S2 EP204 – Are You Being Your Authentic Self?

Transcription:

Hi everyone. Dr. Margaret Paul here with the Inner Bonding Podcast. Today I’m speaking about authenticity.

How often are you authentic?

We are authentic when we are being genuine and truthful – being our true soul self, our essence.

There is nothing genuine and true – nothing authentic – about us when we are operating from our ego wounded self. No matter how nice, caring, giving, or complimentary we are, it will not feel authentic to another person when our intent in being nice, giving, caring, or complimentary is to avoid something or get something from another person. The wounded self gives with an agenda in mind, while soul gives for the joy of giving.

Take a moment to think about what you might want to get or avoid when giving or being nice. Are you being nice, caring, complementary, or giving in order to:

• Avoid another’s anger?
• Pacify another’s anxiety?
• Take away your own anxiety?
• Get time, attention, love, sex, or approval from someone?
• Control someone into liking you?
• Prove your worth?
• Be seen as a good person? 

The problem with giving to get approval or avoid pain is that the other person may not feel given to.

The energy of getting or avoiding couched in the act of giving generally doesn’t feel good to others because it’s manipulative rather than authentic. The person being given to might feel confused in the interaction because, while the action itself might feel good, the energy behind the action feels pulling and draining.

Many people who give to get something or avoid something find that people often withdraw in the face of their giving and caring. The person giving might feel confused about why the other is withdrawing in the face of being given to or complimented. If people withdraw from you when you are being nice, you might want to examine your intent – to give for the joy of giving, or to get something or avoid something. 

We feel wonderful when someone gives to us from an authentic place, purely for the joy of giving.

There is a clear, bright, loving, flowing energy that comes from someone who is being authentic in their giving. The act of giving, in itself, is not what determines the quality of the energy behind the giving. The very same act can have totally different energies depending upon the intent.

Clara, one of my clients, shared with me the following incident. Her best friend had just been diagnosed with cancer and Clara was feeling very sad and deeply in need of comfort. She was sitting on the couch crying when her husband, Walter, walked in and saw her crying. He knew what she was so sad about and came over and put his hand on her shoulder, ostensibly to give her comfort. However, Clara didn’t feel comforted by his touch. Instead, she felt pulled on. (quote)”It was like some part of him was saying to me, ‘Look what a good guy I am. Look how caring I am. Maybe if you see me as caring, then you will have sex with me later.’ It felt so yucky that I just pulled away. Then he got hurt and angry at me for pulling away when he was being so ‘nice.’ Don’t you think that if he had really been caring, he would have cared about why I was pulling away? If he really cared about me instead of just wanting sex all the time, he would have been interested in why I pulled away. I just hate it when he uses giving as a way to get sex. Yuck! There certainly is nothing in that kind of giving that would turn me on!”(unquote)

While the gesture of putting his hand on her shoulder appeared caring, the energy behind the gesture felt anything but caring to Clara. She knew that if she accepted the comfort, which she really wanted and needed, there would be a demand on her later for sex, even at a time when she was feeling so sad. She had learned in the course of her marriage that Walter never gave to her without expecting sex in return.

The more you practice Inner Bonding and give to yourself the love and attention that your inner child needs, the less you will find yourself giving to get something or avoid something. Healing the wounded self and discovering the wonder of your beautiful and loving soul naturally leads to authentically being loving and giving with others.

Part of being an authentic person is being a real friend. I like this quote by an anonymous person, (quote)“A real friend is one who helps us to think our noblest thoughts, put forth our best efforts, and be our best selves.”(unquote)

What kind of friend are you? Here are some of the things good friends do as an authentic loving adult.

• Do you listen with caring and attention?
• Do you support what brings your friend joy?
• Do you have the courage to speak your truth when you see your friend harming herself or himself?
• Do you reach out frequently?
• Do you return calls, texts, and emails in a timely manner?
• Do you feel joy for your friend’s joy and pain for their pain?
• Do you help when you are asked for help?
• Do you share your own struggles and ask for help or support?

Or, do you operate from your unauthentic wounded self?

• Do you try to fix your friend, thinking you know better?
• Do you lecture, criticize, and judge?
• Do you feel envious of your friend?
• Do you try to keep your friend from being all he or she can be?
• Do you talk on and on and don’t listen?
• Do you brag and try to make your friend feel one down, envious, or jealous?
• Do you make everything about you?
• Do you take a long time to return a call, text, or email?
• Do you wait for your friend to reach out?
• Do you refuse to be open and vulnerable with your friend?

If you find yourself more on the second list than on the first list, you might want to explore why you are not able or willing to be a good, caring, and authentic friend. What are you afraid will happen if you are open, caring, and supportive?

The ego wounded self generally comes from a fear of lack and scarcity. This fear may translate into believing that if you support others in being all they can be, somehow you will lose out – that there isn’t enough for all of you in the universe. If you have this false belief, where did you get it? How is it serving you to believe it? How do you feel when you try to keep others limited so that you won’t lose out? Do you believe that the only way you will feel good about yourself is if someone else feels bad about themselves? If you believe this, where did you get this false belief?

Since all of our feelings are informational, if you are envious or jealous of your family or friends, there is a good reason for it. The good reason likely has to do with old fears and beliefs that you acquired in childhood and that are now making it hard for you to be an authentic person and an authentically caring friend. You might want to take the time to explore what false beliefs lie under your jealousy or envy. What beliefs about yourself do you have that are limiting you and keeping you from having whatever you are jealous and envious about? What fears are keeping you from manifesting what you want in your life? What fears are keeping you operating from your inauthentic wounded self rather than from your authentic soul?

Until you become a real friend with yourself, you might have problems being a real friend with others. Being a real friend with yourself means seeing, valuing, and supporting your own gifts and talents – your own real authentic self. When you can cherish who you are in your essence – your true self – then it becomes easy to see, value, and support others. When you learn to treat yourself with love, you will naturally and authentically treat your friends and others with love, too.

Connected, caring friendship is vitally important to our wellbeing. People tend to mirror how we treat ourselves, so the more connected and caring you are with yourself, the more you will attract connected, caring friends into your life.

People who operate primarily from their open, caring, and authentic loving adult are also people who you can rely on and depend on. They are reliable and dependable because it gives them joy to act from integrity.

It seems to me that more and more, I can’t depend on others to follow through on what they say they are going to do. Someone says they will call back and they don’t. Someone says they will be at my house at a certain time, and they aren’t.

I was brought up to believe that it’s rude and uncaring to say you are going to do something and then not do it. Not only that, I realized early on that I didn’t feel good about myself if I said I was going to do something and then didn’t do it. I was able to absorb this ethic because I had parents who were role models of dependability. While they did lots of things wrong as parents, I am grateful to them in this area – they did what they said they would do. They followed through on their promises to me. In this area at least, they operated from their authentic loving adult.

This is not the case for my client Gideon, who said,

(Quote)”What would you advise for a person who finds it very hard to be dependable day after day? I was raised in a household with absent parents, and I didn’t learn discipline. I can work hard in spurts, but I am not very consistent. If I believe in something I can really throw my heart into work and dazzle employers, but I find it a real struggle to be dependable on a consistent ongoing basis. Also, if I am thrown off kilter for any reason or am in difficult circumstances, then I find it hard to continue to perform while untangling difficult emotions, and I start to become undependable.

And he went on to say:

“I am occasionally overcome with an emotion and can’t function for a while. If something fairly upsetting happens, I have to take a day or two off. I feel there is a rebel inside me that I can’t control, and I can’t get myself to function until I take a break for a long while and get my balance back. If something big has happened, I find it hard to be dependable and to continue to function in life until the feelings stirred up have calmed down, which seems to take a while.” (Unquote)

The underlying reason for this is that Gideon is abandoning himself emotionally, operating from his controlling wounded self rather than his caring loving adult.

When something upsetting happens, instead of showing up for his inner child as a loving adult, Gideon is collapsing into his wounded self, and it then takes him days to recover. If he were operating as a spiritually connected loving adult, he would likely recover quickly and then operate with integrity from his authentic self.

Because Gideon had no role models for authentic loving self-care, he doesn’t know how to be dependable and authentic to himself. The wounded self is generally not dependable. If we didn’t learn to be authentic and dependable with ourselves and others as we were growing up, the way to become authentic and dependable is by developing our loving adult. 

Here is where the practice of Inner Bonding is invaluable.

The consistent practice of Inner Bonding creates new neural pathways in the brain, which is what Gideon needs in order to become consistently open, authentic, and dependable. The more he learns to show up for himself throughout a day, the easier time he will have showing up authentically for himself and for others when something upsetting happens.

Recent brain research proves, through MRIs, that whatever we focus on for a couple of months is what gets wired into our brain. Therefore, if Gideon were to focus on taking responsibility for his own feelings through his Inner Bonding practice, this is what would get wired into his brain and he would find himself becoming more and more authentic and dependable with himself and with others.

Our authenticity or lack of it is often apparent when we hug. Most of us can tell the difference between genuine authentic hugs given with no agenda for getting anything back, and needy hugs that come from the wounded self and have an agenda attached.

There is a world of difference between the energy of genuine loving and giving hugs, and needy hugs and inappropriately sexual hugs.

While I knew this as a child – as most children do – I didn’t have words for the difference. I just knew that I loved hugging and being hugged by some people, and I hated being hugged by others. Authentic loving hugs felt nurturing and safe to me, while needy and sexual hugs felt yucky.

My mother’s hugs never felt good to me. My mother was narcissistic, and her hugs were needy. When she hugged me – which fortunately wasn’t very often, I felt like the life was being sucked right out of me. My mother was never a person I would go to for love or comfort.

Until I was twelve, my father’s hugs were wonderful – filled with love and nurturing. I felt so safe in the arms of my father. All that changed when I was twelve and my father became sexually abusive, which, of course, meant that he was no longer safe for me. I was confused and scared and crushed to no longer be able to go to my father for loving hugs. I protected myself by staying away from him as much as I could.

I’m a very affectionate person, and by the time I started dating I was so starved for hugs that I often found myself in difficult situations with the boys I dated. What I wanted was authentic, loving, and caring hugs but, what I mostly got was needy or sexual hugs. It took me many more years before I could articulate the energetic difference between authentic, loving, healing, nurturing hugs, and needy or inappropriately sexual hugs.

When a person is abandoning themselves in various ways, they create an emptiness inside. The emptiness is like a vacuum trying to suck the love out of others – trying to get the love that they are not giving to themselves.

While the hugger might have a warm smile on his or her face, the energy of a needy hug doesn’t feel good. If you tune into the energy and feeling of it, you will know instantly that the person hugging you is trying to take from you rather than give to you or share with you.

Before I understood this, I allowed myself to be taken from and it felt awful. Now I deal with this totally differently. I understand that the pull is from the other person’s abandoned little child, and I feel compassion for that child. Instead of allowing myself to be taken from, I generally freely give my love to that child. This feels much better to me than pulling away, and when I decide to give my love to someone, I don’t end up feeling used. I even reached a place where I was able to hug my mother and give her needy little girl my love. 

There is also a neediness in inappropriately sexual hugs. The hugger is trying to get filled through sexual energy. I experience this with many of the men I meet, but fortunately not all of them. Occasionally, I meet a man who hugs from his heart full of love. What a gift it is to be authentically hugged by a truly loving man – as well as by a truly loving woman! Perhaps this is why many women love to have gay men as friends – they don’t hug women with sexual energy!

There is much healing power in authentically loving hugs. When two people hug each other with hearts full of love, the energy that passes between them is a healing energy.

I believe we all need these loving hugs – frequently. I encourage you to seek them in your life – with a partner, a friend, a child or a relative. Authentically loving, healing hugs are a balm for the soul.

We are authentic only when we are operating from our spiritually connected loving adult. Our programmed wounded self, just intent on controlling, is incapable of being authentic. And part of being able to stay in the higher frequency of our loving adult is taking loving care of our body.

I often meet people who are seemly devoted to a spiritual path, yet who consistently disregard caring for their body, the temple of their soul. A while back I met a brilliant man devoted to doing research regarding understanding different states of consciousness. He told me that he has had four heart attacks – the first at age 40. He was at least 50 pounds overweight. I found it hard to take him seriously regarding his work, because it was so obvious that there was a deep inauthenticity between what he did and how his lived his life.

Why do so many supposedly consciously evolving people disregard the body that God gifted us with to house our soul – our inner child – while we evolve our consciousness? Why do they disregard what they put into their bodies that affects their frequency, that affects their ability to be in their loving adult, authentically loving, giving, and sharing?

Perhaps the answer is that we live in such a lonely and disconnected society that food, especially easily acquired junk food, becomes one of the few ways we have of handling our loneliness. Before junk food, TV, the Internet, when people were not being dumbed down with toxic food and a toxic environment, and when people sat around and shared their lives with each other, there weren’t so many sick and overweight and emotionally disconnected people. Perhaps getting back to authentic food and to authentically sharing our hearts would go a long way toward preventing heart attacks and other illnesses.

When people lived in closer communities, it was easy to get together with friends and family, even if a person didn’t have a partner. People were not nearly as lonely when friends and family were close by. We are meant to live in community rather than in our separate, isolated houses. A friend of mine who lives alone has struggled with her weight for years, and the only time she has not had a struggle is when she had a friend staying with her for 6 months. They sat around the table each evening, like the Golden Girls, and shared their day. “I was able to easily maintain my weight while she was here,” she said, “but I started to struggle again after she left.” The Golden Girls had the right idea for people not in partnership.

Caring for the temple of our inner child is truly a sacred privilege. The more you get to know the incredible authentic beauty of your soul essence – your true self – the more you naturally want to take loving care of your body – the house you live in. We take care of what we value, and when you learn to value your authentic self, you will also value the body that your authentic self lives in. Through the practice of Inner Bonding, you develop your spiritually connected loving adult, which is what enables you to see the magnificence of your soul – the spark of the Divine within. This deep healing naturally leads to taking the loving actions that create health, wellbeing, and authenticity.

You will find that the more you learn to value your beautiful essence, your wonderful inner child, the more you want to create a fit and healthy body for your essence to live in, and the more authentic you naturally become.

The secret to health and authenticity is wanting 100% responsibility for your feelings – for thinking and behaving in ways that bring you inner peace and joy. This is your right and your privilege.

If you enjoyed this podcast, I would really appreciate it if you tell your friends about it, and if you give it a review wherever you heard it.

And I invite you join me for my bi-monthly masterclass and receive my live help, which you can learn about at https://innerbondinghub.com/membership.

I invite you to join me for my 30-Day at-home Course: “Love Yourself: An Inner Bonding Experience to Heal Anxiety, Depression, Shame, Addictions and Relationships.”

And you can learn so much about loving yourself and creating loving relationships from my recent books and from our website at https://www.innerbonding.com.

If you want to do individual work with me or with one of our many trained Inner Bonding facilitators, please go innerbonding.com and look under Facilitators -> Find a Facilitator, or call my office, the number is on the website.

I’m sending you my love and my blessings.