'I don't really know me. I don't know who I am'
'I've been so overwhelmed by my family's needs, I couldn't see myself.'
The people who make these comments at the beginning of my course lack self-identity.
'I can't talk to my mother. Instead of helping me she starts suffering', says a teenager in Ginott's book Between Parent and Teenager. Mother takes on the problems of the teenager as though they were her own. She lacks self-identity as a separate person. With it, she could stand back and help rather than suffer with her offspring.
A few people say, 'I don't know what I want to do. Friends tell me to take up this interest or that hobby, but I don't know what I want', By the end of the course they know. They've made contact with themselves and with interests that were there all along although they didn't realise it. 'I used to enjoy writing' or 'I always liked doing things with my hands', they remember.
Using all the Self Acceptance skills clears away the clutter that blocks your contact with yourself. Now you've got to the identity skill you will have a feeling of, 'Yes, I know roughly who I am and what I want and where I'm going'. In this chapter you turn that feeling into a fairly definite picture of your identity by making a self-portrait.
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We hope that you have enjoyed the first few pages above in this section of "Happiness - It's Up To You".
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