When You Don’t Feel Like Yourself: How Psychotherapy Can Help

Sometimes people come to therapy with a sense that they don't really feel like themselves anymore.

Life might be going relatively well on the surface. They're working, maintaining relationships and doing what needs to be done. But underneath that, there can be a feeling of living slightly at a distance from themselves.

Often, I think it's helpful to understand this not as somebody having lost who they are, but as the result of ways they've learned to adapt over time.

We all learn something from our early experiences about which parts of ourselves are easier to express and which are more difficult. Perhaps being angry led to conflict, needing somebody resulted in disappointment, or keeping other people happy helped relationships feel more secure.

We adapt to the situations we're in.

The difficulty is that these adaptations can stay with us long after the situation has changed.

Someone who learned that expressing anger caused problems might now say "it's fine" when their partner upsets them. Someone who became very good at noticing what everybody else needed might struggle to know what they want themselves. Someone who learned to manage alone might want closeness but find themselves pulling away when somebody gets too close.

What happens in therapy?

One of the things we can do in psychotherapy is slow these processes down enough to understand what is actually happening.

Perhaps you know that you struggle to say no to people. Rather than only understanding where that pattern came from, we can also become interested in what happens when you actually want to say no.

Do you become anxious? Do you immediately start thinking about how the other person might feel? Do you question whether what you want is reasonable?

This matters because knowing about a pattern and being able to change it aren't necessarily the same thing.

You might already know that you avoid conflict, put everybody else first or withdraw when relationships become close. But when the situation actually occurs, you still find yourself responding in the same way.

Therapy gives us an opportunity to pay attention to those moments as they happen and understand what gets in the way of responding differently.

The aim isn't to remove ways of coping that may once have served an important purpose. It's to understand them well enough that you have more choice about whether you still need them.

Feeling more like yourself

Over time, this can mean becoming more able to recognise what you actually feel, what you want and what matters to you.

You might notice you're annoyed without immediately telling yourself you shouldn't be. You might recognise that you don't want something before automatically agreeing to it. You might stay emotionally present with somebody when previously you would have withdrawn.

Perhaps feeling more like yourself isn't about discovering some hidden or more authentic version of you.

It might simply mean having more freedom to experience what is already there, your feelings, wants, needs and responses, without having to move away from them in the ways you once needed to.

If you're thinking about therapy

If you recognise some of this in yourself and are wondering whether psychotherapy might be helpful, you can get in touch using my contact form.

I offer psychotherapy in person and online, and you're welcome to contact me with any questions or to discuss arranging an initial session.