On Finding Ourselves Again

A sense of self doesn’t appear all at once. It forms slowly, almost imperceptibly, in the early years of life. Children discover who they are through a thousand small encounters, such as the foods they like, the games they invent, the colours they prefer, the rhythms that soothe them. These early preferences aren’t trivial. They are the psyche’s first attempts at saying this is me.

Much of this happens before language. A child’s likes and dislikes are often the earliest expressions of their inner world taking shape. They show us what feels enlivening, what feels overwhelming, and what feels comforting. Over time these small choices accumulate into a sense of continuity, a feeling of being the same person from one moment to the next.

As adults, we can lose touch with our inner selves, as life becomes crowded with roles, responsibilities and the terrible ‘shoulds’: You should be like this, You should not be like that. This is one of the reasons why therapist’s sometimes ask What did you like and dislike as a child? The things we loved as a child often reveal something essential about our temperament, our imagination and our way of being in the world before we absorbed messages about them being acceptable or not. Revisiting them can feel like finding a long-lost thread and following it back to ourselves.

Sometimes, a client will remember a childhood fascination - an imaginary game they disappeared into, a loved teddy, a favourite story - and something in them lights up. These moments are important as they reveal that the self they were back then still exists underneath the layers of accumulated life.

And yet, we are not only our early selves. We are shaped in relation to others. We grow through imitation, through contrast, through the push and pull of connection. Siblings can try to carve out their own niche in the family system, the sporty one, or have it imposed on them, the naughty one. We are similar to others in ways that make belonging possible, shared needs, shared vulnerabilities, shared longings. But we are also different in ways that matter, our sensitivities, our rhythms, our eccentricities, our ways of making meaning.

Part of adult life is learning to hold both truths. We are not interchangeable, and we are not entirely separate. We are each a unique variation on a human theme. Therapy is a place where these two truths can sit side by side. A place to rediscover the threads that make us uniquely ourselves, whilst also recognising the universal threads that connect us to others. A place to remember that the self is not a fixed object, but a living evolving process, that began long before we had words, and that continues to unfold throughout our lives.

Sometimes the work requires us to turn gently towards what we once loved, to notice what still stirs, and to allow that recognition to guide us back to ourselves.