Your identity blooms like a flower. Patience, fortitude, maybe a prickly defense, time and attention: you’ll bloom.

Finding one's true identity is a deeply personal and introspective journey that can take time and self-reflection. Here are seven steps you can take to explore and discover your true identity:

1.          Self-reflection: Take the time to reflect on your thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and values. Ask yourself meaningful questions about who you are, what matters to you, and what brings you joy and fulfillment. Consider your strengths, passions, and aspirations.

Betrayal can strike us fast and hard, a blow to gut and soul

Betrayal as a lens to look at eating disorders, PTSD, self-doubt and anxiety

Betrayal is a vast concept we may think of in limited terms. Betrayal causes such intense emotional and psychological pain the mind reels. Thinking moves to self-doubt and unworthiness.  “If I were valuable and worthy I would never have been betrayed.” Betrayal can plunge you into a sense of abandonment at your most vulnerable times. You can be anxious, bewildered and unable to think clearly about your situation.

Anxiety is challenged by calm, wisdom, strength and focus.

Anxiety, whether it comes rarely, or is ever-present or seems to loom on the edge of your experience ready to strike, is a full body and emotional experience. When you are In it you want out of it. That desire to get immediate relief can leave people in a desperate situation where they will reach for food, alcohol, drugs, isolate at home and under the covers, emotional venting on others and even violence.

In my psychotherapy practice, my first goal is to gain trust so that the individual can have an anxiety attack in my presence. Knowing I can bear it helps the person know it’s bearable. She knows she can talk through it, think while it’s happening, and not act out. The first requirement in coping with anxiety and then relieving it is to be able to bear it while it’s happening.

Once that is achieved, we can unravel causes and triggers. We can develop the insight, strength and stamina to face and resolve the issues that cause our anxiety reaction.