3. Our Natural Drives: The Emergence of Real Self-Esteem
Lloyd Lalande, PhD
There are forces within each of us that precede language, culture, and conditioning. Forces that move us toward aliveness, coherence, and contact with reality. When these natural drives are supported, a person grows in a direction that feels deeply right. When they are suppressed, distorted, or feared, the self adapts—sometimes brilliantly—for survival, but at a cost to wholeness.
Authenticity is not simply a matter of “being yourself.” It is the gradual recovery of these natural drives: the drive to know ourselves, the drive to express ourselves, and the drive to expand into fuller participation with life.
These drives form the living foundation of self-esteem—not the social-performance version of self-esteem, but the quiet inner confidence that arises when a person experiences themselves as real, present, and connected to their own truth.
Self-Awareness: The First Movement Toward Freedom
Authenticity becomes possible only when we begin to see how we are shaped—internally and externally. Self-awareness is the capacity to turn toward our own experience with curiosity rather than judgement. It means noticing what is happening in the body, what emotions arise, what thoughts unfold, what perceptions colour the moment, and how our inherited patterns are influencing us.
Without this awareness, we move through life half-awake, guided largely by internalised expectations, fears, and strategies that developed at a time when we had little choice. The less self-aware we are, the more we become a passenger to forces we cannot see.
Self-awareness is not introspection in the conventional sense. It is a direct sensing of how life is moving through us—moment by moment. It is the root of agency. It allows us to interrupt automaticity. It is also how we begin to make conscious contact with the “inner architecture” that shapes our behaviour.
When we lack self-awareness, we cannot reliably access our feelings. And when we cannot feel, we cannot sense what is true for us. The result is a life lived through adaptation rather than authenticity.
People then oscillate between three common survival strategies:
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Conformity — suppressing themselves to maintain approval
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Rebellion — resisting expectations as a form of self-protection
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Withdrawal — avoiding relational exposure and vulnerability
None of these strategies can sustain meaning, connection, or full engagement with life. They are intelligent adaptations to early environments, but they cannot lead us to ourselves.
Self-awareness is the doorway out of this cycle.
The Hidden Cost of Inauthentic Living
The rules we absorbed as children—the spoken ones and the silent ones—do not simply vanish. They become internalised: a network of prohibitions, fears, self-doubts, and protective strategies that shape how we think, relate, and make decisions. They influence how we love and how we allow ourselves to be loved. They determine whether we feel entitled to take up space in the world.
When a person is unaware of these internalised structures, life becomes an exhausting performance: holding back feelings, suppressing impulses, managing fear, and trying to maintain an image that feels acceptable. The nervous system stays on alert, scanning for disapproval or threat.
Under these conditions, vitality diminishes. Creativity contracts. Life feels smaller and more effortful.
A. S. Neill wrote that excessive interference in the natural unfolding of the child produces “a generation of robots.” He was speaking not of technology but of emotional constriction—of the self learning to survive by going numb.
When we numb feelings, we numb the self. Without access to feeling, we cannot sense what is ours to choose. We lose contact with our values, our direction, and our inner truth. Change becomes nearly impossible because the compass that guides transformation—the felt sense—is offline.
Self-awareness reawakens this compass. It allows us to meet the present moment with clarity and intention, rather than with inherited patterns.
The Drive to Explore
Every human being is born with a natural curiosity: the instinct to look, touch, test, imagine, question, and discover. This drive is not cognitive; it is existential. It is the impulse to participate in life and to understand the world we inhabit.
In childhood, this drive often collides with parental fear, cultural expectations, or rigid rules. When curiosity is met with warmth, children learn that the world is safe enough to explore. When it is met with criticism, control, or punishment, the child learns to restrict their curiosity to “safe zones.” They internalise rules about what is allowed and what is dangerous—not just behaviourally, but emotionally and intellectually.
For many adults, the suppression of curiosity becomes a way of life. They no longer ask questions that lead to growth. They avoid unfamiliar possibilities. They stop exploring the edges of their own experience.
Yet the drive to explore never disappears. It waits. It remains dormant until life circumstances—or an inner opening—allow it to reemerge.
Curiosity is not frivolous. It is the beginning of self-knowledge. It is also a remedy for fear. When we bring curiosity to a problem—rather than self-blame or defensiveness—we create the possibility for change. Exploration is how we begin to understand the patterns that limit us and the possibilities that call to us.
Whenever someone asks, “Where do I begin?” the answer is simple:
Begin where life hurts. Begin where life calls. Begin where there is energy.
Exploration reveals the path.
The Drive to Express
If exploration is our way of knowing, expression is our way of being known.
It is the movement of the inner life outward—into words, actions, creativity, love, boundaries, choices, and presence.
Infants express spontaneously. Their aliveness flows without hesitation. But when a child’s expression is shamed, punished, or discouraged, they learn to hide parts of themselves. They internalise the belief that being fully alive is unsafe.
This suppression becomes a lifelong pattern: controlling emotions, withholding truth, minimising needs, and keeping creativity contained. Yet expression is intrinsic to our design. It is how life moves through us. When it is blocked, people feel tight, small, disconnected, or stifled.
The drive to express ourselves cannot be extinguished—only redirected or contained. When we begin to unlearn the shame around authentic expression, something remarkable happens - our vitality returns.
We feel again.
We speak again.
We become visible to ourselves.
Expression is not about performance. It is about congruence. It is about allowing the outside of our life to gradually match the inside.
This is the foundation of real self-esteem: living in alignment with our values and truth—not perfectly, but sincerely.
The Drive to Expand
Exploring and expressing are not isolated acts. Together, they form a cycle of growth: curiosity leads to insight, insight leads to expression, and expression leads to further unfolding. This is how human beings expand.
Growth is not something we create. It is something that emerges when our natural drives are allowed to function. When we orient toward truth, clarity, and expression, the mind reorganises, the nervous system adapts, and the self expands into greater coherence.
This expansion is what people often describe as “flow,” “aliveness,” or “meaning.” It is the felt sense of participating in one’s own evolution.
When these drives are suppressed, people feel restricted, stuck, or cut off from possibility. When they are honoured, life gains direction and purpose.
A person does not need to chase meaning.
Meaning arises when we live in alignment with the movements that create growth.
The Roots of Self-Esteem
Real self-esteem does not come from achievements, praise, or social status. It emerges from the quiet, persistent experience of living in agreement with oneself.
When we deny our natural drives—when we refuse to explore, silence our truth, or live small—we erode our own self-respect. Something in us knows we are abandoning ourselves, and this creates an inner wound that no external validation can heal.
Conversely, when we follow the impulses that arise from our deeper nature—when we speak truthfully, express creatively, explore courageously—we experience ourselves as capable, trustworthy, and alive. Self-esteem deepens organically.
The question is not whether these drives exist. They are always there.
The question is whether we feed them or starve them.
Fueling the Fire of Aliveness
There is a fire within each of us—the spark of curiosity, the impulse to express, the drive to grow. It can be neglected, ignored, or covered, but it cannot be extinguished.
To live authentically is to feed that fire. It is to trust the inner movements that lead toward coherence. It is to allow ourselves to grow in ways that feel true.
The remainder of this book is devoted to understanding these processes more deeply and learning how to work with the psychological, emotional, and somatic patterns that shape our lives. These principles are simple, grounded, and practical. They illuminate a path back to the self—a path that unfolds through contact, curiosity, and the courage to express what is most real within us.