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For example, perhaps as a girl, you relieved household tensions by making people laugh, so as an adult you continue to clown your way through life—never showing your tears and keeping everyone else smiling at your own expense. Or maybe you were the “good” girl who was rewarded for working hard, and now you’re at the top of a career ladder, and you have no idea why you climbed it.
Perhaps you gained your sense of worth by caretaking an alcoholic or otherwise sick parent, and now you continue to give more than you have and wonder why you are always running on empty. Or maybe you grew up in an environment where there was nobody you could rely on, and so you developed a mask of independence that leaves you seemingly invincible but horribly alone.
It may be difficult to draw sharp distinctions between the characters you’ve played, whose boundaries may conflict and overlap. Were you Mommy’s little helper or Daddy’s princess? Were you the intellectual or the dropout? Were you the peacemaker or the truth teller (or both)? Were you a people pleaser, a party girl, a loner, or a saint? Were you Miss Perfect, a rebel, or a critic who sat on the sidelines? Or were you invisible? Write down every subpersonality you find.
Each of us will have developed a number of selves to ensure our survival. Normally, you’ll find five or six dominant ones that are still with you in adult life.
Now take every one that you’ve found and visualize her as a separate person. Greet her and thank her for the protection she has given you. Each of them has helped to keep you safe.
When you’ve worked through your list, take five deep breaths in and out and congratulate yourself. This is an important step you’ve taken. Even though these subpersonalities will emerge and sometimes still be useful, from now on, you will see them for what they are—masks that you’ve needed to wear—and you will not mistake them for yourself. Who you truly are lies beneath and beyond them, and you are now on your journey to meet her.
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As you go through your day, try to notice when you slip into one of your subpersonalities. Practicing honesty will enable you to identify them and then let them gently drop away, in the same way that a husk drops from a seed.
When I told the school careers advisor that I wanted to be a secretary at the British Broadcasting Corporation—I didn’t dare tell her that I wanted to be a reporter, because I didn’t think it would ever be possible—she laughed at me and said, “Don’t you think every girl wants to do that? Why don’t you be a bit more realistic and work at the insurance company? They’re always looking for typists.” When, years later, I found myself reporting for the BBC, I always carried a sense that I should be in the typing pool rather than on air. While the men around me had a sense of entitlement and clearly planned their career trajectories, I always felt as if I were begging to be allowed to do what I loved rather than claiming my rightful place at the table.
—JN
Other People’s Stuff
When she stopped conforming to the conventional picture of femininity, she finally began to enjoy being a woman.
—THE FEMININE MYSTIQUE, by Betty Friedan (1921–2006), feminist and author
How we are seen by others and society as a whole informs how we see ourselves. The messages we’re given as women about what is and what isn’t “okay” for us to do, feel, look like, or want, get absorbed.
Whether the message is that we need to be passive and wait to be chosen or that we should try to have it all—children and the seat in the boardroom—the complex truth of who we are gets obscured. Our sense of what is possible is limited, and we bury parts of ourselves, fearing we won’t fit into the world as we truly are.
Similarly, our perception of our physical self gets distorted by the constant messages we receive about what we should and shouldn’t wear, weigh, and eat, and how we should and shouldn’t look. No matter how hard we try, it’s difficult not to be affected. They’re all around us in what we read and hear and in the images we see on a daily basis. Whether it’s scantily clad, airbrushed models staring down at us from billboards or magazine covers, or images on social media, the message is the same: it’s not okay to be who we are.
* * *
THE PRICE OF SOCIAL MEDIA
The stress that social media is causing young women is heavily implicated in a dramatic rise in mental illness. Levels of self-harm, post-traumatic stress disorder, and chronic mental illness are all on the increase.1 According to UK government-funded research,2 one in five women ages sixteen to twenty-four have anxiety, depression, panic disorders, phobias, or obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). And the proportion of young women self-harming tripled from 2007 to 2014.
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At this stage of WE’s journey, your goal is to discover and know your true self. Becoming conscious of those messages is the first stage to escaping their toxic power.
When I was broadcasting, I felt obliged to don the “uniform” of power suits and heels that my news editors and the industry expected. I was very conscious that I was perpetuating the stereotypes I hoped my work would dispel, but I felt trapped. If I didn’t look the part, I wouldn’t get to play the part. And I desperately wanted the part. So I dressed up and pretended to be someone I was not in order to get the chance to tell the truth—one of the many acts of hypocrisy that I engaged in to become “successful.” I became part of the problem that I was hoping to solve, and each time I put on one of my work suits, I felt myself getting more and more estranged from my real self, and my levels of internal self-hatred grew.
—JN
I agreed to participate in photo shoots when I was younger that I would advise myself against in retrospect, where my desire to be liked or found attractive overrode that small voice that wanted to say, “I’m not okay with this.” Whether it was not wanting to upset the male photographer or letting my ego get caught up in the attention, I hadn’t yet found that part of my brain. Not just the part that could stand up for myself and say I will not participate in an act that feels shameful because it is exposing too much of myself for a stranger’s gaze, but also the part that might recognize that what I was participating in was a bigger issue, and that by agreeing to do the shoot, I was colluding in a far darker message about women and our objectification.
—GA
It’s easy to forget how relatively recently women—even in the developed Western Hemisphere—won basic legal rights. Until 1920 and 1928, respectively, women in the United States and the United Kingdom weren’t allowed to vote; until the 1990s, our husbands could legally rape us. For the bulk of legal history, we’ve been treated as inferior, and the legacy of centuries of inequality continues to exact its toll on our sense of who we are.
Leading female scientists, politicians, and commentators still find that if they speak publicly, their looks and clothes are dissected in ways that simply don’t happen to men, reinforcing the sense that beneath the talk of equality, we remain objects to be lusted over, dominated, and possessed, rather than equals.
To get a snapshot of the extent to which equality is still resisted, take a look at the comments that women who write about equality generate online: threats of sexual assault and even death are commonplace. As a result, whatever strides the world is making toward equality, the mirror we’re reflected back in is distorted and in turn can corrupt and limit how we perceive ourselves.
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UNDER COVER
Too often we can feel we have to disguise our real physical self to match artificial notions of femininity that have been created largely by men. Whether we’re forcing our feet into heels so high they damage our backs or suppressing what we think or feel in order not to upset our other half, we’re often left feeling worse about ourselves.
The rise of porn has compounded the problem, giving both genders warped perceptions of what is normal. Young men expect girls to look and behave like porn stars, and girls find themselves under pressure to oblige. Plastic surgeons have seen a surge in the number of women seeking labiaplasty—a painful procedure to alter the ap
pearance of the folds of skin around the vulva, which can permanently damage nerve endings—as women try to conform to damaging cosmetic norms perpetuated by the porn industry to make themselves desirable.
Of course, changing our outside appearance doesn’t get us any nearer to being loved and wanted for who we authentically are. Applying We’s Principles enables us to know our identity from the inside out rather than the outside in, and realize that who we are lies beyond what we do, how we look, and what we own.
* * *
When you are clear about who you are and who you are not, it’s a lot easier to be clearer with the outside world. If you adopt rigorous self-honesty as a way of life, the false selves and labels that have disguised your true self will gradually start to fall away.
Curiosity is our friend that teaches us how to become ourselves.
—ELIZABETH GILBERT, author of Eat Pray Love and other books
As children, we’re all emotionally super-porous. In addition to the messages we receive from our families, peers, and society at large, we also absorb our caregivers’ fears, frustrations, and beliefs, and mistake them for our own. We start receiving most of them before we’re old enough to be able to scrutinize and reject those that don’t serve us or belong to us. This will especially be the case if you come from a family in which there are secrets or traumatic events. You may not know the facts, but you’ll still absorb the feelings. It’s possible to carry emotions such as shame, fear, and sadness for decades, even though they have nothing to do with you.
I’ve always lived with a fear of catastrophe and could never define what that “terrible” thing I feared might be. As a girl, I’d squirrel away my pocket money so that I’d be ready for whatever it was that was going to happen to us. It was only years later, when I discovered my father’s secret past, that my behavior made sense, and my fear started to evaporate.
When my father was a child, he’d fled from the Nazis during the Second World War. Later, wanting to protect his own family from anti-Semitism, he never told us that he was Jewish. But it turned out that he inadvertently left me a different kind of legacy: a sense of impending catastrophe and a fear of saying who I really was.
—JN
* * *
GENES WITH MEMORIES
The new and fast-evolving field of epigenetics research suggests that trauma can be inherited genetically. In one study, male mice that were taught to fear a smell passed on that fear to their babies—which in turn would bequeath the same sensitivity to their offspring.3
Another study found that baby rats who received insufficient nurturing from their mothers matured to become more prone to disease and anxiety than their well-groomed counterparts, and then passed on that predisposition to their descendants.4
* * *
We can live our whole lives with a particular sensitivity, fear, or trait that doesn’t belong to us—that’s been internalized from the outside world. Now we can start challenging the assumptions we’ve made about ourselves and ask, “Is this mine? Do I own this? Is it part of me? Is it serving me, or can I let it go?”
* * *
Exercise 2: Getting Beneath the Surface
* * *
This exercise is to help you discard the ideas about yourself that no longer serve you.
Think about the labels you’d use to describe yourself. They might be about your job, how you look, your race, your background, or your sexual preference.
Now think about the messages about yourself that you were given growing up. It doesn’t matter whether they were good or bad—we internalize them when we’re young and impressionable, and as we get older, they can be hard to shake.
As a child, were you told you were lazy, smart, or a show-off? Were you criticized or praised for how you looked—told you were too fat, too skinny, too tall, too short? Or maybe you were ignored and grew up with the belief that you were worth nothing at all.
Write a list of the ten most prominent messages about yourself that come to your mind—from your past and your present.
Look at each label on your list. Really ponder it. Is it true? Does it really represent who you are inside?
Now make sure that you are comfortable and have time to sit for a few moments. Close your eyes. Breathe in and out five times, letting your outbreath last for five counts and your inbreath for four. Imagine that you are in a boat floating far out at sea and that you take the labels you have written and scatter them onto the surface of the ocean. Watch the words floating there, bobbing up and down on the waves. Now imagine diving into the water so you’re beneath them. As you look back up at them, you see that the paper is wet and the writing is starting to smudge so you can no longer read the words.
Dive deeper and look back up again. The paper is dissolving into the ocean, and now it is gone. As you swim deeper, you find yourself resting on the seabed. It is calm and peaceful and still down there. No turbulence, no waves. Any notion of who you are or are not is just a distant memory left on the surface. Inhale and exhale. You are free. Deep down, beneath the words, beneath the ideas and judgements of yourself and others, you are perfect and whole just as you are. Allow yourself to really embrace what that feels like. To be truly free. To be truly yourself.
When you are ready, slowly float up to the surface and open your eyes.
Take your list and crumple it up. If you’d like, you can throw it in the trash or even burn it and scatter the ashes. You don’t need those labels any more. Your true self—the part of you that dived into the water—exists beyond and beneath all words. When you reside in her, you will feel utterly safe and loved.
* * *
This is a great exercise for when you’re feeling off balance or upset. It’s not necessary to repeat all of it; just imagine yourself diving deep down into your own internal ocean and resting there for a while until you feel restored. You can even add this calming imagery to your daily meditation practice.
Finding Ourselves
To be oneself, simply oneself, is so amazing and utterly unique an experience that it’s hard to convince oneself so singular a thing happens to everybody.
—SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR (1908–1986), French author
Now that you have started to shed who and what you are not, the really exciting work of discovering who you really are can begin in earnest.
It’s time to get curious—about yourself. Forget all those messages you may have been given as a girl about not being nosy or not asking too many questions. Give yourself permission to question everything and assume nothing. Then be ready to be amazed.
In my working life, I was dedicated to uncovering the truth in the world around me—first as a barrister and then as an investigative journalist—but it was a whole new journey when I was told to start asking myself the questions that I’d normally throw at others. I realized there were all sorts of truths in my own life I didn’t want to get too honest about for fear of unravelling. Eventually I did, and that’s when I discovered a new level of emotional freedom.
—JN
This is not a straightforward, linear process. You’ll find false leads and dead ends. You’ll have surprises and tough choices.
Think of yourself as an archaeologist in your own life. Let curiosity be the tool you dig with. Ask yourself questions as you would someone you were studying. When was the last time you were really happy in your life? Why was that? What music did you love in your teens, and do you ever allow yourself to listen to it now? What is your favorite food? What do you hate about your life and what do you love? Write down your answers in your journal.
Sometimes we simply don’t know. We’ve dulled our longings and our wants out of necessity. They’ve become what often feels like a painful luxury. But the truth is that they are the nerve endings we need to bring back to life. So listen for the stirrings of what you love and what you want, and then expose and explore them.
There are no rules, and there’s nothing that says what you discover has to be coherent or logical. Whoever said we had
to make sense? We are all complex and multifaceted.
Born in the United States, I lived in London from the age of two. I naturally spoke with a British accent and felt British but was teased in school for being a “Yank.” I wanted to fit in but was confused about where my loyalties lay because my parents were American and I loved the States—where the sun always seemed to shine, and I was plied with candy. When I was eleven, we moved to Michigan. I was so excited at the prospect of living in the land of milkshakes and hamburgers. But the reality was, I was still the kid with the “funny” accent. I eventually modulated my speech to fit in, but I still felt like the outsider, and I deeply missed my other home.
Today I still feel torn: the UK has my heart and soul, but the US is in my genes. I’ve lived in London again now for fifteen years, and it is second nature to go back and forth with the accent depending on where I am and to whom I’m speaking. This has confused people along the way, and the question of falseness has meant that I’ve had to look at it closely. It would be easy for me to attach a “bad” label to my intentions or to judge myself as being disingenuous, but I’ve come to accept that adapting to my mixed cultural identity has been vital to my well-being, and despite the fact that it’s confusing and awkward sometimes, I have come to own the reality that they are both the authentic me.