Independence Self-Check: Do You Remember Your Natural Self?
I'm guessing it's been a while. Maybe it's time you got reacquainted.
NOTE: This post originally appeared as part of my series on the stages of the Healthy Deviant Hero’s Journey (from 2024). As I wrap up my summer break, I thought this July 4th might be a good time to surface it again. Because any meaningful sense of independence must begin with our recognizing and reclaiming our sovereign selves.
In a culture that pressures us to abandon our innate longings and convictions in favor of whatever our society seems to value more at that moment, this can be a challenging, lifelong task. So, at this moment when our young democracy is once again trying to find its footing, may we all take a moment and recommit to bringing our best and brightest selves to that shared task.
CONFORMITY SUCKS. I mean it sucks the the freedom, joy, and wonder right out of most of us, right? And yet, to some extent, our conditioning is the price we pay for survival.
We all come into this world essentially who and how we are—small animals equipped to navigate toward adulthood. We are formed by all we observe, all we experience, all we ingest.
And that’s how we become who we are today. We build the skills and aptitudes necessary to survive in the world that presents itself to us. And we learn to present ourselves to it in the ways we believe will help us succeed.
Most of us get pretty messed up along the way. It starts early, and it can happen fast.
In our early childhood, our brains are so plastic and so fast-expanding that our pace of learning is almost impossible to conceive. A lot of that learning is dedicated to understanding our physical world and where we fit into it.
Little by little, first at home and then at school …
We are taught where we begin and end.
We are taught how things work and what we need to do to get by.
We learn what is ours and not ours.
We learn to sit in chairs and color inside of lines.
We learn what is considered “good,” “attractive,” and “normal.” We learn to compare ourselves with others.
We learn to watch television, to operate electronic devices, to make and spend money.
We learn who is in control, whose opinions and decisions count most, and who has a right to boss other people around.
We learn what we’re supposed to want, what we’re supposed to dread, and what we’re supposed to be ashamed of.
Day by day, we go through the process of becoming civilized and indoctrinated into modern society.
Bit by bit, we become enmeshed with the Unhealthy Default Reality.
We go from being a small animal equipped to make sense of the natural world, to being an adult whose priorities are largely determined by mass media, complex social hierarchies, and large institutions.
We spend the rest of our lives trying to balance our basic human needs with the agendas set for us by the outside world. Our natural appetites, energy patterns, and priorities all shift accordingly.
Somewhere, beneath the conditioning and programming that the Unhealthy Default Reality imposes on us, the DNA of that original small animal still exists.
The essential operating instructions and central nervous system remain much as they were when we came into the world.
👉 The good news: Our natural state is still accessible to us if we choose to access it. 😇
👉 The bad news: This is not something the Unhealthy Default Reality teaches us. 😵💫
It’s something we must discover for ourselves.
We discover it through what I call the Healthy Deviant Hero’s Journey (inspired, of course, by Joseph Campbell’s classic model.)
In last week’s post, I shared this image of how I see that journey …
This week, I’m going to give you a quick overview and introduce you to Act 1 of that journey. In future posts, we’ll be exploring this and subsequent phases.
The Great Unlearning: A Drama in 7 Acts
While each person’s journey is different, one thing most Healthy Deviant Hero’s Journeys have something in common is the unlearning of at least some of what the Unhealthy Default Reality has taught us.
Because some of the Unhealthy Default Reality first lessons are focused on convincing us that we are inadequate failures and that we should expend all our energy and resources striving to become something other than who and how we are.
That experience plays out differently for each of us, but with some surprisingly similar results: stress, anxiety, insecurity, and struggle.
Fortunately, if you stay the course, the voyage takes a turn — and for most of us, it winds up imparting some important gifts. Things like insight, skill, authenticity, compassion, and a sense of purpose.
But wait, we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s return now to our story of formation …
Act 1: Natural State
Our Natural State is our entry point into the world, and into ourselves. Barring birth traumas or congenital challenges, we typically arrive in a reasonably healthy condition, comfortable in our own skin, unashamed, curious, and open to the world around us, eager to discover all that is within our reach.
In this state, we feel like part of a larger whole, with nothing to prove and no need to earn outside approval. We take pleasure in simply being and in feeling connected to all that surrounds us.
Act 2. Compliance
Here we begin registering and conforming to social expectations and norms. Adopting and internalizing our society’s preferences, we invest increasing amounts of energy in trying to “fit in” or perform the roles we are told that we must.
We strive to live up to the ideals and images that are presented to us as “normal” and desirable. We start to notice the ways that we don’t measure up. We fear judgment and exclusion on the basis of our points of difference or perceived inadequacy.
The goal of “good enough” seems forever beyond reach. We try to purchase, practice, and attain our society’s markers of success. Or, in some cases, we simply try to survive.
Act 3. Descent
Here we experience the building sense of stress, anxiety, insecurity, and impending failure that comes up from struggling to comply with unachievable standards or to endure intolerable pain.
Our health and happiness degrade as the result of stress, strain, self-denial, and counterproductive interventions. Our energy, vitality, self-confidence, and self-regard are all depleted through our efforts at self-improvement, self-correction, or self-soothing.
In our increasing urgency to fix whatever we see as “wrong with us” and to achieve what we are told will make us happy, we may become increasingly dependent on outside agents and experts to tell us what to do, or at least to find us acceptable.
Act 4. Darkness
Struggling and suffering with a growing assortment of unconscious behaviors and compulsive coping mechanisms, we feel a deepening sense of helplessness, hopelessness, and desperation.
We may experience a severe dissatisfaction with our appearance, achievements, and place in the world, and we may be increasingly alienated from our own body.
Feeling out of control, victimized, and emotionally reactive, we may be frequently anxious, depressed, tearful, rageful, reactive, critical, or withdrawn.
We may be inclined to seeking oblivion or anesthesia through drugs, alcohol, food, sex, gambling, digital distraction, risk-taking, or other self-numbing, self-distracting, or self-soothing dependencies.
Act 5. Divergence
Approaching or arriving at an unsustainable, rock-bottom state, we decide that we don’t want to (or can’t) keep living the way we have been. Moving away from conventional improvement prescriptions and interventions, we may seek other forms of professional help or spiritual guidance, and new sources of social support.
As we begin breaking away from the status quo, we may pursue more progressive forms of health care (such as alternative, integrative, and functional medicine) and more progressive forms of personal exploration. We may experiment with new ways of eating, moving, or living.
Discovering that a lot of what works for us is not at all what we’ve been told to do, and also not what most other people are doing, we start to care less whether other people understand or approve of our choices. We decide that the rewards of our difference are greater than the costs.
Act 6. Rebellion
Striking out on our own path toward health, we may look to other Healthy Deviants for counsel and perspective. In this stage, we may feel relieved to have discovered approaches that are actually working, but also angry, resentful, or mortified about all that we’ve been put through (or put ourselves through) on the way to this better place.
We may be outraged or dumbfounded that nobody has told us there are easier, better, more effective ways to approach health and happiness. We may regret having wasted so much time, money, and energy on things that don’t work.
Feeling that we’ve suffered unjustly, we may be given to railing against the oppressive, conspiratorial forces of the Unhealthy Default Reality, including mass media, mass health care, big food, big oil, big pharma, the government, the patriarchy, the military industrial complex, colonialism, and more. Uncertain whom to blame, we may find ourselves waving our fists in the air at all the powers that be.
Act 7. Healthy Deviance
Realizing that while rebellion can be a useful and necessary state, it can also be exhausting and negative-minded, we begin seeking a more sustainable and enjoyable position to play from.
In this stage, we begin to recognize that through all our trials and tribulations, we have become stronger, wiser, better versions of ourselves. Feeling grateful for our own hard-won knowledge and experience, and relieved that life no longer seems as hard, we feel a growing desire to give back.
Knowing that we carry insights and gifts that others can benefit from, we long to share them with anyone who wants to learn. We get comfortable with the fact that even though we’ve arrived in a better place, we will inevitably step back and forth between all the positions on the Healthy Deviant Hero’s Journey. Sometimes we will inhabit more than one spot—or hold the viewpoints of more than one station—simultaneously.
Act 8. The Return
Consistent with a classic hero’s journey, the final stage of the Healthy Deviant Hero’s Journey represents a “return” phase. Because at this point, all of the stages of our journey live within us, we now have the opportunity to reinhabit the easy, authentic, Natural State that is our birthright.
We no longer feel we have something to fix or prove, but rather, that we are here to witness and observe with empathy, to do some good, to relieve unnecessary waste and suffering. We now carry wisdom, resources, and inspiration—the bounty gathered on all the previous stages of our voyage—and feel compelled to share them with others.
This can manifest as a “pay it forward” instinct focused on helping individuals struggling with our former challenges or as a generalized passion for making positive change in the wider world.
Any of this sounding familiar?
Most of the time, when I describe this journey to folks, I see a glimmer of recognition. And often, vigorous head-nodding. Sometimes tears.
We’ve all moved through at least some of these states in various moments and in various stages of our lives. But too often, we forget how far we’ve come. We forget that we can choose where we will head next.
So starting next week, I’ll be sharing some tiny bits of my own story — just by way of example — and I’m going to be asking you some questions about your own.
For right now, here’s what I’d invite you to consider …
🤔 Reflecting back as far as you can, can you recall a memory from any part of your childhood (or later life) in which you felt completely at peace and okay in your body?
🤔 Can you recall even one moment when you felt unselfconscious but aware, connected with the world around you, but also clear on your own individuality?
See if you can find even a tiny memory like that, and describe it in careful detail.
It does not need to be an outwardly significant moment, but it will probably be a moment in which you can describe with some precision the sensory experience of being in your body.
If you can’t recall a particular moment, just picture yourself as an infant, coming fresh into the world, emerging directly from nature’s most basic processes, without any sense that you should be anything other than what you are.
Sit with that feeling a moment, and see if you can tap back into the experience of being in the right time at the right place without anything to prove or produce.
See if you can access the feeling of being some whole, simple, unadulterated version of yourself.
Reflect for a moment on these areas of inquiry, and if you like, note your answers in a journal. Or hit the comment button and share your thoughts here.
What I’m hoping you’ll recognize is that you still have access to that part of yourself — even if that access is tenuous and fleeting.
In next week’s post we’ll be looking at how it got that way — in Act 2 of the Healthy Deviant Hero’s Journey: Compliance. 😬
Happy 4th — and hope to connect with you next week when I’ll be back at the keyboard with some fresh Healthy Deviant goodies!
P.S. Interested in rediscovering your Natural State over the course of one beautiful Saturday (plus an optional half-day Sunday brunch experience) — and experiencing some huge “aha!” moments in the process? Consider coming to Healthy Deviant Day Camp at my family’s 400-acre organic farm in Wisconsin on Sept. 12-13th 2026. Only a few spots left!
