identity issues

identity issues

At the heart of identity there’s always a kind of fracture – a gap; a tear in the fabric of who we feel we are. That might be the gap between who you feel you are inside vs. the physical body you see looking back at you in the mirror; or the gaps between all the different roles and identities you occupy in life; or more broadly the gap between who you feel you are vs. the unknowable way a million different people see you as you walk through life every day. Even at the best of times identity brings a freedom that can also feel unstable; at the worst it’s lain at the core of the most heinous crimes in history. Identity is simultaneously this huge, concrete thing that affects every part of life, while psychologically speaking can often feel elusive and impermanent.

Feeling some kind of shift in your identity can be profoundly destabilising. You may have been through a life transition or traumatic experience and not know who you are now, what you want or what your values are. Or be sure in yourself who you are, but have been on the receiving end of judgement, prejudice, power & oppression from others based on nothing more than a few physical traits that supposedly define you.

Experiences like dissociation, depersonalisation and spells of amnesia may resonate with you, feeling disconnected from yourself for varying periods of time. You may have received or wondered about diagnoses like Borderline Personality Disorder, and noticed big shifts in who you feel you are. Or perhaps have a strong sense of more than one very clear and discrete identity inside you, where a term like Dissociative Identity Disorder may speak to you.

A depth-based therapy like psychodynamic therapy can help you work through all of the experiences that form and affect your sense of identity. Be that the formative experiences of early life, or the socio-cultural environment around you in the present day.