HELP PAGES
New Identity
Identity is a collective term for the roles, goals, and values that people adopt in order to five their lives direction and purpose. Identity forms a blueprint for the way in which we conduct our lives and plan our future.
The transition from being powerless to being once more powerful in the recovery process goes down to the core of you are – to who you think you are, to your identity. You gain strength and purpose by linking to your other selves in ways that resolve pain and loss and increase action and connection to your new way of being.
“Then, one day I noticed that while I wasn’t who I was, or could have been, there were some good things about who I had become.”
Michele Rosenthal, author of Your Life After Trauma: Powerful Practices to Reclaim Your Identity.
Traumatic events disrupt these plans and alter our lives in unpredictable and sometimes permanent ways. Your identity prior to the fire may have been defined by relationships to family members, your role in the family, your work, your play and leisure. Since the fire, your experiences may have helped you to re-think how you view yourself in these roles and relationships. New ways of relating and working have become the norm.
Life goals change when years of living your life ware wiped away in an instant. Values and beliefs about the world may be shattered by events that suggest the world is not as safe as you thought. How you view your new circumstances shapes your recovery and your actions. The event can be viewed as a positive turning point in life, and/or as a reference point for expectations about the future.
“In my own process, this meant acknowledging who I had become and what I didn’t like about myself, recognising what I missed about my old self and finding ways to reconnect, creating a visiton of who I wanted to be and setting up experiences that allowed me to explore, discover, embrace and embody the elements that made me feel a connection to that.”
You cannot go back to who you used to be
You might try to go back to how you used to be before; you might try to imitate who you had been. That old person didn’t know all the things you now know about yourself, others and the world. This new information will always be present in any identity you choose.
You can bring the past into your present
If you can remember who you used to be, then you can identify what you valued back then and see how that aligns with what you value now. Offering yourself new experiences that link up to old values is one way of creating a connection between your past and your present.
If you can’t remember a self before trauma, then you can use your imagination to create an image of who that would have been, identify what values that represents, and also create new experiences that allow you to embody those values.
You can choose to go forward into the future
It’s easy to think that who you were or didn’t have the chance to be is better than who are now or can become. That’s true only if you make it so. While post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms make you feel less than, your more-than self waits to be discovered.
One way to start moving in that direction is to be clear about who you want to be – who you want to be becomes part of your recovery goals. What kind of person is that?
That vision can be simply “I am courageous, I overcome obstacles and become a person free of my past. I look forward with hope and confidence to a future full of promise.”