One of the nicest pieces of feedback I've received recently came from a new client.

They told me that my videos appealed to them because I seemed authentic. That I looked comfortable being myself.

It was a lovely thing to hear.

But it also made me smile, because there was a time in my life when I would have done almost anything not to be fully seen. Without knowing it back then, I had become an expert at hiding long before I ever realised I was doing it.

It's something that so many of us do. Sometimes it's because we feel different. Sometimes because we've learned that expressing ourselves leads to criticism, rejection or ridicule. Sometimes it's simply because the world around us quietly teaches us which parts of ourselves are acceptable and which parts are better kept hidden.

Our formative years have an extraordinary influence on the adults we become.

As children, we don't have the luxury of deciding whether the environments we grow up in feel emotionally safe. We simply adapt to them.

If being quiet keeps the peace, we become quiet.

If making people laugh earns acceptance, we become funny.

If hiding our sexuality, our gender identity, our emotions or our needs helps us avoid pain, we learn to hide.

At the time, those adaptations make perfect sense.

They're not weaknesses.

They're survival strategies.

The problem is that survival strategies have a habit of outliving the situations that created them.

Years later, we may still be carrying behaviours that once protected us, even though they're now preventing us from living as fully as we'd like.

That's one of the reasons learning how to be your authentic self can feel so uncomfortable.

People often imagine authenticity as a simple decision:

"Just be yourself."

If only it were that easy.

The work surrounding authenticity is often about remembering who we were before we learned which parts of ourselves weren't welcome.

And that takes time.

As a gay man, I know what it feels like to carefully monitor what you say, how you say it, how you walk into a room and whether it's safe to let people see the whole of you.

Many LGBTQIA+ people become incredibly skilled at reading environments. We learn to assess whether we're safe before we've even introduced ourselves.

I don't think this is something unique to LGBTQIA+ people either, when it comes to authenticity.

I've worked with people from all kinds of backgrounds and cultures who had learned to hide different parts of themselves.

Some hid their emotions.

Some hid their ambitions.

Some hid their struggles.

Some hid their differences.

Different reasons.

The same underlying need.

To belong.

To stay safe.

To avoid rejection.

The difficulty is that if we spend enough years living according to other people's expectations, we can lose touch with what we actually want.

Not because we've done anything wrong.

Simply because we've become so practised at scanning outwards that we've forgotten to look inwards.

Becoming more authentic isn't about suddenly announcing every thought that comes into your head or changing your life overnight.

It's often much quieter than that.

It's noticing when you're agreeing just to avoid disappointing someone.

It's asking yourself what you think before deciding what everyone else wants.

It's choosing relationships where you don't have to edit yourself quite so heavily.

And perhaps most importantly, it's recognising that this process should happen when you're ready.

Nobody should be forced to come out.

Nobody should feel pressured to share parts of themselves before they feel safe enough to do so.

Authenticity isn't something we owe other people.

It's something we gradually offer ourselves.

One of the biggest shifts, I think, is realising that not everyone has to approve of who we are.

For many of us, that's uncomfortable.

We've spent years believing acceptance had to be earned.

That if we could just be a little easier, quieter, funnier or more successful, everyone would like us.

But there comes a point where the constant search for approval becomes more exhausting than the possibility of disapproval.

That's where real freedom begins.

Not because everyone suddenly understands us.

But because we're no longer asking everyone else for permission to be ourselves.

Authenticity is about slowly deciding that your relationship with yourself matters just as much as your relationship with everyone else.

That takes time and it rarely happens in a straight line.

But each and every time you choose honesty over performance, self-acceptance over approval, and connection over pretending, you're moving a little closer to the person you've been all along.

And in my experience, that's one of the most worthwhile things any of us can do.