Why Honoring Your Authentic Self Feels So Hard (and How to Begin)
Why we abandon our true selves to be loved — and how to start choosing authenticity instead.
We’re told to “just be ourselves,” but the truth is most of us have spent decades doing the opposite. We’ve been conditioned to suppress, abandon, or even reject the truest parts of who we are in order to be loved, accepted, or safe.
This isn’t a character flaw. It’s survival.
According to physician and author Gabor Maté, every human being has two essential needs: attachment and authenticity. Attachment is the need to belong — to maintain connection with others. Authenticity is the need to be true to ourselves.
When these needs collide, attachment almost always wins. Why? Because as children, losing connection feels like life or death. If authenticity threatens attachment, we learn to mute our truth, tuck away our feelings, and show up as the version of ourselves that gets approval.
The problem is those early survival strategies don’t disappear when we grow up. They follow us into our careers, our relationships, and our inner lives.
What Self-Abandonment Looks Like
Self-abandonment is any action we take that goes against our intuition or authentic self in order to maintain attachment. Sometimes it’s dramatic — like staying in a job that drains us because it looks impressive on paper. More often, it’s subtle:
Saying yes when every part of you wanted to say no.
Laughing off a comment that actually stung.
Minimizing your own needs to avoid “being difficult.”
Silencing your opinion in a meeting so you don’t rock the boat.
In the moment, these choices feel safer. But over time, they create a quiet erosion of self-trust.
The Cost of Abandoning Yourself
Every time we override our intuition, we send a message to ourselves: Your truth doesn’t matter as much as keeping the peace. Eventually, that message settles into our nervous system. We feel disconnected from who we are, unsure of what we want, and exhausted from playing roles that no longer fit.
Here’s the paradox: the very connection we’re trying to protect by abandoning ourselves is never as deep or nourishing as the connection that comes from showing up authentically. Real intimacy, whether in relationships, at work, or even with ourselves, requires risk.
Risk that a boundary might not be well received.
Risk that speaking your truth might disappoint someone.
Risk that showing who you are might mean not everyone approves.
It’s only in taking that risk that we show our nervous systems something powerful: we can survive rejection. And in surviving it, we start to reclaim the freedom to be fully ourselves.
How to Begin Honoring Your Authentic Self
This is lifelong work, but it doesn’t have to be overwhelming. You can begin with small, consistent practices:
Notice when you override your intuition.
Catch yourself in the act. That sinking feeling in your gut or tightness in your chest? That’s your authenticity raising its hand.Get curious about your feelings.
Instead of dismissing or numbing them, pause to ask: What’s here for me right now? Even naming the feeling is a radical act of authenticity.Reframe rejection as survival practice.
Each time you risk being honest, and survive the outcome, you strengthen your capacity for authenticity. It’s like training a muscle.
Honoring your authentic self is not about perfection. It’s about practice. It’s about choosing, moment by moment, to come back to yourself instead of abandoning yourself.
Because the deeper truth is this: the relationships, careers, and lives we long for aren’t built on our ability to fit in. They’re built on our willingness to be real.
And while that may feel risky, it’s also the doorway to everything we’re actually craving: connection that feels nourishing, work that feels purposeful, and a self we can finally trust.
Authenticity isn’t something you “find” out there, it’s something you return to, again and again. Every small act of honoring your truth is a vote for the life you want to create.
The question is no longer, “What will happen if I disappoint someone else?” but rather, “What will open up if I stop disappointing myself?”