Who Are You, Really?

The person we believe ourselves to be is not necessarily the whole of who we are.

Our sense of self is not fixed. It develops and changes throughout our lives, shaped by our experiences and, importantly, by our relationships with other people.

The following is a fictional example, created to illustrate an idea about therapeutic work. It is not based on any individual client.

Sarah's story

Sarah is 26 and comes to counselling because she feels anxious about the future, low in mood and lacking in confidence.

She grew up with loving, protective parents. Within her family, being kind, helpful and considerate of others was highly valued, and Sarah was particularly praised for being caring and attentive.

Over time, she became hesitant about taking on challenges and tended to underestimate her ability to cope. The more she held herself back, the less confident she became.

Sarah had gradually come to understand herself as the kind one, the helpful one. She was very attuned to other people's needs and often found it easier to think about what someone else wanted than to identify what she wanted herself.

There were aspects of herself that Sarah had become less familiar with, and she had had little opportunity to explore what she might want beyond the role she had become accustomed to.

What happens to the parts of us that don't find room?

The family we grow up in is a unique relational environment. Every family has its own ways of communicating, relating and responding to one another. This is not about something being right or wrong. It is simply the environment in which we learn about ourselves and about relationships. Within that environment, some aspects of who we are may find more room to develop and be expressed than others.

For Sarah, being caring and accommodating fitted comfortably within her relationships. Her anger, however, had less room. When she felt frustrated or hurt, she tended to swallow it. She worried about upsetting people and had become accustomed to seeing herself as kind and easy-going. Gradually, anger became something that didn't feel like her.

It wasn't that her anger disappeared. It became something she had learnt to keep at a distance.

When we lose touch with anger, we can sometimes lose touch with qualities connected to it. Anger can tell us that something matters to us, that a boundary has been crossed, or that a need has gone unnoticed. Being able to recognise and tolerate anger can support our capacity to say no, disagree, be assertive and protect what matters to us.

For Sarah, keeping her anger at a distance also meant that these ways of being were less familiar. She found it difficult to know when something wasn't right for her, express disagreement, or put her own needs alongside those of others.

What looked like a lack of confidence was connected to something deeper: Sarah had become very practised at accommodating others, but had had less opportunity to experience herself as someone who could take up space, have needs and act on her own behalf.

Finding a fuller sense of self

Sarah's anxiety and low mood may have brought her to counselling, but underneath these difficulties was another question: Who am I, when I am not simply responding to what other people need from me?

The therapeutic relationship offered Sarah an opportunity to tend to her inner world: to slow down, become curious about her experience, and begin to notice feelings and needs that had previously been difficult to acknowledge. As she talked about situations in which she felt frustrated or overlooked, she began to recognise her anger.

At first, this felt uncomfortable. If she was kind, wasn't anger a bad thing?

Within the therapy relationship, there was space for her anger to be explored rather than judged. She could begin to see that anger did not make her unkind. Sometimes it told her that something mattered to her, that a boundary had been crossed, or that she had a need that deserved attention.

Sarah didn't have to become an angry person. She could simply begin to recognise anger as one part of her experience. And as this became more possible, other things began to change. She became more able to notice what she wanted and needed. She found it easier to disagree without immediately feeling she had done something wrong. She could begin to say no and take on challenges without needing to know that she would succeed.

She did not become a completely different person. Rather, her sense of herself became larger. She could still be caring and considerate. But she no longer had to be only those things.

We discover ourselves in relationship

Much of our sense of self develops in relationship. From our earliest experiences, we learn how other people respond to us and what seems possible within our relationships. We develop ideas, often without consciously choosing them, about who we are and how we need to be in order to belong, feel safe and remain connected. Sometimes these ways of being continue to serve us well. At other times, they can become restrictive.

We may become very good at being the person others know us as, while becoming less familiar with other aspects of ourselves.

The people who care for us bring their own histories, needs and ways of relating. Families are complex, and children develop within these particular relational environments in different ways. Yet even within loving relationships, there may be aspects of ourselves that find less room to be expressed.

Over time, these less-expressed parts can become unfamiliar. We may push them away, minimise them, or come to experience them as unacceptable or simply not me.

Sometimes we feel the effects without knowing where they come from: anxiety, low mood, withdrawal from relationships, irritability, low self-esteem, difficulty setting boundaries, confusion about what we want, or a sense that we are somehow living at a distance from ourselves.

Counselling can offer an opportunity to become curious about these experiences within a relationship where there is space to explore them. As we become more familiar and compassionate with more of ourselves, we can gain greater freedom in how we choose to live.