Identity refers to:

• A healthy ‘I’ (in the sense of a psychological ‘ego’ as an executive function of

the human psyche)

• With my own free will

• With all my senses

• In contact with my body

• With my own feelings

• With my own words

• In all my relationships

What Does a Healthy ‘I’ Mean in This Context?

• Being present, but not dominating

• Being flexible in altering situations

• Being realistic about what is possible and what is not

• Being able to accept surviving parts and traumatized parts of my psyche

• Taking responsibility for a healthy identity-development

• Having a free will

Psychotrauma may result in:

• Looking for substitute-identities (e.g. a professional role to hide behind)

• Inappropriately clinging to another person (e.g. to a partner, a child, a

therapist, an ‘authority’)

• Hiding one’s I behind a ‘We’ (relationship, family, company, ‘system’, nation

etc.)

• Identifying with the behavior of perpetrators and acting out against yourself

or others later on.

• re-defining oneself (e.g. ‘It didn’t affect me!’)

• self-denial (e.g. ‘I was not beaten / sexually abused!’)

• disengaging the ‘I’ from the body (e.g. ‘My body is sick!’ ‘My body needs to be fixed by a specialist.’)

• dissolving the ‘I’ (e.g. through drug usage or withdrawing into a state of confusion)

• individuals who split into personalities, who experience this as normal and their ‘true identity’

• Men and women turning into functioning machines, without any connection to their healthy ‘I’ and their bodies.

A Healthy Identity::

• Is the sum total of all conscious and unconscious life experiences

• Exhibits the capability and capacity of allowing the truth of life to flow through, feeling it, acknowledging it, including all of it as life’s messy glory.