Specialties

Personal Identity

The work of becoming who you choose to be.

Some people come here because something happened. Others come because something stopped fitting. They have built a life that looks fine from the outside, and inside they are no longer sure who they are, what they want, or whose expectations they have been living by.

You do not need a diagnosis to do this work. You need a sense that the way you have been living is not fully yours, and a wish to find out what is.

People come to this work when:

They no longer know who they are, or realize they may never have known
A life experience made them rethink what they believed about themselves and the world
A challenge or crisis left them feeling they had lost themselves
The career, possessions, and achievements they built no longer feel like who they are
They feel a spiritual pull, or are simply ready to turn inward and explore their inner world

Healing is not about becoming someone new. It is about finding your way back to your authentic self.

What Is Identity?

Identity is your sense of who you are: what you value, what you believe, how you relate to others, and what gives your life meaning. It shapes how you experience the world and how the world experiences you.

Personal identity can mean many things. It can include gender, sexuality, and cultural identity. It can include your roles, your relationships, your work, and your faith. And it can include the larger questions of being a person: meaning and purpose, freedom and responsibility, loss and mortality, and how to live a life that is truly yours.

When identity is suppressed, dismissed, or misunderstood, it can lead to anxiety, depression, or deep disconnection. When it is honored and expressed, it becomes a source of resilience. Your individuality is not something to fix.

What Brings People Here

Living by Someone Else's Script

Realizing you have been living by expectations that were never your own. Saying yes when you mean no. Knowing what everyone else needs and not honoring what you want. Feeling like you are playing a part that no longer feels right.

Beliefs, Values, and Meaning

Questioning the beliefs you were raised with. Changes in faith or spirituality. Wanting to live by your own values rather than other people's expectations.

Losing a Role That Defined You

Losing a role that defined you, as a partner, a parent, or a professional. Finding that the identity you built no longer fits the person you have become.

Turning Inward

Feeling that the answers are no longer outside you. A spiritual search, or a wish to understand your inner world: your dreams, your patterns, and what drives you beneath the surface.

The Parts of Yourself You Set Aside

Feeling like a stranger in your own life. Being a different person with different people. Any part of yourself you learned to hide: your playfulness, ambition, anger, grief, tenderness, desire, creativity, or faith. Every part of you is welcome here.

Where Your Sense of Self Comes From

Most of what you believe about yourself was in place before you were old enough to examine it. It came from your family, your schooling, your culture, and whatever earned approval when you were young. For a long time it works well enough that you never have to look at it.

Those beliefs shape more than your opinions. They shape what you notice, how you interpret it, what you feel, and what you do. Over years, what you do becomes who you believe yourself to be, and that becomes the life you have. It also runs the other way: acting differently changes what you believe.

That is why identity can change. Part of the work is getting back the parts of yourself you set aside along the way.

Insight. Integration. Individuation.

Insight is seeing what shaped you. Integration is bringing every part of yourself back together. Individuation is becoming who you truly are.

Identity and What Shaped You

Questions about identity often sit alongside other things. People who grew up having to stay safe by keeping others happy often reach adulthood unsure of who they are apart from what others need from them. That is part of what trauma can leave behind, and it is part of what treatment here addresses (more about trauma). Identity questions can also come with depression, anxiety, or a major life change (Life Transitions).

What Treatment Looks Like Here

A thorough evaluation sorts out what you are dealing with. Sometimes it is a question about direction and meaning with nothing clinical underneath it. Sometimes depression, an anxiety disorder, or the effects of trauma are making the question harder to answer. Often it is both.

When symptoms are part of the picture, we treat them directly, with medication when it would help. Therapy offers space for the deeper work: understanding what shaped you, making peace with the parts of yourself you pushed away, and choosing how you want to live from here.

Who This Work Suits

This work suits people who are curious about themselves and willing to be changed by what they find. Many are doing well by outside measures. Some have a history of trauma, anxiety, or depression, and some do not. What they share is that they would rather understand their life and direct it than wait for it to settle on its own.

Adolescents and Young Adults

Adolescence and early adulthood are when a sense of self first takes shape: who you are apart from your family, what you believe, and what you want your life to be. I work with adolescents age 14 and older and with young adults.