Do you ever wonder exactly who you are, whether you are who, and what you really want to be?

Do you never wonder who you are, do you have no time for self-reflection, and go through the day, the week, the month, the year, propelled by external circumstances in which you as an individual seem to get lost and forgotten?

If you’re reading this you’re already accepting that you have some interest in the notion of identity, and in just a few seconds you may have instinctively reflected on the either/or scenario above. Whether you’re in a state of self-curiosity, or just coming to recognise that you are so overwhelmed with life in general that your identity is taken for granted, it will help you to know that psychotherapy can provide the vehicle for your journey into self-awareness on the one hand, and into that realm where new identities are forged after old ones have been fractured by life traumas on the other.

The following two fictitious case studies are quite different, but in both the identity of the client is at stake.

• Sue, a marketing executive married Jack, a dentist five years ago. The wedding was lavish, a public statement of the two families’ expectations of the marriage. After having twin boys and taking a 12-month period of maternity leave, Sue hired a full-time nanny and returned to her marketing role in a large organisation. She wanted to ‘feel’ her old self, and had looked forward to getting out of the house, but the pressures of her job, and motherhood brought continual fatigue. Now, she doesn’t feel like a professional woman, nor a good mother, and her wife-image is severely compromised as the time for romance between herself and Jack, who is increasingly late home from his surgery, is consumed by domestic chores. Complicating Sue’s thoughts is the fact that she has formed a strong friendship with a female work colleague and has come to realise that she is sexually as well as emotionally attached to this person. She no longer knows who she is and is suffering with high levels of anxiety resulting from her identity crisis.

• Mustafa is a refugee recently arrived from the Middle East, where he had a good education and training, became a hospital doctor, and married Leila, a colleague. In traumatic circumstances occasioned by a civil war, Mustafa and Leila, by then pregnant with their first child, used their savings to escape via a land/sea route, but in a tragic accident, Leila drowned and her body was not recovered. Mustafa completed his journey with the emotional support of other refugees. Now, he is undergoing bridging training to take up a hospital doctor post, but emotionally he is confused and broken, his assumptive world being shattered as his self-perception as a professional man, husband and father-to-be has been decimated. The predominant language around him is not his native tongue so even his expression is compromised, and he is largely silent. Mustafa is facing an existential crisis which involves occasional suicidal thoughts. He no longer knows who he is and is suffering high levels of anxiety resulting from his loss of identity.

The scenarios I have painted may seem extreme and outside of most people’s everyday experience, as they each contain multiple complications, but any one of the factors present in these cases can cause identity problems. In the case of Sue and Mustafa, psychotherapy can promote their identity exploration and a greater understanding of where they see themselves in their socio-psychological world. From this self-knowledge, the journey to acceptance of, and comfort with their identities can start.

As a therapist, I have heard clients expressing their regret about not tackling their identity issues – “if only I’d accepted that about myself five years ago, I’d have saved myself a lot of heartache”, “I wish I’d had the courage to recognise that job was never suited to who I saw myself as being”, “I felt I was in the wrong body for so long but was scared to even put that into words” …  

With such clients I use several socio-psychological theories in the area of attachment and identity, and techniques from CBT to explore core beliefs and fears that generate anxieties. These can help to answer the important question of “Who am I?” that most people ask themselves at some point in their lives.