Our “real selves” are the lives we are living.

I don’t believe we “find ourselves,” or that we enhance our lives by searching for some form of “true me” or “authentic self.” I don’t believe we find ourselves because I don’t believe that “selves" are things that are found. Of course, I’m very aware that popular culture suggests otherwise!

I believe we create ourselves - in the very deepest sense, our journey is to move toward becoming the person we sense, glimpse, and envision that we are capable of being - a person who acts with strength, compassion, realism, charity, connectedness, curiosity, flexibility, and openness. You will not “find” such a self inside you, though you may well recognize your potential. Our journeys may require that we step through our emotional and physical pain, fear, compulsiveness, trauma, addiction, depression, and other burdens that stand between who we are today and who we are capable of being.

While therapy is a journey, I do not believe it is a journey of understanding “who am I” or “What’s wrong with me” or of “being fixed.” Rather, it is a journey of recognizing and understanding who we want to be, and moving to become that person. Healing happens while doing; healing happens as we become the person we envision ourselves as being.

Behavioral Health

Behavioral health diagnoses (anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, PTSD, autism spectrum, ADHD, addiction/substance use disorders, and the many others) are, at best, partial or slipshod descriptions of our experience, but the social and emotional pain they aim to describe are as real as anything we encounter in our lives.

Emotional pain and behavioral disability limit our potential. That said, understanding psychiatric diagnoses as barriers (and not as permanent markers) helps shift the question from “What’s wrong with me?” to “How do I move forward in my life?” or “How can I do things differently and more effectively?”

Questions like “what’s wrong with me?” do not offer any pathway forward - they are laden with blame and with a focus on disease and deficit, and thus are rarely helpful. Alternatively, questions like “How do I do things more effectively,” or “How do I move forward in my life” invite new ways of engaging with ourselves and with others.

Like magic

Who do you want to be in this world? What are the values and meanings by which you arrange and live your life? What memories and meanings will you leave with others — with your spouse or partner, your children, your friends — and what mark will you leave on this world? 

You have this nearly magical opportunity — being alive. It starts when you realize that it’s started, and ends when it ends.  Who will you be, and how will you do it?