Authentic Self-Expression

This week I have been feeling like I have been standing outside of the box of my own mind and looking at it with wonder. It is as though I have been a goldfish swimming in my bowl unable to see my own water. I have been reflecting on how tenuously I started my Expressive Art blog 5 years ago and how nervous I was about expressing myself honestly - to anybody - for fear that I would lose their love and approval. I remember reading and re-reading my posts for hours, censoring them, un-censoring them and then sitting in my own intense anxiety noticing how I felt about what I should and should not express.

As I walked on my lunch hour, I was contemplating the feeling of strength, empowerment - taking full responsibility for my own life and letting go of the last vestiges of victim consciousness. I marveled at how good it feels to express myself honestly and take responsibility for my own thoughts and values, without feeling the level of intense anxiety around pleasing others that I have had in the past.

As these thoughts were running through my mind, I was astounded to turn the corner and to see hundreds and hundreds of tiny birds literally just in front of my feet. As I walked, they swooped over to the next lawn and the next. As I looked up I saw the little birds lined up on telephone wires and roof peaks, crowded, side by side, twittering. Joyful multitudes in the trees. My whole body opened up and I started to laugh. It felt like an affirmation of freedom from the jail cell of my primal and unconscious thoughts around "I am bad and guilty for expressing myself honestly - I am bad for even having an authentic self that differs from others".

Mystics would call our childhood thought system the "conditioned mind". The counseling program that I am taking would call it "family systems thinking". Very rarely do we think there is any way of being outside of our habitual thought systems. We come into this world, open, unique, authentic beings. Quickly however, we learn how to belong and how to be taken care of by our family and by society. We learn how to fit in.

Children learn within their families what to say and what not to say, what to do and what not to do in order to keep down the anxiety in the family system. If for example, as children, we learn that expressing anger brings up anxiety in the family, we literally grow up feeling like a "bad" person for expressing ourselves authentically in this way.

As children we are often praised for being "good and nice". For so much of my life I have questioned this "mandate" to be nice. Merely being "nice" in the world cuts off a huge range of feelings that we need to be fully functioning human beings! This oppression of niceness plagues so many, especially my women friends - it is the fishbowl we swim in.

As children, we are taught to behave. To behave means to defer to others, to not make choices for ourselves, and to be externally referenced to the thoughts and feelings of other people. When we make another person's thoughts or feelings more important than our own, we "lose ourselves". This is how we stay victims and dependent children inside, often for our entire lives.

Differentiating out of our family systems rules around authentic self-expression takes such incredible courage and strength, many of us will not choose to make that journey. The mere thought of expressing ourselves authentically within our family and societal systems can bring up tremendous anxiety. It might feel easier to shut down our self-expression down in order to belong.

I received a most surprising and supportive gift in the mail this week. Someone very dear sent me her inner world - she mailed me her entire collage journal to read. Her gift moved me beyond belief.  What I read in her journal is what I see in myself. As women we often feel like we are "bad" when we speak our truth. We are taught to be nice at all costs, even to the point of not standing up for ourselves.

I learned a great deal about standing up for myself at my job this past year around a workplace bullying issue. I kept asking myself, "Why do I feel guilty when I stand up for myself?" It was so curious to me that I did not think speaking up for myself was a "nice" thing to do! What I learned is that we all in varying degrees, bully, seek revenge, and try to control others in proportion to how much victimization and dependence on other people's opinions that we feel inside ourselves. It has been a revelation to me that I had to stop believing in my own victimized thought system in order to stand up for my values. I have to know who I am and what I stand for so that I can make authentic choices for myself.

As we come to know ourselves outside of victimized and dependent thinking patterns, it becomes easier to stand up to life's challenges. The more we touch into our true being, the more we we need to learn how to choose how we want to live our own lives from inner values rather than outer family and societal rules. This is how we become real. This is how we become our "authentic selves".

Good Questions To Ask:

1) Where do you feel victimized in your life? Where do you feel life has "done" you wrong?

2) Can you see places where you choose to keep yourself small and avoid taking the next step in your life by hanging onto your feelings of victimization?

3) What would your life look like if your did not feel victimized? How would you move into your day? What steps would you take?