Allow Your Inner-Frog to Shine

“The most common form of despair is not being who you are.”

Soren Kierkegaard

Being who we are is essential to our happiness. And yet, so many codependents have no idea of who they really are. We rejected and lost our real selves years ago. We buried them under a false self; often times an “ideal” self that reflected the person that our parents or others wanted us to be.

For some of us this ideal self was fueled by perfectionism. The real self underneath ached with inadequacy. It was the frog underneath the prince we were attempting to project to the world around us; or the raggedy Cinderella underneath the princess we wanted the world to see. We were two people in one and that drained a lot of energy out of us.

It’s exhausting to live with two personas. First off, it takes a lot of energy to suppress our real selves. We are constantly on-guard that some part of our unacceptable real self with accidently pop-out and be seen by others. But it’s equally as exhausting trying to make sure that no crack appears in our Prince/Princess armor. Heaven forbid that someone else should see that we really aren’t perfect after all.

Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of being exhausted while trying to balance two personas. Perfectionism has always been a problem for me and abandonment has been just as big of a problem. I figure I started burying my real self under an ideal self as a child because my parents weren’t able to accept and love me just as I was. Fear of abandonment forced me to deny my true self and a learned desire to be perfect intensified my own self-abandonment.

As a result, it’s been very difficult for me as an adult to let down my guard and get comfortable in my own REAL skin by letting go of my FALSE skin (self). But if we don’t allow our frogginess out for all the world to see, we will never know true lasting happiness. Fear will keep us trapped in our false, ideal selves and we will be slaves to depression and despair.

Being our true froggy selves is essential. This is something Cinderella realizes in the new Disney version of the popular fairytale. Toward the end of the film, the Prince has come to her home, where she has been a prisoner in the attic. When the prince discovers she’s there, he sends for her. And as Cinderella is descending the long staircase down out of the attic, she’s faced with a very real fear that we are all faced with: “Will the Prince accept me and love me in all of my raggedness? After all, he last saw me looking like a beautiful princess; now, he’s going to see the real me.”

Cinderella could have fled back up the stairs, filled with fear of being vulnerable before the Prince and possibly rejected by him. But she chooses not to do this. She allows herself to be vulnerable and shows her real raggedy self to the Prince, who accepts and loves her as she is. If she had fled back up the stairs, she would have been miserable for the rest of her life; not only because she would have missed out on true love, but  because even if the Prince had rejected her, she would have been true to her real self and stronger for it by allowing herself to be vulnerable. By choosing to show her true self to the Prince, Cinderella honored herself and found lasting happiness.

And by “lasting happiness,” I’m not so much talking about her relationship with the Prince, but rather her relationship with herself. She chose to be comfortable in her own REAL skin and nothing can bring us more happiness than that feeling of satisfaction that comes from accepting and loving ourselves just as we are.