• Do you feel a dissonance between who you want to be and the life you’re currently living?

• Do you struggle with ongoing negative thinking, self-doubt, or beating yourself up?

• Do you feel like your own worst enemy and hold yourself back from things you want to do?

• Are you tired of hearing the advice, “You just need to be more confident”?

The Problem

“Who am I?” is perhaps the most basic question to ask, but also the most daunting one to answer.

Who we are says more than just a name. It entails our personality: what we like, what we dislike, our hobbies, our career, what we stand for, and so much more. It reflects how we fit in the world and alongside the people around us. It also implies what we desire and what we think we deserve.

Sometimes we learn to believe that our interests don’t matter as much as someone else’s. Sometimes we feel self-conscious that we don’t fit in with the crowd. Sometimes we feel like we’re not lovable, not capable, or not good enough.

During your youth, you learn from caregivers & peers who you are and how to behave. Your brain is not developed enough yet to consciously internalize events. However, how these key figures show up for you in key events (e.g., comforts you after you fall, dismisses your tears, physically present but emotionally absent) unconsciously encodes in your body an initial understanding of your identity:

• My passions are welcome or unwelcome by others

• My emotions validated or invalidated

• Affection is unconditional or earned

• I am allowed to “take up” space or not

During adolescence, you start to develop self-awareness and an internal dialogue. Your brain starts to “make sense” of your experiences and tries to put language towards it. You start to latch onto negative core beliefs like:

• I’m not deserving

• I’m not enough

• I’m too much

• I’m not allowed to be fully myself

Given the pain that this can cause, your brain kicks into self-protection mode. Your brain focuses in on the negative as a default, and so it gets you stuck on these beliefs.

This negative self-esteem casts a tinted lens onto your world. This may hold you back from making a career change or asking out someone you like. You may self-sabotage and let go of things you actually want.

It may not even be an issue of ability; there’s an intrinsic belief that you’re insufficient.

The Path Forward

Just as negative beliefs have been learned, they can also be unlearned and overwritten.

In therapy, we start by identifying your negative core beliefs and where they came from. We explore the deep fear underlying them — “What if this were true about me?”

Coming face-to-face with your fears can be the scary part; however, confronting these fears in a safe space can show you that they don’t need to have such power over you and that you’re capable of moving past them.

From there, you can begin to re-write your thought patterns:

• “What if” I am enough?

• “What if” I am capable?

• “What if” I have permission?

This reprograms the reticular activating system in your brain to look for the good, the positive, and the helpful. Over time, you will begin to identify these in your day-to-day world and reinforces that you deserve good things — not because of what you’ve accomplished, but because of who you already are.

You can start to shut out the outside voices (e.g., family pressures, social media, societal norms) that crowd your mind. You can begin to recognize that you have a unique voice worth expressing, boundaries worth setting, or risks worth taking.

The growth process is not merely about becoming more “confident.” It is about giving you the space to be and express your full self. “Confidence,” or assurance in who you know yourself to be, is just the outflowing of that internal recognition.

As “simple” as it sounds (though it takes work to achieve), the journey is about [1] recognizing you have control & permission and [2] giving yourself space to exercise your ability to create your own path.

And even if you don’t know who you want to be just yet, that’s okay; you can feel allowed & unhurried to explore, to dream, to become.