ED4AW - How to Build Identity (Away from Others)

 Hi, welcome/welcome back to my blog!

Day 1/Intro

What to start with? I'm at work most of the time so a lot of what I'm inspired to write about comes from my interactions at work.

I want to say I'm not as confident at work as I would like? It's hard to explain.

I can be assertive and actually quite bold, but my default is to *very* actively avoid situations where I would even need to be in the first place. It's so confusing.

I wrote in my journal "It's other people's world and I'm just living in it, I exist only where other people have created gaps, like mould."

Kinda mean, but super accurate. 

I only assert myself when someone is brazen enough to encroach on these gaps.

I feel like these gaps are owed to me as an absolute minimum after denying so much of myself just to be able to stay in them.

"Surely no one will bother me here."

"At least let me have this what the fuck."

I put the quote about mould into Chat GPT and asked for an interpretation (I know some people are gonna get scared  now), it returned a couple but this one is what I think is actually going on. 

Dependency on Others for Identity: The phrase might suggest that one's identity or sense of self is heavily dependent on others. It could imply that without the roles, expectations, or gaps created by others, the individual feels they have no clear existence or purpose.

Yeah this is me... so fucked up. I don't know if I 100% agree with the quote, maybe 80%. It's like, these gaps I've confined myself do feel like the way of finding my purpose, but it requires so much of me being empty in order to fit in them. 

I had other things I wanted to write about: I don't act my age, I'm a push over, I don't initiate things ever, life feels like everyone is in on a big secret except me, but now that I think about it, they all come from the same source. 

I feel 1 dimensional sometimes; I'm not big enough, I don't take up enough room, there isn't enough of me to address the things I mentioned in the paragraph above. I've assigned my identity to other people and left myself empty. 

So each day for a week I will be trying to see all of me, and not leave so much of my identity in other people's hand. 

All of the space I should be taking up is filled with other people...but I'm too scared to do anything about it.  

Day 2 - what my therapist said

My therapist basically said chill out or something.. I struggled to explain the issue to him.

I was like, I feel so scared to be myself, I don't think there's enough in me to do everything I'd like to do. 

He said "sometimes you just have to be brave, every person has doubts especially creative people. Think of how many famous people were overcome by their struggles, it's hard to put yourself out there."

There isn't enough of me to fill up the space, and that's why I confine myself to corners.

My therapist said it already seems like I know who I am, I've got my identity laid out. 

Day 2 is definitely an IDK moment. If I feel like there isn't enough in me to do everything I want, where is it?

Day 3 - I'm hiding parts of myself away

I've been invited on to a Facebook live where people in the local community tell their story, so I'm gonna have to tell my story. 

And this made me think, maybe I am confined to the gaps left by other people, because I am hiding parts of myself.

Maybe what my therapist said about being brave is relevant here. It's not just about being brave enough to not care about disapproval, it's being brave enough to stop hiding.

Are these the same thing? I feel like like "being brave enough to not care about disapproval" doesn't bring you out of the gaps, it's not expansive, it doesn't give you more to draw from. It still has you looking outwards, considering how everyone else is encroaching on your space.

Whereas being brave.. I think it means being brave enough to reveal yourself, to risk encroaching on other people's territory. 

Does coming out of hiding always mean you might encroach on other people's space, or is this something that I only worry about? 

The being confined is only real for me, the encroaching is only real for me.

Day 4 - Giving Over Your Power

Did the same art therapy technique I always do:

https://youtu.be/TcGPc80f2VM?si=XGqNTK7ZQVvPbtYo

Pink, red, green. Very random colours, I'm not sure what to take from that.

They are bright colours, is the art about something that is always grabbing my attention?

There were pink coloured clouds; does this represent spending a lot of time in my head?

The rain was green... like toxic rain?? It was raining on me, I was spread out.

This art therapy was harder to pin down than my normal sessions, but this is what I got from it:

I'm someone who feels things intensely, and does things intensely. That includes hiding away parts of myself  I think others might find unworthy; it's almost like I disappear away.

But this is not a peaceful process, deep down I think it makes me feel angry, or at least very frustrated.

I'm angry that I've centred my identity around interpersonal struggle...interpersonal inconvenience. It takes up more space than it needs to, I fixate on it.

I'm angry at the cause of this behaviour; probably something from the past I am unable to fully move on from. I'm angry at the process itself; how much emotional resource it takes to 'come out on top' in this fictional struggle. Angry that I feel like this is something I always have to have switched on; it requires people constantly being so available to my mind's thinking process.

The art therapy technique invites you to articulate what you think might help.

I said I need to decentre my identity from interpersonal struggle; it keeps me angry and feeling 'short-changed' as a default. Another important aspect of this struggle is that it's subjective and I can't see it; this came through in my art.

One piece of advice my therapist gave me was to check in with my feelings of being angry at the world, and not wanting to let people get in my way. He said it might mean I'm getting in my own way; it doesn't allow me to go easy on myself.

Being softer on the world means you can be softer on yourself - I can't say this quote is applicable to everyone person but it's definitely applicable to me...

I do wonder what comes first for me, being angry or being scared (of revealing parts of myself)?

I wanna say something like, I feel the fear first, but I don't let it get very far before I'm back in the game of interpersonal struggle and feeling frustrated/angry because of it.. 

Day 5 - Interoception, and Stopping to Think 

I am technically writing this on the morning of day 6, but it's a download of everything that happened on day 5.

There was a quote about judgement from a Youtube video I watched a couple of days ago, I wasn't sure where it fit into my writing so I didn't include it on the day, but here it is:

"Judgement is not about us, it is about how other people feel about themselves, and the implications we think this will have for how we feel about ourselves."

I'm not sure how all the stuff for Day 5 link together, I think there is a common theme of being grounded in reality?

Let's continue...

On day 5 there was  focus on what is called 'interoception'; noticing the feelings that are bubbling up in your body.

• Where in your body do you feel it?
• Does it feel hot/cold?
• How intense is it?
• What triggers these feelings?
• Is it painful?

If we quickly circle back to the subject of this blog:

In my opinion, a lot of who I feel like I can be, is determined by other people. "I feel like I only exist in gaps created by others." 

I wanted to explore how to not let my identity be so centred around what everyone else is doing. I call the feelings around this my interpersonal struggle, and it takes up a lot of emotional resource. 

Through some art therapy, I discovered that all this work around interpersonal struggle is frustrating for me. It makes me actually angry, I associate inconvenience with it. But it's what I'm used to and how I feel like I need to be.

The fact that I feel like I need to be this way, seems unfair to me, like I've been short changed by the world. 

But I'm the one who has chosen to put interpersonal struggle at the forefront of my mind; it's a choice I make every day. 

Interoception is the focus of today because for me, there are physical sensations associated with engaging with this interpersonal struggle,  so when I notice them bubbling up I make a deliberate effort to ***pause***, and try not to get immediately wrapped up in feelings and sensations.

9 times out of 10, my feelings don't reflect the actual reality. I am proactively looking for things to get wound up in and frustrated about, not on purpose but that is what's happening. 

Negative experiences, that we hope to move on from (that we feel like we ought to have moved on from), are like phantoms; we recreate certain experiences in our mind; but it might not be directly correlated with what is happening in front of us.  

Sometimes we read negative intentions into normal things. 

Another thing I wrote down in my notes app is "Being fully present is a gift I can give to myself, and it is free".

I feel like unconscious behaviour patterns, whether it's being fixated on interpersonal struggle like me, isolating ourselves, not setting appropriate boundaries with people, whatever it may be, comes from a place of leaving ourselves behind and choosing the pattern; it's almost like a reflex and I would say is most like a survival instinct. 

So what helps is interoception and being internally aware, noticing all of the signs that certain feelings and associated behaviours are bubbling up. This gives us the opportunity to choose something different, and hopefully that choice is being more present.

Being present is powerful, and it's a gift that we should aspire to give ourselves more of. 

Day 6 - Violation and Violence

On the previous day where I said "Being fully present is a gift I can give to myself, and it is free".

I also wrote something else at the same time but I forgot what I meant: 

"There is a (survival) instinct to dismiss everything about ourselves."

I think I meant: it's much easier for me to hide away parts of myself, it comes so much easier to me than being present. It doesn't take much for me to say "I am nothing, I am not here, act like I was never here."

It's so easy to retreat away into myself, when I should be expanding, taking up space, being present.

I started writing this blog post because I feel like "I only exist in the space left by other people. ", but on day 6 I acknowledged that this isn't all my fault. I have to take into account all the negative experiences that have diminished me, diminished the space I feel like I can take up, diminished how much of myself I allow to be visible.

I feel like your brain interprets these experiences as a type of violence; other people not being able to contain their own baggage means you feel like you have a smaller space to occupy.

This type of "violence" presses on and compresses the space you feel like you can occupy in the world. It encroaches on it, until you basically have nothing left for your self, or you become conditioned to leave nothing for yourself.

The pressing represents the initial injury, and the compression describes the feeling of "stuckness"; losing the ability and motivation to expand out and stay present. 

I also realised, that this type of feeling is something I genuinely need to heal from. Seriously.

I can't just "fix" it. Like healing from other types of violence, I need to acknowledge the injury, how it has made me feel, especially pertaining to my identity.

Acknowledge that it fucking sucks.

How does a wounded person act? What kind of things do they do to recover?

Day 7 - Conclusion

I would say that a big aspect of building your identity away from others is trying to be present. Be present with the things you consider important about yourself, in the same way you would be if a important friend wanted your time and attention.

I think the point I made about acknowledging the initial injury is also important, things that have diminished us in some way; this makes it easier to move on from them.

I wrote this blog because sometimes I feel like I only exist in the space left by other people.

One thing I'm gonna do differently is try not to retreat into myself out of habit.

So how to end...there is no question that within us we have so much space, and so many different layers that we can use to create a rich inner world, but some of us abandon this aspect of ourselves out of habit. 

Yes there was an initial injury, which diminished how much space we think we are entitled to, but you never have to stay where the world places you. Being present helps us to understand this. 

If you got this far, thanks for reading.