Authenticity (psychology): Underrated, Overrated?

[Joshe]

Prediction is control/safety.

Safety → control → prediction → legibility → curiosity

😂

[Natasha Tori Maru]

5 minutes ago, Joshe said:

Prediction is control/safety.

Safety → control → prediction → legibility → curiosity

😂

The survival brain! Ambiguity is not appreciated from the lymbric brains perspective.

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I'm very interested in this, but it's also very complex. 

Yes. Huge topic. 

[Rafael Thundercat]

U@Natasha Tori Maru

Drop this here, only because I like to make connections

 

Fear of abandonment.

Doesn't just show up in our relationships.

It shows up in our bodies and it can become dis-ease.

 this is how I see fear of abandonment quietly shaping our health.

In early life, being abandoned by our caregivers actually threatens our survival.

Therefore, love equates to safety.

So we do what we need to, to preserve love. We repress the parts of ourselves we perceive as unlovable. However, this is often a misunderstanding. Sometimes a caregiver withdraws for reasons that have nothing to do with us — but a child's experience is not rational. It's direct.

We sacrifice authenticity to preserve love. The nervous system never forgets this.

We become adults that are terrified to be authentic because deep in the roots of our experience is the misunderstanding that authenticity may lead to abandonment.

And while the mind knows that abandonment does not threaten our survival, the inner child does not.

The inner child lives on in the spiritual quadrant of health — where past, present and future are all happening now.

And when we feel as if love may be taken away, the nervous system sounds the alarm. The endocrine system translates that inner child's memory into chemistry — and our fear of abandonment enters the physical quadrant of our health.

Unlike the spiritual quadrant, which is timeless, the physical quadrant is present.

So that inner child's confusion about what she needs to do to stay safe shows up in the body.

The body responds to the wound years — sometimes decades — after the original injury.

The immune system, the adrenals, the gut and the skin do what they need to do to protect that inner child.

And this is why fear of abandonment often presents as autoimmunity, allergies, adrenal fatigue, food sensitivities, weight retention, disordered eating, and skin issues.

This is how the wounds of the past shape the present.

This is how the wound of the root chakra quietly shapes your health.

 

[eos_nyxia]

Interesting questions!

On 2026-09-02 at 8:00 PM, Natasha Tori Maru said:

Authenticity. I find it ill-defined. The word is tossed about flippantly. EVERYWHERE. It is spoken about on these forums frequently.

For what it is worth, I tend to look at these type of ideas within the context of the history of ideas first. I was raised with the intimate exposure to two philosophical traditions: Chinese and Continental (aka. "Western") philosophy.

The idea of the moral necessity/ imperative to "express yourself" wholly and freely comes from the Romantic tradition, which itself was a response to the Enlightenment. The latter shifted the locus of control from God and destiny to the individual (and by extension the concept of individual responsibility) and the revitalization of "Reason" as a primary virtue.

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Authenticity IS NOT just expressing the contents of your mind. "I say what I feel", "I refuse to change for anyone", "I do what feels natural", "I am brutally honest" or "I don't care what anyone thinks, this is who I am" - all of these are not it in my definition.

Individualism. I do this, I am that. I, I, I, etc. 

In the Daoist tradition, it is also about returning to what is true and pure (in the way that an uncultivated being is, like a very young child or an animal) but you don't need to turn that energy outward at all. You really often don't need to act. You don't need to push for people to see or hear you, in fact, you ought not to push and force at all, because that is in direct resistance to the Way (the natural flow of nature, life, the universe, etc). 

Daoism is also about inner transmutation and self refining to "perfection", but not through the psychoemotionally constipated notions of "effort" Westerns tend to have. 

Actually, now that I think about it, this type of beingness tends to be coded is very "feminine" here. In the Chinese tradition, this is both the yin and the yang, but whole and in balance.

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Philosophy wise I don't think to be authentic we require a true fixed self. Values change. We change. What is authentic will change. Existentially I see it creeping toward "am I taking ownership of the fact I am choosing?"

I was going to say that I don't believe this either, but it depends what you think the self is made up of. Do you have anything in you that aligns with the belief in a "soul", or some essential aspect that survives death?

To me, what people generally call a "personality" is mostly a social costume. If they have no sense of anything else beyond that, well, that is why they are trapped within it and must suffer with it, because it always eventually becomes a burden in some way if you can't shed it.

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My closest definition: Authenticity is the constant, background practice of shrinking the space between what I experience and what I understand myself to currently value. What I claim to be, and how I actually behave... while remaining willing to amend my understanding of me.

Why is there a gap there at all? Do you think it has to be there?  (I do experience this same gap myself too, at times.)

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What is Authenticity (in the romantic sense, and interpersonally)? Do you think it is overrated/underrated? Only appropriate at certain times or phases of connection?

Would love everyone's thoughts around this loaded topic as it applies to dating, courtship, romance, relationships, attraction etc.

Philosophically, I follow both in my own way, but I wholeheartedly hold the perspective that the Daoist way is "more true". I go through phases of "expressing myself" in the way you described above mainly to relieve pent up energy, but there ideally would not be an "inner" and "outer" self at all due to the congruence principle you mentioned and also generally having all of your aspects integrated rather than segregated in some fashion from each other. Ideally, you would have just enough "structure" (or "mind") to move through this world smoothly and with purpose, and no extra deadweight at all. Wherever I am at now inevitably effects all of my relationships, but often not in a positive way.

Edited 1 hour ago by eos_nyxia