Authenticity: I Am Me, You Are You
The Gestalt Prayer was written by Fritz Pers, a great neuropsychiatric psychoanalyst who, along with his wife Lore Posner, tried to explain in a simple way how we as humans create our world. Together they have helped us to understand that the way we want to please others makes us our own executioners. And that valuing our own reality is the first step we must take to understand ourselves and move forward.
In reality, it is not the lies we tell ourselves that hurt us the most, but the lies we experience. At times in our lives we make the mistake of living in a false reality, which we sometimes even come to believe in.
Living in a cage we built ourselves means believing in certain values but holding ourselves to other values, pretending to be strong when we’re not, fearing but not showing it, showing interest when we’re actually not interested, and keep it up.
In reality, we all create this false reality at some point in our lives. It is very common; we do it to gain respect, money, power or prestige. This means not only that we deceive others, but also that we reject ourselves and do not believe in what we think and feel as unique individuals.
We reflect our diminished authenticity at multiple times in our lives. The way we fail is often as simple as denying that we ate the last piece of chocolate left in the cupboard or that we weren’t the first to see that tear in the curtain.
Why is self-deception so common?
This is all very strongly linked to the way our parents and society have raised us since we were little. From birth, we are taught to suppress our feelings and emotions, to avoid expressing what is real and what we really feel.
Thus, we have created an outside that is completely unlike what we are actually experiencing inside at that moment. It often happens that we do not fight for our own ideals and that our fears, ideas and beliefs do not match the reality we express.
All of this has very negative consequences for the development of our lives and ultimately forces us to put on the mask that we have been making since childhood. In general, our parents and teachers have encouraged us to reject emotions such as anger, fear, or pain, which has led us to hide these emotions.
This is also why we believe that we can become indifferent to these emotions, when in reality this is impossible. Fear, pain or anger will always exist and are an important part of our experiences in life. However, we tend to make ourselves strong and suppress the frustration and manifestation of pain on an emotional level.
Another contradiction that we internalize from a young age is whether or not it is good to lie. Older people lie, telling us they shouldn’t and to make matters worse, as we get older we become more aware of things around us and find that sometimes we just have to accept other people’s lying and even have to take part in it at times. This can be very confusing.
Keeping your confidence high and showing your true self won’t always appeal to everyone, but it allows us to build authentic, pure, open, genuine and independent relationships.
Accepting ourselves and being true to who we really are can help us avoid being afraid of what we want and who we are. We must learn to do this, even if doing so creates envy in the hearts of those who have not yet been brave enough to unite their inner with their outer appearance.
Being authentic and having a healthy dose of self-confidence can help us distance ourselves from our fake side, encouraging ourselves to always be ourselves and love ourselves the way we deserve.
