Do not fear having no friends. Fear having bad friends. ~ DALE Carnegie
Many people don’t like my true self. Why? Because I am no longer a people pleaser. I am convinced that it’s okay to be misunderstood and at peace with myself, than to be liked and miserable.
John Eldredge in his book, Wild at Heart, writes –
“From the place of our woundedness we construct a false self. We find a few gifts that work for us, and we try to live off them. Stuart found he was good at math and science. He shut down his heart and spent all his energies perfecting his “Spock” persona. There, in the academy, he was safe; he was also recognized and rewarded. “When I was eight,” confesses Brennan Manning, “the impostor, or false self, was born as a defense against pain. The impostor within whispered, ‘Brennan, don’t ever be your real self anymore because nobody likes you as you are. Invent a new self that everybody will admire and nobody will know.'” Notice the key phrase: “as a defense against pain,” as a way of saving himself. The impostor is our plan for salvation.
“So God must take it all away. He thwarts our plan for salvation; he shatters the false self. Our plan for redemption is hard to let go of; it clings to our hearts like an octopus.
“Why would God do something so terrible as to wound us in the place of our deepest wound? Jesus warned us that “whoever wants to save his life will lose it” (Luke 9:24). Christ is not using the word bios here; he’s not talking about our physical life. The passage is not about trying to save your skin by ducking martyrdom or something like that. The word Christ uses for “life” is the word psyche — the word for our soul, our inner self, our heart. He says that the things we do to save our psyche, our self, those plans to save and protect our inner life — those are the things that will actually destroy us. “There is a way that seems right to a man but in the end it leads to death,” says Proverbs 16:25. The false self, our plan for redemption, seems so right to us. It shields us from pain and secures us a little love and admiration. But the false self is a lie; the whole plan is built on pretense. It’s a deadly trap. God loves us too much to leave us there. So he thwarts us, in many, many different ways.”
Robert Firestone (THE FEAR BONDING) said that the purpose of the false self is to defend against pain– not deal with reality.
Our customs demand the false self to perform. Example: You’re so afraid to be seen as broke so you borrow to appear rich.
It’s a long process to learn as your true self. Stepping out of being a codependent is difficult, to say the least. It’s like we’ve been hypnotized to perform and to please. We become more an enabler than one to intervene to prevent self-destructive behaviors.