Breaking the Habit of Being Your (s)elf

Where inner freedom comes from, where to begin, and what awaits beyond the stories that keep us small

Photo by Alice Gu on Unsplash

Many years ago, my spiritual journey took a unexpected turn when I realized I wanted to be anyone other than my self. That realization, and the raw feelings that came with it, got me busy. I started asking questions that many friends thought were too dangerous to ask.

I wanted to be happy, to live a truthful life as my Self, but I soon learned how much of my Self had been denied or locked away early in life. I wasn’t even sure what it meant to be me.

I wanted to find out and to be free. I discovered at some point—I can’t tell you exactly when—that finding answers and the inner freedom I longed for would require becoming conscious of the subconscious patterns and stories that kept me stuck, confused, and feeling lost.

How is that possible when we are literally unaware of our subconscious? The answer is simple. We already know it, actually: it begins by understanding how these patterns were created in the first place, and how the cycle of Expression > Suppression > Repression plays out in our lives so we can reverse the process.

Expression

To be human is to be in expression. We are always either expressing ourselves truthfully or we are expressing who we think we’re supposed to be or should be.

Children, when allowed to simply be themselves and naturally express their thoughts, emotions, and desires. As parents, this raw, unfiltered authenticity both delights us and embarrasses us at times, especially in grocery stores and restaurants.

This wild and free way of being is domesticated out of us over time as we learn language and culture’s rules about what is acceptable and what is not. Our free expression becomes regulated through the learned skill of suppression.

Suppression

As our unfiltered expression collides with our parents’ and community’s beliefs, we are taught to suppress what is at odds with our community’s collective agreements. In order to be accepted, we must agree to consciously hide or deny those unique aspects of ourselves that don’t fit the mold.

Suppression isn’t all bad, of course. Teaching our kids not to stab their classmates with a pencil is helpful in more ways than one.

The kind of suppression I’m talking about is, at its core, an act of self-betrayal. It carries an implicit message: being yourself fully isn’t safe or acceptable, because who you are is flawed. And so we drive parts of ourselves into the shadows.

Repression

Over the course of years, suppression mutates into repression as our once conscious choices become subconscious, mental-emotional reflexes. Our sense of self becomes a collection of embodied habits.

At the level of repression, we are no longer clearly thinking, feeling, or noticing what we do. We live and act on autopilot. In a way, we’re hypnotized by our conditioning and, as author Tara Brach says, we find ourselves lost in the “trance of unworthiness” that sabotages us from within.

In a true sense, we know not what we do. It’s true of everyone else, too. We’re innocent by reason of insanity, or at least ignorance. That is, until we become aware of the hidden things that drive us and start taking responsibility for ourselves.

Reversing the Process

But back to this idea of how to recognize and disentangle yourself from subconscious, repressed patterns…

If freedom from our habitual self comes through bringing the unconsciously repressed aspects of our lives into the light, how does this happen if we’re unconscious of what we’ve repressed?

The answer is so simple it’s easy to miss: notice when you get triggered. Watch for those moments when life pisses you off. Every time you are triggered it is nothing more than your conditioning colliding with reality.

Life is showing you where you’re not free.

You don’t have to seek it out. If you’re determined to free yourself from your conditioned limitations, life will shine the light on all of your shadowy bits. All you need to do is be willing to pay attention and recognize them when they come.

From this perspective, Life itself becomes an exercise in “doing the Work” and every person, circumstance, and experience becomes a mirror reflecting back to you where you’re not free.

Life becomes your teacher, as does everyone in your life—especially those who trigger you most. In fact, they are your greatest teachers, who will reveal the stories within yourself (not “out there”) that you use to keep yourself small.

Then, as you make the subconscious conscious, you can actually choose to free yourself of the stories you inherited. Or not. No one will make you give anything up. You’re free to be, and you are totally responsible for yourself at that point. Victimhood disappears and the sovereign choice you’ve always had to be your Self comes into greater focus.

At its core, this is what all spirituality, psychology, and healing modalities are pointing to: the peeling away of all the layers that are not you in order to reveal your True Self, your Essential Nature, which has simply been hidden in the shadows all along.

From where I sit, it is as simple as that, really—the reclamation of our Self through the reversal of the process that has imprisoned us each in some way.

To me, that is the only thing worth doing in life. In fact, I think it is all we’re doing no matter what our pursuits look like on the surface. We are all trying to answer the questions: Who am I, and why am I here?

May life illuminate all your shadows and reveal to you that the prisons you inhabit are not locked. They’ve only just appeared that way. The answer to both of those questions are hidden in plain sight. We just need to see clearly.