Mar 9 (edited) • Seeking Support
Question about Identifying "Authentic" Self
Lately I've had been thinking a lot about a core theme in all the Brojo material: living authentically.
The context to the question I'm about to ask is that I recently started taking the contraceptive pill after being diagnosed with adenomyosis and PCOS (the worst symptom of which was dyspareunia). The first two and half months on the pill were fine and then in the third month I started feeling unusually depressed. Now, I've dealt with high anxiety and very mild depression my whole life, but this depression has been next level. My doctor agreed that while the pill may not be the root cause of the depression, there is significant evidence to suggest that the hormone changes as a result of the pill can at least amplify depression. So, my question to everyone, but especially and , how can we identify who we "authentically" are when there are so many other influences that could be altering our minds and in turn impairing that sense of authentic self?
In my case, I've been thinking specifically about the role of hormones on the mind. The contraceptive pill has caused me to feel depressed in a way I would not consider to be "authentically" me and yet it's really colouring my vision of the world at the moment. But even if I wasn't on the pill, we can't deny that hormones play a large role in our lives, prompting this related question: what is "us", and what is hormones? To give an example of something that bothers me on this topic: I am sure that I do not want children and I have felt this way since I was a child, when I first realised that it was an option. Uncovering my shame around this topic has been one of the key outcomes from Brojo — I know it’s not the societal norm, but this choice feels like “me” and I’m willing to lose potential partners in being honest about it. My "authentic" belief is that to feel fulfilled, each individual needs to experience creation and nurturing in some way, but not necessarily in the physical sense of having children. For me, the creation is my writing, and the nurturing is my goal of running a writing retreat centre here in Italy. I do like taking care of others, but I've always been drawn to older people, even as a child myself. All that being said, having engaged with Buddhist teachings, I accept that people are always evolving, even from one second to the next. But while people change, I comfort myself with the thought that they change in a very slow and natural way, let's say at a 45 degree angle over many years, but certainly not a 180. I am not sure what a 45 degree angle on the children question looks like, since you can’t have a quarter of a child, haha. But maybe it’s meeting a partner who accepts that I have never been into babies, who agrees that not all women are built like that, and who is willing to be an active participant in the early parenting as a result — perhaps after many years together, we’d agree just to leave up to fate, not because we want a “baby” (after all, they’re only a baby for a short time) but because we’d enjoy supporting the growth of a new individual. Or maybe 45 degrees for me is a stepchild should I meet a man who has one — I am oddly open to that concept as most kids seem to really like me for some reason. Then again I could go 45 degrees the opposite way and become even more entrenched in my position. I don't know, the point is that 45 degree angles are hard for our present selves to imagine but they do sometimes happen because people do change, and I feel at peace with those changes still being “authentic”. But what scares the living daylights out of me is being told by society that one day “hormones” will suddenly kick in and I’ll be baby-crazy. To me, to go from not wanting children at all for almost my whole life to becoming one of those cervical-mucus-monitoring-fertility-obsessed women would be a total 180. I would argue that such a rapid change couldn’t possibly be my authentic self. The whole hormone thing really freaks me out on so many levels even beyond the baby question.
Obviously, there are other things beyond hormones that this question can be applied to. Alcohol, sugar, even other non-hormonal medications (my doctor shared her experience of anti-malaria medication causing severe depression during her work in Sudan) are all known to alter the brain, so given all these influences on the mind, how can we determine what is our authentic self?
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Question about Identifying "Authentic" Self
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