to really admire those people who knew how to dress with style.  I didn’t have a bad body image particularly, but I really had no experience in dressing well. Growing up we had only enough money for essentials, so I was often dressed in what was sensible and available at the time.

Moving into my teenage years it was all about fashion. How I laugh now to look at photos of the dangly fry pan earrings (with tiny fried eggs in them), the short cropped hair slicked up to one side, the bat-winged jersey and baggy trousers; finished off with a pink neon studded belt. Fabulous.

But when I learned about dressing to suit my body shape and colouring, well, it tapped into a part of me that I’d never really explored. I had great fun creating a new wardrobe and new image. At first I felt really vulnerable dressing differently, instead of the stock standard pleat skirt and blouse I’d usually wear to work, I started to wear things like a wrap dress and knee high boots.

I was worried people would think or say things like “who does she think she is? Mutton dressed as lamb”. But I took a deep breath and did it anyway and quickly became confident in my new look.

Owning the things I despised in others took longer – another decade – and was just as uncomfortable. But if I take my little list (lazy, selfish, non-committal, unresponsive and inconsiderate) and turn those into attributes I admire it becomes self evident that those are concepts I want and need to adopt:

• taking time to restore your energy
• putting your own needs first
• taking a position without feeling the need to explain it
•  saying yes to things that fuel you, no to things that don’t

Again, at first I was worried that I’d be attacked or thought less of as a result of adopting some of these concepts, they were uncomfortable. But they felt positive, I could sense that my vitality and wellbeing – my inner strength - depended on me practicing these new behaviours.

Like anything new, it just requires focus and persistence. I’m not saying I’m there yet, but I’m consciously aware of what I’m feeling about most things on most days, and that helps guide me towards things I might need to look at or focus on in order to keep fortifying myself from the inside out.

So what are your feelings towards others and situations telling you? What do you admire or despise in others? Imagine a world full of people becoming conscious of their true nature in this way, a world full of more authentic people would mean we could take put all that armour in the melting pot and use it as fuel towards a better life.

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