The “Real” Self, Narrative Psychology and Intimacy
bob mccue
April 2010

Introduction

I was raised with the belief that there is “real” or “authentic” me waiting to be discovered, and that my personal happiness depended on this discovery. While Mormon, the real me was of course an obedient Mormon – nothing else would work. But even after I shed that belief, the idea that deep inside of me was a static core – the real me – stuck. I recently noticed that this belief has changed. What follows are some meandering thoughts in that regard, and in particular, how our most important intimate relationships are connected to this concept.

Hearing Our Own Voices – The Community Within

I like to think of reading philosophy, psychology and other parts of the social sciences related to the nature of human beings as individuals and in groups as a means of stimulating and then listening to the different voices that comprise me. The more I hear of, and deeply understand, the most authentic voices other people can muster, the better I seem to be able to hear different parts of the choir within me. It seems like I cannot hear these voices without changing. I am not sure whether this is because the changes are underway in any event and this enables me to hear, or whether hearing the voices amplifies certain aspects of who I am, or even calls new parts of me into being. But in any event, I have become fascinated by this crowd that lives within me and how the better I am able to hear their voices, the more comfortable I seem to become in my own skin.

I did not have much opportunity to listen to the voices within me while I was Mormon. That is not to say that my Mormon family and friends are insincere or deceptive. The opposite is true. However, sincerity does not make authenticity, as I am using that term. By authentic I mean describing reality as you really see it, which includes expressing doubt and fear as well as hope. It also means criticizing authority.

We will never be perfectly authentic – perfectly pitched, to use a vocal metaphor – but there has been a profound shift in the democratic world and to an extent elsewhere, towards this mode of expression and away from the requirement that the party line alone must be spoken. Mormonism is relatively retrograde in this regard. When was the last time we heard a Mormon prophet criticized or joked about from the pulpit within a Mormon congregation? Think of the form Mormon “testimonies” must take; the temple covenant against criticizing Mormon leaders, etc. This lack of internal criticism is one of the hallmarks of a dysfunctional organization.

The scientists who study human behavior have particularly clear and authentic voices. The fact that they acknowledge their error prone nature is a big part of this. The voices of regular folk telling their stories as best they can are helpful in different ways.

So, while Mormon, the authentic voices around and within me were stifled. Only orthodox (as defined by the Mormon institution) voices were permitted. This prevented me from feeling many aspects of my internal reality – from understanding my own nature – as well the reality by which I was surrounded. As a result, I had little idea of how I could experience life. My existence was relatively stressed and flat. I accepted that as reality, and coped as best I could.

Narrative Psychology

Late in my transition out of Mormonism, I found Dan McAdam's concept of "Re-storying" and the discipline of "narrative psychology". I also learned that I would probably have been better off spending a lot more time taking art lessons, learning to meditate and returning to the things I loved as a young adult (sports and music, mostly) instead of spending so much time reading, analyzing and writing while trying to re-wire my Mormon brain. Activities of this kind help loosen neural connections, encourage brain growth, and assist the new narrative to gel. But that is another story.

The narrative psychology concept, in a nutshell, is that our most basic beliefs form a story line, or metanarrative, within which we perceive ourselves to play a role. As Mormons, this may have been a journey through mortality during which the forces of good and evil exert pressure on us as we attempt to overcome the challenges God permits to fall into our paths, and so prove ourselves worthy of life in Mormonism’s highest Heaven; the Celestial Kingdom. If we come to disbelieve the basic story, we are also without a role. This loss of sense of self is profoundly painful, but a required step toward growth. In order for new plants to have the room and energy they need to grow, much of the old must be cleared out of our lives. This is analogous to the theory of creative destruction in economics, not to mention having countless biological analogies.

For those of us who have chosen to leave or move to the fringes of Mormonism, there is no clearly written script with either the main story or our role within it. So the first thing we need to find is a new set of basic beliefs that seem reliable to us. My main paradigm in this regard is scientific or naturalistic – the story of how life evolved and where it seems likely to be headed as told by our best scientists. Other people opt for basic beliefs that are more traditionally Christian; yet others for New Age oriented beliefs. There are many possibilities.

The key in terms of personal mental health is that each person’s foundational beliefs seem reliable to her. The more reliable those beliefs are in fact, the better. In this information rich age, false beliefs are exposed much more often than has been traditionally the case. It is best to avoid the pain and instability this causes to the extent possible. Our sense of self, important relationships and our foundational aspects of life are based on these ideas in ways we usually don’t appreciate unless we have the vertigo inducing experience of feeling what seemed like bedrock disappear beneath our feet. Those of us who then have the chance to create new meta and personal narratives will not make a more important choice.

The second step is to find a comfortable role for ourselves within this new framework - a new personal narrative. Many people find it necessary to leave their community of origin to do this. Others change the way they are in relation to that community. But in any event, talking through the possibilities in this regard with a competent therapist is extremely helpful. This amounts to telling and re-telling our story as it changes in response to what we think and experience, and in particular, the possibilities we see for ourselves in our new understanding of the world. Journaling also helps this evolutionary process of self understanding or discovery along, as does anything that involves the re-telling of our story, including getting together with trusted friends, participating anonymously on internet bulletin boards and a host of alternatives in between. When former Mormons get together, they do this instinctively – we are hungry to both hear about how others found they way to the fringes of our inherited belief system, and to tell our own version of this story. And we do this over and again.

For reasons the psychologists have not yet pinned down, re-telling the personal narrative dramatically helps its evolution. It seems that as we experience, think, feel, and re-articulate what we can feel emerging from ourselves, feedback loops are created that help the brain to change the way it works by forming and strengthening new neural nets, and allowing old ones to dissolve.

Spending time in “right brain” space (engaging in artistic, creative activities; meditating; doing yoga; engaging in “flow” activities; etc.) also facilitates neural change and therefore helps the new narrative to form and become stable. Reconnecting to the activities about which we have been passionate as young people also helps as we try to regain, or find for the first time, contact with what moves us as individuals as opposed to what we did in order to fit within a role defined for us by a social group or an intimate relationship that has been left behind or radically altered because of a change in religious belief, or for any other reason. There are many analogies between the grieving and other change oriented processes that occur as a person leaves a religious belief system and changes many relationships related to it, or leaves a long term intimate relationship.

Our Context Dependence

Social psychologists have amply demonstrated how our perception of any subject is changed by the context within which the subject is placed. The same principles apply to our self conception. So, as our meta and personal narratives evolve, we become able to hear voices within us that had been either inaudible or silent. They are called into being, or at least to within ear shot, by our new way of perceiving ourselves. It is hard to say whether we are becoming different or simply perceiving what was always there differently. But in either event, the effect this has on how we feel and behave is often dramatic.

For example, while Mormon, I did not dare to allow the adventuresome, authority challenging voices within me to have much airtime. As a teenager, these had gotten me into so many painful situations that I cut them off, and so became a straight up the middle of the road, conservative Mormon. As I was leaving Mormonism, I began to experiment with new ways of thinking and being in the manner described above, and suddenly began to hear voices within me that were vaguely familiar and felt like old friends. I quickly gravitated towards them, and have become much more like the somewhat rough edged, questioning, adventuresome person I was during most of my teenage years.

I know people who acknowledged a gay, lesbian or other sexual orientation as their personal narratives changed in the context of a new, non-Mormon or post-divorce metanarrative. I know others who became far more strongly feminist or politically liberal than they had been while Mormon or married, others who became more conservative in some ways, and yet others whose intellectual orientation blossomed. Each of these changes, and many others of a similar sort, come with becoming able to hear parts of ourselves that had been repressed by a particular set of relationships and so were underdeveloped. Hearing and interpreting these voices is for most people an imprecise process, not a revelatory event.

So to recap, most of us who are carving new lives after leaving a religion or a long term relationship seem to be helped by feeling what happens inside of us as we experience a wide variety of activities, environments and people, and then re-tell our stories over and again as we move through this process. As the context (the metanarrative) within which we perceive ourselves changes, we must find a new personal narrative. As this narrative emerges as a result of the iterations of experiencing, feeling, and re-telling described above, we gradually become able to hear different parts of our soul as they find their voices. This changes us fundamentally, and as a result we emerge from ourselves.

We no longer need to be obedient Priesthood leaders or stay-at-home-Moms in order to feel “good”, but rather just "let the soft animal of your body love what it loves", as Mary Oliver counsels. There is ample room for those who stabilize our society as well as those who shake it up; for stay-at-home-Moms and astronaut Moms; for Moms who marry other Moms; for stay-home-Dads as well as men and women who determine that they would rather be in the world without offspring or long term relationships.

We have so much more potential than most of us can dream in the beginning of this process. Coming to understand what we are, and not fear ourselves, is perhaps our greatest challenge. We are, literally, making this up as we go, including how it will all hang together so that future human generations will enjoy more opportunity than we have.

The Sense of Authenticity, the Real Self and Intimacy

We seek a sense of well-being or authenticity that results from resonance between what we are and our environment. So, in different contexts we become different beings as we seek resonance, and when we choose our environment, and in particular the people with whom we will become intimate, we define ourselves in the long term more than through any other choice. The choices we make in this regard are of course directly connected to our meta and personal narratives. And I have in mind intimacy in the board sense. The same principles apply to romantic intimacy and the kind of intimacy that occurs within close-knit communities of all kinds, including religious communities.

For example, we become so entangled through intimacy that parts of us grow into the other, and vice versa, changing both and creating an “us” that is a separate organism. As this happens, our meta and personal narratives often changes. Many single person self conceptions (the “me”) differ radically from conceptions of “me as part of us”. As a result, the tools of narrative psychology are again particularly well suited to assisting the re-birth process that follows the end of a long term relationship, or the commencement of a new one. As a new relationship comes into being, for example, we can think, experience, tell our story, and repeat, while the “us” forms and as a result, our self conception and nature changes.

When a significant relationship ends and the “us” dissolves, the parts that have grown together cannot return to their prior state any more than an omelette can be turned back into eggs, or a tree that has grown for years around a huge boulder can suddenly become straight when the boulder is removed. We carry imprints and transmit echoes of our intimate relationships forever, for better or worse. Thankfully, for most of us, this is to the good.

Emerging from Ourselves

All this means that I have pretty much stopped trying to find the "real" or "authentic" me. We are dynamic beings, evolving against social and other environments that cause us to change as we instinctively seek resonance. A sudden feeling of increased authenticity usually means that we have found this. We then quickly habituate and want more. This need for novelty most of human progress and makes us, ironically, become anxious relatively quickly even when in the best of all possible worlds in terms of relationship intimacy or otherwise. Learning to live with that itch, to allow it at times to drive us creatively forward and at other times to distract ourselves from it or simply ignore it, is a big part of the good life.

Since both we (as we age, mature, etc.) and our environments are constantly changing, we are awash in opportunity to grow into resonance of various kinds. This is the path from “Thou Shalt” to “We will”. Along this way, finding authenticity is not an event, but a life-long process of emerging from ourselves as the music around and within us changes, and we continue to seek resonance. Far from discouraging, this realization brings with it the realistic hope that we will many times experience the miracle of rebirth.

Life looks wonderful from this point of view – a cornucopia that only ends as our energy does. The process day to day and step by step is, however, sometimes terrifying. Security is our most basic need, so relatively few are prepared to step into the re-newing chaos from which life emerges. Most of us who muster the courage to do this, or are merely pushed or stumble into it, find exhilaration as we forge our souls.