Your Ideal Self Is Your Unadapted Self: 9 Key Attributes

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Why We Develop an “Adapted” Self (and It’s Not Really a Choice)

When we’re fresh out of the womb, we’re innocent. Not yet subject to powerful outside influences that inhibit the expression of our natural preferences, needs, and desires, we assert them all. (Babylike, of course: through cooing, squealing, whimpering, crying, or displays of agitation.)

Soon enough, however, we learn that many of our behaviors upset our caretakers. And when we begin to experience their warmth or acceptance as conditional—that certain actions revealing our inborn nature trigger negative reactions in them—at the most primal level we realize that we‘d better tamp down or eradicate those unwanted parts of ourselves.

Sure, we all start out open-hearted, trusting, and spontaneous; sensitive, creative, and adventurous; playful, sensuous, free-spirited, and loving. In short, ready to affirm who we are. That’s our genuine or authentic self—and it’s our birthright. As psychologists Brian Goldman and Michael Kernis concisely portray authenticity, it’s “the unimpeded operation of one’s true or core self in one’s daily enterprise.”

Additionally, as opposed to strict religious dogma that postulates the need for caretakers to instill a conscience in their children (because at birth they lack one), consider Dacher Keltner (Univ. of California, Berkeley) and his pioneering study Born to Be Good (2009). In this groundbreaking work, the author takes up such pro-social states as gratitude, love, compassion, awe, and play, which much research has shown to be innate.

Nonetheless, when our parents demonstrate that they can’t respond positively to our natural ways of being (as we so urgently need them to), we hasten to make adjustments. We teach ourselves to adapt in ways that mitigate intense fears of disapproval, rejection, isolation, or abandonment. For what could be scarier to a vulnerable child—and, as children, we're all acutely vulnerable—than to feel anxious or insecure about their attachment to the very people on whom they depend for survival?

So when we sense that our parents’ acceptance of us may not be guaranteed, that it may be based on how we behave, we feel compelled to search for ways to fortify this crucial bond. Instinctively, we grasp how critical it is to do everything in our power to ensure their devotion to us. Consequently, if anything “native” to us seems regularly to meet with parental disapproval (or worse, disgust or rage), we feel obliged to do our best to root it out—independent of whether that entails relinquishing something inherent in us.

If, for instance, we’re by nature effervescent and it becomes obvious that this lack of restraint disturbs our highly subdued parents, we’ll generally strive to quell this disfavored trait. We really have very little choice because avoiding anything that threatens the support we must rely on has to be given higher priority than expressing our natural inclinations. Otherwise, it will feel as though we’re putting our mortal welfare at stake. And that’s hardly a risk we can afford to take.

To sum up, each time our family precipitated in us feelings, or fears, of neglect, disdain, shame, or abandonment, we feel compelled to alter or eradicate whatever behavior appeared linked to such perceived rejection.

The High Costs of the Adapted Self

Regardless of how aware we were of it, unconditional acceptance from our caretakers is what we most yearned for. But because of our parents’ unresolved issues (most likely stemming from their childhood), very few of us received that validation. We were therefore left with highly irrational, yet deep-seated (and generally unconscious), insecurities about whether we were good enough, smart enough, or attractive enough to be loved simply for who we were.

However far beneath the surface, how many of us don’t still harbor certain ancient doubts about ourselves? True, in becoming adults and in different ways exhibiting our basic competence and worth, we typically succeed in recognizing our value to others and becoming more self-accepting. Yet all these “cures” are conditional. So in our repeated efforts to assure ourselves that we are good enough, the great majority of us become performance-oriented. Inevitably, in the continuing endeavor to get from others the confirmation we never unequivocally received from our parents, our true nature gets sabotaged, stifled, or snuffed out. And without considerable self-reflection and inner “repair work,” we’re more or less doomed to repeat the same adaptive patterns that seemed required of us as children. And that keeps us alienated from our genuine unadapted self—those core parts of our being that earlier we felt required to renounce.

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As an addendum, it should be noted that it may not have been our parents who, however passively or inadvertently, compelled us to compromise our true nature. Instead, it could have been our peers, teachers, neighborhood, our family’s socio-economic status, the culture we grew up in, or even the religion we were indoctrinated with (which, if fundamentalist, may have inflicted us with the shame of original sin).

And so it’s hardly surprising that the purity, or “wholeness,” of our self-image may have been degraded by any number of outside forces. If, deep down, we can’t quite shake the notion that there’s something wrong with us—or that something essential is missing inside us—this self-doubt originated from all the externally discrediting conditions we were subject to. And the net result of these uncontrollable circumstances is that we may be plagued by issues relating to:

• not fitting in;
• not feeling comfortable trusting others;
• being overly concerned with how the outside world views us;
• feeling too vulnerable to allow ourselves to engage in a truly intimate relationship (the main prerequisite for which is “coming from” a place of inner security);
• endlessly striving to validate ourselves or prove our value;
• being a lot more competitive than cooperative;
• leading a self-oppressive, burdensome life that routinely wears us down and stresses us out; and lastly,
• Wondering why feelings of happiness and contentment elude us.

Richard Schwartz, the founder of Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS), has written one of the most profound and indispensable books on this subject. It’s entitled You Are the One You’ve Been Waiting For (2008) and it focuses on how we lose our authentic, non-reactive self (particularly in the context of intimate relationships), as well as on the dynamic process by which we can recover that inborn joy and vitality. In fact, my efforts as a therapist to better assimilate this author’s powerful and truly revolutionary approach to psychological healing is what inspired me to write this article in the first place.

In Schwartz’ own words, “virtually all of us carry inner vaults full of pain, shame, and emptiness.”

I wish there were the space here to adequately elaborate on Schwartz’s intricate but elegant methodology for retrieving our core self—which, as part of our “normal” development, we more or less determined had to be forfeited. But that would take a volume in itself, and I still couldn’t capture its essence anywhere as well as Schwartz does. So let me strongly recommend the book cited above, as well as Schwartz’s excellent Introduction to the Internal Family Systems Model (2001). You might also want to take a look at two earlier posts I’ve published on IFS: namely, “Covering Up Negative Emotions Doesn’t Work. So What Does?” and “How and Why You Compromise Your Integrity.”

Undertaking the intensely personal work to regain your authentic self is no easy task. For in the course of all our lives, we’ve cultivated numerous defenses to protect us from re-experiencing past fears, hurts, and humiliations. And it’s simply not possible to just leapfrog over them (as, frankly, so many self-help books unrealistically imply you should be able to).

No, it’s first imperative that you understand, respect, and sympathize with these well-entrenched defenses. It can’t be over-emphasized that what Schwartz calls our “protectors” originally safeguarded you in situations experienced as dire threats to your welfare. For at the time you lacked the inner strength to cope directly with such challenges. So as paradoxical, or counter-intuitive, as it may seem, you need to “befriend” these defensive parts of yourself before they’ll trust you enough to step back and offer you a fresh opportunity to courageously confront past vulnerabilities—and finally exert control over them.

In fact, all your defenses were engendered to protect you from what otherwise might have mentally and emotionally overwhelmed you. So it needs to be grasped that no mere act of resolve, however resolute, can enable you to vanquish, once and for all, these obdurate, survival-based defenses.

Coming From Your “Unadapted Self”—What Does It Involve?

I’ll end this post by offering a clearer sense of what recovering your authentic—or unadapted—self looks like. Here are nine characterizations, and note that these descriptors closely overlap, for they’re all complementary:

• It’s being true to yourself. You’re not compelled to turn your back on yourself, surrendering to outward pressures. You hold fast to who you are and what matters most to you. Yes, there may be times when it’s only prudent to go along with somebody or something not reflecting your values. But when you decide to make such accommodations, you don’t do so impulsively but only after careful consideration. You’re not lying to yourself or subjugating yourself to another. You’re making a choice that you believe will help you reach longer-term, inwardly derived goals. You’re fully cognizant that this is a compromise you can live with, since it doesn’t betray fundamental ideals. Even though, to safeguard your welfare, at times you’re willing to acquiesce to others, you don’t abandon your principles merely to avoid offending them.
• It’s being transparent. Absent the need to protect yourself from those around you, you freely share your thoughts and feelings, wants and needs, dreams and desires. Confident in your fundamental human decency, you can—responsibly and without shame—admit to others times that you acted stupidly, selfishly, or even reprehensibly. For in accepting all of yourself, including the less admirable parts you're still in the process of changing, you don’t mind others being privy to these past failings—as long, that is, as you’re confident such candor won’t later be used against you. Self-compassionately, you regard these deficiencies as depicting what you’d yet to learn about yourself, or about life generally—see them more as “insensitivities” than “unruly demons” exercising ultimate power over you. You realize that whatever you may have done earlier hardly defines your innate worth or potential.
• It’s being “comfortably vulnerable.” Intimately tied to the above, you permit others to know you fully. Beholding yourself as a work in progress, but nonetheless able right now to totally accept yourself, you’re not overly concerned with how others might evaluate you. Retaining ultimate authority to judge yourself, and doing so with kindness and understanding, another's possibly negative regard for your qualities, impulses, or motives no longer affects your emotional equilibrium. Contrary to how you may have acted in the past to prevent others from making you feel anxious, intimidated, or ashamed, you no longer feel the need to safeguard yourself from their possible criticism.
• It’s being self-forgiving. You review your past in a charitable, compassionate manner. Without self-recrimination, you take full ownership for harmful things you may have said or done earlier. For instance, you may have mercilessly bullied your younger sister who, back then, you couldn’t help but resent because your parents treated her like a “princess” and she received far more approval and praise than you ever did. Not yet knowing how to effectively communicate your hurt feelings to your family, you couldn’t resist aggressively acting them out against her.

  Still, if it’s feasible for you to make amends for such past misdeeds, you take every opportunity to do so. Afterward, however, you’re able to let it go, understanding that you really didn’t know any better at the time. Or even if you did, you appreciate that your angry impulses got the better of your more benign tendencies. In addition, you grasp that the key prerequisite to being kind and understanding toward others is to first develop the capacity to be kind and understanding toward yourself. And from deep within you’ve discovered the basic goodness and generosity to do both.

• It’s being unconditionally self-accepting. You genuinely like who you are. And you can be as satisfied hanging out with yourself as you can with others. Although you may wish to develop your aptitude or skills in something meaningful to you, you don’t regard your essential worth as based on present-day knowledge or performance. That self-assessment relates to self-esteem, not self-acceptance—a far broader, more critical, consideration (and here, see “The Path to Unconditional Self-Acceptance”). The mistakes and failures you may have been guilty of in the past don’t hinder you from seeing yourself as fundamentally honorable and well-meaning, especially since you realize that your negative past behaviors represented defenses deemed imperative at the time.
• It’s being undefended, or non-reactive. Because your basic sense of self-worth now comes from within, another’s criticizing you no longer throws you off balance. You see them as entitled to their viewpoint and can even validate it (i.e., from their, not your, perspective). But their adverse or mixed outlook—though you don’t shy away from it and can objectively weigh its possible merits— doesn’t itself threaten your self-regard. For your confident, positive view of self in no way depends on being beyond reproach.
• It’s feeling connected to others. To connect deeply to others in a way that’s loving, trusting, and intimate, you need first to establish a heartfelt connection between all the parts of you, which have a trusting and intimate relationship with each other. Becoming self-integrated enables you to see yourself in others and to accept in them what earlier you weren’t able to accept in yourself.
• It’s being authentic. You live by your word because you realize that nothing matters more than your personal integrity. Finally, the main reason you’re happy with yourself is that the standards you set for yourself are rooted in the intuitive knowledge of who you are and your life’s purpose. Your behavior is flexible because you’re sensitive to what various situations call for. You regard others’ wants and needs as no less important than your own—but no more important either.
• It’s being the “free spirit” you were meant to be. No one owns you—but you. And that realization enables you to act spontaneously. You don’t need anyone’s permission to present yourself to the world as the person, by nature, you are. And you recognize, too, that it’s your responsibility to nurture this core, indestructible essence and prevent it from being compromised or exploited by others.

Regardless of the situation you're in, you now see yourself “at choice” ... to be you.

© 2018 Leon F. Seltzer, Ph.D. All rights reserved.