Be Yourself, But Which One? Rethinking the Authentic Self

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Who are you, really, underneath everything else? In this solo, Travis Heath questions a common assumption in therapy and everyday life: that a true, authentic self is waiting beneath our cultural expectations, family influences, and insecurities to be uncovered.
Travis explores why showing up differently with our kids, friends, and clients doesn’t make us fake, why “I don’t care what anyone thinks” isn’t the freedom it claims to be, and how the search for authenticity can turn into pressure and exhaustion in therapy and beyond. He also separates behaving authentically in a moment from finding an authentic self, and makes the case for living with contradiction, loosening our grip on self-certainty, and leaving room for growth and change we can’t yet predict. If “just be yourself” has ever left you wondering which self that means, this one is for you.
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Travis Heath

Clinical Psychologist, Educator, Author and Head of Content, Psychotherapy.net

Travis Heath, PhD, is a licensed psychologist and has been in community practice for nearly two decades. His scholarship has included looking at shifting from a multicultural approach to counseling to one of cultural democracy that invites people to heal in mediums that are culturally near. Other writings have focused on the use of rap music in narrative therapy, working with persons entangled in the criminal injustice system in ways that maintain their dignity, narrative practice stories as pedagogy, and a co-created questioning practice called reunion questions. He is co-author, with David Epston and Tom Carlson, of the first book on Contemporary Narrative Therapy released in June 2022 entitled, “Reimagining Narrative Therapy Through Practice Stories and Autoethnography.” He has presented his work in 10 countries to date.