The Authenticity Issue In Your Winning Recipe – How To Lower Its Effect

AS INTROVERTS IT is not surprising that we often feel like we struggle to be authentic with people. We recoil from too much stimulation.  We think we will shock people if we truly reveal how much we do not want to be around them.

The Real Reason We Struggle With Authenticity

BUT THE ISSUE is deeper than that. On top of being introverts we each have a built a winning recipe specifically to compensate for not being outgoing enough. It allows us to hide behind a socially acceptable way to be – calm, fearless, motherly, fatherly, relentless, supportive.  Or any other of the thousands of other personas introverts adopt to win in an extroverted world. My recipe is being process-driven, building step by step procedures to cope with life events.

A persona is a façade, a role, a front.  By nature it is inauthentic because it conceals the individual sitting inside it. As long as that shell surrounds you, you cannot reveal your authentic self to others. Regardless of how laudable or attractive the shell may be.  This can cause you to attract people who are not right for you.

How I Discovered The Authenticity Issue

THE CORE PROBLEM is that as long as you project a winning recipe you can only be that recipe.  Not yourself – not the introvert behind the curtain. With two of the women I got to know my process-laden approaches got in the way.  They made it impossible for me to be my true, introverted self with them. Instead I attracted them with something I was not.

Sofia. Sofia was a quiet girl I met when I was 21 and on a cultural exchange in Rio de Janeiro. Night after night she dazzled me with her psychological insights as we walked along Copacabana Beach. We kissed and held each other tenderly.  After I returned to California we declared our love for one another in letters over many months.

Yet the intellectual repartee with her had been relentless and emotionally draining. I responded by acting as if I were a nimble swordsperson. She was so perceptive that I do think she saw through my recipe to the quiet person inside it.  But amid so much banter, all in a foreign language no less, I was not able to project that person. My authenticity issue made me come off as much less of an introvert than I really was.  I appeared as an  eager debater, and that attracted her.

Roberta. I met Roberta during my senior year at Stanford, attracted by her quiet demeanor. Shortly afterwards I was shocked to learn that she was catatonic and in a hospital. I foolishly resolved to “rescue” her after her mother whisked her away to Ohio. I took a train to Toledo but found the awakened Roberta to be a completely different person.  She now was alive and vibrant. I was so committed to saving her that I did not see how sick she was with bipolar disease.

She returned to Stanford months later.  Now she was her manic self and launched attacks on me for anything I might say. Apparently she was trying to provoke me into controlling her.  She likely wished I might do that to rescue her from her out-of-control life. At the end of the relationship I only wanted peace and quiet. I did not want the drama of trying to control her at every turn. She soon started sleeping with a former roommate of mine.  He was an assertive flirt who was able to perform in the role that she desired.

Unpacking the Authenticity Issue

ULTIMATELY I WAS not authentic with these two ladies because I could only be my recipe with them.  That is, I could only be something I was not – a debater or a rescuer.

That is what a winning recipe does. It is the outer self that engages other people.  It nicely cloaks the inner self that long ago you decided you could not expose to the world if you wanted to succeed.

There is only one way an introvert can interact with someone else in an authentic way.  You must acknowledge that you have a particular winning recipe, and then consciously step outside of it.  This is especially true concerning a person as important as one you may choose as a life partner.

This means being willing, in the moment, to act as the introvert who is inside that recipe. You will move in and out of being able to do this because it will probably take so much out of you. But here is how to do it:

Step 1: Pick A Sharing Method
The real you behind the screen is an introvert.  So pick whichever of the two natural behaviors below is easiest for you to use at a particular time:

• Launch a deep one-on-one conversation with the other person;
• Or, write down your thoughts.

Step 2: Share What You Are Committed To
Your thoughts and feelings will always be present but you have little or no control over them. They come at you as if shot out of a fire hose. But there is one thing in life that you do control, and that is what you are committed to. Share about what you can be counted on to be and do in your relationship.  Or in your job, in your parenting, or any other domain of life that you are passionate about.

Thoughts and feelings keep you in the comfort zone of your recipe. Sharing your commitment yanks you right out of it.  It launches you into a position of authenticity that can hit your listener between the eyes.

Step 3: Share Your Commitment As An Introvert Would
This means doing the following as you speak or write:

• Listen to what your commitment calls you to be or do.
• Focus deeply on it.
• Think about how best to say it.
• Express it in writing ahead of time.
• Wait until you are finished thinking before planning to speak of it.
• Share it in a one-on-one conversation.

Step 4: Keep Swinging

Your commitment, and along with it your authenticity, can vanish in an instant. Your recipe and the authenticity issue are always there for you to slip back inside of.  This can happen even after you have hooked yourself out of it.

If that occurs, bring yourself back to what you are committed to. That will restore the spell – temporarily – so that your true self can show up.

The bad news is that your default state is the recipe, not your commitment. The good news is that you always have the choice to re-experience your commitment.  Each time you do that you can for a time reduce the hold that the recipe has over you.

Sometimes I am so steeped in whatever process I am running that I show up as it instead of as me.  In that state I have no possibility of being authentic with my wonderful wife Sandy. Yet I always recall who I am in this relationship, and how absolute my commitment is to it and to her.  I then move into a place of calm where the authenticity of my love shines through like a star.

I Invite You To Focus On Overcoming The Authenticity Issue

• What are you committed to in your relationship? How has sharing that had a positive impact on a significant other in your life? If you would like us to consider sharing your story anonymously with The Satisfied Introvert community please email it to me at thesatisfiedintrovert@gmail.com .
• How can I help you downplay your thoughts and feelings in favor of your commitments? Please enter your questions on the Contact page. I cannot answer everyone, but will do my best – especially if the answer could benefit others.
• To be notified of new posts to The Satisfied Introvert blog, please go to the Subscribe section at the bottom of this post and enter your name and email.  Under no circumstances will we share your information without your express permission.  A new post appears every two weeks. Coming up next: “The Reliability Issue In Your Winning Formula – How To Shrink Its Power.” If a particular post does not apply to you, future ones most likely will!

Welcome to the joy that comes from sharing what you

 

are committed to in life, and allowing that to shine

 

through to the person in front of you

© 2022 The Satisfied Introvert LLC