Your Representative

I just finished reading the book "Love Warrior" by Glennon Doyle Melton. It's a thoughtful, sad, and funny memoir of her life, growing up (and then marrying) while being bulimic and alcoholic. Ultimately, it's a story of finding her voice and her strength through therapy and increased self-esteem, achieved through a variety of experiences. Even if you've never been bulimic, alcoholic or married, it's a great read.

What stuck with me the most was her assertion that at some point, while still quite young, her personality split in two. When put into stressful or socially difficult situations, she would summon forth a false self -- her "Representative" as she called it. 

Author John Bradshaw has another term for the persona we bring out when we don't feel safe enough to show who we really are. He called it "the false self," and maintained most of us create one by the time we're through primary school, through the process of learning and/or believing we are not desirable, wanted or appreciated for who we really are. We create a false self so that our sensitive, thoughtful and more vulnerable self can hide in the deep gardens of our soul when it needs to (or perceives it does), in what has to be the first and the original "safe space,"  that being the inside of our own skulls.

I believe this is how so many of us who rate higher on the "sensitivity scale" survive the the ups and downs of adolescence, the working world and especially relationships. We don't send our real selves into the trenches of interpersonal relationships and society when we don't feel safe. We send our Representative instead.

How I visualize "my Representative"

How many times do I send my Representative to deal with things instead of my authentic self? I've been thinking about that. At work, I do occasionally, of course. There are just some customers who aren't given the access code for The Real Me, and so I have a bright, cheery persona who deals with people while my inner self ponders deeper things. Ditto with certain coworkers, especially if they have been hurtful or insensitive in the past. 

But she's probably more like this.

My Representative comes out to banter and smile whenever I need her to. And on thinking about it, I realized I even have a couple of friendships where it is not so much two people being friends but our Representatives who are there, having lunch and talking over current events.

I spent the day with a good friend today -- a real friend -- and part of the fun of our afternoon spent together was the complete and utter spontaneity we had just being ourselves. We laughed, we guffawed and we complained about the sheer absurdity and ridiculousness of life and buoyed each other up with our common thoughts and feelings on everything from work to husbands to where we live.

But in thinking about it, my mind shifted to yet another "friend" who I see once in awhile but who I don't think I've ever actually, really, met. Early on her Representative indicated she wished to meet with my Representative for lunch, and so they did.  There were a few laughs and polite conversation, but any attempt to go deeper on my part was met with a wall on her part, and so our relationship has remained shallow...and ultimately without meaning. Representatives are great at keeping things smooth but if it's meaning you seek you must first drop your facade and be known and seen.

How often do you send in your "Representative" to deal with things in your life? I suspect the measure of a person's happiness is how often they feel safe enough to hang their Representative up on a coat hanger behind the door, come sit down, and be their real selves. The more unhappy among us must don their Representative on a daily basis, keeping things pleasant but ultimately meaningless. 

Perhaps that's one of the draws of homesteading life...the chance to be oneself, all day, every day, no Representatives necessary.