Expressing Your Authentic Voice: How Phony Roles Prevent Us From Experiencing Vitality

All The World's A Stage
When there is a lack of freedom to express ourselves authentically, a rigidity and inflexibility of response takes place. This is sometimes seen clearly in elderly people whose personalities have conformed to a prescripted "role" in life, and as a result, their responses are unconsciously "rote." They have a witty "quip" for every comment made, but it doesn't come from the heart. Instead, the robotic-like mechanism speaks for them. They are no longer required to think for themselves, nor are they required to feel deeply. Afraid they might love too much and get hurt, they have withdrawn into a protective shell; a highly automated, predictable role, and asking them to genuinely experience life (to display openness)  is terrifying. Roles are the opposite of vulnerability. Roles are the antithesis of authenticity. They are the substitute for the real thing: love. These people are "play-acting." They are not living their lives; they are playing a given role in life. Life has become a highly scripted stage, where they are the director and nobody gets hurt.

The Show's Just Begun
When we play roles, we are doing it unconsciously. It is difficult to be self-aware when we are playing them; it can take an observer (such as a counselor, partner or friend) to point out when we are play-acting again. When we play phony roles, it feels "natural," and doesn't feel "phony," or "put on." When our roles begin to "replace" our genuine responses, our authentic selves, our true voice, then we have true psychopathology: neurosis. A neurosis is defined as a dysfunction of the personality. A neurosis is an inflexible character. People who are "stuck" in the role cannot "move about freely." The role has come to define them, and in a sense, it has "replaced" parts of their original personality, their authentic self, who they are innately. What is left is a rigid character role they play for the world. It is an eery experience to try to make genuine contact with a "real person" and get instead a "programmed response."

Top Dog and Underdog
In Gestalt Therapy, the two facets of personality seen most often are referred to as the Top Dog and the Underdog. Dr. Fritz (Frederick) Perls, the creator of Gestalt Therapy, described these trouble-makers as, "The two fighting clowns," because we can dialectically "play" both roles at different times and they both vie for control of the personality. The Top Dog role can be described as: superior, judgmental, demanding, perfectionist, and mostly, righteous, or having to be right. It's the part of the human personality which insists his view is the right view, his religion is the only religion, and his politics are the best. The second role we can play is the Underdog, who apologizes for her existence, second-guesses her decisions, feels insecure, tries hard to be polite and say the right thing, puts others needs ahead of her own, and tries desperately to meet others expectations of her. Dr. Perls often worked with these two polarized (opposite) expressions of the fragile Ego when facilitating therapy.

Examples of the Top Dog role would be the supervisor who treats employees as if they are his possessions, with disrespect or unfairness, instead of leading by example. He might lead with his head and seldom his heart, and as he commandeers the role of Top Dog, he forgets his humanity while playing the "important supervisor," too busy to notice his employee's struggles. The Underdog might work for the Top Dog, and being acutely aware of her mortality, she apologizes for it. She is hyper-critical of herself, while excusing the behavior of others. She is ultra-polite, self-abasing and subservient. Her behavior expresses, "You are more important than I." Examples of the Underdog role are seen in the "seen and not heard" demeanor of the maid who "cleans up" after other people's messes (mothers, wives and minorities favor this role). Playing Top Dog or Underdog creates a psychopathological problem: we are not free to be ourselves. We are busy playing a phony role, "living up" to someone elses expectation of us. The Top Dog supervisor wants to be a skilled leader, but doesn't know how, so he resorts to a phony authoritarian role in discharging his duties. He "lives up" to his idea of what a boss "should be." Because of his pretending, he denies his potential to learn to be a real leader. He substitutes a "dummy role" for the real thing, with which he falsely bolsters his fragile sense of Ego. This substituting what is not real for what is real is to cheat himself out of  the opportunity to learn and grow. It is to cheat those around him as well. The Underdog has been conditioned by her environment (family and culture) to, as the song says, "Take what is given ('cause I'm working for a livin"...)." She has been taught not to hope or ask for more. She has been conditioned to show gratitude, and not to question authority, so she "keeps her head down" and tries not to make trouble. The trouble with playing this phony role is that she denies herself the freedom of expression. While the Top Dog over-expresses his demands and wants, Underdog under-expresses. She keeps her thoughts to herself. In playing the silent observer, the submissive, her potential is diminished. Ever so slowly, like the tide that sneaks the sand from the shore, her potential and vitality are washed out to sea.

The Three Virtues of the Authentic Voice
 Lao Tzu said, "At the center of your being you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want." If this is true, if we know what we want, why can just being ourselves prove to be so challenging?
Becoming an authentic and free person is not as easy as it may sound. It requires three virtues: Openness, Teachability, and Honesty.

Openness is the ability to consider alternatives. It is the opposite of having to be right. There is a flexibility inherent in openness; I must be willing to change my position and consider others opinions or alternatives.

Teachability is the quality of eagerness to learn. To learn is to discover that something is possible (Perls). To learn is to explore, and the willingness to question our assumptions and try alternative methods.

Honesty is the undisturbed self. It is the essence of who we are; at the core of everyone is the unmolested self. This self is the self that  Lao Tzu spoke of: this self knows the truth about us. This self knows what it wants, knows what it should be doing, and knows its thoughts and desires. Of the three authentic virtues, honesty is the one which is most important to cultivate, and here is why: Without acknowledgement and expression of the undisturbed self, we have no inner compass by which to guide our lives. If we remain inhibited by denying our thoughts and desires, we will become a slave; institutionalized. We will conform and constrict our expressions to please the institutions of religion, government, society...sometimes even a partner becomes that institution.

Vitalness and Your Authentic Voice
When we stop thinking for ourselves, we stop dreaming...a moratorium is placed upon our vitalness...we are diminished. Though a certain amount of law-abiding is appropriate and necessary to live in society, to give up one's birth-right to self-expression helps no one. There has never been another person exactly like you, nor will there be. When we consider this truism, we see clearly that each person has a responsibility to contribute in their own way that which is uniquely theirs to contribute. To say only that which has already been said is an echo, and not a voice.

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