Loss of authenticity – how does it happen? – filling the missing link in the thoughts of dr Gabor Mate

Dr Gabor Mate (Image source: wikipedia.org)

Too fully grasp this article you should already be familiar with the body of work of dr Gabor Mate. His lectures are available on YouTube.com

Dr Gabor Mate in his book and lectures speaks on what he calls an authenticity as an effect of a trauma. According to Mate the great tragedy is not the trauma or the wrongs done to one,emotional losses, or even specific events in one’s life, but in fact the loss of one’s authenticity. But what is this authenticity? Mate calls it an essence or one’s inner link to oneself. Here I will explain and simplify this term. For even better understanding, I will also link this to the emotions we feel, something that is rarely done in our culture. This simplification and clarification of authenticity is what’s missing in Mate’s work, as well as direct connection to the unnamed root of the problem presented his other book Hold on to your kids which he co-authored with dr Gordon Neufeld.

Authenticity is a loving oneself. Authenticity is sense of self. But what does it mean loving oneself , and how we should understand it? It’s not a romantic love, nor love we may feel for our parents. However, love one may feel for one’s own children is more like it. Even a love one may feel for a dog can be used as an example here. Why not romantic love or love for a parent? Well, you don’t suppose to be physically attracted to you or live in deep fascination with yourself. We’re not talking about narcissistic obsession here. Love for a parent is also different form what we are suppose to feel for ourselves as you shouldn’t be taking care of someone who suppose to be your authority figure. It would be in direct opposition to a healthy parent-child relationship dynamics. Why then we should love ourselves as we should love our children? Because you should want the best in life for yourself. Take care of yourself. Help yourself. Appreciate yourself. Explain the world to yourself. By understanding of yourself and invest in yourself. Be sympathetic to yourself and be nice to yourself. You should also teach yourself something new and learn about your worth. Aspire to better things and to being better. Most of all, never give up on yourself. Why love for a dog is a good example? Well, it’s similar to loving your child. For instance, you wouldn’t be mad at a dog that he is a dog. You wouldn’t be mad that he scratches his ear, has a tail and wags it. You wouldn’t be mad at a dog that he barks instead of uttering full sentences, nor that he walks on four paws instead of just two. You are fully aware that dog is a dog, and despite that you still take care of him, you teach him stuff, you love him and respect him (dogs may be the only creatures on this planet that actually are capable of true unconditional love). So, authenticity should be understood as a manifestation of respect, love, understanding and care for oneself.

But how authenticity is a sense of self and what does it mean? It’s an interpretation of oneself that lies beyond the element of love. It’s our personality, our interests, desires, aspirations and our unique character. It may be also roles we take on in our daily lives through which we manifest who we are.To put it simply, it’s the accumulation of everything we interpeter our self beyond love or what others think of us.

You must understand one thing – you are who you are. It’s a combination of thousand of things and events. You may not be in this particular point in your life where you wanted to be, should be or could be. But it also doesn’t mean you are not worthy of love and acceptance even if you’re the only person thinks so right now or is able to give it to you. In fact, you should be the only person who should have utter control in this matter and value only your opinion should stand above all other. It's a great news, because it means you can start loving yourself right away. It doesn’t matter that you’re not perfect, nobody is. Understand that the only thing prohibiting you for loving yourself right now are only the requirements and conditions you create yourself. So, change them! Love yourself right now, just the way you are. Before you can start bettering yourself, you must give yourself enough love and appreciation to feel free. I will use example of love for one’s child here again. You love your child right away. It doesn’t matter that he doesn’t walk right away, or talk, or can do anything on his own. You may think to yourself that you shouldn’t treat yourself this way now, because your adult now, however you know what events brought you to this point. So just try this, even if for a while. I know people in the internet may ridicule everyone and anything, but know that those people have a binary system of thinking. There are just two options for them. Yes and no. A-minute-and-a-half attention span. That’s the way they see the world. Most people are conditioned by culture to utter simplicity through television series and stupid game shows. Let’s get back to a dogs here for a second. Internet is full f videos of rescued stray dogs. Abandoned, often scared and starved. However, in just few months the same dogs are changing. After couple of more, they are full of life, happy, running and joyfully chasing a ball. You may say that those dogs were in fact rescued, they wouldn’t to this on their own. I know being lonely hurts. However, you are not a dog. You are stronger and smarter than any dog out there. Even if there really is nobody out there, nor even an institution you may turn to for help, you can help yourself. How? Even by reading articles like this one. You already know more than you were when you started reading this text. You already are equipped with different frames of interpretation of the current state you’re in. Different forms of self-help and loving oneself will be touched upon in a separate article.

Authenticity needs to be also explained on the ground of its development in the regard to the book Hold on to your kids by Gabor Mate and Gordon Neufeld. I am truly amazed at lack of direct presentation of a connection of authenticity and the main subject of the book – positive validation of a child by parents in the safety of a loving relationship with in home. If they had pointed to it directly it would be more clear and made it easier to understand the technical part. This in turn would allow for mindful work on one’s mind/thought and emotions. Personally, I think that human brain possesses emotional memory which work similar to muscle or body memory. Anybody who ever trained any sport heard the express that muscle or body have a memory. Body may remember your laziness and revolt against training. Sometimes you need to push it and train regularly to changes its physiognomy and see some effect. Similarity body of someone who works out regularly and is now forced to become a couch potato will reject fast food and rebel to this alien state. Our souls just like our bodies may be stubborn and keep it’s memory. I will touch upon the methods of working on emotional memory in a separate article.

In Hold on to your kids the authors point our attention to the importance of parent-child relationship. They say that: 100% of responsibility for the parent-child relationship is in the hands of a parent; child should rest in the relationship with a parent and not be stressed about parent’s acceptance; love cannot be hold as privilege to a child or he or she will look for it elsewhere; chemical stress regulatory system in the brain isn’t developed after the third year of life of a child and all the hugs and kisses fill the lack of this system and is responsible for its correct development; parents should pay attention that the validation of self-worth of a child stems directly from home, as then child wouldn’t be as vulnerable to hurtful word or behavior form bullies, teacher, or anyone else; it's (ideally) parents who should teach their children about their worth. Everything they’ve said i true and I agree with it completely. I do own this book and I highly recommend getting one yourself.However, this book is more of a how-to for parents and doesn’t carry direct link to the authenticity of the people who already have been hurt. The term of authenticity doesn’t even appear in this book (at least polish translation) nor it may be heard in the online lectures (which I’ve watched every single one to this day) regarding the child-upbringing.

So let me put it all together for you – authenticity, understood as love for oneself and sense of self, should directly steem from and be shaped in a loving relationship by healthy upbringing and positive validation of a child’s self-worth by parents. Ergo, authenticity is fully developed, adult version of the positive validation that should have been taught by parents during child’s early childhood, adolescence and early adulthood. In other words, authenticity is knowledge of one’s own worth , love and validation of oneself that comes from within, and not the outside world. Authentic person doesn’t need anyone else to feel worthy and loved. Therefore, the loss of authenticity in many cases, if not the most, is a direct effect of loss of a security that for a child lies in a loving relationship with a parent and lack of proper validation f self-worth.

To sump up, in order to reclaim our authenticity we have to localize when in our childhood we lost a relationship and validation. We need to understand that we are not helpless little kid anymore. We are adults now and we are do not need anyone else to protect us as we now have skills and power at our disposal. When we do this, we need to digest emotions that come with this knowledge and accept the fact that what happend will never unhappen.In this moment we need to understand that we can love ourselves, that these other people were wrong, or that we may have been wrong and forgive ourselves. Now we are armed with this knowledge. We are aware of the mechanisms of our psychies and understand what happened to us in the past. We interpret it from the point of view of an adult and not a child. Now we are able to work on ourselves. we are ready to reclaim our authenticity cause we know the only people who will reclaim it for ourselves are only us.Only we are capable to build this friendly relationship with ourselves that will open window for betterment. Only the truly authentic person can live his life as free man, and be able to live life to the fullest.

Consider getting books:
Hold on to your kids by Gordon Neufeld on Amazon
Hold on to your kids by Gordon Neufeld on eBay
When the body says no - the cost of hidden stress by Gabor Mate on Amazon
When the body says no - the cost of hidden stress by Gabor Mate on eBay