To Overcome Trauma is to Express Ones Authentic Personality

When answering the question, who am I, or who are you, there's a lot of sort of absolutist, almost spiritual talk about the I am, or I am awareness, or I am presence. And I actually think that's not always that helpful, because I think there's another thing that's very important to be aware of, and it is our authentic personality, the essence of who you really are, your uniqueness, and that's what I want to focus on in today's video. Your authentic personality is, okay, maybe it's not resting awareness, or presence, or being, all these different words, but your authentic personality is something you're born with. It's almost like your eye color, or your height, or you know, any other physical thing, in that it's just sort of like a thing that you're born with, and it's not really that changeable. So what I'm kind of saying here is, who you are is pretty unchangeable. You can't really change yourself, you can't really change the essence of who it is that you are. And some people take issue with that, you know, they think, well, you know, I like the idea that I can change who I am, I can be whoever I want to be. But you see, I think the issue with that is only because secretly we have this sort of a judgment about our authentic inherent personality. We already sort of see it as not really that good, or lacking in some way, and therefore we are motivated to want to change it. Essentially, really what we're trying to do is fix the personality that we were born with. When you really start to live authentically from your personality, be centered in your own personality, there is complete appreciation for your personality. There is no real desire to fix it. Now, there's a desire to express it more. There's a desire to put it in an environment in which it can feel safe to go and express itself. It can certainly grow, it can certainly fulfill a complete potential of itself in the world, but it's not changing. Its essence was there from the very beginning, and all that happened in the right environment, in the right conditions, is that it just expressed itself. It's like a tree, you know, in your garden or something. It's the little seed that it grows from. All the information, all the potential is there from the beginning. It's already a perfect tree. Just give it the right conditions and what it needs, and it potentiates, it becomes a perfect, you know, giant tree. So this is our personality, and of course, the problem is in childhood with trauma, usually complex trauma, we get into all this addiction to praise, and we get the people-pleasing, and we develop all these covert contracts about how I should behave. Covert contracts are really all about unwritten rules that I kind of sign up to that are about being loved. People-pleasing is a huge one, and the authentic personality gets sort of forced out, and this fake sense of self starts to develop, and all sorts of false concepts about ourselves start to be housed, and ignored, and denied, and before you know it, the personality is completely obscured to the point where you have no sense of who you are. Sometimes the only sense of who we are is found in sort of abstract spiritual absolute concepts like I am awareness, or I am, or I am being, which I think is true, but healing for me is much more about okay, we get to that point maybe, but let's first get back in touch with the personality. It's all about self-expression. It's all about healthy boundaries. That's the stuff like we can use like self-development or even some forms of spirituality to bypass that work. Forget like well there isn't actually person here, you know. There is an actual personality that needs to express itself. So healthy boundaries, looking at some of those covert contracts that we signed up to when we were younger that we're still bound to, and we're still acting from, don't be so selfish, you know. Think of other people. Everyone should be happy, and unless that happens I feel very, very uncomfortable because I'm signed up to that covert contract. But this is what we mean by making the unconscious conscious. We start to become more and more aware of those rules, and we start to very, very carefully break those rules. And we realize that, huh, it's safe to break those rules. Nothing bad happened when I broke that rule. I'm still loved. I'm still worthy of love even though I put myself first maybe in that situation. What your personality is, is another question. What do I mean really by personality? I mean your uniqueness. I mean the flavor of what it is that makes you, you. Sometimes people will do personality tests like the big five or Enneagrams or Myers-Briggs, all these things. They're useful. They can be a part of it. Certainly you could be more introverted or extroverted or conscientious or neurotic and all these things, and that's useful. I also think it's important to add in what it is what your emotional needs are because that tells me, I think, a lot more about who you are as a person or as a personality. What is it that you're attracted to? What is it that you desire most? What is your value system drawn to? Your values, that's another part of it. Other things too though, it's like what are your energy levels? You know, some people have like just insane amounts of energy. Other people have very low energy. It's not good or bad, it's just it's part of what makes them that individual unique person. So there are various things that tie it up but put all that stuff together and you get this unique code or this combination of a personality that can now go and express itself. It was born to be that personality in the world and show up as that personality in the world. And that's what the world needs. The world does not need more personas trying to people please and impress people. It needs or it doesn't need anyone else with low self-esteem and unworthiness issues. It needs people who are secure enough, supported enough and detached from approval enough where we are just expressing our personalities. Where we are literally who we were born to be. And that is a really really powerful world. It's a really interesting world. It's a helpful world. It's a world where people are are getting what they need from each other. People become so much more useful in the world when they are themselves. So guys I hope that's a useful video. You do have a personality and nobody else in the world has the exact same personality as you. Of course nobody else has the lived experience that you've had. So you are completely unique. And the goal of really all healing in my view is to get to the point where you are living in alignment or centered as that personality and expressing that personality in your interpersonal relationships and in the world in general. So I also mentioned about the covert contracts and things and that's our work in terms of how that actually happens. But just food for thought I think and if anything I've said here sounds useful you can find out more on my website and find out about the work that I do. I work one-on-one with people and just send me a message or you can book a one-to-one session with me directly on my website. Thanks guys for being with me today and I will see you again soon in the next video. Bye for now.