Where to start looking
I do not recognise myself anymore
Old photographs feel like somebody else's.
You behave in ways that would have surprised you ten years ago and you cannot always explain them.
People who knew you then treat you as though you are still that person.
Everybody changes. Not everybody notices the direction
Change is normal and mostly invisible while it happens. What unsettles people is not that they changed but that they cannot remember agreeing to it. Reconstructing the decisions, including the ones made by default, usually restores some sense of authorship.
Roles accumulate and some of them stay on
You become the reliable one, the one who copes, the one who does not make a fuss. Roles adopted for good reasons at the time can outlast their usefulness by decades.
Some of what changed is worth keeping
The instinct is to want the old self back. Often the old self would not manage the current life. What matters is which parts you miss specifically, rather than whether to reverse the whole thing.
What this usually connects to
- Which parts of you have gone quiet rather than gone.
- What was happening in the period when it shifted.
A question worth sitting with
- What did you used to do that you would still enjoy?
The session looks at who you are when nobody is watching, which is usually where this becomes clearer.
Who am I when nobody is watchingIt is a conversation, not a questionnaire. You can stop at any point, and finishing it does not mean anything has to change.
If the question turns out to be a different one
This is reflection, not treatment. If what surfaces here is heavier than an exercise can hold, speak to your GP or a qualified professional.