True to You

True to You Plot Summary

Introduction

Picture this: You're at a dinner party, nodding along to a conversation about politics that makes your stomach churn. Your friend asks what you think, and you feel that familiar tightness in your chest. Should you share your actual opinion and risk disagreement? Or should you smile and say what everyone wants to hear? For many of us, this internal battle plays out dozens of times daily—from small moments like ordering the salad instead of the pasta you really want, to life-altering decisions about careers and relationships that don't reflect our deepest desires. We live in a world that constantly pulls us in different directions, urging us to be what others need. As social creatures, we're wired to seek approval and connection, to read the room and adjust accordingly. But something profound happens when we continually silence our authentic selves. We lose touch with who we are beneath the performance. The good news? It doesn't have to stay this way. Through exploring the relationship patterns that keep us stuck and learning practical ways to define ourselves without giving up important connections, we can build a life that feels truer to who we really are. Not by isolating ourselves from others or becoming selfish, but by finding that delicate balance between togetherness and individuality that allows us to dance through life with both connection and freedom.

Chapter 1: The Relationship Patterns That Keep Us Stuck

Marie's life felt like a closet full of clothes that didn't quite fit. New to Washington, DC, the twenty-eight-year-old spent her days working as a fundraiser for her mother's alma mater. At night she barhopped with her boyfriend's law school buddies or dodged fly balls on his softball team. Her schedule was full, but her life wasn't. She'd gone to several therapists over the years, eager to follow their instructions. They sent her to Al-Anon to help her deal with her father's history of substance use. They printed worksheets to help keep her anxious thoughts at bay. Everything helped, until it didn't. Marie was likable. Small talk came easily to her, and she was quick to mimic body language. Not in a manipulative way—it was just the mark of a woman who wanted to make everyone around her feel comfortable. This laser focus on others was a useful skill for her fundraising job, but it generated tension in her romantic life. Her boyfriend, Jake, was a frazzled law student with a full social calendar. After a full day of work, Marie dragged herself to softball games, networking nights, and lecture series so she could see him. Borrowing her boyfriend's friend group was less intimidating than building her own in a new city. When Marie grew tired of borrowing Jake's routine, the conflict started. She demanded that Jake cut back on his socializing and spend more time with her. When he refused, she kept showing up at the grad school gatherings. It's better than nothing, she told herself. Most people would say that their life choices don't fit them perfectly. We're a mishmash of beliefs and values we've borrowed from people who are important to us. A combination of choices that seem to get us some love and attention. This is because we look to others to find ourselves. When experts give us answers, we take them. When your friends get Botox, it begins to feel necessary. When you just want to survive another Easter dinner with your family, you accept that Jesus rose from the dead and pass the mashed potatoes. The decisions themselves aren't the problem. It's how quickly we adopt them into our lives. Do you stop to think? Or do you toss them into your shopping cart and say, "Good enough"? We borrow from others because we are social creatures. We care a lot about what other people think about us and how they will react to us. The more sensitive we are to others' reactions, the more we accommodate (trying to be what others want), act out (rebelling or attacking), or avoid (distancing or cutting off). These three predictable reactions—what we might call the Neapolitan ice cream of human behavior—can feel safe and familiar. But they often lack self-direction and leave us feeling hollow. When we make space to develop our own thinking before reacting, we open the door to authentic living. We create a life that's true to us, not just an anxious response to others.

Chapter 2: How Fusion Blurs the Lines Between Self and Others

When Alex was four years old, her family split in two. The chaos began when her paternal grandfather died. Three months after his funeral, Grandma Lynn shocked everyone by eloping with her dead husband's business partner. A blowout ensued over her grandfather's will, and Alex's father decided he was done with his mother and sisters, who didn't want much to do with him either. For the next twenty years, Alex's parents pretended that this side of the family had never existed. Now Alex was twenty-seven. Her grandmother, more a myth than a person at this point, was somewhere in warm Arizona, chasing after great-grandchildren Alex had never met. Her absence was a manageable sadness, an artifact Alex's brain pulled out of storage on the holidays, or in therapy sessions. Until one day, when her father called to announce that he'd reconnected with Grandma Lynn. "Do you want to have a relationship with her again?" he asked. Alex's body went into high alert. Her muscles tensed, her breathing grew rapid, and the tears were rolling. How could the prospect of chatting with a little old lady inspire such terror? She didn't even remember her grandmother. So why was her body preparing for war or retreat? This is the power of emotional fusion in a family. When we're fused with others, the boundaries between individuals blur. Their anxiety becomes our anxiety. Their distress feels like our responsibility. In Alex's family, avoiding Grandma had kept things calm, to a degree. Interrupting this pattern meant increasing the anxiety, at least in the short term. It's no surprise Alex's brain took one look at the situation and said, "I'm out." Distance is a part of any relationship. Maybe you like your mother better when there's an ocean between you. Or you only talk to your brother about your fantasy football team. Maybe you look at your phone too much at dinner, or create an escape plan when you visit a talkative friend. Perhaps you're a millennial who would rather die than have someone pop by your house unexpectedly. Distance is another relationship pattern used to manage anxiety. It's one way that we react to fusion in our relationships, the pressure to think and feel as one unit. Distance can be physical, but it can also be emotional. We create emotional distance when we hide our thinking, our beliefs, and our true selves from others. Differences in political beliefs aren't a problem if you never talk about them. Disapproval can be avoided if you never introduce your partner to your parents. If you never show your real self to people, you can escape the pain of being rejected. When we always manage tension by distancing, we lose opportunities to build stronger one-on-one relationships, work on our own maturity, and practice self-regulation in the face of others' distress. We stay stuck in superficial connections because they feel safer. But as Alex would discover, the path to a more authentic life doesn't mean cutting people off or keeping conversations light. It means finding the courage to be ourselves while staying connected to important relationships.

Chapter 3: The Anxiety of Togetherness vs. The Power of Individuality

At seventy-three, Margaret was still getting to know herself. She was a retired high school biology teacher, mother of two, and grandmother of seven. And she'd just taken a great leap in life, moving with her husband into a retirement community. The attractive campus of Friendship Village was a lot like high school, full of cliques, queen bees, and unspoken rules, as well as a killer baked potato bar. Facing the social pressures of a new environment, Margaret let me in on a secret: she didn't feel like she'd lived a life of strong belief. Most of her decisions had been attempts to keep people happy. And she worried she'd fallen into this pattern yet again. Like any human's, Margaret's life was a combination of courageous decisions and anxious accommodations to others. She was the middle child of working-class Southern Baptists who'd scrimped to send her to college. Her junior year, she went and did the unthinkable—married a young professor who was Catholic. Her mother responded by dying a month after they'd eloped. Margaret didn't think she'd singlehandedly killed her mother by picking up a rosary. But it scared her enough that she changed her major from psychology to education, her mother's wish. Fast-forward fifty years, and Margaret, a student of Bowen theory, saw new opportunities for working on differentiation of self. One year into the COVID-19 pandemic, Margaret felt stuck in relationship orientation. She was too involved in the divorce of her younger son, Grant. She was too quick to follow the advice of her older son, Paul, a doctor who wanted his parents to live like the bubble boy. Meanwhile, the newly vaccinated residents of Friendship Village were partying like it was Woodstock. At Margaret's church, the congregation was torn between getting back to normal and playing it safe. Margaret wasn't sure what she thought. Either way, someone was bound to be upset. In the natural world, blending in with the group is a powerful form of self-defense. Look different from your peers, and you'll catch the eye of a hungry predator. Show up to middle school in the wrong shoes, and you're basically a lone wildebeest on the savannah. Humans are master conformers, and our brains were built to adopt the norms of the family, the peer group, or society. But what if conforming to the group and being yourself aren't opposing forces? What if the tension between them is the natural dance of being human? We have a strong drive to direct ourselves, but we also have a strong drive to connect with others. Bowen called these forces "individuality" and "togetherness," and he saw them as central to life. When togetherness dominates—as it tends to do in times of anxiety like a pandemic—we become more sensitive to others' reactions, less tolerant of disagreement, and less capable of defining our own beliefs. But it's possible to find a better balance, one where people can think for themselves while remaining connected to important relationships. For Margaret, this meant developing her own thinking about pandemic risks, about her faith, and about how to be a parent to adult children. It meant learning to be a mind knower, not just a mind reader.

Chapter 4: Breaking Free from Borrowed Beliefs and Values

Susan's mother, Maureen, called her every hour on the hour. The Today show had a big makeover reveal. The photo wouldn't attach to the email. There were no more Oatmeal Creme Pies in the cupboard. The crabby neighbors had stopped by, furious that her leaves were falling into their pristine yard. Could Susan also hear a helicopter on her side of town? No, wait, it was just the leaf blower. Speaking of leaves, did she want to save her fourth-grade nature project? She had worked so hard on it, and it would be a pity to throw out. Reader, it was relentless. Susan's father had died from a heart attack at the age of seventy-five. Before his death, Susan hadn't considered how much her dad did for her mom. They'd always been a happy pair, an electrician and his chatty wife who gave piano lessons in their living room. Maureen had mastered Chopin and Stravinsky, but she never drove on the interstate, cooked anything more complicated than scrambled eggs, or paid the bills. At seventy-four, there were more than a few gaps in her own maturity. But they'd never created much anxiety, until her husband wasn't around to pick up the slack. Distress is contagious, especially in a family. If you don't believe me, clearly you've never helped a parent fix their iPhone settings remotely. This sensitivity is annoying but necessary. Social mammals need to be able to sense stirrings in the group. A dog's levels of the stress hormone cortisol will rise if their human is crying. Prairie dogs listen for the furious foot thumping of their neighbors, warning them to leap back into their burrows. In an anxious family, all we hear are thumps. Even more so after a death. Allergic to one another's distress, we activate those familiar patterns to keep things calm. Susan was no exception to this rule. She needed someone to steady her after her father's death. She claimed her mother was a nuisance, but Maureen was a convenient focus. Susan quickly shifted into her father's role, lending her mother her own capabilities. And her mother was happy to borrow them. This pattern of lending and borrowing self, known in Bowen theory as "over- and underfunctioning," is one pattern a system uses to manage anxiety. Imagine you followed Susan and Maureen around the grocery store as they searched for those elusive Oatmeal Creme Pies. If I asked you, "Who is the more mature person?" you'd probably point to Susan. This assessment ignores what is happening in the relationship system. Because they both have their own flavor of immaturity. Each was using the relationship pattern of over- and underfunctioning to prevent or manage tension. Both the overfunctioner and underfunctioner benefit to some degree from the dynamic. Just like her father, Susan gained a pseudo-maturity, or pretend strength, from her position as the over-responsible one. Being in charge of her mother felt less stressful than letting her flail a little. In return, Maureen had everything done for her and her worries eased. Unfortunately, there is a hidden cost to over- and underfunctioning. An underfunctioner is more vulnerable to feeling and acting helpless when someone is always ready to swoop in. The overfunctioner may become more sensitive to the other's distress, riding a runaway train toward burnout. So the dynamic works, until it doesn't.

Chapter 5: Overfunctioning and Underfunctioning: The Reciprocal Dance

Luis's addiction to approval didn't exist in a vacuum. The gaps in his own maturity spoke to the functioning of his family system. And in Luis's family, the focus on appearances ran deep. He'd been raised by his mother and grandmother, the latter a woman who treated life like a zero-sum game. When he visited his grandmother, she would update him on the successes (or lack thereof) of his cousins and childhood friends. She was quick to comment on who had moved into a bigger house, who had a drinking problem, and who had gained weight. He had purposely kept his distance after college when he'd worked for his aunt, imagining what his grandmother was saying (or not saying) to others about him. When he was accepted into graduate school, she'd paraded him around town like a prized poodle. Luis's mom had been much more supportive during his ups and downs, but he knew she was nervous about this next transition. His older sister had a physical disability, and his mother would sometimes direct the same level of anxious focus on him. Succeeding had been his way of relating to his mother who'd finished law school with two small kids and was now a judge beloved by his hometown. Luis could feel everyone in his family (except his sister, bless her) holding their breath those final weeks before graduation. Would he make them proud, or would he be someone they spoke about in vague terms? Luis was motivated to please his family, but this outward focus felt paralyzing when he wasn't doing well. These borrowed beliefs about life and success didn't reflect his best thinking. He didn't care whether his friends were considered accomplished or not. He was usually turned off by people who were trying their hardest to impress him. So why did he make himself the exception to these rules? He needed to shed some pseudo-self and figure out his next steps. As anxiety increases in a system, people tend to overfunction or underfunction for each other. The overfunctioner appears capable and strong, while the underfunctioner seems helpless or incapable. But this dance keeps both people stuck. Luis had spent his life trying to impress others, borrowing their definitions of success rather than developing his own. He was excellent at getting validation from teachers, friends, and family. But this left him dependent on external sources of motivation. When people stopped praising him, or when he failed to meet their expectations, his functioning would plummet. This kind of borrowing isn't limited to families. We often gain pseudo-strength from our groups, whether it's a sports team, a religious congregation, or social media followers. Our brains get a nice dose of dopamine from praise and attention, and these social rewards can temporarily boost our functioning. But Luis was learning that these were just training wheels. To ride on his own, he would need to develop intrinsic motivation—an ability to function well even when no one was watching or applauding. This meant making space for his own thinking, asking himself what truly mattered to him, and developing beliefs that could withstand relationship pressure. Only then could he break free from the reciprocal dance of over- and underfunctioning that had shaped his life.

Chapter 6: Learning to Define Yourself in Important Relationships

Naima's husband, Eric, looked at his phone too much. He left his clothes on the floor, and when she asked him to clean them up, he piled them in a chair. The lawn needed mowing, the bathroom sink was clogged, and their two boys wouldn't stop sitting on each other's head. But Eric didn't notice any of these things. He was too busy grumbling at something on the internet. Naima and Eric had met on the job, two twentysomething reporters sent to cover city council meetings. Naima loved Eric's spontaneity and sense of adventure, his willingness to exit the highway and visit any and every tourist trap. He adored her tenacity, chasing after a story when people tried to shut her out. They perfectly balanced each other, until the kids came along. Soon after their youngest turned four, Eric lost his media job. While he searched for a new one, every semi-decent habit he had seemed to evaporate. Watching his confidence plummet, Naima was quick to swoop in and take over. Eventually Eric found a job, but his capabilities at home never rebounded. Their initial compatibility now felt like a broken seesaw. At first, Naima fumed quietly, reading articles on women's emotional labor to feel vindicated. And then she not-so-quietly complained, demanding that Eric be a more responsible human. He would step up for a few days, emptying the dishwasher or doing the laundry without being asked. But when Naima gave him pointers on his efforts, he'd sulk and slip back into his underfunctioning. And the cycle would begin again. Ever the journalist, Naima did her homework. She read a lot about Bowen theory, and she was interested in interrupting her relationship pattern with Eric. She knew she was overfunctioning in her marriage. She was willing to do anything, anything to get Eric to step up more at home. And right there was the problem. She believed that if she stopped overfunctioning, if she let the grass grow high enough, or stopped buying paper towels, her husband would do something. Weeks later, she was still wiping her hands on her pants and the front yard was a nature preserve. Why hadn't her strategy worked? Humans are experts at self-delusion. Often we think we are working on ourselves when we are not. We're simply trying to manipulate others by tinkering with our own behavior. The goals we claim for ourselves are secretly the goals we have for others. Naima's strategy might have changed, but the level of fusion in her marriage had not. Her laser focus on Eric was just as strong, if not more so. She watched him like a scientist, waiting for her brilliant experiment to work. Whether she was doing nothing for Eric, or doing everything for him, the level of intensity was the same. Changes in our relationships do not come about through aggressive, anxious reposturing. They happen when we begin to think differently about the problem. Getting the yard mowed was a problem, but it wasn't the problem. Naima's problem was the one we face in any relationship—how do you respond to the immaturity that inevitably shows up in others? Do you respond with your own flavor of immaturity, or something a little more thoughtful? A person who is working on differentiation is asking questions that center their own responses, not questions that focus on "fixing" the other's immaturity. This is the shift from relationship orientation to working on yourself. Rather than trying to make Eric function as she functioned, Naima could focus on being more thoughtfully defined in the relationship. She could learn to respect Eric's different ways of functioning, while also setting clear boundaries about her own expectations.

Chapter 7: Building a Solid Self Through Emotional Courage

When Sylvie was four years old, her family split in two. The chaos began when her paternal grandfather died. Three months after his funeral, Grandma Lynn shocked everyone by eloping with her dead husband's business partner. A blowout ensued over her grandfather's will, and Sylvie's father decided he was done with his mother and sisters, who didn't want much to do with him either. For the next twenty years, Sylvie's parents pretended that this side of the family had never existed. Now Sylvie was twenty-seven. Her grandmother, more a myth than a person at this point, was somewhere in warm Arizona, chasing after great-grandchildren Sylvie had never met. Her absence was a manageable sadness, an artifact Sylvie's brain pulled out of storage on the holidays, or in therapy sessions. Until one day, when her father called to announce that he'd reconnected with Grandma Lynn. "Do you want to have a relationship with her again?" he asked. Sylvie's body went into high alert. Her muscles tensed, her breathing grew rapid, and the tears were rolling. How could the prospect of chatting with a little old lady inspire such terror? She didn't even remember her grandmother. So why was her body preparing for war or retreat? Sylvie was experiencing what happens when we try to interrupt a long-established pattern of emotional distance in a family. For twenty years, avoiding Grandma Lynn had kept things calm, to a degree, in her nuclear family. The intensity of bridging this cutoff would be significant. It would require emotional courage—the willingness to tolerate the distress that comes with putting your best thinking into action. Sylvie had to make a decision: would she continue to maintain distance from her grandmother, or would she take a risk and try to build a person-to-person relationship with her? The latter would require her to move beyond the superficial chatter that characterized most of her relationships. She would need to ask questions that engaged her grandmother's thinking and experiences, and she would need to share her own. One Sunday, at a Wendy's off the New Jersey Turnpike, she had lunch with Grandma Lynn for the first time since preschool. They started small, chatting about Arizona weather and Sylvie's job. Ready to shoot her shot, Sylvie brought up the hurt she'd experienced from the family cutoff and her desire to move forward in a different way. Her grandmother apologized, they hugged, and they promised to see each other again soon. Problem solved, right? Not exactly. Sylvie was dismayed that her anxiety was still churning after their first meeting. They stayed in contact through texting, but Sylvie didn't feel motivated to call her grandmother or make plans for their next visit. Is this what our relationship is going to be? she wondered. Polite chatting and pictures of the rattlesnakes in her backyard? Building a solid self is not a quick fix. It's a lifelong process of learning to define yourself in important relationships. For Sylvie, this meant making herself uncomfortable by reaching out to her grandmother regularly, by asking deeper questions, by sharing more of herself despite the awkwardness. It meant recognizing that relationship building is rarely natural or easy. It requires consistent effort, especially in a family that has managed anxiety through cutoff. As she built this relationship with her grandmother, Sylvie was also building her capacity for emotional courage—her ability to tolerate discomfort while living out her principles. This courage would serve her well in all her relationships, allowing her to be more authentic with friends, colleagues, and future partners. Through many small acts of bravery, Sylvie was becoming more of herself.

Summary

Life is a delicate dance between being ourselves and being with others. As we've seen through the stories of Marie, Alex, Margaret, Susan, Luis, Naima, and Sylvie, our natural tendency is to accommodate others, distance ourselves, or act out when anxiety runs high. We borrow beliefs, over-function for others, and avoid meaningful conversations. These patterns provide temporary comfort but ultimately leave us feeling disconnected from our authentic selves. They keep us stuck in superficial relationships and prevent us from growing into our most mature selves. The path forward isn't about achieving perfect independence or sacrificing all connection. It's about finding the courage to define yourself within important relationships. This means developing your own thinking before borrowing from others. It means stepping back to let capable people function for themselves, while staying connected enough to support them. It means bridging emotional distance with authentic conversation, even when it feels awkward or risky. When we bring more solid self to our relationships—operating from our principles rather than relationship pressure—we create space for others to do the same. This is how we build a life that feels truer to who we are, surrounded by relationships that nourish rather than deplete us. The journey isn't easy, but each small step toward authenticity is an opportunity to experience the profound joy of being fully human: deeply connected to others while also free to be ourselves.

About Author

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Kathleen Smith

DR. KATHLEEN SMITH is a licensed therapist and mental health writer who lives in Washington, DC. She has written for popular publications such as Slate, Salon, New York Magazine, Lifehacker, Bustle, and Counseling Today, among many others. She is an associate faculty member at the Bowen Center for the Study of the Family and hosts the show Family Matters, a production of the University of the District of Columbia.

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