Therapy can help you discover, be and appreciate more of who you are. When I was a self-conscious, insecure teenager, I remember always hearing the advice “Just be yourself.” I talked to a dear friend about this once and said to him, “What if who you are sucks? Should you still be yourself then?” He said that he didn’t know. Shame and insecurity kept both of us from seeing that the answer was yes. The idea of “sucking” either comes from shame, or from ideas and projections from other people, or both. Once you free yourself from shame and from being other-directed, you start seeing that there are good reasons for why you are the way you are and that who you are is okay. You can then move from self-consciousness to self-awareness. You become aware of your strengths and weaknesses without shaming or blaming yourself. You can make self-directed decisions about the changes you want to make in your life.
The truth is that we don’t suck, and we are not perfect either. We are good enough. You’ll sometimes see my practice advertised as Good Enough Psychotherapy. Psychologist D.W. Winnicott coined the term “good enough parenting.” There is no such thing as perfect parenting. If you received good enough parenting, you were lucky enough to get the best parenting possible.
There is also no such thing as a perfect human being. We make ourselves miserable trying to be perfect. Knowing that we are good enough is really all we need.
Psychotherapy can help you discover and achieve what is good enough for you and your life.
Doing what you were born to do… That’s the way to be happy. –Agnes Martin