There is a particular kind of tiredness that has nothing to do with sleep. It arrives when we have been performing well for too long, holding up versions of ourselves that other people need us to be, while something quieter inside us waits to be heard. This is not restlessness for its own sake. It is the self, asking to be taken seriously.
Many of us learned, very early, that certain versions of who we are were safer than others. The child who kept the peace. The teenager who performed confidence. The adult who says “I’m fine” so reliably that they begin to believe it. They formed as adaptations, sensible ones at the time, and for a long time they may have worked well. But adaptations do not age well. At some point, usually when life cracks open a little through grief, a relationship ending, a job that has lost its meaning, or a low mood that refuses to lift, the performance starts to feel costly in ways we can no longer ignore.
What Authenticity Actually Means (and What It Does Not)
In existential thought, particularly in the work of Heidegger, authenticity is less a fixed state and more a direction. He used the term das Man, sometimes translated as the “they-self” or “the crowd”, to name that familiar drift in which we live mainly by unexamined rules about what a good life, a serious career, or a proper relationship should look like. Moving towards authenticity means noticing this drift and, little by little, choosing responses that feel genuinely our own. It means taking ownership of our choices rather than floating along in borrowed ones.
Authenticity, read this way, sits at a considerable distance from self-absorption, and asks nothing about dismantling a life. Carl Rogers, whose person-centred thinking shapes much of the work at Liminal Therapy and Counselling, put it with characteristic simplicity: when a person can accept themselves as they are, change becomes possible. Acceptance is the starting point.
Living authentically tends to bring four recurring questions into focus. What gives life depth and meaning, beyond what we have been told it should? Where do we have genuine choice, and how do our choices shape the people we are becoming? How can we be more truthful with ourselves while still moving towards others? And how does the fact that our time is limited change what we wish to do with it now?
These are not abstract puzzles. They surface in offices, kitchens, and quiet car journeys. They turn up in the gap between the life we describe to others and the one we actually feel.
The Masks We Wear, and How They Formed
Most of us are wearing at least one. There is the capable professional who would never ask for help. There is the cheerful friend who finds genuine distress almost impossible to admit. There is the accommodating partner who keeps the peace so consistently that they have long since lost track of what they actually want
These masks did not arrive from nowhere. In person-centred and existential thinking, the process of taking in other people’s beliefs and values and treating them as our own is called introjection. We absorb messages from families, schools, friendships, and culture about what a worthwhile person looks like, how much feeling is acceptable to show, and which parts of us are welcome. Over time, those absorbed messages can harden into something that feels less like choice and more like nature. The inner critic speaks in a voice that sounds like ours, yet may be carrying a parent’s fear, a teacher’s standard, or an early relationship’s unspoken rules.
The masks themselves are worth approaching with warmth rather than judgement. They formed as protection, helping us to belong, to avoid harm, to manage environments in which we had little power. Seeing them clearly is the beginning of being able to put them down
“The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it is conformity.”
— Rollo May
The quiet act of noticing where we have been conforming, and asking why, is often the first real movement towards a more honest way of living.
How Existential Counselling Supports This Work
Existential counselling does not arrive with ready-made answers to be handed over. The work is more like creating a space in which questions can be explored without rushing towards resolution. At Liminal Therapy and Counselling, that space is shaped by the principles of person-centred practice: unconditional positive regard, which means meeting the person with steady respect rather than judgement; genuine empathy, listening closely to the world as the client experiences it; and congruence, the counsellor being real in the room rather than hiding behind a professional mask of their own.
In early sessions, this often means slowing down enough to map the pressures that govern daily life. Which expectations are truly the client’s, and which have simply been inherited? Where, if anywhere, does there feel like room to choose differently? What feelings or impulses have been set to one side, perhaps for years, that might be worth listening to?
This kind of work is well-suited to people navigating grief or significant loss, life transitions that have displaced a previous sense of identity, low mood or anxiety that feels hard to name, or a growing sense that something important is missing. None of these experiences are treated as flaws to be corrected. In existential terms, they are the self trying to get through with something worth hearing.
One particular thread in this work involves tracing introjects back to their origins. When a person can see that a harsh internal rule, something like “never be a burden” or “always have answers”, came from a specific early experience rather than from their own considered values, the rule begins to loosen. It does not vanish overnight, but it can lose some of its authority. In that freed-up space, real choice becomes possible.
We offer this work both in person in Cornwall and online, for anyone who finds that easier or who cannot travel. Whether the question bringing someone to counselling is large or still half-formed, the work begins wherever they are.
A First Step That Asks Very Little
The moment of realising that something is not quite right, that the life being lived and the person doing the living are not quite in accord, can arrive quietly or with considerable force. Either way, it is worth paying attention to. It does not demand an immediate overhaul. It asks, at first, only for a small act of honesty.
That honesty might look like sending an email asking about counselling. It might be reading something that names an experience you had not yet found words for. It might be saying to someone you trust, “I am not sure this is really me”, and noticing that the world does not end when you do.
At Liminal Therapy and Counselling, the first contact can be simple. There is no need to arrive with polished goals or a clear account of what is wrong. Our role is to offer a considered, steady, and compassionate space in which authentic living can be explored at whatever pace feels right. In Cornwall and online, this work is open to anyone who feels drawn to it, including those who feel uncertain or apprehensive about therapy itself.
Finding Your Way Back to Yourself
Living more authentically is rarely a single moment of transformation. It is a series of small, recurring choices to move a little closer to what is true: to notice a mask and consider whether it is still needed, to let a borrowed value be questioned, to sit with a feeling that was previously too uncomfortable to allow. Over time, those small choices accumulate into something that feels, at last, more genuinely like a life.
From an existential perspective, the moments of tension and difficulty that bring many people to counselling are not obstacles to authentic living. They are some of its most direct invitations. They ask us to look at who we are beneath the roles we have been playing, and to consider what it might mean to live a little more honestly from here.
If you are curious about existential counselling or person-centred therapy, or if something in this article has named something you recognise, we would be glad to hear from you. Liminal Therapy and Counselling offers sessions in person in Cornwall and online.
