What is Authenticity?

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

—Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself”

Do you ever wonder who you really are? Sometimes you’re kind and gentle, and other times you are irritable or need space. You’re proud of some things you’ve done, but maybe deeply regret some others. Maybe you’re trying to make a change and notice that, while a part of you really wants to, another part is resisting. So, who is the real you underneath all of that?

This is a question that comes up pretty often in my counseling practice. A lot of people wonder about authenticity, what it means, and how to access it. Sometimes it comes down to wondering what it is we even really want from life and where to put our energies. For example, are we more authentic when we take mental health medication, or more authentic when we’re without it? Are we genuinely ourselves when we’re in addiction, or does addiction take over the true self?

Authenticity and Internal Family Systems

I’d like to suggest that we are asking the wrong questions. Needing to have a singular self that is true while other versions are false may simply not be the way human beings work. From the perspective of Internal Family Systems (IFS), which is a therapeutic modality created by Dr. Richard Schwartz, any given person is made up of multiple—possibly countless—parts that present themselves in our lives at different times for different reasons. We have inner managers, protectors, and firefighters, and multiple younger versions of ourselves that may have been frozen in time due to stress or trauma. Any one of these parts (or sometimes groups of them) can show up through our mindset and behavior to help deal with whatever we’re facing in that particular moment.

The way to work with the question of authenticity, from an IFS perspective, is to activate the “observing self,” a calm inner being who can witness all the parts of us without needing to judge or reject any single one of them. We don’t need to work to control or organize our parts, but rather to listen to them and learn from them. In doing this work, we draw on the fundamentals of mindfulness, observing with an intention of compassion. But even this observing self must change—it is the self that we are today, in the present moment, with all the knowledge and experience we’ve cultivated up to this point in our lives. That self could be different tomorrow or next week.

Becoming the Observing Self

I often work with my clients to activate this observing self and get to know what’s going on inside them without needing to judge, analyze, fix, or immediately change any of it. In some cases, it can be transformative to have the space to feel a feeling without the pressure to even have to explain to me, the therapist and witness, what that feeling is and means. And the more we practice doing this, the more compassionate the observing self can become.

The more we practice feeling and acknowledging the many versions of ourselves, the braver the observing self can become. Our feelings can seem remarkably scary, but when we do these practices over and over again, we come to realize that feelings are simply that—feelings. When we have the tools to stay present with those feelings without needing to do anything other than feeling, they become a lot less intimidating.

Integrating Our “Ecosystem of Selves”

All of the selves we meet in these practices (and even the ones we can’t access) are trying to help. Yes—even the ones that have done things we regret. When we can come to understand why a part of us yelled at our partner, lied, or did something selfish or cruel, we can come to see how it was trying to support our system. That doesn’t excuse bad behavior; sometimes parts are acting on old information and might need to be brought up to speed. But understanding where they are coming from is the first step to being able to shift out of those less functional behaviors

Most of the time, our parts are protective—trying to keep us safe or intact in some way, or trying to prevent some future hurt from happening. Sometimes they are acting out of a hurt that happened a long time ago, perhaps even intergenerationally, and need to be updated on what’s going on in the present. When we start to bring these selves up to the conscious mind and to the present, we may be able to help them work together more cohesively—not as a monolithic Self, but rather as an ecosystem of selves that each have a role to keep the whole being together.

Even if we think about this literally, it makes sense—as it happens, human beings are mostly bacteria and fungi that have non-human DNA. We are made up of a lot of microorganisms that work together to create the ecosystem that is the body. Why would our minds and hearts not be organized the same way: as multiple rather than singular beings? How might we experience or treat ourselves differently if we let go of the pressure to be one singular thing, and instead allowed ourselves to be many—to contain multitudes?

Learn more about the choice between authenticity and connection.