Who Am I ?

The therapist wasn't fed up with me. He was amused that I thought he would be. He said that we would always take things at my pace but he was impressed that I had taken time out to try and think things through.

I told him about this blog. He said it was a good thing if I felt it was helping. I told him that I hadn't been able to write about what Ewan did and he said that was interesting. He asked if I thought that was part of my need for others to like me which meant I controlled what they know about me. That has made me think a lot.

Everyone has an opinion on who they are. Some think very highly of themselves and believe they are never in the wrong. Some have very low self-esteem, sometimes so bad that they can’t allow themselves to be loved as they don’t think they are worthy.

Do we really know who we are? My family, these people I live in this house with, know me best. They see the good and bad. The tantrums and the laughter.

But in terms of my friends, there is not one who knows it all. Not one who even comes close to knowing who I really am. They will only ever know what I want them to know.

And that constantly surprises me as I have friends who tell me every last detail of their life, who allow me in to see the good and the bad and who find it very therapeutic to do so. I can’t imagine that I would ever feel better by giving someone power and letting them know things about me that are not right, not good, not part of the perfect life that I pretend I have.

But also, because I have become someone who is known for being a good listener, I've noticed that on the occasions that I do tell people what's bothering me, they lose interest. I guess it’s because they see me as such an upbeat person and hearing me moaning on brings them down and they don’t want that from me.

I have come to the conclusion recently that as a result I am pretty much living a lie, or at best, just living life on the surface, and I am afraid to look within to see who I really am.

With the therapist’s help though I am confident I will eventually be able to do that and thus stop behaving badly, but it has taken me this long to understand that I really can offload on him without fear.

The trouble is that I present an image of myself to the world which I have allowed myself to believe so when something doesn't match, like this "thing" with Ewan, it confuses and upsets me. The therapist says it is probably one of the root causes as to why I feel so out of control at the moment, even though it happened such a long time ago. He suggested that I make a real effort to try and blog about it. It is not as if I haven’t tried to do that before but I have decided that now is definitely the time.

So, that will be my next post. It could take some but I refuse to write about anything else until I have got this out.

Apologies in advance…..it may be some time before you hear from me again !!