The Courage to Be
Your Authentic Self

Apart from the exhaustion itself, there is another thread I notice running through the experiences of many people I work with: a deep-seated fear of being fully, visibly themselves. Is this something you recognise?

I can speak to this from my own life. Growing up in an inner city school, I was tormented by bullies. Protection became everything. I learned to keep my head down, stay unnoticed, not draw attention to myself. I had these conversations with myself so often and so thoroughly that I became very good at making myself small.

I essentially trained my nervous system into a pattern of playing small. And that pattern did not stay in the playground. It followed me into adult life.

The Map Is Not the Territory

There is a useful idea from the field of NLP: the map is not the territory. If you have a map of a town, the map is not the town itself. It is a representation. The actual town contains all the richness and texture that no map can fully capture.

We carry internal maps of who we think we are, built from our experiences and from what significant people in our lives told us about ourselves. Parents, peers, teachers, culture. These maps are not us. They are a flat, conditioned representation of us.

If you knew who you really were, and what you were genuinely capable of, it might surprise you. As Ram Dass put it: “Who you think you are is like a grain of sand on the beach of who you really are.”

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us.

Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.

As we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.”

Marianne Williamson

Fear and the Nervous System

FEAR can sometimes stand for False Evidence Appearing Real. When we sort and filter our experiences through the lens of past hurt, we can end up telling ourselves a scary story and then living as though it is true.

Over time, a pattern of fear and avoidance can become wired in. We feel relief when we avoid something that makes us anxious. The nervous system notices that relief, and generalises the pattern: avoid anything that resembles fear. The trouble is, this stops us growing. We can end up hiding from life in ways that slowly erode our confidence and our sense of self.

Fight, flight and avoidance can shrink the world to a very small place. For people with ME/CFS, the world may already feel small because of the physical limits of the condition. Addressing the underlying pattern of playing small, not just the physical symptoms, can be part of finding a way back to a fuller life.

Communicating Your Feelings and Needs

One framework I have found genuinely useful, both personally and in my work as a coach, is Nonviolent Communication, developed by Marshall B. Rosenberg. It centres on four steps:

1. Observations: seeing a situation clearly, without blaming or criticising
2. Feelings: naming what you actually feel in relation to what you observe
3. Needs: recognising the need or value behind the feeling
4. Requests: asking clearly for what you would like

I find this process cuts through confusion quickly. Knowing what I need and being able to say it clearly, without either swallowing it or lashing out, is a form of quiet confidence. It also creates space to understand what the other person needs, rather than getting lost in the heat of the moment.

A Simple Fear-Facing Exercise

Credit for this goes to Jamie Smart. Go into a shop and ask for something they obviously do not sell: a pound of apples from a hardware store, for example. Ask with a straight face. When they tell you they do not have it, say thank you and leave.

It sounds small. But deliberately facing a small, low-stakes awkwardness is a way of showing your nervous system that fear does not have to lead to disaster. Do it a few times and notice what it does for your confidence.

The Gentle Art of Blessing

Another practice I have found valuable comes from Pierre Pradervand. When someone triggers fear, upset or hurt in me, I practise silently blessing them: their ability to listen, to be kind, to communicate well, whatever quality I find myself needing from them.

This is not about denying what happened or performing forgiveness. It is a practical observation: when we hold poisonous thoughts about another person, we are the ones living with the stress hormones. We poison ourselves.

I have come to see dominant or difficult people differently. They have a need to make others feel small so they can feel big. Understanding that changes the power dynamic entirely. Rather than something to dread, I now tend to see these encounters as unexpected opportunities to practise standing my ground with more clarity and less fear.

A Question Worth Sitting With

Gandhi was once asked by a reporter what message he wanted to give to the world. He replied: “My life is my message.”

Is your life your message? If not, what would need to happen for that to be so?

If there was a shift overnight and you woke tomorrow with the courage to be your authentic self: what would be different? What would you see, hear and feel that would tell you something had changed?

These are not rhetorical questions. They are worth sitting with. The answers often point somewhere important.

With gratitude to the teachers who inspired this piece: Marshall Rosenberg, Pierre Pradervand, Jamie Smart, Ram Dass and Mahatma Gandhi. And a particular thank you to the tyrants and childhood bullies. Bless em.