What does it mean to honor your authentic self? How can women break free from external validation and cultivate genuine self-acceptance?
Living as your true self involves more than following societal expectations—it requires a deep connection to your inner wisdom and needs. Dr. Shefali Tsabary explores the path to authentic womanhood through three key principles: establishing strong standards, practicing detachment, and fulfilling your own needs.
Read more to discover practical strategies that will help you embrace your genuine self and create a more meaningful life.
Authentic Womanhood
According to Tsabary, the most important component of achieving happiness and fulfillment in life is connecting to and honoring your authentic self. This requires you to take total accountability for yourself and your life, detach from external influences, and let your inner self guide you. Tsabary provides a few guiding principles that will help you achieve authentic womanhood.
#1: Establish Strong Standards, and Never Accept Less
Tsabary explains that many women can’t be happy and fulfilled because they set low standards for themselves and accept less than they deserve. These low standards often stem from low self-worth that results from failing to meet societal expectations. For example, a woman striving to have the perfect body may deprive herself of food—she accepts less than what she needs to be healthy. Or, a woman craving acceptance may stay in an abusive relationship because she thinks if she just tries harder, her partner will treat her better—her standards are low.
Tsabary argues that women must recognize and take accountability for the actions, decisions, and habits that compromise their well-being and power. Rather than seeing themselves as powerless or victims, women need to love and respect themselves enough to let go of people and situations that don’t serve them and only accept ones that do.
(Shortform note: In Healing the Shame that Binds You, John Bradshaw explains that the root of having low self-esteem, low standards, and engaging in self-detrimental behaviors is often toxic shame. Failing to meet societal standards is a common cause of toxic shame, which causes us to accept less than we deserve out of fear that if we demand more, we’ll be told we’re unworthy. Bradshaw offers a few strategies to overcome this toxic shame and the issues it causes, such as by identifying the source of your shame and sharing it with others. For example, share your shame about your weight with close friends. The support you receive from them will show you that you deserve to eat well despite the shame you feel.)
#2: Practice Detachment
According to Tsabary, many women hold themselves back from happiness and fulfillment because of their attachments to others. They rely on people and situations to fulfill their needs and provide them with acceptance; however, these external elements are always changing and therefore can never provide us with the consistent acceptance we seek.
Tsabary believes that only you can satisfy your needs and provide the consistent acceptance you seek. To achieve this, she recommends that you live life in a state of detachment—love things as fully as possible, but live in the moment and accept life as it happens. Rather than resisting change or undesirable situations, accept them with grace and refrain from judging them as good or bad and right or wrong. Once you detach from and stop seeking fulfillment from external sources, you’re able to start fulfilling your own needs.
(Shortform note: Detachment is a core component of Stoic philosophy as explained by Marcus Aurelias in Meditations. Like Tsabary, Stoicism asserts detaching from external outcomes is crucial to avoid pain and suffering. One of the primary ways to do so under the Stoic philosophy is to follow the principle of logos. Following logos means believing that everything happens as it should to ensure an outcome that benefits the greater good. Following logos therefore allows you to relinquish control and the need to judge things as good and bad, allowing you to live in a state of detachment and presence as Tsabary recommends.)
#3: Fulfill Your Own Needs
Finally, Tsabary says women must learn how to fulfill their own needs. To do so, they must consider the needs they were trying to fulfill with their egoic identity and attachments to others. Then, they must identify ways to fulfill those needs themselves.
First, to identify the source of your egoic identity and attachments, Tsabary recommends considering which of your childhood needs went unfulfilled. Unfulfilled childhood needs tend to transfer into adulthood and produce the unhealthy methods we use to seek validation such as our ego or attachment to others.
For example, you may have felt lonely and unimportant as a child because your parents were always busy. Asking for their time or attention made you feel like a burden. As an adult, your childhood need for attention and validation manifests as a boss ego where you seek independence. This way, you don’t need anyone else and won’t face rejection like you did as a child. You also receive validation from others for being perfect—they provide you with the assurance that you’re good enough and not a burden.
To overcome this negative cycle, Tsabary explains that you need to get to the root of the problem—override the negative voice in your head. This inner voice prevents you from fulfilling your needs by telling you you’re not good enough—when you don’t think you’re good enough, you need others to show you that you are.
To do so, start by acknowledging the origin of your inner thoughts: Did they come from the way you were treated as a child? Did you absorb them from society or culture? For example, you may think you’re unworthy and a burden because your parents made you feel like this as a kid.
Then, consider how you can replace these negative thoughts and be a source of support for yourself—talk to yourself like a best friend or therapist would. Ask yourself questions like: What exactly is making you feel upset or leading you to engage in undesirable behavior? Then talk yourself down—consider why your negative thoughts aren’t true, why you’re actually awesome and not flawed, and what kinds of thoughts and behaviors you should engage in instead.
| Fulfilling Your Needs & Overcoming Trauma In Healing the Shame That Binds You, Bradshaw reiterates the importance of fulfilling your own needs to achieve happiness and reconnecting with your childhood to do so. Bradshaw adds some information about how to undergo this process that can supplement Tsabary’s advice and help you more effectively support yourself. For example, before you move on from identifying your unmet childhood needs to overcoming your negative voice, Bradshaw says there’s more work to be done. You must take time to grieve those unmet needs from your childhood so you can move on. To do so, you need external support from someone like a therapist or friend. To process the grief, you’ll also need the following: 1) validation that your trauma (unfulfilled needs) was real, 2) support, 3) an emotional expression of trauma-related feelings like anger or sadness, and 4) corrective experiences that fulfill the unmet childhood need. Bradshaw also reiterates the importance of overcoming your negative voice by identifying and learning how to de-escalate and replace it—but this doesn’t mean you’re done yet. Once you’ve done this, Bradshaw says you must work on reconnecting with and accepting your authentic self. You can do so by building an imaginary room in your mind that’s decorated with everything that describes who you are as a person (instruments, books, and so on), and that houses every version of you that has existed. Accept and love all these versions of yourself. |
