Connecting and Belonging
At some point, you might realize you’ve lost touch with who you are. Life feels directionless, decisions feel unclear, and your own needs and desires seem hard to name. Therapy can help you reconnect with yourself and find a clearer sense of direction.
“A deep sense of love and belonging is an irreducible need of all people.”
—Brené Brown
Living Without a Strong Sense of Self
At some point, you lost touch with who you are. Maybe life changed suddenly—a breakup, a job loss, or some other shift that left you uncertain. Or maybe this feeling built over time. You learned early that your ideas carried little weight. Staying quiet kept you safe. Over the years, you adapted. You placed your own needs and preferences in the background. Slowly, your sense of self faded.
Now, decisions feel confusing. You hesitate to speak up. You find it hard to know what you want. Life moves forward, yet you feel detached from it—as if you are watching rather than choosing. This experience often comes from survival, not failure.
When you lack a strong sense of self, relationships can swallow you. You adapt to the other person without meaning to. Their preferences, their needs, their moods set the tone. You might find yourself agreeing just to keep peace—or because you truly cannot tell what you want. Over time, you feel invisible inside your own life.
Losing Yourself in Relationships
When you lack a strong sense of self, relationships can swallow you. You adapt to the other person without meaning to. Their preferences, their needs, their moods set the tone. You might find yourself agreeing just to keep peace—or because you truly cannot tell what you want. Over time, you feel invisible inside your own life.
Struggling to Make Decisions
Choices become difficult when you don’t feel connected to your own values or desires. You hesitate. You second-guess. You follow what others suggest because it feels easier than deciding for yourself. Life moves forward, but you feel like you’re being carried rather than leading.
Doubt and Disconnection from Desire
Desire can feel like a mystery. You might struggle to know what excites you or what feels meaningful. Even simple preferences—what to eat, where to go, who to trust—can feel slippery. Over years, the habit of pushing your needs aside can leave you unsure whether they exist at all.
Difficulty Standing Up for Yourself
Without a solid sense of self, boundaries feel impossible to set. Saying no feels unsafe, maybe even unkind. You let others shape your days, your choices, and your emotional world. When you look for your own center, there’s little to hold onto.
The Experience of Being Adrift
Many people describe this state as drifting. You move through your life, but without a clear sense that it belongs to you. Instead of agency, there’s passivity. Instead of clarity, there’s confusion. You long for direction but feel unsure how to find it.
Treatment Path:
Reconnecting to Self
In therapy, we focus on helping you rebuild contact with yourself. This is slow, careful work. Together, we explore how early experiences shaped your relationship to your needs and preferences. We begin noticing how you sideline yourself in daily life—how often you defer, adapt, or disconnect without realizing it.
I draw from experiential, emotion-focused, and psychoanalytic approaches to help you strengthen your sense of self. This might mean paying attention to bodily signals you’ve learned to ignore. It might mean revisiting old patterns and offering compassion to the parts of you that adapted to survive. Over time, we work on helping your own feelings, values, and desires feel like steady ground beneath you.
Rather than searching for a new identity, this work is about allowing your existing self to take up space in your own life.
What Might Change After Therapy?
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You may find it easier to recognize and name what you want
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Decisions may feel clearer and less fraught
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You may stop abandoning yourself to keep others comfortable
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You could feel more grounded and steady in relationships
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You might start standing up for yourself more naturally
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Life may begin to feel more like something you are choosing
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You could feel a quiet confidence: your life belongs to you