From 繭 to Butterfly: Unveiling My Authentic Self - 213

I don't like feeling paranoid of deception, and today. I wake feeling that way. People lie for all sort of reasons. For self gain, self preservation. People lie to improve their status. People will lie to appear more intelligent or capable.

The trouble is, I'm not very good at being correct that someone is deceiving me, or perhaps I should say to what degree. It may be a minor issue and not one that truly ends up being something I really even have to be concerned about being deceptive. Like someone lying about their personal preferences because they are unable to disappoint their friend that they like another flavor ice cream more. I am usually good at catching that deception is happening, however again the degree or what the deception is, I am prone to assuming much worse than it is. This leads me into handling some things poorly intending to preserve my feelings. This constant state of suspicion, however, can lead to a more serious problem: repressing my true feelings

If you don't reveal yourself to others, you cannot reveal yourself to yourself. You usually suppress who you are and your greatest potential will not be realized. Confronting the unknown means gathering information and building a new understanding of yourself and the world and how you act in it. It has been found that new genes in your central nervous system, turn on, when you are in new situations. They release proteins that are responsible for building new areas of your brain. You literally build new ways of thinking on a biological level when you choose to challenge familiarity and bravely step towards the unknown. It is truly amazing on a scientific level to understand this paired with my subjective emotional human experience.

By not speaking up for myself, I realized I was not only allowing others to deceive me, but I was also often assuming I was being deceived and I wouldn't address whatever it was that caused it. This has been an injustice to myself. As when I do this, it is something that I prime myself to be just a little more compliant with being uncomfortable and bothered. I made it just a little easier for someone to walk over me and I often spend time thinking on a situation that hardly hit the radar for the other person. When you don't stand for your thoughts and opinions on some level, you are being complicit to some way of forsaking and lying about yourself. It's inauthentic. 

Repressing things leads to worse mental illness. Most people that are mentally disturbed, they are fundamentally seeing the world in some deceptive way. Lying to themselves or others in some way. The severity is the only separation from repressing self and outright lying.

Lately, I've taken to leaning into expressing myself more boldly by allowing room for my opinion in the presence of other's opinions. Even if it is opposing, it is okay to speak up about my thoughts and ideas. To do this I must sort of trust that the other party will continue to be honest and just like me allow space for ideas to be exchanged. Having this framework of mutual responsibility for a productive conversation makes me feel more at ease as I feel a responsibility to speak up and express myself instead of a need to repress. Recently at work I felt disregarded when I was asked to do a task, and I felt it was not very logical or reasonable to complete it in the way requested. Time management wise it just didn't make sense. Typically I would have assumed the person instructing me outranked me and had a reason for suggesting it as they did. Instead I gave space to my thoughts and said that this doesn't make sense to me to do that , that way. I think it would make more sense if we adjusted it and did it this way. due to patient privacy concerns, I can't go into specifics... The end result is we got to do the task the way I thought was best and the other person agreed the approach was not just fine, but it was better and made more sense.

By acting this out, I feel a little more trusting of the world too, because if I can come to these realizations and understandings with the unique struggle I have had, it is likely more people I meet will have come to the same maturity points and maybe...just maybe we can change the world by being the change we want to see.

For now my dear reader,

Breathe deeply, sleep sweetly, and dream big!