Being authentic

Recently I have had experienced a few personal victories, that I feel quite amazed and thankful for. I have been feeling quite fearful about certain social situations and expectations from particular people. These fears arise from past negative and hurtful experiences that I've had. For a long time, I've been feeling quite stuck in these fears, going through the seemingly endless cycles of remembering the hurts and pain. I am still fearful, but it's been less intimidating for me these days and I feel a sense of liberation and freedom.

What I've discovered that is key to start experiencing freedom from the fear of social expectations is to be real and authentic with oneself, and with God. Here's the process:

1. Acknowledging that feelings of fear and shame are present and there's nothing wrong with having feelings of fear and shame
- It helped to label for myself the feelings of fear and shame.
- The fear, arising from how other people will see me and my flaws.
- The shame, arising from how I see myself and all my flaws and weaknesses.


2. To stay with feelings of fear and shame
- The most instinctive/natural thing to do when we feel fear and shame is to run and to hide (respectively). That's what I've been seeing myself doing. I'll either run away from the situation or withdraw from certain social interactions (whether literally or figuratively).
- It's helpful when we just stay with those emotions as they arise and know that these emotions are okay, normal and valid.
- It's often unhelpful to tell oneself that we ought not to feel these feelings because God is in control, God has already accepted us. Sometimes doing this means to also run away and hide from who we are. This is where I realise that our typical Christian advice falls short. At least from my understanding, when we listen to a sermon or go for a Bible study, we are "trained" to quickly dismiss our feelings and quickly focus on what Scripture says. Hence, at this stage when experiencing fear and shame, the normal me would keep cognitively telling myself that I'm okay - I need not feel fear because God is in control, and I need not feel shame because Christ died for my shame - But doing these at this stage might be a little too premature. 

3. To make meaning of the fear and the shame
- I realised that the fear and shame were there because I kept running away from my flaws and my weaknesses. I realised that there were so many things I didn't like about myself and I was afraid that if people knew me for who I am, they would not like me too. And if they did not like me, I'll dislike myself even more. It's an endless self perpetuating cycle of not liking myself and being fearful of people not liking me.

4. To be authentic with self and with God
-  I decided to write down a list of everything I disliked and hated about myself. It wasn't difficult to do it because I knew the many things I hated about myself. 
- I looked at the list and struggled with God (I think I am still struggling). I struggled and told God that I really still dislike myself and I wondered how He would make anything better, or how having a relationship with Him would make any difference to all that I hated about myself.
- I struggled with God about how I know cognitively that He has already accepted me, yet I still can't accept myself and the fact that He has already accepted me.

5. The implications of the gospel
-As I was struggling, I happened to stumble upon a quote by Tim Keller that says, "The gospel is this: We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared to believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope".
- I think the first part of the quote always precedes the second. We can only know how much we are loved and accepted when we know how sinful and flawed we are in ourselves.
- After writing all I hated about myself, being and loved and accepted in Jesus then made sense and gave me the freedom to accept myself for who I am, even with my flaws and weaknesses.
- Since experiencing acceptance of who I am, I experienced the victory of being able to be less fearful in certain social situations and expectations. I honestly felt that it was really okay to just be who I am in those social situations and expectations, like it was also okay to fail to meet others' expectations. In the past, I would just run away or withdraw or give up because the fear of failure was too great. I was less organized by fear and shame in the way that I relate with others.
- I really did change at the end of my processing of these emotions of fear and shame. I really went into some social situation that I felt uncomfortable with, and I really did something I didn't normally do because of the fear of failure.


Reflections
-  Change in our behaviours is not the whole process of change. Often the typical Christian advice would be focused on on what we should do (or at best, think) differently, rather than how we can feel and think, and make meaning of our experiences.
- The process of change is often an unseen one. The behaviour is just one small (though significant) observable part of that change process. So we can stop being so preoccupied with working to ensure our behaviour changes, but rather allow ourselves to make meaning of what's happening to us in our different experiences and struggle with God through them too.
- Struggles, hurt and pain are part of the human experience (at least before Christ returns) and we need not always see them as negative or "blocks". We have the grace given to us to stay with the pain and hurt, to struggle through our difficulties and not just be preoccupied as to when the struggles would end or to run away/withdraw from them.