Sometimes we sense that we are different, or “other”, because of our identity or unique, personal style. The path to becoming ourselves is often made difficult by others’ prejudices or blind spots.
Are you ready to give your unique self the nurturing and support needed for you to thrive?
Holly did. Read her story below…
Who Is Holly—to Herself and the World?
When Holly* stepped into my office, I saw a woman who bore pain and fear on her face. She said that over the last year her sense of despair about her future had grown to a worrisome point, and she wanted to understand these feelings and find a path forward.
Holly complained of having embarked on several different job paths in the tech field only to have her initial enthusiasm crushed. She seemed to not fit in with her work peers and believed that her bosses minimized her and rejected her contributions. She was also in a long-term relationship with a boyfriend whom she also felt minimized her and whom she suspected might be having an affair.
Holly Is Unique – Who Recognizes This Uniqueness?
As we started to work together and looked more closely at her history, we started to see that she had a unique personal style that was out of step with her family and work environments. She had an ironic, cynical outlook on the world and a kind of dark humor, while also preserving a budding sense of optimism about herself. She could be very passionate about her ideas and displayed a real sense of vitality and aliveness when expressing them.
Holly’s Early Years
Holly described growing up with her parents and feeling loved and cared for. Often, however, she felt misunderstood and at times even diminished. Whether it was because Holly’s parents subscribed to a more gender-stereotyped view of what a woman should be, or because they couldn’t embrace and be supportive of Holly’s non-conformist and assertive self, she often felt like there was something wrong with her.
Could Holly Grow Past This Stifled Life?
Important work began for her when she realized how much of her current life with work and relationship still retained that stifling feeling that who she was couldn’t be embraced and nurtured. To the contrary, in her corporate life, she often was given the feeling that she was stepping out of line when attempting to contribute ideas.
In several successive jobs, she often had the experience that expressing herself led to the painful feeling of not fitting in. Even in her current relationship, Holly sensed that her boyfriend’s subtle teasing and competitiveness with her led to a more pervasive feeling that she needed to suppress parts of herself to keep him happy.
Holly’s growing understanding of how her early history of having her uniqueness be misunderstood and unsupported was again playing out in her current life experience. The more she expressed herself freely in sessions, she gained confidence that it was “okay to be her.”
With my encouragement, she began to devise ideas of changing the contexts where she re-experienced many of these early painful feelings. She eventually took big risks by leaving her relationship and decided to develop her own on-line business.
*To respect confidentiality, Holly is a composite of several clients’ stories.
Discovering Your Unique Self
Like my work with Holly, we will work to understand how you may be encumbered by self-attitudes that were formed in response to the way others have treated you.
My goal is to discover with you who your unique self is, help you to free yourself from negative beliefs, and help you to find your path to greater self-expression and vitality.
You can live as your own unique self. Call to start the process of discovery.
