In the early stages of life, our primary need is to belong, which often leads us to sacrifice authenticity to gain acceptance. As children, we depend on caregivers for survival, and we quickly learn which parts of ourselves are acceptable based on their reactions. Unfortunately, this process can inhibit our true selves, as caregivers, despite their love, may struggle with their emotional issues. By the age of 7, most of our personality is shaped through relational experiences. 

The second phase of life involves reclaiming our authentic selves, which can be challenging, especially for Generation Z.  Many youth from Generation Z can find themselves in front of this threshold – letting go of the comfort of old identities developed mostly to belong, and stepping into the unknown of their authenticity, which of course, poses a threat to their previous life system and social structures. They are at a place in their lives, where the need for authenticity becomes stronger. As one goes down this path, old inner protectors and survival strategies will kick in, and one can find oneself overwhelmed by fear, anxiety, criticism, shame, and so on. These are signs that we are going on a new path, trying out something different, but older parts of our psyche which have the function to protect us (Bill Plotkin (2013) calls them subpersonalities) will fight against it, as they still believe being authentic is a threat to our wellbeing.

Nevertheless, the art is to embrace authenticity and belong to the greater web of life. As Bill Plotkin (2021) says “Authenticity is a piece of cake if you don’t mind alienating others and possibly being friendless. And social acceptance is a snap if you’re okay with being an impostor, willing to act in whatever ways are necessary to be accepted.” But finding a balance between the two is not an easy job. One needs courage, confidence, empathy, awareness, compassion and guidance.

Growing up, from a teen to a young adult is a process through which one learns more about the place they want to take in the world, who they are, what they bring and how can they enrich this world. The challenge comes from our consumerism, conformist, fear-infused society – in which important is to fit in, to look good, and to respect the norm, thus one can lose contact with one’s values, needs, desires, attitudes, and beliefs. Unfortunately, little guidance is there in childhood or teen years. But authenticity and belonging remain perhaps the most widespread longings of our times. Bill Plotkin (2021) translates the people’s yearning for “greater meaning or purpose in their lives” as “the opportunity to participate meaningfully in the world. They want to feel more real and more in communion with the web of life. They want their lives to make a difference”. The aforementioned author distinguishes between three different types of belonging:

• psychological belonging – knowing who you are, personal authenticity,
• social belonging – acceptance in a peer group or community
• ecological belonging -communion with the more-than-human world

The tasks of the growing-up process are to cultivate authenticity (I know who I am and I can express and embody this identity in my social life) and to belong and be socially accepted. Bill Plotkin (2021) gives us clear steps to how to cultivate belonging and authenticity*:

• Asking questions like: What is worth striving for? What genuinely brings me alive? What has heart for me and what doesn’t? Who are my people? What principles will I fight to uphold? To whom and what will I be faithful? What is necessary for a decent life? What is the meaning of human existence? What, to me, is God? Death?
• Learning to distinguish between authenticity (your own) and self-deception.
• Cultivating emotional skills. This includes the capacity for the full somatic experience of your emotions; the skill of insight into their meaning and significance; and the ability to compassionately express and act on your emotions in a way that honours both yourself and any others involved.
• Learning the art of conflict resolution.
• Developing the ability to define yourself culturally and to co-create your social world.
• Cultivating dexterity and sensitivity in sex and sexual relationships.
• Developing the ability to take care of yourself and earn a living.
• The practice of human-nature reciprocity and ecological responsibility for the well-being of the greater Earth community.

*This 8 steps are taken from his book “The Journey of Soul Initiation: A Field Guide for Visionaries, Evolutionaries, and Revolutionaries” (2021)

Authenticity and belonging are deeply connected to our attachment. As social beings, we cannot develop independently of the world we live in. Our closest relationships to our community, culture and society, all have an influence on our character’s development, on the values we introject, the life perspective we develop and so on. Working with our attachment style means addressing our relationships: me in relation to others, with the world and with myself.

How I communicate, how I relate, and the place I take in the world is essentially connected with the sense of Self, a sense of authenticity, and acceptance. The self-concept is developed with the help of our caregivers from an early age. As previously mentioned, most of our character is developed by the age of 7, and all start with – the first relationship we have – the primary caretaker (usually the mother) and the baby. The baby learns to feel oneself through the mother – and as Bessel van der Kolk (2015) says the way a mother holds her child underlies “the ability to feel the body as the place where the psyche lives”. Based on the qualities of this primary interaction different types of attachments can be developed: anxious, avoidant, disorganised, and secure.

The attachment style plays out in our relationship throughout life. The way we communicate, express our emotions and needs, and the trust and safety we can experience are based on our attachment style. Regardless of what attachment style we have, we can work to heal it and develop a secure attachment. The more we can embody and internalise safety, the more authentic we can be, the more we can develop further in life and we can create healthier and nourishing relationships. A secure attachment combined with the cultivation of competency builds an internal locus of control, the key factor in healthy coping throughout life. John Churchill (2024) describes attachment as being formed of 4 qualities.

1. The first quality is safety – feeling physically safe. This is internalised as a deep sense of security, when as babies we were held by someone, for example, one of the caretakers being physically present and holding us in their arms.
2. The second quality is attunement. For example, if a parent is physically holding the child, but emotionally they are absent, checking their phone or being mentally and emotionally somewhere else, then attunement doesn’t happen. Attunement is defined as the capacity to feel into someone else’s nervous system, to be felt by someone else and to be feeling someone else. The experience of feeling felt means taking the other person’s nervous system inside of you. In the case of children, the parents’ nervous system is used to organise and regulate the nervous system of the child. When a child doesn’t have this experience, it can be difficult to develop the ability to organise their internal landscape.
3. The third quality is feeling valued. This is experienced and internalised when, for example, the child is in the playground and looking behind and sees the parents looking after them with love and interest, in awe at the miracle this child is. The child feels seen but also cherished – in those moments we internalise the feeling of being valued and cherished.
4. The fourth quality is developing a sense of self, a capacity to ask questions to yourself about yourself. This is modelled by parents since the children can’t do it on their own. For example, the parents notice the interests of the child and ask the child – “what do you want to do? What do you like? I see you want to play/to be a musician etc”. The parents mirror and encourage the child to explore what she likes and is curious about. This behaviour can be translated as “a deep caring from the adult to help instil inside of the child the GPS system” (Churchill, J. 2024) through which we learn to navigate in life following what is in alignment with ourselves. Without this help, the child can’t ask themselves “What do I think about this? What do I want” and so on.

Imagination is a powerful tool in our lives, it can enable us to go beyond what we know and create new possibilities, it is essential for making our hopes come true. It boosts our creativity, can alleviate our pain, helps heal wounds, restructure narrative and so on. Recent research shows that the brain can struggle to make the difference between what we imagine and reality. “The more vividly a person imagines something, the more likely it is that they believe it’s real” (University College London researchers). Their study showed, as Dr. Dijkstra (Kolk, B. van der, 2015), said, “there is no categorical difference between imagination and reality; instead, it is a difference in degree, not in kind”. Thus, our projections onto reality have as big influence on the brain as reality itself. Using our imagination we can reparent our inner child and develop a secure attachment style. For example, in meditation or visualisation, one can envision the ideal parent or guide, how they would act, what they would say, and how they would feel in their presence.

Using Bill Plotkin’s model of the human psyche (2013) which has 4 directions – representing 4 facets of our psyche, we can learn to connect and embody the qualities of the North – defined as the Nurturing Generative Adult. The figure below shows the map of the psyche as described by Plotkin, but in this section, we will address only the Nurturing Generative Adult – the qualities of the North – as a foundational work for developing our ideal inner parents, those that have the resources and qualities to reparent our inner child. The NGA is “emphatic, compassionate, courageous, competent, knowledgeable, productive and able to provide genuine loving care and service to both ourselves and others. Through the NGA, we contribute our best and most creative parenting, leading, teaching, directing, producing and healing”. It is the inner parent – the one that is emotionally grounded enough to take care of our young wounded parts.

Image from Bill Plotkin (2013)- Wild Mind, page 21

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the ANPCDEFP. Neither the European Union nor the ANPCDEFP can be held responsible for them.