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When Being ‘Authentic’ Stops Helping You Grow


“So, I’m fine. How are you?”


That’s how episode 15 of the Reimagine Communication podcast opens — with a joke about the least authentic exchange in the English language. But it lands on a question most of us never ask: what if authenticity, the thing we celebrate as the goal of personal growth, can quietly become the thing that stops it?

In this episode, Kay Rung and Liv Larsson take a loving but honest look at authenticity — its beauty, its pitfalls, and what comes after it.



Authenticity as medicine

Many of us discover authenticity as a kind of medicine. We’ve been silenced, shamed, or trained into niceness, and then — often with the help of tools like Nonviolent Communication — we find our voice. We dare to say the inconvenient thing. We feel dignity and self-respect return.

Liv shares the story of a colleague who walked away from a successful training career because, in her own words, she felt fake — teaching things she hadn’t yet lived. Years later she returned to the work, this time integrated. That gap between what we express and what is true in us is real, and closing it is healing.

So no — this episode is not against authenticity. The point is to name the moment when it’s no longer the medicine, and we keep taking it anyway.


When medicine becomes identity

The trouble starts when authenticity turns from something that heals us into something we are. “This is me. Period.” A few pitfalls show up quickly:

  • We get rigid. One strong voice becomes the whole story of who we are, and anything that threatens it isn’t allowed in.

  • We get judgmental. Others become “inauthentic” or “not transparent” — simply because they express themselves differently.

  • Expression becomes a demand. “I have to say this, otherwise I’m not true to myself” — and suddenly we’ve created a new inner should.

There’s also a quieter cost: the strongest voice in us is only one part. The most silent whisper in the back of our head — the one that asks at dawn, “what are you doing with your days?” — may need to be included in what we call “me” far more than the loud, confident voice we’ve become identified with.

One story from the episode makes this vivid: a woman in one of Liv’s shame workshops — cool, calm and collected — about to end a promising relationship with a breezy “everyone is free to do what they like.” Her strongest voice, the rebellion, felt completely authentic. But the truer thing, the vulnerable thing, was the quiet voice saying I want this person in my life. Saying that out loud felt like the ground would open beneath her. She said it anyway. It changed everything.


The three chapters of authenticity

  1. Medicine — finding and expressing the voice that was silenced. This is the healing chapter.

  2. Identity — when that voice hardens into “this is who I am,” bringing rigidity, moralism, and blindness to our other parts.

  3. Choice — authenticity becomes fluid: I can choose how, when, and with whom I express which part of me, in service of what I actually care about.

Because here’s the paradox: authenticity feels like freedom, but when we can only ever express the one strong voice, we’ve lost choice — and losing choice is not freedom. Saying everything isn’t more true than saying a few things. It’s just different.


Keep exploring

If this stirred something, listen to the full conversation — and if you want to go beyond thinking about it, this is exactly the kind of terrain we explore in practice, with exercises, in our Reimagine Communication program. What’s your strongest voice — and what might the whisper behind it be saying?


Links from the episode

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Image by Ben White

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