Personal Integrated Change Toward Authenticity
Personal Integrated Change Toward Authenticity
Change doesn’t necessarily mean becoming someone new. Sometimes it means becoming more authentically you.
Throughout my career as a social worker and counsellor, this is the perspective I have taken when approaching meeting my clients at moments of uncertainty in their lives. Specifically regarding my counselling and therapy work with men, I have worked with numerous clients who have approached initial sessions cautious and weary, describing their assumptions about therapy as akin to “brainwashing”. Ultimately, when I look at change through the therapeutic process, it is never my intention to change who my client is, but to help them be more of their authentic selves.
If you are struggling with pornography, masturbation, sexual secrecy, or another behaviour that feels out of alignment with the person you want to be, it can be tempting to think that enacting change means becoming a completely different man. We often imagine the “better version” of ourselves as more disciplined, more masculine, or more controlled, and able to “avoid conflict”. A common strategy to avoid conflict that I’ve observed with many men that I have worked with is to shut down their connection to, and awareness of, their personal needs and boundaries, and suffer in silence. This creates an environment where they see their needs as a burden to their loved ones, and their identities as utilitarian in service to those around them.
But what if meaningful change is less about shuttering who we are and becoming someone new, and more about becoming less divided?
I think of this as personal integrated change toward authenticity: bringing your behaviours, values, emotions, and understanding of yourself into greater alignment. This doesn’t mean that every internal part of you has to agree all the time, and that you have to “become-one with the universe”. What it does mean is learning to understand those different parts of yourself, and finding appreciation for what they need and value without allowing shame, secrecy, or rigid expectations to run the show.
When Your Life Doesn’t Match Your Values
Research on masculinity suggests that men can experience distress when there is a discrepancy between who they believe they actually are, who they think they ought to be, and who they personally want to become. These aren’t necessarily always the same person. For example, you might believe that a “real man” should always be sexually confident, self-controlled, emotionally unaffected, and able to handle everything alone. At the same time, you may deeply value intimacy, honesty, tenderness, spirituality, or emotional connection. The problem may not simply be that we are failing to live up to masculinity, it may be that we are trying to make sense of competing ideas about what masculinity is supposed to mean.
Boxer and Gill (2021) found that, among the men they studied, anxiety was associated with incongruence between masculine self-reliance, personal control, and other belief systems. Their findings point toward an important question that many men, including myself, have grappled with: Do the ways you are trying to be a man actually fit the man you want to be?
Shame Doesn’t Have to Become Your Identity
Struggles with sexual integrity can create enormous shame. A part of you that hides in the deepest shadows of your heart. That part, that monster of shame, threatens to destroy your life if you tell someone about it, while also screaming inside your head that something is wrong. In this way, shame can make change strangely difficult. When something you have done becomes evidence for a universal conclusion about your identity…
“I’m disgusting.”
“I’m broken.”
“I’m not a real man.”
…there is little room left for curiosity. The evidence the Shame-Monster needs is all on the table, so why keep exploring and asking questions? At this point, you are no longer examining a behaviour, you’re judging your entire identity.
Research suggests that self-acceptance and resilience can help us develop a stronger sense of control over our behaviour and our circumstances. Shame makes us feel stuck about who we are and what we’ve done, self-acceptance can help us recognize that we can take responsibility for our choices and still have the ability to change what happens next (Kaplánová & Gregor, 2021).
Accountability says: “I did something that does not fit my values, and I can take responsibility for changing it. I want to work towards being the man I want to be.”
Shame says: “I did something wrong, therefore I am wrong. I want to avoid being the man I have been.”
This is the important distinction. Personal integrated change requires the first without getting trapped in the second.
Change Means Listening to the Parts of You
So often I’ve worked with men who have used behaviours when they are feeling stressed, angry, or overwhelmed that don’t align with their values. A lot of times, I hear this description of their perspective:
“It’s like another part of me took over.”
Sometimes a sexual behaviour has been doing something for you, performing some underlying function in support of your needs, even if it has ultimately created problems.
Perhaps porn provides temporary relief from loneliness. Perhaps masturbation becomes a way of managing anxiety. Perhaps secrecy protects you from the fear of disappointing someone, or an escape from expectations you feel unable to meet. When our internal parts “take over” they are often trying to protect us from these fears, even though the behaviour is something that our authentic self doesn’t agree with.
To be clear, understanding this does not excuse harmful behaviour or remove responsibility. It gives you information to help you move forward and create change towards authenticity.
The Internal Family Systems therapy framework (IFS) offers one way of thinking about this. Rather than treating unwanted behaviours as evidence that something is fundamentally wrong with you, IFS conceptualizes different internal “parts” as having different roles, including protective roles. Curiosity about those parts can create space between you and the behaviour (Schwartz, 2021).
That space matters.
Try this out:
You can say to yourself, “A part of me wants this right now…” without having to conclude, “…therefore this is who I am.”
Boxer, A., & Gill, P. R. (2021). Predicting anxiety from the complex interaction between masculinity and spiritual beliefs. American Journal of Men’s Health, 15(5), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1177/15579883211049021
Kaplánová, A., & Gregor, A. (2021). Self-acceptance, shame withdrawal tendencies and resilience as predictors of locus of control of behavior. Psychological Studies, 66(1), 85–91. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12646-020-00589-1
Schwartz, R. C. (2021). No bad parts: Healing trauma & restoring wholeness with the internal family systems model. Sounds True.
