Untamed by Glennon Doyle, a bestselling memoir and Reese Witherspoon book club pick, recounts Doyle’s decision to leave her marriage to a man, come out as a lesbian, and eventually marry a woman.

In the book’s introduction, she compares her former life to that of a cheetah raised in captivity. Doyle imagines the animal sensing that something is wrong — that the life she knows is not the one she was made for. “She has a hunch that everything is supposed to be more beautiful… more like the fenceless, wide-open savannahs.”

The implication is clear: if the cheetah could escape, she might finally become her true self. This reflects a common assumption in modern culture — that freedom comes from casting off constraints and following the inner voice. That if we go far enough down the road of self-discovery, we will find a version of ourselves that is fulfilled, creative, free, and whole.

This view of freedom is flawed in itself, a point I made in a separate article (recently guest-published here) that explores this cheetah metaphor in further detail.

The False Promise of Autonomy

But this vision of freedom rests on a particular understanding of the self, one that is rarely questioned. At its core, it assumes two things:

• Assumed neutrality

• Assumed autonomy

In this view, the self is both the starting point and the final destination. It is seen as the problem to be solved AND the solution to that problem.

Back to the cheetah. If she were to escape and run “wild and free” across the savannah, she would not enter a life of ease. She would face immediate and unrelenting challenges — the need to hunt, survive, and defend herself. Her days would be governed by instinct and scarcity. And she would quickly become a threat to the weaker animals around her.

In other words, her life would be ruled by the demands of “self,” and the self, as many have discovered, is not a trustworthy guide. Many who pursue self-discovery as the highest goal end up disoriented, not because they failed to find themselves, but because they did — and found that the self was far more complex and destructive than expected.

The Case Against the Inner Voice

David McRaney’s best-selling book You Are Not So Smart systematically dismantles the myth of the rational, autonomous self. One of his most compelling arguments comes from recounting various studies in “split-brain confabulation."

He points out that most moderns believe that “Your opinions are the result of years of rational, objective analysis. And that you know when you are lying to yourself.” But this is a “misconception” as countless studies indicate.

In studies on split-brain patients — individuals whose brain hemispheres have been surgically separated — researchers have consistently found a striking pattern. When an image is shown only to the right hemisphere (which lacks the ability to produce speech), patients will act in response to what they’ve seen, but then give a completely unrelated explanation for their behavior. Their left hemisphere, unaware of the real stimulus, fills in the gap with a plausible-sounding story — one they fully believe.

In short, patients created a narrative and then fool themselves with it.

As McRaney puts it, “These individuals aren’t lying; they’re confabulating. The deeper emotional centers could still talk to both sides, but only the left hemisphere had the ability to describe what was bubbling up.” This split-brain confabulation has been demonstrated many times over the years. “When the left hemisphere is forced to explain why the right hemisphere is doing something, it often creates a fiction that both sides then accept.”

This well-documented phenomenon reveals a core truth: we don’t just report facts to ourselves — we construct stories, often without realizing we’re missing key information. In other words, we lie to ourselves all the time.

We Are Not as Rational as We Think

This knowledge does not belong only to scientists. Marketers, for example, who understand this better than most, easily manipulate us. They don’t argue with our beliefs; they co-opt them. They present us with messages that feel like our own conclusions, subtly nudging us in their desired direction.

So not only are we not neutral, we’re not even self-directed. The “self,” it turns out, is not a sovereign. It’s a sponge.

“The Self Can’t Be Both the Problem and the Solution”

—Allie Beth Stuckey

The modern tragedy isn’t just that we believe we can find ourselves if we look within — it’s that we persist in this belief, even when all the evidence is against it.

In my first article on identity (linked here), I argued that we treat “identity” like a consumer product (personality tests, for example), something we examine, interpret, and adopt if it suits us, discard if it doesn’t. But this assumes that we are the reliable narrators of our own story.

As Rod Dreher explains in Living in Wonder, this belief is a symptom of an overly rational, left-brained culture. Meaning, we assume that the most reductive explanation is the best one. We reduce ourselves to data, behaviors, and tests.

“This leads to the result that the world appears to be a giant mass of disconnected things… There is no horizontal link between phenomena and no vertical link to a higher truth, there is only personal relationships and personal preferences grounded in nothing but individual desire.”

Where Do We Go From Here?

We tend to hear about quirky facts like those mentioned above and dismiss them as merely interesting trivia, a rabbit hole at best, with no real practical application. They seem impractical, but they are, in fact, very practical.

It might feel discouraging to be told you can’t trust yourself. But this is not bad, it’s how God made us. And if we understand and approach it rightly, it can be incredibly helpful.

Historically, this general concept was never shocking to people. Christians in particular understood that the self is a poor foundation for identity. Instead of defining themselves by their feelings, they defined themselves by their covenants: to God, to the church, to family, and to truth.

“Look for yourself and you will find loneliness and despair. But look for christ and you will find him and everything else.”

— C.S. Lewis

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You are A Story You Tell Yourself:

I’m not suggesting our rational minds are useless — only that they can’t serve as the sole authority. We need practices that reach beyond reason. Here are a few ways to help shape the right story within yourself:

• Church Liturgy: Even McRaney (who I don’t think is a Christian) points out how powerful liturgical habits are. They subtly train us, much like marketing, but toward a higher character rather than consumption. They form us, bypassing our rational defenses, slowly reordering our loves.

  As a side note, churches that move away from liturgical practices often overemphasize teaching or emotional experience. Both tendencies reflect the broader cultural habit of centering the rational mind or individual self. Liturgy, by contrast, recognizes that formation requires more than what we can constantly perceive; it engages the whole person in something deeper and more shaping.

• Tell yourself the right story. Like David in the Psalms, speak truth to yourself. We all live by internal narratives — make sure yours is rooted in what’s true: not just that God loves you, but that He is for you.

• Means of Grace: Scripture, prayer, sacraments. These don’t always feel dramatic, but act on us in hidden ways. When we submit to them, we not only surrender our autonomy—we surrender illusion.

• Read good stories (of course!): Stories reach the inner person in ways logic can’t. They bypass the rational mind, speaking to the whole self and shaping us at a deeper level.

I plan to write a few more articles in this series, so stick around!