? Well, hello there, friend. I'm so glad you stopped in today. I want to talk to you today about something that's really important in the context of personal growth work in general, but also in the context of the best mental health we can possibly have. And the idea that I want to talk about with you today is called individuation.
And so here's the thing. Is that a lot of people come to therapy because they feel, um, not quite themselves, they feel like their life is like kind of not resonating for them. Whether it's that they're feeling down or they're feeling anxious. Those are the things that I kind of tend to help people with anxieties, my specialization. But also like, They're feeling uninspired by life.
They're kind of like, whoa, whoa. Huh is this it? And the thing typically comes out very quickly for people is an issue of identity, right? Like as we go through life, we take on all these different roles and all these different identities. We are the child, right. And then we are a student and perhaps we are a partner and perhaps we are identified in our career. Or with parenting or with pet owning or with home owning, you see what I'm getting at here?
Like we have a lot of things that we do in life that kind of identify how we live our lives. But oftentimes when people come into therapy, It's it's that the identity doesn't include a sense of self. Like who am I, what do I care about? What do I want to do for fun? Like how do I spend time with myself in a way that's enjoyable and compelling and keeps me grounded and focused, right?
So this is the idea that I want to talk to you about today. And we call it in my field. We call this individuation, which means basically. We grow up and we are someone's child. So whatever the structure of that looks like it doesn't really matter because children, the way that they grow and develop is that they look to the adults around them for information about who they are, how they ought to behave. Um, and there's relationship there in one way or another, right? So. The thing is, is that when we move into the adult years, Often times we still kind of feel that pole to please the people in our lives to be a full fledged adult, right?
Like, um, some people have trouble actually separating out from their families and the roles that they played in their families and all that really adds up to is that. We're not really individuated, meaning we don't have. Oftentimes a huge sense of like, well, this is who I am right in that ferry. Like I am me.
And let me tell you about me, but rather we end up kind of feeling like a bag in the wind. Like we look to the other people in our lives for information about who we are and what we want to do with our time. Right. So. This is really important. And again, it throws a lot of people into therapy because, uh, what I see is in, in our twenties, we're kind of, we come out of our parents' home.
We come out of whether we went to college or not. Right. But. There's a point in time. Where it's like, okay. It's time to be an adult now. And it's a little bit of a holy shit moment. I see a lot of people in their twenties. 'cause it's really hard, right? Like to just all of a sudden define what you care about and who you are and what direction you're moving in.
It's it's overwhelming, frankly, and quite confusing. If you don't know what you're doing, and none of us know what we're doing. And then there's kind of, um, Wake up call in our forties or thirties, thirties. It's sort of like, I don't know about my career. I have no idea if I even like what I'm doing or why on earth did I have children?
No, I'm, I'm kind of kidding, but kind of not because that throws a monkey wrench in things too. Right. And. These things take up a lot of us. And so oftentimes instead of individually meeting, We end up just like marinating in the human, doing part of being a human being. You know what I mean? We become what we've created in our lives.
Like for me, I had two kids. Uh, 16 months apart, which was bananas. I became the mother. I became the housewife and the, um, Counselor and the, uh, chef short order cook actually. Right. We morphed to our lives. Some of us go into career, right? Somebody who's first for an example say is maybe didn't go to college.
Maybe did doesn't really matter, but. At some point transitions into a sales role who sales so demanding, right. It can really take up your life, um, real estate, right? Something like that. That's you get consumed by career. And so many of us do we become. Right. I am a therapist. And this part. Of my identity.
Of course. So all the things we do in life absolutely are part of our identity. But here's the problem with that? Is that when you strip away. All the stuff like I'm 50. My kids have left the house. If I'm all mother. Well, who am I now? Because I don't have children living in my house. They're 20 somethings that I have no business getting involved in so much of their business.
Right. So that leaves me to go like, well, who am I. What am I going to do to fill my time? What do I care about, um, who do I want to spend time with in my life? So this is individuation and it's so important. No matter what age you are. Because you, my friend. Have one job in your life. To take care of one human being. It's you. Your job. From the day you were born. Is to nurture, grow. And care for. One human yourself.
You are your own leader. You are the guide of this project. So it's quite important. You know, and sometimes it's not that easy, is it so. Let me give you a few little hints for the next couple minutes and help you if you're kind of resonating with this and going, yeah. Okay. I don't really know what I like.
I don't really do a lot of hobbies. Like I work, I do this, I do that. But maybe you don't feel like your, the leader or your, the guide, right? Because life can pull us around like a bag in the wind baby. So every single day. Take a little bit of time for yourself. What do I mean by that? I mean, like, just chill out with you. You don't have to sit around thinking or always be writing, but like maybe when you sit down in the morning to have your cup of coffee, which I really hope you're doing, because it's such a lovely, enjoyable. Experience to just hold a warm beverage in the morning. And not look at your phone and just chill out with yourself to just sit quietly and be. With you. Right. So I'm hinting at something here and it's that in order to cultivate individuation, which furthers our relationship with ourself, we have to learn to be alone. We have to learn to be with ourselves, which is another word for a loan.
That sounds less terrible. Doesn't it? Here's the deal. Even though I prefer to be around my person. They're not really here to entertain me. And so it's also really important to be alone. Just you and you, that is kind of being in a relationship with yourself that is taking care of the one human, because in those moments, things will become clear to you that maybe aren't clear to you, which is like, Hm in the mornings, I feel like a little, um, tightness in my chest.
I don't know what's going on with that. Maybe I couldn't like spend some time with that. Maybe soften it, maybe nurture it, right? Like things come up like, gosh, you know, I'm noticing I'm not super stoked about go into work lately. Huh. Okay. I'm going to, I'm going to like witness that and just pay attention to it. And see what's going on with that, right?
Like it's just a small little way every single day. That you can just spend a little bit of time alone. And have a nice conversation with yourself about important things, not BS, right? Here's the thing. As you. Work on your individuation project, you can lengthen the time that you spend alone. You could go hike on your own, or you could take a nice drive or go get an ice cream cone.
It doesn't matter, friend. It the point is to come into relationship. And.
The other thing that I want to mention is part of. This idea about not being individuated includes that we really look to others for a lot of things, actually, that we could do for ourselves. For example, Um, oftentimes we're asking people for advice about things that a are not really there. Uh, business or area of expertise.
Right. But also. That you're your goal. When we ask for advice. We're asking for someone's opinion. Which doesn't really help us in order to know what our own opinion is. You know, like when I ask for advice, typically I've already. Kids come to some sort of conclusion on my own. Em, and I'm actually just looking for a compelling conversation around it. If I asked somebody for input. I want to like expand the way I'm thinking about something, not take someone else's. Idea of how I should live my life and go with that. That's the difference between being individuated and not really being individuated.
Right. Like. We have to stop asking for advice. We have to be more assertive, right? Because passive is sort of. Chess, letting other people kind of make all the decisions and then being like, oh, okay, it's fine with me. I don't care. I'm easy going. Right. But passive isn't individuated because if you ask me, Rebecca, what do you want for dinner tonight?
I'm going to tell you flat out. I am making a steak. It's going to be good. I've been craving it for like three days. I'm not going to know that I am like. I need me a good steak for dinner and then say to someone. Oh, I don't care. Oh, whatever you think. Right. There's a couple things I want to say about that.
About just being agreeable, being easy, going and, um, passing passively. Off as being like easy to be around. Is that people don't get to know much about you. And so it's a good way to kind of find people that like to make all the decisions. And you'll find that you get to take up a little bit less space in your relationships because you've kind of allowed other people to make decisions on your behalf.
So if you want Thai food, Just speak up and say, I I'm in the mood for Thai. What do you think? Right. That's part of becoming individuated is saying, this is what I'm craving. This is what I want. Right. In whatever the situation is to say, I would like to go here. Would you like to come with me or. I'm not up for that today. Right. And then the other thing that really helps us become individuated is to stop kind of masking, which we use we're using this term more and more in ADHD land because people. That don't that kind of, no, they don't operate like everybody else.
They just sort of try to fit in. And so we're calling this masking, which I don't know how I feel about this term or not. But it's, it's a human wide term. Once again, we make up these terms in mental health, and then we stigmatize them when actually we literally all do this, which is like, if you're in a bad mood and you have a range to go to a party or a dinner or whatever, Like, you're going to have to fake it. Do you know what I mean?
Like, we all have to do this from time to time. If you're at work and you hate your job, you're going to have to fake it a little bit. So you don't get canned. Right. Of course, so. If we could cut back on having to do that. It helps to then be in authentic. Brave and vulnerable relationship with ourself. Which is individuation. So give that some thought as you kind of contemplate this idea of individuation, here's the thing. If you're not, if you're like, oh, I've got some work to do here.
Great. We all do myself included. Okay. And here's warning. People will drop off. They will. Uh, They will become less resonant in your life. When you start to get a little more individuated because we find people.
We all do this. We find people who can over-function. For our lack of kind of knowing ourselves that's okay. We do the best we can with what we have until we can do better because we know more. Okay. And so sometimes when we have people in our life, like. Say you're going. Yeah. I am actually kind of a passive and social stuff.
Maybe I need to like, you know, just like individually it, a little right here. You're going to find that people that kind of over-function for you are gonna get their feelings hurt. And I want to let you know my friend. Th that's okay. And that's just a conversation that can be had. And you don't need to live your life in a way. So as to help other people not experience negative emotion or feelings, it's okay. Sometimes we do hurt. People in our lives, but not because we want to, but just because being in relationship is hard and shifting relationships is really difficult.
So. If there's someone who's like, I need to do a little individuation work, like good for you, but just know that it changes the context of your life. And anyone in your life that is, um, at all kind of toxic they're, they're not gonna want much to do with you once you individually rate. Because that just doesn't go well together.
Right? So the thing is, is when we individually it is a literal letting go process. It's learning to let go be in relationship with ourself, embody ourselves, like feel us every day. Feel what our needs are and be willing to get the mat feel how our life feels and be willing to rearrange it if we have to.
Okay. So if you're someone who's like, yeah, I'm going to do this work. I wish you, I wish for you, patience. I wish for you curiosity. And just know that it just takes time. Right? We didn't get here overnight and we're not going to get out that quickly. Either experiment, play. Have it be a fun process of like getting to know yourself?
Many people don't really have hobbies, um, especially when we get into mental health holes. And so that's one of the things that I really. I recommend that people do is like, Go try some activities, wherever you live, people are gathering and doing things. They're painting. They're in book clubs, they're uh, having drinking clubs.
I don't know. What is your jam? Right. And if you don't know, then try a whole bunch of different things, like try playing the guitar or join a one of them, those disc golf leagues or. I learned to play Mahjong and after moving. Into a brand new community. That's how I'm getting to know people is they have Mahjong games around the city and I just go and play this game with random people.
And you know what. As long as I am kind to myself, curious. And I keep plugging. Like I will find my place. And I'm not going to stop till I do. And don't you stop either. Just remember to have grace and patience as you just come into this new relationship with yourself in which you are the leader. Okay. And if you need help with this, just get in touch with me.
This is where I love to work with folks to help them build the life that they love. Another awesome way to learn about individuation from me is to join. Take out their bee club, the literal cheapest self-help therapist led club on the internets. Check it [email protected]. Okay. I'll see you guys next week.
