Identity Work
“I don’t even know who I am anymore...”
“Who am I?”
Our world today is more complex than most points in history. There’s a label for everything and everyone. Still, it seems harder than ever to feel like you truly know who you are. Maybe you never really had a firm sense of identity to begin with. Perhaps, your parents or caregivers didn’t really reflect back to you about your strengths, challenges, and values. Or maybe, you remember having a firm identity at one point in your life, but this identity doesn’t seem to fit anymore for one reason or another. You’ve been through too many changes or difficult relationships and just don’t feel like you know who you are anymore.
It can be very destabilizing to go through your day not knowing who you are. This makes it difficult to make decisions and easy to people-please rather than checking in with yourself because you don’t know what you stand for or what’s important to you. After a while, you can start to feel out of touch, like you don’t have any firm foundation. It’s hard to be alone with yourself. And, you may even start looking for your worth within others or within unhealthy relationships.
Some common struggles related to identity
Feeling unsure of who you are deep down
Having an unstable or fluctuating sense of self
Uncertainty about what’s important to you
Feeling frequently disappointed with yourself
Struggling with decision-making
Excessive people-pleasing
Struggling with racial, ethnic, sexual, or gender identity, etc.
The path back to yourself.
If you can relate to these struggles, know that your life doesn’t have to be like this. You can be close with others and still know who you are. You can have a firm sense of what’s important to you. You can figure out what compromises you are and are not willing to make. It just takes a little bit of time, self-love, and attention.
Identity work can be an enjoyable exploration with the added benefits of saving you time and struggle in your daily life. Knowing who you are will help you make better decisions and magnetize more of the things you want in your life. We can take time to explore your values, complete comprehensive personality assessment, and review the ways that your values and personality play out in your personal life and relationships. We can also look at situations that tend to cause the most conflict between your values, taking steps to resolve these conflicts as we go.