And that's something that I've been thinking about a lot because some social circumstances, I don't necessarily feel like it's okay or comfortable or sometimes safe, which all those are kind of different feelings to be my authentic self or to be totally open about what I think or feel, particularly if I'm in the minority position. But also it's super important that we speak out and don't let others kind of define our experience and reality for us. I know that to be true
When that more closely aligns with my outward presentation, the words that I speak, the actions that I take or don't take, et cetera, I think that human interaction requires some masking for all humans, regardless of brain wiring. When you go into work and people ask, how was your weekend? And you say, Great, and you really just don't want to talk about it, that kind of thing
Georgie Dee
@GeorgieDee · 1:22
Hi, Bowie. Great. Swell. For me, authenticity is all about knowing yourself. The more you know yourself, the more authentic you can be if you want to be. Right? And there's a choice there because I think sometimes you in life, as Christina talked about there's masking to fit into certain situations. You can still hold on to your inner self and have your authentic self at your core
Swell Team
@Swell · 0:15
Georgie Dee
@GeorgieDee · 2:51
And this doesn't become a selfish thing, it becomes something about integrity and authenticity. But there's still times where I will use the tools of manipulation and masking to get through the working day. For example, because if you've got someone, for example, a student that's really upset in front of you and they're angry and they're resistant, my authentic self inside is actually really annoyed with them because I'm like, my God, you're such so annoying
Wren .
@aBirdieOnaWire · 4:50
And one of my communications classes, I learned about this social science theory that was developed and kind of honed and added to and taken from called oh, God, what is it called? Oh my God, what is it called? Communication. Accommodation theory. And it posits that we as humans adjust our methods of communicating depending on the audience
I don't know if this ties in exactly, but the talent of what you were describing there sort of brought this to mind that when I was contemplating authentic recently, there's the relationship with self and how we come to it, but then there's also of that external presentation and how others perceive it. And it's such a subjective thing
Bowie Rowan
@bowie · 2:25
The article you shared was really interesting and it got me thinking about how much that feeling of authenticity then might be related to a sense of connection. And that part of us, you know, even the idea of being authentic has to be in relationship, right? Because when we're alone, we're in relationship with ourselves, obviously. And there may be ways that we represent ourselves or don't necessarily want to be completely honest or authentic with ourselves, but we're still like aware. Right?