“Young children will sacrifice their authentic self to maintain attachment, believing that losing connection means losing survival.”—Peter Levine (American biophysicist and psychologist)

From Attachment to Authenticity

“A child learns to hide his true self in order to protect the only important thing—the relationship with his parents.”—Donald Winnicott,  English pediatrician and psychoanalyst

The Child’s Survival Blueprint

Imagine a toddler: small, vulnerable, completely dependent. Her entire universe revolves around one fundamental need: connection—lose that, and she loses her lifeline.

The child becomes a master adapter:

• Reading subtle facial expressions
• Adjusting behaviors instantaneously
• Learning the intricate dance of “how to be wanted, loved, and accepted”

This isn’t manipulation. This is the survival instinct.

This brilliant emotional intelligence becomes the child’s primary survival strategy.

The Primal Tension

This primal instinct – to attach, belong, and survive – is deeply ingrained in us.

Yet, as we grow, we face a profound challenge—balancing the need between our survival-driven instinct for attachment and our deeper longing for authenticity.

What Real Authenticity Means

True authenticity goes beyond fleeting self-expression—it’s not about oversharing, unfiltered behaviors, or disregarding others’ well-being.

Rather, it’s the courageous commitment to move through life guided by our personal truth—even when our genuine desires diverge from those close to us, and our choices defy societal norms.

Our truth can guide us in small choices, like how to spend the weekend, as well as major decisions, like whether to move to another country.

When we stay trapped in childhood strategies, we silence the glorious truth of who we are to contort ourselves into a mold of who we think we should be. This disconnect from our true selves often becomes the very barrier to what we most deeply desire – meaning and real belonging.

Why We Carry Childhood Strategies Into Adulthood

“Care about what other people think and you will always be their prisoner.”—Lao Tzu,  Ancient Chinese philosopher

We Lacked Guidance

Our caretakers play a vital role in teaching us how to balance attachment and authenticity during our formative years. However, this essential guidance isn’t always provided. When it falls short, we never learn that the ultimate goal is to be true to ourselves, release performative behaviors, and prioritize our needs and well-being. Without this understanding, we cling to the only strategy we know—choosing attachment, which feels safe, over authenticity, which can seem risky or even dangerous.

We Never Learned How to Be Ourselves

Without guidance toward self-discovery in our formative years, we may find it difficult to truly understand ourselves and authentically communicate our needs, wishes, and feelings.

Instead, we developed habits of pleasing and appeasing—first with our caretakers, and later with teachers, friends, or bosses. Our strategy was to keep others happy because we learned that we are safer when others’ needs are met.

Why These Patterns Persist

“Healing is not a linear process. It’s a spiral, with unexpected turns, breakthroughs, and setbacks. Compassion is the compass that keeps us moving forward.”—Gabor Maté, Canadian physician and trauma expert

Abandon Self to Maintain Safety

As we progress through life, that childhood strategy doesn’t magically vanish. It shapeshifts. Now it shows up in:

• People-pleasing at work
• Tolerating harmful environments
• Accommodating “empty” transactional relationships
• Suppressing personal needs or authentic expression
• Performing “acceptable” versions of the self

We learned early that safety depends on reading the room. In childhood, this often meant putting others’ needs first or avoiding conflict. In the workplace, it means:

• Choosing to remain silent in discussions even with valuable input
• Avoiding honest feedback or asking for help
• Performing enthusiasm that’s not there
• Tolerating toxic work environments
• Reshaping personality to fit the culture

The reality is that abandoning ourselves to maintain connection, which helped us in childhood, will trap us in the cycle of survival in adulthood.

To experience freedom, we must update outdated strategies and reclaim the power of our true selves.

Our Body Remembers

Our early survival strategies aren’t just distant stories and memories—they’re deeply encoded in our bodies and nervous systems. This is why making lasting changes can feel impossible, even when we fully understand the need for change.

This internal conflict can feel as though we’re doing something wrong. But we’re not at fault.

This struggle has nothing to do with a lack of character, intelligence, or willpower. Instead, it reflects the powerful biological and psychological forces that make moving beyond childhood coping strategies challenging for so many.

Neural Pathway Entrenchment

Early survival strategies carve deep neural pathways that feel neurologically “comfortable” and become automatic. Formed during critical stages of development, these circuits are so ingrained in the brain that they feel safer than trying new, unfamiliar responses. The brain’s predictive system labels familiar patterns as “safe,” even if they no longer serve us, making authentic responses seem threatening even when objectively they’re not dangerous.

Autonomic Nervous System Conditioning

When being authentic felt unsafe in childhood, the body’s threat response system became attuned to those danger cues. This hypervigilance lingers into adulthood, making authentic self-expression trigger the same stress responses as in childhood. To the nervous system, social rejection or conflict can feel like an existential threat, much like abandonment once did.

Inherited Patterns

Intergenerational trauma can lead to the development of fawning or people-pleasing behaviors— where we learn to prioritize others’ needs and maintain harmony at the expense of our own authenticity, as this pattern may have been crucial for survival in previous generations. We often unconsciously adopt our family’s emotional survival patterns, treating these adaptations as “rules to live by” rather than flexible, adaptable responses.

Attachment Trauma Imprinting

Early attachment wounds instill a core belief that ‘belonging requires performance’—acting as someone we’re not to secure approval. This belief is not merely psychological; it’s hardwired into our survival instincts becoming our way of being. The brain-body system, shaped by these early experiences, operates under the assumption that altering ourselves or prioritizing others’ needs and wants is essential for acceptance and belonging. Authenticity feels risky, as the nervous system equates it with the threat of losing connection.

Each of the above reasons is why moving from attachment to authenticity isn’t just a mental choice, but a complex neurobiological and psychological transformation requiring compassionate, patient rewiring of deeply established survival systems.

The Stakes of Self-Abandonment

“The workplace has become a psychological battleground where the soul is under continuous assault.”—bell hooks, American author, theorist, educator, and social critic

The Price of Fitting In

What if the price of fitting in is losing yourself?

Self-abandonment isn’t a dramatic buzzword—it’s the quiet act of silencing your truth to secure a false sense of belonging. It’s the trade-off of your authentic self—who you are, how you feel, what you want and believe, and what truly matters—for the illusion of acceptance. This surrender also denies the truth of who you’re not, what you don’t feel, what you don’t want, believe, or value—leaving your true identity and boundaries behind in the pursuit of connection.

A Compartmentalized Life Creates a Fragmented Life

When we silence our true selves in the workplace, reality starts to blur at the edges. Because it doesn’t feel real. We’re not our genuine selves engaging in authentic interactions. Some describe it as acting a role or living a separate life—a voluntary version of what we see in Severance (a popular TV series).

While we may not have a physical chip dividing our consciousness, we perform our own daily severance. Our authentic selves become quarantined, watching from behind mental walls as we navigate our professional persona.

Around us, we see these psychological splits in each other—we become the ambitious executive severed from our doubts, the unflappable manager disconnected from our vulnerability, the team player divided from our individual needs.

While most of us don’t experience such a stark divide as in Severance, many of us perform similar psychological gymnastics maintaining these separate selves. This constant state of division and performance extracts a hidden toll.

The Hidden Toll: Burnout

Burnout isn’t just exhaustion—it’s the weight accumulated from all the times we’ve suppressed parts of our true selves. The gift of burnout is your authentic self inviting you back home to rejoin and be with your whole self. When we come home to ourselves, we experience true belonging.

Strategy Upgrade: From Survival to Sovereignty

“Authenticity is the daily practice of letting go of who we think we’re supposed to be and embracing who we are.”—Brené Brown, American Social Worker, Researcher & Author

The beauty of choosing to live authentically is that it empowers us to claim personal sovereignty—to own ourselves, including our decisions.

Adulthood offers something revolutionary: actual choice.

Our survival no longer depends on others in the same way as it did when we were young. Losing a connection doesn’t equate to losing a lifeline. In fact, as adults, if a connection fades because we are true to ourselves, we might even say, “Good riddance!” As Dr. Seuss wisely put it: Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind.

True abandonment isn’t possible in adulthood when we can choose to care for ourselves through:

• The wisdom gained from life’s experiences
• Skills and knowledge we’ve developed
• Resources we can tap into
• A chosen community or support network
• The discernment to recognize what’s best for us

Our sovereignty grows as we trust ourselves and consistently make decisions that align with our truth and well-being, one intentional and courageous choice at a time.

Authenticity Experiment: Your Practical Rebellion

“The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.”—Carl Jung, Swiss psychiatrist, psychotherapist, psychologist, and Holocaust survivor

Understanding these patterns is illuminating – yet awareness alone rarely creates change.

While we might recognize our childhood survival strategies intellectually, our nervous systems need new experiences to embody the belief that authenticity is truly safe now.

This is where deliberate practice comes in.

To start, no grand gestures or dramatic transformations, but small, intentional experiments that allow our systems to update their old programming. Think of it as creating a gentle laboratory for your authentic self—a space where you can test, observe, and gradually expand your comfort with being your whole self.

The following experiments are small yet meaningful to create new reference points for your nervous system. Each one is an invitation, not a prescription—take what resonates and modify what doesn’t.

1. Set a “truth check” daily alarm. When it rings, ask:
   • What am I feeling right now?
   • Am I being, or performing?
   • What would be different if I embraced my whole self?
2. Familiarize yourself with your “whole-body ‘yes’ and ‘no’”
   • Say “yes” to one thing this week that feels aligned from head to toe
   • Say “no” to one thing this week that doesn’t align from head to toe
   • Notice the body sensations and internal narrative as you assert what’s right for you
3. Try one small act of genuine self-expression this week
   • Express who you are, what you value, what matters through words or actions
   • Experiment at work or outside of work
   • Notice the impact of your genuine expression on yourself and others

Treat self-discovery like a scientific exploration. Keep experiments small. Notice how it feels. Observe and document the outcome. Refine and repeat to learn more.

Closing Thoughts

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”—Ralph Waldo Emerson, American Philosopher

Authenticity is a practice, not a destination.

We are not here to be perfect. We are here to be present. Each moment of awareness is a quiet victory of self-reclamation. Every small step toward our true selves rewires our inner worlds, gradually strengthening and healing us.

In this collective journey, your small steps will inevitably lead to bolder strides toward what inspires you, gradually unveiling or amplifying your unique essence. This is the place from which you will create your best work, deepest connections, and the most meaningful impact.

Your authenticity becomes a beacon—quietly but powerfully drawing in those who will appreciate not just what you can offer and do for them, but the profound spirit of who you are. That’s the kind of connection we all long for. That’s the kind of belonging you deserve.