Finding your "Self-Culture"
by Victoria Lorient-Faibish MED, CCC, RPE, Registered Psychotherapist
Author of the book Find Your “Self-Culture”: Moving From Depression and Anxiety to Monumental Self-Acceptance
If you have not yet found your self-culture—your authentic, instinctive self—you are not living the life the universe intends for you. The planet needs the real you, and it is time that you began the journey! The pursuit of self-culture is a hard one for many of us, and I have unlimited compassion for those who embark on this path.
What is your inner voice saying? What makes your heart happy? What brings you joy? Who is your real self? What path are you on? And what do you want out of your life? You need to know the answers to these questions to live your life in the best way you can. The quest for your self-culture is not a narcissistic, futile, self-indulgent pursuit. It is vital to your well-being. You can serve those you love and the planet better when you know who you are and are at peace with yourself. This peace does not come without the “spiritual warrior” part of you doing its finest battle on your behalf. The journey is a profound, and at times arduous, look within. The result will be an emerging self that you will treasure, savour and protect because you know you fought for it and won!
Whatever ails you, whether it be depression, anxiety, addiction, unhappiness, relationship issues or any other emotional disharmony, finding your self-culture is key to healing. There is no doubt that brain chemistry, nutrition, spirituality, support, cognitive changes and discipline are part of the recipe for success in the reversal of chronic mental disharmony, but the journey to find and live your self-culture is essential to being a balanced adult.
There is no way around the mountain; you must go through it on all levels: body, mind and spirit. There will be pain and discomfort when defining your own “culture” in the face of the strong and imposing cultures of your society and family and their long-held belief systems. This does not at all mean total amputation of your family-culture or society. But you will need a period of adjustment for your new normal to surface and stick. The joy you derive from living your own self-cultural truth will be matched, to be sure, by the conflict that can ensue during the process. But the thing to hold onto at every turn is the fact that you, and only you, are the one living your life. No one else is. True joy comes from unearthing your true self from the depths of your soul.
Self-Culture versus Family-Culture
Before we can define self-culture, we need to look at what culture is. Culture is the full range of learned human behaviour patterns, such as ritual, habits and customs. Culture is a powerful tool for survival, but it is a fragile phenomenon, constantly changing and easily lost because it exists only in our minds.
Your family-culture is all you know in the beginning. It influences all aspects of your life. This is something you engage in without thinking. It is something that gives you a sense of community, belonging and family—when it is working for you. When it is not, it may cause you to feel unhappy. It can exert undue pressure on you to conform and fit into what your family knows and has done for generations. To define yourself, or your self-culture, in the midst of this pressure is very difficult, and if you find you are not able to be free to be yourself, a feeling of unhappiness can permeate your life. Even if you are happy within the construct of your family-culture, the journey to knowing yourself better and defining who you are is a worthy endeavour. Finding one’s self-culture is valuable for all who walk the planet, especially for those who feel like an alien in their own homes.
When we do not look inside to hear the voice that is truly our own, we are actually living an amalgam of our family-culture and our societal culture rather unconsciously. This can either work for us or betray us. If it is betraying us, we can become depressed and anxious. I have seen deeply unhappy people who appear to be happy on the outside, but inside, in the quiet of their lives, that happiness is not there. It is a facade that is masking deep unhappiness.
Total self-sacrifice in favor of the well-being of your family-culture will not lead you to feelings of joy. Instead, it will result in depression, resentment and eventual embitterment. It is important to be true to yourself as a means to create joy. You need to fill your own cup first and give to others from the overflow. When I refer to your family-culture, I do not mean your country of origin or religion, although these do play a part. Family-culture is the emotional baggage handed down through generations that profoundly affects the life of any given family. The relationships, such as between parents and children, brothers and sisters, grandparents and grandchildren, are the real meat of the issue, and from where a family-culture derives. These relationships influence how a person turns out. If individual needs and wants are constantly subjugated in favour of the group, that person’s well-being will be negatively affected, or if the emotional needs of all in the family are silenced in the face of one overbearing family member, things will turn out badly for those who have learned to silence their own authenticity just to survive this type of family minefield.
I see many people who are not living authentically and, therefore, are suffering terribly. They are struggling within, wanting to be who they truly are, yet having to contend with their beloved family, who puts so much pressure on them to conform with the family-culture. They mistakenly believe that guilt can be avoided by obeying the rules and not disappointing or displeasing the family. But this leads to self-sabotage, which is profoundly self-destructive.
It is important to remember that uncovering your true self brings with it responsibility as well. This quest is not permission to wage a full-scale rebellion against your parental culture. That would indicate that you are coming from your hurt child/teenage self, who feels the need to revolt in order to establish boundaries and preferences. Instead, when you are coming from your adult self, you know that you do not need to be aggressive or arrogant in your bid for selfhood. You accept it as fact that you must act in peaceful, non-defensive ways to establish the new normal of your own self-culture. In addition, I advise that you do your own inner work before announcing your plans to anyone. I firmly believe that doing versus telling is the best way to engage in new ways of behaving.
Most parents and loved ones truly want what is best for their children and relatives, so trust that your journey will eventually be accepted by the old guard. Be mindful that finding and living your self-culture may not occur very quickly or very easily. But time has a way of doing its healing work. Soon, with practice and diligence, you will be living the life of your choosing, in which you are on the top of your own priority list, and your family is still a blessed part of your life—but not the main show. This balancing act is necessary for your development as a reasonable and balanced adult who is facing the world on your own terms.
Getting to Work
So grab your shovels! You will be digging—excavating into the self—and at the same time creating a little necessary perturbation as you begin your journey to self-culture. It is profoundly important to do some deep emotional mining. You need to see if you are feeling any resentment about your present situation. Ask yourself these questions: Do you feel deprived of your authentic truth while living within your family-culture, your job, your community, your marriage or your society at large? Are you giving all of yourself to others and leaving very little for yourself? Have you been ignoring your true feelings about the state of your life? Are you living your life in your own way, or as someone else’s version of what is best for you?
If you answered yes to some or all of these questions, then you have some work to do. No one else is going to save you. You have to do the work of finding your self-culture. You, and you alone, are responsible for your life. You cannot blame others for your life situation; you have to do the work to have the life you want for yourself.
As you seek your authentic self, you may feel guilty for defining your own self-culture and establishing your empowered voice. Tell yourself that it is healthy and normal to establish your own way of being and distinguish yourself from others; that is, to “individuate.” Another way to help you alleviate your guilt is to establish what you are reasonably able to commit to regarding your dedication to your family and its culture. Be brutally honest with yourself. If you give more than you truly want to, resentment will creep in once again. Similarly, if you don’t give anything at all, guilt will do its damage. Thus, the course of your journey is a dance between guilt and self-culture that you will need to analyze often and honestly.
Selfy versus Selfish
I like the made-up word selfy instead of selfish, which means being concerned only with advantages for oneself without regard for others. You may feel that pursuing your self-culture will make you appear to be mean, selfish and unkind. Yes, the journey does involve you; however, you cannot help others unless you are filled with vitality yourself, and so I encourage an attitude of selfyness. Selfyness involves the consistent act of listening deeply to your true inner voice and allowing it to be louder than all other voices or opinions. It is personalized self-care. Unless you focus on yourself first, your attempts to give to others from an empty vessel will inevitably result in burnout.
The Spiritual Warrior
Finding your self-culture is hero’s work. I liken it to the journey of a warrior who is preparing for battle. There is no violence in this battle, but there is a plan of attack and a methodology that you need to employ to complete the journey. There are many forces out there that can dissuade you from being who you truly are. But no permanent change can occur without discipline, commitment and diligence, and because we tend to learn more profoundly through pain, I wish you the gift of despair! This may sound cruel, but pain is the great motivator, and people tend to be more teachable when they are in despair.
When people come into my office feeling despair, anxiety or depression, we engage in therapy designed to uncover the triggers to their unhappiness. We look at the messaging they have ingested and metabolized as truth but that now, as adults, just does not feel authentic. Because of conditioning, they feel trapped by the disease to please, obligation, stress, expenses they cannot afford and judgment from others. They come to me to see if there is a way out of their misery—and there is! But the journey requires the strength of a spiritual warrior.
There is no way around the mountain of pain and darkness; you have to go through it to get to the light on the other side. I see this part of the journey to selfhood as a crusade in which you need to pull out all the tools to support you on the sometimes arduous trek. Part of being a spiritual warrior is having the courage to shine a light on the monsters that are keeping you stuck—to look at the obstacles to finding your self-culture squarely in the eye—and when you see the dark within, you have to name it, claim it and then transform it. The toxic patterns, the feelings of turmoil, the dysfunctional relationships are all part of the darkness. The only way to neutralize and transform any part of yourself that is causing you pain and grief is to completely and courageously shine a light on it. In this way, you will be able to truly understand yourself and the motives that keep you down. You will be able to bring the monster out of the unconscious realm. You cannot change the monster or learn from it if you are not aware of it. Also, you cannot learn from the dark parts of yourself if you judge these parts. Drawing on the strength of your spiritual warrior to look at these darker aspects from a more neutral stance will help to put you in a space where you are teachable. You will be less reactive and, therefore, more receptive to understanding any spiritual lessons that your buried monster, if released, could teach you.
You will need to grieve for what you leave behind. You may have self-doubt. You will most probably feel lost initially. But remember, for every feeling of loss, loneliness or emptiness, there will be a new normal that you specifically designed for yourself to live in. No one else has the privilege of designing your life other than yourself. Also, know that the more you endeavor to make yourself happy, joyful and authentic, the more the planet will benefit. Finding your self-culture ultimately means that you will be able to benefit the people around the planet and the universe as a whole, which is what I think we are all meant to do in our own unique way.
Thank you for reading
Finding Your “Self-Culture”
By Victoria Lorient-Faibish MEd, RP, CCC, RPE
Registered Psychotherapist
Author of the book Find Your “Self-Culture”: Moving From Depression and Anxiety to Monumental Self-Acceptance
Registered Psychotherapist
Holistic Psychotherapist
Masters in Educational Psychology
Canadian Certified Counsellor
Board Certified Polarity Practitioner
Registered Polarity Educator
Audio Book! Find Your Self-Culture
Courageous Conversations! My YouTube Channel
