‘Who am I Now?’

This is something women can find themselves asking at different stages in their life, as their current self evolves due to beginnings, endings, shifts; periods of change.

As a woman, I have experienced these transitions at various points in my life; feeling like my identity has changed and that I’ve lost all sense of who I am. This recurring, anxiety-inducing obstacle to moving forward into the next phase of my life with confidence and enthusiasm has forced me to look inward to work out who I am, who I want to be; work out the essence and fabric of my person. How can we search for our true self amongst the jumbled-up overspill of past experiences? How do we find our true self who hasn’t changed, despite everything else changing? Does she even exist still?

What is identity?

Identity is something which comes up regularly in the counselling room, regardless of age, gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, class, relationships and so on. Life events can make us stop in our tracks and question who we are. The consciousness of this question can create a feeling of being lost. And losing all sense of who we are can feel like a deep loss; grieving for the person we used to be. Identity is a constant shifting process of change, and it encompasses what you see as your characteristics, personal qualities and responsibilities in the world.

Identity is multifaced, in that we already exist as son/daughter, sibling, woman/man/nonbinary, wife/husband/partner, mother/father/parent, work colleague, friend, social identity, and then there is another layer including religion, nationality, ethnicity, race, social class, culture, disability, language, sex, sexual orientation. These roles we inhabit come with taught, learnt, absorbed or adapted values and perceptions of how we relate with ourselves and the world around us. So many layers make it a complex beast to navigate at the best of times, never mind when a life changing event happens that make us question who we are.

The ‘Personal Identity’ definition in the Oxford Reference describes ‘A phenomenological sense of oneself as a separate individual being with a distinctive personality and a ‘true self’ persisting over time; a self image’ and philosophically ‘The problem of whether ‘the same person’ can exist over time.’ Can the same person exist throughout their lifetime, or does that core essence of a person evolve and change so much it becomes unrecognisable in life transitions?

Identity as a woman

Women find themselves entering new phases of massive change many times in their lives; puberty, youth, education, career, infertility/pregnancy/choosing not to have children, birthing experience, motherhood, relationships, mother & working person, stepmother roles, children becoming independent, aging, body changes, menopause, grandparent, retiree. And this list doesn’t touch on all the personal and social heartfelt struggles that each of those phases can present, causing mental and physical health issues of which some feel life changing, and your old self feels lost. I used to call all these overlapping roles my ‘hats’, “I’m putting a different hat on now” (mother hat, job hat, partner hat, social hat, friend hat etc).

As I approached my 50s, I felt like I had ticked the boxes of almost everything that a woman could face as a personal challenge and difficulty, with the endless feeling ‘I don’t know who I am any more’. It brought about chronic anxiety, lack of confidence and wanting to disappear. This led me to finally try and discover who I am, through making some big life changing decisions, counselling and then training in counselling.

Exploring identity in counselling?

Sometimes our loss of self reaches such a low point that we feel we can’t cope; this can be described as having an ‘identity crisis’. It can cause issues in relationships, bad decision making, loneliness and depression. You feel you can’t trust yourself; trust your instincts. Taking the step to seek some support, when the emptiness or confusion feels all-consuming, can feel like such a hard thing to do.

As a counsellor, I have offered to my clients the belief that their true self hasn’t been lost and they can find their old self again if that is what they wish for; their old self complete with new experiences added on. This can sometimes cause distress because they feel overwhelmed with grief for the self they miss. For example, they used to be care-free, gregarious and confident but now they feel constricted by what people think, lack confidence and joy. They believe all their life stresses, anxiety, trauma and things ‘going wrong’ has buried who they are. Buried things can be re-found.

Sometimes the process involves going back to childhood to work out what messages and experiences you received as a child, which then formed your values, self-belief and self-perception of what kind of person you felt you were, such as being worthy of love and acceptance by just being yourself, by asking yourself, ‘am I good enough as myself?’. A childhood which consisted of emotional neglect and/or trauma most likely caused a poor sense of self and a need to adapt personality and behaviour to find that love and acceptance. Whereas sometimes loss of self has happened as a consequence of an abusive relationship or a traumatic event which strips you of your strong self-belief system and you find yourself feeling like an empty shell and ‘not being good enough as myself’.

If your belief is that you are not good enough from childhood or abuse/trauma, then it is likely you strive for perfection, love, acceptance, approval, validation, not saying ‘no’, bending over backwards to please others and putting their needs before your own. In which case, it is time to reset those self-beliefs. As your counsellor, I can help you process trauma and repressed emotions. I can reflect back to you parts of yourself you believed were lost, which can be joyfully surprising for clients. I can provide a safe space to explore your lost self, or help you adopt different personal values and attitudes to enable you to honour your true, core self. Receiving compassion from me, as your counsellor, can provide a base for learning self-compassion, forgiveness, acceptance, trust and being able to put yourself first; a strong sense of self-worth.

And so begins a period of deep change, of self-awareness, self-esteem, self-worth, self-acceptance and embracing that belief system which says ‘I am good enough as myself’. The true-self can then re-emerge with a strong and confident sense of personal identity. It takes time and patience, but you are worthy of giving yourself that time for a sustained and strong belief in who you are.

If you feel you relate to anything mentioned in this blog, or feel like you are lost, don’t know who you are and would like to work it out in a safe and confidential space, please contact me on info@instinctivecounselling.co.uk or call me on 07831 841 096