Why You’re Acting Out of Alignment With Who You Really Are

The Quiet, Familiar Ache of Being Out of Alignment

Have you ever been in a group where everyone seems to share the same viewpoint, but their viewpoint is different from yours, and you don’t feel like you can speak up? Or have you ever felt that you had to behave in a certain manner or espouse viewpoints you don’t endorse, just to be accepted within that group? Did you feel like you were sort of betraying yourself or your own personal ethics? Or did it feel like you were just out of alignment? Almost like you just couldn’t quite be yourself? Do you feel like you lose just a little bit of yourself each and every time this happens? Almost like, if you continue to be that way, you might forget who you once were?

If you’ve ever felt this way, you are not alone. Millions of people feel this way every day – and I’d submit to all readers that many more than that number are the same way every day, but are so used to being and feeling the same that the internal conflict doesn’t even register anymore.

If you answered yes to any of these questions, take a moment to acknowledge yourself, because you aren’t lost. You’re aware. And awareness is the first sign that your authentic self is still alive and trying to be heard.

The questions I posed above have multiple answers as potential reasons, and to some degree, the reasons aren’t as important as the realization you feel after those specific moments, it’s the moment you walk away from a conversation knowing you didn’t say what you really believed, it’s the moment you nod along with a group even though your internal voice is whispering, "This isn’t what I think." It’s the moment you feel yourself shrinking — just a little — because being accepted felt safer than being authentic.

You may wonder:

Have I betrayed myself?

Have I signaled that my value is negotiable?

Have I abandoned my integrity, convictions, or principles?

No, you haven’t.

You’ve merely provided yourself with evidence of something you’ve yet to encounter and evaluate: That your need not to be excluded has a higher priority than your desire to be authentic. And that makes you human.

But now that you see it, the question becomes:

What do I do with this knowledge?

Why You Can’t “Just Be Yourself”: Understanding Your Emotional System

I often tell clients, “Those who wonder if they are too selfish are the ones who aren’t too selfish.”

The same principle applies here: Those who wonder why they can’t be themselves confidently are the ones who want to be themselves.

Our emotional system consists of three parts:

1. The Unconscious Emotional Mind (UEM)

This is the oldest, fastest, most powerful part of your emotional system. The UEM has the primary directive to preserve our emotional existence. It forms in early childhood. It’s created and maintained based on what we witness, experience, and interpret, then evaluates the data to determine safe paths and stores it all together. Our unconscious emotional mind is where the big stuff is contained —all the elements that control our existence throughout our lives—the most important element being our belief system.

Our belief system is the housing of concepts that make us, us. Our considerations of justice, fairness, and dignity are here. Additionally, this is the original location of every component that determines our:

• sense of personal value

• sense of worth in the world

• level of goodness

• barometer of comfort; the determination of the familiarity of the emotional expectations of people

• emotional rules

• coping and defense mechanisms

• trauma-shaped beliefs

2. The Conscious Emotional Mind (CEM)

This is the part of you that feels emotions in real time. It receives information from the UEM — but only what the UEM believes we can handle; it withholds that which we consciously cannot yet emotionally confront.

3. The Intellectual Brain

This is the logical, rational, adult part of you.

It handles math, reasoning, planning, and conscious decision-making.

But here’s the problem:

One of the greatest myths we must dispel, that we’ve been taught all of our lives: Our intellectual brain is not in charge. It is our unconscious emotional mind that influences every single decision, action, and reaction we take as human beings – and each decision is based on what it considers safe.

Our UEM decides what feels safe, what feels threatening, and how we behave, long before our intellectual brain has a chance to weigh in. And those evaluations are determined based on our belief systems in place at the time. This is why you can intellectually know you’re safe in a situation but still feel threatened by the prospect of acting authentically.

Childhood Emotional Rules Become Adult Misalignment

Here’s the big key: Our UEM determines safety, but not our conscious safety; our unconscious emotional mind considers anything we haven’t experienced a threat. Therefore, what our UEM considers safe is anything we have already experienced. Since we survived it once, our UEM knows it is survivable. We must never confuse safety and survivability with conscious pleasure or benefit, only that it’s survivable. Remember, the primary directive of our UEM is to preserve our emotional existence. For the UEM, safety equals familiarity.

And “familiar” often means:

• don’t stand out

• don’t challenge the group

• don’t risk rejection

• don’t disrupt the emotional status quo

• don’t reveal too much of yourself

These rules were formed in childhood, long before you had the ability to question them. All those things our youngest self witnessed, what to be or not to be, in an effort to be considered as approvable as possible.

So, when you’re in a group, and you silence yourself, it’s not because you lack courage.

It’s because your UEM is trying to protect you with rules created decades ago.

“Fear their beliefs will be mocked… fear of conflict… fear of being shunned… fear of disrupting the status quo.”

These fears are not about the present moment. They are the echoes of childhood emotional experiences that are still acting as the leader. Our UEM is not reacting to where we are currently; it’s reacting to the emotional rules we learned when we were 2-8 that, by the UEM's definition, provided safety.

The Adapted Self vs. the Authentic Self

The Adapted Self

This is the version of us that formed in childhood to survive our environment. Based on our environment, boundaries, and personalities in those early years, we realized the rules we must be aware of to be considered acceptable and therefore protected and safe. These are the POOL rules: Rules we created as the Primary Occurrence Of Learning.

In our POOL, we learned to be a certain way – specific to our environment; thus our Adapted Self learned to:

• please

• appease

• stay quiet

• avoid conflict

• anticipate others’ needs

• minimize your own

• stay emotionally small

• or accept the consequence of a lack of safety by not conforming to any of the above.

This identity was brilliant, it was created perfectly – it was developed for our environment then because it was developed to keep us safe. But now, as an adult, it no longer serves our purpose or our needs.

The Authentic Self

This is the version of you that existed before the world taught you to shrink or live according to the POOL rules. The Authentic Self is:

• grounded

• self-led

• emotionally honest

• aligned with your considered and convicted values

• capable of healthy conflict

• willing to be seen

• willing to be known

Misalignment happens when the adapted self overrides the authentic self.

Your authentic self wants to speak the truth.

Your adapted self wants to avoid danger.

Your future self wants to live in integrity.

Your UEM needs to avoid anything unfamiliar, as it is a threat.

This creates emotional gridlock.

The Emotional Cost of Living Out of Alignment

Every time you silence yourself, you feel it. Every time you shrink, you feel it. Every time you betray your truth, you feel it. We feel like we lose just a little bit of ourselves each and every time, because we do.

An automobile with a wheel base out of alignment causes multiple issues if not noticed and resolved; our emotions are no different. Conflict between our adapted and authentic selves creates a misalignment, and with that comes:

• emotional exhaustion

• resentment

• anxiety

• self-doubt

• identity confusion

• disconnection from your future self

• erosion of self-trust

And self-trust is the foundation of alignment. When we repeatedly act against our truth, our emotional system reinforces what our child’s mind felt as it created those original rules:

“My truth is unsafe.”

“My needs don’t matter.”

“My voice creates danger.”

This is why misalignment feels like self-abandonment — because it is. But here’s the part most people don’t realize:

Misalignment is not a sign you’re broken. It’s a sign you’re willing to wake up.

Only people who are hearing and feeling their authentic identity feel the pain of misalignment. People who are fully fused with their adapted identity no longer even feel the conflict. Your discomfort is evidence of your ability to grow; it is now your decision whether you grow or seek to become fused with your adapted self, like millions of others, and never become the “me you were meant to be.”

How to Return to Alignment With Who You Really Are

Alignment isn’t about becoming someone new. It’s about returning to who you were before the world taught you to become someone else for the sake of safety. My coaching framework offers a clear path back.

1. Understand Your Emotional System:

We cannot change what we do not understand.

Our UEM isn’t our enemy — it’s our oldest protector.

When we understand its rules, we can update them.

2. Reconnect With Your Authentic Identity:

This is the heart of the APACHE model:

• identity integration

• emotional responsibility

• future-self embodiment

• alignment with truth

• self-leadership

Your authentic self is not fragile; it’s simply unfamiliar. Remind yourself that you do not need to change; change indicates we’ve done something wrong – we never did; we created a set of rules perfectly for then. We need not change; we need to grow – and we will need the ally of our UEM to do so.

And the growth needed is somewhat ironic, because our growth really is the removal of the coping and defense mechanisms we developed in childhood to conform to the POOL rules for safety.

3. Build Micro-Acts of Alignment

You don’t need to overhaul your life. You need to take small, consistent actions that teach your UEM: “Authenticity is safe now.”

Examples:

• saying one honest sentence

• expressing one preference

• disagreeing gently once

• asking for one small need

• pausing before abandoning yourself

But the statements themselves are not enough -- with each authentic proclamation, be willing to feel the discomfort from expressing the truth and ask yourself, “What is the fear I am trying to avoid?” You’ll be amazed to find that, if done authentically and somatically, you’ll often have a vivid recollection of a time in childhood when your choices or voiced opinions were ignored, ridiculed, or rejected.

At this point, an excellent Personal Development Coach familiar with the APACHE method and framework is the perfect next step to help you reveal your authentic self as quickly as possible. That is the timeline that is still controlling the feeling of discomfort you do not deserve to feel. You must realize you now have the responsibility to free yourself of those earlier rules that were perfectly created for then and now, and now have the right to renovate.

4. Update Your Emotional Rules

Your childhood rules kept you safe then. They are no longer serving you and sometimes even suffocating you. You get to rewrite them – once you are made aware of the adapted self, you must realize you now have the responsibility to free yourself of those earlier rules that were perfectly created for then and now, and create your new POOL rules. The rules for your authentic self and those you allow within your world, you now get to choose.

5. Embody Your Future Self

Your future self is the version of you who already lives in alignment. When you act from that identity — even in small ways — you collapse the gap between who you are and how you behave.

6. Practice Emotional Integrity

Some would say that emotional integrity is the courage to let your internal truth shape your external behavior. I submit that emotional integrity is the removal of childhood fear from your external behavior, allowing your internal truth, your authentic being, and your original self to be revealed.

7. The Irony Of Selves

Our adapted self was created out of fear -- fear of lacking safety was the entire motivation of every POOL rule we ever created for ourselves to assure safety, and it is fear in our adult world that prevents us from feeling safe.

It does not take strength to show the world our authenticity, nor does it take power; it merely takes the absence of fear.

Final Integration: You’re Not Lost, You’re Emerging

You’re not acting out of alignment because you’re weak. You’re acting out of alignment because your emotional system is still using outdated rules. But the moment you become aware of the misalignment, you’ve already begun the process of returning to yourself.

Your authentic self is not lost; it’s waiting. Use the inner strength that little child used to survive and persevere so wonderfully to decide you deserve “to be the me I deserve to be.”

By David Jones,

Founder, CAPTIVE Coaching and Empowerment, LLC