Embracing Personal Congruence: The Power of Authenticity

Director’s Blog- Originally posted on LinkedIn on March 2nd, 2025 by Managing Director Lisa Charlotte Davis

The Tension Between Self and Mask

I’ve talked about congruency of mission with process/collaborators and have been meaning to follow up with a reflection on personal congruency.

What does this even mean?

I came across a nice articulation in a Guardian interview with Coralie Fargeat, writer-director of the body horror film, The Substance:

“The self resents the mask for suffocating it; the mask is disgusted by the self. This distinction between who you really are & who you’re trying to be, that’s what creates the real violence. That’s what creates the disconnection with yourself. Everything you do to try to look some other way creates two selves; & there will always be this fear that your real self is going to find a way to be seen.”

Whilst her focus is beauty, the idea of masks resonated with me as someone who’s spent the last year exploring my neurodiversity. It’s also relevant to Changing Relations C.I.C.’s work unpicking the gender stereotypes that affect how we feel we should behave as a man or woman.

This came together for me a few weeks ago as I worked on a task outside my comfort zone to a tight deadline and burst into tears. I felt foolish for bringing emotion to the professional sphere but as I zoomed out of the emotion, I realised this was an example of incongruence — with echoes of Fargeat’s notion of visiting violence on oneself.

Navigating Emotionality and Self-Acceptance

One of the features of ADHD is difficulty regulating emotion, making me excitable with a tendency to crash hard. Calm is not my forte! The trick is to build one’s “window of tolerance” (thanks 🌈 Liz Mulhall for this concept), engaging in soothing activity so that when something challenging comes along, it’s less likely to throw your emotions out of whack.

But in the last few months, I’ve dealt with a nerve-wracking health situation whilst steering my business through a tough economic climate in the VCSE/culture sectors. No wonder my window of tolerance was paper thin. Instead of rolling my eyes, I could have shown compassion.

It didn’t occur to me to see this from a gendered perspective until I attended The WOW Foundation “think-in” to prepare for a festival coming our way in October. We were tasked with thinking about what we’d want Durham WOW to feature in terms of the messages to foreground, and emotionality was one of the themes — how women are seen as “less than” for being emotional, whilst male expressions of anger — at a sports loss or high-stakes political meltdown — are in a different category.

This isn’t to pit men against women. This relationship to emotionality is not a win for anyone.

But it made me realise the internalised misogyny of berating myself for my emotionality, as if tears are embarrassingly girly.

Why It Matters

I think letting go of the fear of being who we are makes us more likely to thrive as we’re not wasting energy holding masks or beating ourselves up if they drop. It also empowers others to be honest when it’s not actually fine.

Bit of a lifetime mission to achieve personal congruence though!

Image Tracy Thomas