Come Out of Hiding to Live as Your God-Given, Essential Self
By Dr. Merry C. Lin, PhD, Clinical Psychologist
The clarion call to be our authentic self isn’t inherently wrong. The method is the problem. While popular culture will tell us to “live your truth” and “trust your gut,” neither strategy brings us into contact with our essential, God-given identity.
But what does it mean to be our essential self?
In the Genesis narrative of God creating and then breathing life into humans, the biblical writer uses the Hebrew term nép̄eš, to mean life, soul, or self. It is one of those ancient Hebrew terms that doesn’t translate directly to English in a way that captures the fullness of the writer’s meaning.
But in Israelite thinking, a person doesn’t have a soul, they are a soul. It seems to indicate a human’s personal identity. Furthermore, in Genesis 1:26a, when God said, “Let us make humankind in our image…”, the Hebrew word for “image” refers to something that contains the essence of something else, in this case the essence of God.
Coming Back to Our Essential Self
That means we are a soul, with an essential, personal identity, rooted in some aspect of how we reflect the essence of God. The transformation journey is about coming back to our original design, to the way God created us, to our most essential self, to the way we were meant to be and to live.
But—this is really key—transformation isn’t just about becoming our essential self. It’s about unbecoming all the things we believed we had to be to be loved. Growth and healing aren’t about finding more things to do, strive for, or achieve to earn our worth or our lovability. If we turn growth into a “to do” list, we will continue to live out of our protective shadow self, which is merely a broken reflection of who we truly are.
When we look to the external—to what we do, what we accomplish, the roles we play—to gain our sense of identity, we are living as our shadow self. We waste so much time and energy trying to figure out our “purpose,” looking in all the wrong places—our roles, our education, credentials, our reputation, what others think about us—none of which are bad in and of themselves. But they become our idol, rooted in our shadow self, rather than an output of the fruit that comes out of a life that is lived from its true north—our essential self as created by God.
The good news is that our essential self—that beautiful, priceless, God-breathed part of us—can never be completely lost or destroyed or stolen. They may be hidden behind our protective strategies or what we have learned to believe about ourselves to survive. But who we really are is always still there. We wait to be seen and invited out, for our pain to be healed, and for spaces where our self-protectiveness can be laid down.
Uncovering our essential self requires self-compassion for our stories of pain and tenderness to our hurting, scared, hiding selves. It takes insight to see that fear, reactivity, and anger are our mind and heart’s way of telling us what we’ve been through. It takes courage to face our fears and soothe ourselves in the face of our strong reactions, knowing that we are, after all, just being human. It takes perseverance to face the truth of how we fumble for our unhealthy and destructive coping mechanisms all the time. And it takes transparency to be vulnerable and to reach out for connection—the very thing we need to heal and transform and invite our essential self out of hiding.
Our Shadow Self
Because of the brokenness of this world, and the hurt and shame we experience as we try to navigate our way, we lose access to our true self, and we hide. Our tendency to hide comes from a place of fear and self-protection. When we’re unaware of this, we can live out of a performative place, fraught with the constant need to prove ourselves, gain the approval of others, or protect ourselves to maintain our fragile sense of worth. We then live out of our shadow self, which is a mere reflection of our true self and limits our full potential.
When we recognize that fear, reactivity, shame, and anger are our soul’s way of telling us what we’ve been through, this allows us to have self-compassion for our stories, and our human frailties. This then allows us open up to being loved—by God, ourselves and others—which will allow healing to occur and our essential self to begin to emerge. And in the safety of that grace, this allows us to face tough truths about our shadow self, so that we can be transformed.
Like our shadow, our shadow self looks pretty much like us, at least on the outside. But it’s just a bit off, because it’s our idealized self that we try to project, to ensure that people see us in a positive light, so that we get our ego needs met. It’s based on early childhood experiences that impact our sense of identity and worth. Our shadow self is then based on behaviours and attitudes rooted in our defense mechanisms and coping strategies we develop to protect ourselves, to help us survive, to get our needs met. They come into being to protect us from hurt, rejection, shame and fear.
But it’s so important to remember that our shadow self is part of our humanity. It’s not to be “kicked to the curb.” That’s why the term “shadow self” is preferable to “false self,” which has a negative connotation, making us want to get rid of it, because who wants fake?
When your shadow self shows up, recognize that your shame, fears, insecurities, or unmet needs have been triggered. And choose to pay attention to what has been stirred up—what unresolved pain, what broken bits of yourself are coming up to the surface?
Our shadow self can do such a great job of mimicking our essential self—and protecting us from our fears, our insecurities, and our unmet needs—that most of us let our shadow self take over, to the point where we don’t even recognize that they exist. Our shadow self uses our favoured coping strategies to protect us and ensure that we achieve our goals, gain love and acceptance, maintain control over our lives, and stay safe.
And what makes our shadow self so difficult to see is that these strategies work.
Until they don’t.
Ultimately, our shadow self prevents us from growing and developing the self-awareness we need to mature. They stop us from facing our fears and insecurities, and they prevent us from acknowledging our unmet needs, let alone pursuing healthy ways to get those needs met. And we literally become a shadow of ourselves.
It prevents us from seeing our blind spots, from stopping the behaviours that actually sabotage ourselves, and it stops us from being truly honest with ourselves and with others about all the vulnerable parts of us.
The Journey to Becoming Our Truest Self
The great news is that God created us for transformation! Our minds are literally wired to grow and learn. Our brains are one of the most complex things in the universe—we literally have more neural connections than there are stars in the universe! And like the universe that’s constantly growing and changing, God made us to be adaptive and agile, to be able to think about thinking, to analyze our own actions and feelings and to seek purpose and meaning.
We can re-wire our neural pathways based on changes we make in our thinking, our behaviour and our attitudes. So, transformation starts with insight – learning about why we do what we do; but then it must move to changes in our thinking and behaving and how we respond so that we gain wisdom. But even that is not enough as we need to practice the new thinking and responding over and over again so that we re-wire our brains and pursue transformation.
Transformation is the fruit of daily choices to live wisely, to respond intentionally in a better way. And in spite of our fear of vulnerability, the sting of rejection, the shame of being exposed, the lies that tell us we’re not enough—we must choose to show up anyway as our essential self. Because insight and wisdom are not enough for transformation, true change can only occur from the daily choices we make to choose a different, healthier response, so that over time, that new path becomes our norm. This is the process of allowing our essential self to emerge, to mature fully, and to fulfill our purposes.
(Article based on excerpt from her book, Rebecoming: Come of Out Hiding to Live as Your God-Given, Essential Self. To find out more about Dr. Merry or her book, go to: https://linktr.ee/Drmerry)
