Coming Back to Your Authentic Self: How to Stop Abandoning Who You Are

Beth: Welcome back to the Shift with Beth podcast. I'm your host, Beth Schild, and I'm really excited to bring you guys this episode today. It's been one I've been wanting to do ⁓ for probably since I started doing the my challenge I gave myself to practice being seen. And it's about coming back to your authentic self. So it's not finding your authentic self or being more of it. It's really coming back home to you. You're not trying to be something else, but you're trying to be yourself before the world kind of told you ⁓ to be someone else and abandon yourself, right? So this week I got back from my somatic experiencing training. If you've been following along for a while, you know that I've been in in a three-year program. it's a program by taught Dr. Peter Levine. It's the largest somatic. ⁓ trauma program in the world. And I just finished it three years. And it's been such a bittersweet thing too. It was bittersweet to go to San Francisco knowing that it was my last training there. And just I kind of went back down. It was really cool. ⁓ the trainer there was actually gonna be he's been a somatic experiencing trainer for over 30 years. His name's Raja. And this is gonna be his last ⁓ domestic training, kind of a big deal for him. And to close out the the training and say goodbye. They they really have you it's such a a taxing training because every day for the last three or four hours you are the client, the practitioner, and you observe a session, which observing also takes a lot of energy because you're holding space, right? And so It's beautiful and it it takes a lot out of the body. And so you really want to make sure that you kinda close the container and and the last day he kinda had us drop into our bodies and have a remembrance of every single year, beginning intermediate and advanced. And it was so beautiful just thinking back to that version of me who decided to do this, ⁓ beginning of twenty twenty four. And Just the growth and healing and learning that I've had has been one of the most profound experiences of my life. And I'm super grateful for it. ⁓ it's changed me and the way I show up in the world and the way that I understand my nervous system, the way I can attune to other people's nervous systems. ⁓ I really just go on and on about it. So So that got that was completed and Randy was able to join me ⁓ the last couple of days of my training. I missed his birthday. ⁓ he needed to stay with his kids and I had to be at this training, so we celebrated. I found this really cute little romantic hole in the wall restaurant in San Francisco. I think it was called Norchina. And it was it was beautiful. We had a really beautiful night to celebrate him together. And then now we've been back home and just trying to ⁓ recover from from the training. So so now that that's complete, I'm trying to just celebrate that it's complete, ⁓ and not think about, okay, what's next? Yeah, because I love to learn. And so yeah, so just the practice of celebrating and and that is enough right now. I don't need to do anything more. The reason I wanted to do this episode on coming back to your authentic self is Because I truly feel like for the first time in my life, I am my fully expressed authentic self. And I'm the feeling that I have from being that is indescribable. It's something that I I have not experienced in this way. And it's so freeing and expansive. Like more energy, more ability to excel. And I can actually remember when I was feeling this in my body, and it was during my B-seen. challenge that I gave myself in August. Again, if you're following along, I gave myself a challenge to show up every day in August to practice being seen and get over the blocks that I had ⁓ that were really big blocks that were holding me back from ⁓ creating and showing up online. And I think I was around day twenty one of the challenge. Randy and I were driving somewhere and all of a sudden I just felt this expansiveness in my body like And it just felt like freedom and it was so powerful and so incredible and and it was because I was letting myself be seen. I was not hiding anymore. I was fully expressing and you don't realize what that does to the body and to your own soul and to your own self when you're hiding and playing small because How would you know what it feels like to not do that if you've never fully done that? And so as I showed up every single day, I was experiencing something com completely new and it was so freeing. And I just remember thinking like, what is this? And I realized I'm not abandoning myself in any way anymore. I'm not playing small. I'm not constantly editing myself. I wasn't thinking about whether people were gonna approve of me or try to control what they thought of me. I was just being me and I could actually feel the difference in my body. There was that beautiful expansion and openness. And I remember thinking in that moment about something I've said before that authenticity is the highest frequency a human being can hold. And even beyond love. And I talked about this on one of the days of my practicing being seen challenge too, because if you would have asked me what the highest frequency is, I would have said love until I learned that it was authenticity. And I think the reason is because you can still hold the frequency of love. And ⁓ be abandoning yourself. Does that make sense? You can still love others. ⁓ but you cannot be abandoning yourself and be authentic. And that's why I think the frequency is higher. And it was in that moment of that feeling of freedom. I realized it's because I am being fully my authentic self. And the feeling is just so incredible. I just want everyone to have it and experience that kind of freedom. And Like for me, I realized that the challenge was not about social media. You know, the challenge was to stop playing small and to trust my intuition. And so for you, like maybe just slow me down for a second. And really thinking about where you are not a being authentic in your own life, where you might be hiding parts of yourself. So just sit with that for a minute. The challenge was about coming home to myself. And that's why I wanted to do this episode for all of you. Cause I think so many of us are trying to figure out how to become more authentic and be more ourselves and stop caring what people think and trusting ourselves. And I really I know that authenticity isn't something you have to go out and find. You were born with it. The work is to stop abandoning it. Think about ⁓ little kids. I I've always felt like the age of four with my own kids was one of my most favorite ages. And I remember when I was still in my marriage in our home and then when I went into my rental home, I did this too. But I had like three ⁓ collage on the wall, and I had four pictures at the top, and each one had a newborn picture of of my kids. And then I chose the middle row to be them around the age of four because I just loved that age so much. I didn't really think about why. and then the last row was like a a current picture of my kids, but I loved looking at the four-year-old photo of them all the time. And it wasn't until recently that I realized why. And it's because the four year old age is when they are most free. They're playful. They don't edit themselves. They're not looking around to see what other people will think. They are fun. They're starting to notice things. Like I said, like the wonder and ⁓ they're they're learning so much and they're just they say funny things and and I've realized like that's the version of my inner child that I want to come back to. That free spirit, that authenticity, that not caring what other people think, not editing myself, not trying to control anything, just being so free and Somewhere along the way, we learn, we unlearn that by abandoning ourselves to fit in, to belong. We learn what makes people uncomfortable. We learn what creates conflict. We learn what gets approval, what's accepted, and what gets us rejected. And little by little we start editing ourselves. Maybe you learn that speaking up caused conflict. Maybe you learn that having needs was needy. Maybe your emotions were called dramatic. Maybe your joy was considered too much. Maybe saying no made someone angry. Maybe being easygoing kept the peace. Or being perfect earned you approval. Maybe you learned to be whoever you needed to be in order to feel safe, loved, accepted, or connected. And none of that means there's something wrong with you. It makes sense. It helps you navigate the world and stay safe. But at some point they become become so automatic that we don't even realize that that's self-abandonment. I didn't even understand self-abandonment until I was around 40. I'd been doing it my whole life. People pleasing, perfectionism, not trusting my own knowing, worrying constantly what other people thought, making myself smaller. Thinking I needed permission. And every time I abandoned myself, I moved farther away from my authentic self, which is what happens. So if you're listening to this and you're thinking, okay, this is me too, but how do I actually do that? I wanted to give you a few things to practice. Not because I think authenticity is something you can check off of a list. But we do need awareness to begin to stop the self-abandonment so that we can return to our authentic self. So we have to practice. So number one, start noticing where you abandon yourself. If you haven't, if you're not following me on ⁓ Facebook or TikTok or Instagram, I just finished a nine part series on things that I thought were my personality personality traits. That are actu that were actually self-abandonment. So go watch that series. So we're gonna talk a little bit about that here. But so number one, start noticing where you abandon yourself. Just notice. Where are you saying yes when you mean no? Where are you staying quiet because you're afraid of how someone will react? Where are you making yourself smaller? Where are you changing depending on who you're around? Where are you pretending not to care about something you actually care deeply about? Where are you prioritizing someone else's comfort over your own truth? Where are you not allowing yourself to be excited? Okay, so like downplaying ⁓ your achievements, your love, your happiness. Where are you not letting yourself be seen? Okay, so it might not be. See being seen online on social media, but where are you not letting yourself be seen in a friendship or a relationship or anywhere? And you don't have to change all this immediately. This is just noticing because you can't change a pattern that you can't see. So awareness is truly number one. Number two. Getting curious about the part of you that learned to hide. This is where somatic work has changed so much for me because this lives in the body. And this is why talking and talk therapy, you might find yourself stuck in it. So instead of looking at these patterns and thinking, why am I like this? You can get curious. What happened that taught me this was necessary? What parts of me were punished when I was authentic? What happened when I spoke up? What happened when I had needs? What happened when I was angry or joyful or I said no to something? What happened when I wanted more? Because usually there's a reason. A part of us learn to hide. And we don't want to shame that part, but we get curious. You can literally say, I understand why you learned to do that. You were trying to protect me. Thank you. But you don't have to run th my life like this anymore. And this there's a lot more depth to this practice, but I'm just kind of giving you an idea. So that's very different from like forcing yourself to change. You can't just push these parts away. But we need to listen and get curious. The third is practicing being seen. So you guys know this was a huge one for me. I spent those 31 days practicing being seen, truly healed the parts of me that were blocked. And there were so many moments where I wanted to pull back from this challenge, especially at the beginning, because I had some strong parts of me saying, What is the point of this? Why are you doing this? Who cares? Who do you think you are? People are judging you, people are gonna think you're ridiculous. But I realize something really important. I cannot control what other people think about me. And I don't actually need to. I don't need to decide whether someone likes me and I can't, or if someone thinks that I'm too much, or manage anyone's perception. I'm not that powerful, right? My job is to stay connected to myself, and that truly changed everything. Also, I gained more than six thousand followers across platforms during that challenge, and I'm so grateful that for that. It wasn't the point. But it was really cool to see what happened when I was just authentically me and truly letting parts of myself be seen that were vulnerable and scared and honoring those parts and trusting myself. And I have all these new friends now, hopefully that I can support or help, or you know, help them make one small shift in their life to to help them heal or help them have awareness for something like. It's a beautiful part of it. So I stopped making myself smaller so that other people could be more comfortable, or at least that I thought I could be more comfortable. And also I want to say, like a handful of people unfollow me every day. And that's also okay because that means they're not in alignment with me and that and I have no control over that. And that means nothing about me. Okay, number four on how you can come back home. To your authentic self is to stay with the discomfort. So I recently saw something on Instagram called Cringe Mountain. This is one of the things I talk about on my B-C challenge. I loved it because it's basically this idea that whenever you're doing something new, you have to climb the mountain of discomfort to do it. And it it a lot of people call this cringe mountain. And what I've learned about being on this mountain is you do feel cringe when you are doing something different, especially letting yourself be seen when you haven't. It feels cringy. But what I realized was the cringe was my own self-judgment. I thought it was other people's judgment. And then you kind of picture like all the people who aren't on cringe mountain are at the bottom just like looking up at you, judging you. Maybe that's true. But what I realized is Cringe is actually part of authenticity. Sometimes we think if this feels com uncomfortable, I must be doing something wrong. But what if it's just unfamiliar? Your nervous system is saying, I haven't done this before. Not this is wrong. There's a difference between unsafe and unfamiliar. And this is where discernment matters. Authenticity doesn't mean doing whatever you want, regardless of how you feel. If something is genuinely unsafe, Protecting yourself is not self-abandonment. But sometimes we're calling something unsafe when it's really just uncomfortable. So I just have to pause and think, is this actually unsafe or is it unfamiliar? And if it's unfamiliar, that's something that I can sit with, with knowing that this is something I feel called to do. This is I'm sharing something about me that I'm proud of or that I believe in that I've never shared before. So of course it's gonna feel uncomfortable. But as you climb this mountain and you continue to be more authentic and you work through the discomfort, you get to the top and you are finally free. You're free of your own judgment, caring about what other people might be saying or if they're judging you. It's this freedom that is just the most incredible feeling. So I'm encouraging you. What is your cringe mountain and how can you start climbing it? What do you need to feel safe to start climbing cringe mountain? Do you need some support? Do you need to do some somatic experiencing? Do you need to be in a group container, a coaching container where you are being supported to feel safe so that you can move forward? I know without the support of my somatic experiencing practitioner and having a supportive partner like I would have really struggled a lot more to keep going with my challenge, that's for sure. Okay, and number five, asking yourself what wants to emerge through me. This might be my favorite one. So there's a story about this. ⁓ back in December, my fiance, Randy, sent me this YouTube video and it's Carl Jung's teachings. And ⁓ he talks about in this video, I mean, it's one of those things where I watched it and I just felt it in my body, like the truth of this for me. he talks about how we all came here, like with the soul's purpose. And a lot of times No one even gets to their soul purpose because they're living a life of conditioning of how they were told that they needed to be, or this is what you should do, or this is what success looks like. And it might be checking boxes like what I used to do my whole life. And or they do something that's safe that they know is gonna, you know, provide for their family, or you know, it but it might not be from their soul. And what happens is you know, you people miss out on even learning what their soul's purpose is. So Carl Young suggests asking the universe, God, whatever higher power you believe in on a regular basis. So for me it's like universe, what wants to emerge through me, through my soul. And when you quiet the thinking brain, okay, remember, like you have 60 to 70,000 thoughts a day. We stay so stuck up in this thinking brain that we lose access to our heart and our gut, which are also brains and powerful and our intuition. So if you with intention ask the universe, God, whatever you believe in, what wants to emerge through me, through my soul. It's gonna speak to you. And it might be something that you had no idea that you were gonna do. So I started doing this, and a couple days into it, I woke up in the middle of the night around 3 a.m. and I heard from my what I feel my intuition, you need to write a course. And I had never written a course before. I had thought about writing a course, but never done it. And I was like, okay, knowing that like This is working, right? Me asking what wants to emerge through me. And you know, it was a course on stop abandoning yourself and relationships. And I just got my laptop out and I just started writing. It just flowed through me. And I feel like that's when you're in alignment, when you're in the flow. ⁓ you don't have to try. It just comes. And I wrote this whole course and I continue to, and this is what I did during the beasting challenge as well. What wants to emerge through me? What am I supposed to share today? And I would say, universe, reveal to me what I'm supposed to share today. Or I would actually do it ⁓ before bed at night. So you know your brain at night before you go to sleep. If you think positive things, ⁓ say mantras, like you will like your subconscious will go to work. In the night. So before bed, I would say, share, show me what I'm supposed to share tomorrow and make it so cle clear and obvious that it will be no question for me. And it worked. And sometimes I would wake up with it or I wouldn't, but I wouldn't stress because I knew that the message would come through and it did. And it and it did every single day. I want to share something else that I do. I was wasn't planning this, but ⁓ if you want to believe, I choose to believe that showers, water are is portals of the chance to cleanse and call things in with the water with intention. And so most most of the time, unless I forget, I I take at least two showers a day. But I will say, ⁓ universe, wash away any limiting beliefs, fears, doubts that I have, wash away any energy that I'm carrying that's not mine and do that with intention. And when I do this, I can like feel my body like fill with energy, right? And then I will say something like, and shower down upon me creativity, abundance, gratitude, love, opportunities, people to help, ⁓ whatever I'm wanting to call in, and I visualize like That being showered down upon me. It's really powerful. Some people bless their water or with intention. Like, ⁓ I haven't done that as much, but I I believe in this stuff. So see what lands for you, resonates for you to try. It's like, what do you have to lose? You're gonna shower anyway. Might as well make it a magical portal of manifestation for you. So yeah, so just I'm inviting you into asking what wants to emerge through you. That will be through your soul, and that is your authenticity and trusting it when it comes in, even if it doesn't make sense. So maybe trying this week, like for the next seven days, where can I let myself be seen today? Doesn't have to be huge, it can be something small. Maybe it's expressing a preference or saying no or asking for what you need or sharing your excitement some with someone, telling the truth, taking up space, sharing a dream, letting someone see that you're proud of yourself. And then notice what happens in my body when I do this. You will feel expansion, right? You might feel some discomfort too, but just notice what happens in your body when you are letting yourself be seen in ways that you don't normally. And I want to say one more thing about authenticity. Authenticity doesn't mean you tell everyone everything about yourself. And it doesn't mean that you never compromise. It doesn't mean you say whatever you're thinking. It doesn't mean you have no boundaries. It's the opposite. Authenticity means you're connected enough to yourself to know what's true for you, and then courageous enough to honor it. So knowing for yourself, how much do I want to share? So there's a difference with this, right? ⁓ just because you're being authentic, fully expressed self doesn't mean that we're, you know. rude or unkind in a way or whatever. ⁓ but it's just trusting yourself that you are gonna know how to show up. So I wanna talk about ⁓ authenticity with our kids. I think this is really important. And I think one of the greatest gifts we can give our kids is letting them see that we're human. Not by oversharing everything or telling them everything, but by letting them see that we have made mistakes and continue to do things that we would that we learn from that we would do differently. That we have emotions, that we go through hard things, that we can evolve and change and grow, that we learn from things. And I actually don't call things mistakes. I call them lessons. And teach self-forgiveness for the times where you did show up in a way that might have harmed someone else or that you were you, you know, would do differently now. So I want my kids to know that I made choices that sometimes I did when I was in survival mode, that I wouldn't choose again. But that but how do I treat myself for that? And how did I learn from that? And what did I do to heal from that? You can make a choice you wouldn't make again and still be worthy of love. That's authenticity too. So being able to tell the truth about who you were, who you are, and who you're becoming. So If our kids don't if our kids think we've never made mistakes, what happens or or we have don't I'm using the word mistakes and I don't like it, but let's use the example of like drinking or having sex early or whatever. If we act like we've never done stuff like this to our kids, do you think that what does that tell them? That they need to be perfect, that they can't come to you because you never did anything wrong, right? It doesn't create safety for them. So authenticity can cost you something. There's been moments in my life where choosing myself meant that other people ⁓ didn't benefit anymore from me abandoning myself. It's disappointing people sometimes. It meant me letting go of identities that no longer fit for me. It meant making choices that other people didn't understand. So for a long time I thought being a good person meant keeping everyone comfortable, but I don't live that way anymore. Cause every time I abandon myself to make someone else comfortable, I'm teaching myself that their comfort matters more than my truth. And that is not freedom. So sometimes when you're fully yourself, you lose people. But the good news is is the people that are meant for you, that are aligned with you, you don't lose those people. So coming home to yourself, I t I say this a lot. It's never too late to come back home to yourself. Not becoming someone new, coming back to that little girl who didn't edit herself, or that little boy who didn't, who wore whatever they wanted and did whatever they wanted and could dance around freely, who says what they mean, who is allows themselves to feel all their feelings deeply and not judge it. The wonder, the wonder comes back when you come back home to yourself. And so this is where inner child work comes into play with authenticity. ⁓ these parts will come online when you're becoming more authentic, especially the ones that needed to protect you and hide and where they learned how to hide. And so it's a beautiful opportunity to create a new story, to create safety for these parts so that they can be free, so they can have new roles. They don't have to protect you anymore. But they they need to feel safe. You become more authentic by practicing not abandoning yourself in the moments when it would be easier to. So it's not how do I become more authentic? The question is, where am I abandoning myself? And what would it look like to come back? And it's a journey. Not becoming someone new, not fixing yourself, not finally arriving at some perfect version of you, just coming home. Coming back again and again and again. And when you stop abandoning yourself, you truly will experience authenticity. And when you are fully authentic, that is when you are free. And that is what I've experienced recently as a 46-year-old. I finally feel like I figured figured it out, guys. And It's a really beautiful feeling to have. I'm actually kind of in awe because of the block that I've had for so long that it's finally like removed. I'm like, wow, this really worked. And of course I think that the work works, but this has been a a part of me that I've been trying to unblock for a long time. And it's been in such a beautiful process of ⁓ discomfort and fear and self-judgment. All these things have come in. It's been, it's been very, very healing. If this episode spoke to you, I want to invite you to join me in the shift membership. It's where we go deep on this work, breaking the patterns that keep you abandoning yourself. And doing the work to come back home to yourself, learning to love yourself and every part of you, including the parts that you've learned to hide. It's so freeing when you really decide to do this work and you're in a safe, supportive community. It's alongside other women who are incredible who are doing this work too. And in my experience, being seen in a group like this and getting coaching along the way is one of the most powerful ways to grow and to feel supported. And you don't have to do it alone. We do breath work, we do somatic experiencing tools, meditations, and we meet twice a month for ninety minutes. And it's just magic and powerful. So if you want information on that, ⁓ you can go to the show notes or shiftwithbeth.com or come send me a DM on Instagram or TikTok. I would love to connect with you and I would love to hear how the podcast is for you and and what's helping you. I don't take it lightly that you hit play today. And if you're subscribed to the podcast, thank you so much. ⁓ it's been a fun, fun journey with with all of you and I appreciate you being here and I'll see everyone in the next episode.