Finding yourself if you have the wrong identity
You are who you are, and sometimes it's hard to believe you can change yourself. However, because of the way people form their identities, you can inadvertently have the wrong identity. Do you sometimes resent yourself? Do you feel like you are getting ahead of yourself for some reason? If so, chances are that you accidentally have the wrong identity.
How to make sure you get your good identity then I'll go into that in this blog.
What is identity?
Identity, in this blog, is how you see yourself. What personal characteristics you have and how you think those around you see you.
For example, if you identify yourself as smart you see yourself that way and assume that those around you also see you as smart or that they at least underestimate you in your smartness.
You can also consider yourself a loner. You are good at being alone and know how to entertain yourself. People around you often seem to admire you because you know how to entertain yourself so well.
You can also see yourself as a loner in another way. Apparently no one wants to hang out with you and you are living the lonely life.
Emerging your identity
As soon as you are born, you learn to communicate with your parents. Recent research has shown that when babies make eye contact with caregivers, the baby's brain waves start to align with the person they are in contact with.
I think this is so super cool. It's like we master some form of telepathy as babies. Researchers think this prepares children for communication. Then when your parents actually start communicating with you you get all kinds of signals about how they see you.
For example, if you are a too busy child for your parents, when in fact you are a normal child, you quickly get the plaque of being a "too busy" child. Because, as a child, you primarily look to your parents for feedback on your identity, you may begin to think that you are indeed busy.
Defense against the label
Because you don't want to bother your parents and others, you can try very hard to be calm. As a result, other people may say that you are quiet and shy.
An incredibly confusing situation for a child.
Then, just to regain a sense of control, you can really get busy. So that at least you can be sure you are who others say you are.
As can be seen, as a child, you can start defending yourself against the identity that you are pasted on or by behaving totally the opposite or by very consciously reinforcing the behavior that goes with that identity.
This is also the reason why some educators say you should tell your child to be the way you want him to be, usually the child will then behave accordingly. Telling your child that he/she is very tidy can ensure that that bedroom is indeed left tidy every day. In the end, a child also wants to behave well so that chance is high.
However, do you tell your child that he/she is naughty? If so, don't be surprised if some candy disappears from the kitchen from time to time.
Having the wrong identity
Yet all these projections and even whole unconscious projections from your parents and people around you can be a burden to you later in adulthood.
For example, as a child, were you very excited when your mom or dad came home from work and almost immediately pushed aside so your parent could take a break from their work day? While you were of the opposite sex?
Then you had a negative signal from your parent every workday. Apparently there was something wrong with you that caused your love not to be reciprocated (immediately). The behavior you had to adapt, namely keeping your distance, does not help you in adult life.
Relationships you have can be difficult because of this, as you keep your distance after work out of respect for your partner, but your partner may actually feel rejected because of this. Which in turn can cause irritations in the relationship.
In turn, these irritations are a confirmation of the feeling you got as a child, namely that you are apparently not worth being loved even though you are trying incredibly hard.
Also listen to this podcast:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/195236/1815004-kan-je-je-identiteit-veranderen?play=true
Changing your identity
For you, that trying incredibly hard may often involve not following your gut feeling, your instinct about how you should behave. This can be very tiring and that's why you may be annoyed by your own behavior, but you are not used to anything else.
Moreover, this behavior is also "safe behavior." You know what to expect and you confirm the image people around you have of you. As a result, you don't get raised eyebrows because suddenly you're not going to conform to the image people have of you.
Finding Yourself
Changing your identity doesn't mean getting back into resistance. It's more that you want to get rid of the paralyzing feeling that you apparently can't be yourself. It's more that you start finding yourself.
To find yourself and change your identity for the better, hypnosis can help.
Precisely because childhood has so much influence on our adult lives, while we often don't realize it, hypnosis is a way to find yourself. One of the first techniques you can use to do this is regression.
Regression
Regression is a technique for retrieving memories that still affect your life today. In childhood, your identity is formed because this is also an important stage where your beliefs are formed.
Beliefs determine how you see the world and yourself. Everyone has their own truth and it is because of those beliefs. Those beliefs determine how you see the world. What the social relationships are like, whether the social ladder is real, for example, and whether you, if it is real, are worth dealing with people outside your social class.
These beliefs also determine what you consider normal behavior and how you think about yourself and how you may behave.
Through that regression, you find out how events in your childhood made you who you are today. Then you can look at that memory with more emotional distance and with more reason and see that you don't need to modify your behavior.
As with the example of a parent who comes home from work all tired and then wants 5 minutes to himself. As an adult, you understand this much better than as a child and also understand that this doesn't actually say anything about the love your parent felt for you.
5 minutes later, you might have been cozy playing with the Lego together.
Socratic conversation
Another way to find yourself or rebuild yourself is by having a Socratic conversation. Socrates basically asked with everything why it is the way it is. Repeating this why question gets you to your deepest beliefs, as well as the belief that you don't actually know anything.
If you don't actually know anything you are something like a blank page.
And an unwritten page offers room to be rewritten with rules and beliefs about yourself that are true and not exhausting for you.
Gain new beliefs
Hypnosis also helps with gaining new beliefs, or in the case of finding yourself, making submerged beliefs visible again. With your hypnotherapist, you will talk about how you want to be.
It then explores how you give yourself permission, how you allow yourself to demonstrate that behavior. This can be done through hypnotic suggestions, such as:
"I get to express my love right after my partner comes home from work."
"I get to call friends to meet up."
"I get to follow my inspirations."
These are just examples of hypnotic suggestions, depending on your identity and beliefs you may receive different suggestions.
Install new beliefs
To install new beliefs, in addition to hypnotic suggestions, visualizations in which you see that new behavior can be used. For example, you visualize picking up the phone to call friends to meet up sometime. How the phone feels, your voice sounds and the conversation goes are then parts of that visualization.
The ability to imagine doing something encourages you to actually perform the behavior. As a result, you also discover more quickly that it is not at all scary to be more yourself, and you probably even find that people will like and like you more.
In fact, you become more authentic, which almost everyone likes more than someone who always does everything the way it's supposed to be done.
Want to learn more about what hypnosis can do for you? Then come to the free online master class on hypnosis.
Or sign up for one of our training programs.
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