“I am one of those people who do not trust easily.”
“I cannot let myself look weak.”
“I do not ask for help.”
These are phrases we may repeat for years, until they stop sounding like beliefs and begin to feel like unquestionable truths. And yet, at some point, we may find ourselves face to face with these “truths” and be called to look at them again.
In that moment, it is not necessarily our sense of self that collapses. What may begin to collapse is the image we have built of ourselves.
The world as we experience it and the world as we have constructed it
The existential psychotherapist Ernesto Spinelli offers a useful distinction for understanding this process. On the one hand, there is the fluid experience of being continuously in relationship with others and with the world. We do not simply encounter a fixed world “out there”, independent of us; we are continually involved in a process through which the world acquires meaning in relation to us. Spinelli refers to this ongoing process as worlding (Spinelli, 2007).
On the other hand, there is our worldview: the relatively stable picture we construct from our experience so that we can make sense of it, speak about it, and organise it into something that feels coherent.
Our worldview is a necessary way of making sense of reality. Without some degree of continuity and coherence, it would be difficult to navigate our lives, make decisions, or recognise ourselves across time.
The problem is not that we construct an image of ourselves. The problem is that, over time, we can forget that this image is a construction—formed at particular moments in our history, shaped by our experiences and relationships—and begin to treat it as though it were reality itself.
Why we hold on so tightly to a fixed image
Our relationship with the world and with other people, Spinelli argues, is never completely stable or predictable. There is always some degree of uncertainty in what we feel, what we think, and what we can expect from a relationship. When we encounter that uncertainty directly, it can evoke unease (Spinelli, 2007).
It is not surprising, then, that we try to stabilise certain meanings about ourselves and our lives. Once a particular way of understanding ourselves has helped us feel safe, we tend to hold on to it. We repeat it. We organise our choices around it. Eventually, it can become a rule.
This is how a solid sense of “who I am” can gradually take shape.
The difficulty is that the more tightly we hold on to this image, the more threatening anything that does not fit within it can become.
Someone who has built their identity around “I am always the one who takes care of others” may find it very difficult to acknowledge their own need to be cared for. It is not necessarily that they do not feel this need. Rather, the need may threaten an image of themselves that has helped them feel secure and maintain a sense of continuity. And so, they may distance themselves from it or push it out of awareness (Spinelli, 2007).
It is worth pausing here on this unease, because it is neither accidental nor a weakness of character. Spinelli describes existential anxiety as arising from the fundamental uncertainty and indeterminacy inherent in human existence and our relationships (Spinelli, 2007). No relationship, and no understanding of ourselves or another person, can ever reach a completely final or finished form.
This uncertainty is not a failure of life. It is part of what it means to be alive in a world that is constantly changing and can never become entirely predictable.
When something no longer fits our story
Think of a woman who grew up learning, in one way or another, that her worth was measured by how much she achieved: at school, at work, in her relationships.
Over time, her worldview became organised around a simple belief:
I am worth something because of what I manage to do.
For years, this way of seeing herself worked. It gave her direction, recognition, confidence, and a sense of control.
Until an illness, a disappointment, a major life change, or simply the accumulated exhaustion of the years reduced her ability to keep performing at the same pace.
What she experiences is not simply tiredness. There may also be a deeper insecurity, a feeling that she no longer knows who she is, because the image she has of herself no longer fits the reality she is living.
In moments like these, what is needed is not necessarily a new and more “correct” image of the self to replace the old one.
What is needed is something more difficult: to recognise once again that no narrative can contain the whole of lived experience, and that no image of ourselves can ever fully capture what we are.
Often, the first step is not even to change anything, but simply to notice that something within us no longer agrees with the version of ourselves we have been telling.
That part that does not fit is not necessarily a mistake or a weakness that needs to be corrected quickly.
It is information.
It is a piece of living experience that our worldview has not yet found a way to include.
Therapy as a space where the image can become fluid again
In Gestalt therapy, we are not primarily interested in replacing a “wrong” story with a more correct one. We are interested in noticing how that story came into being, when it protected us, what it continues to serve today, and where it may have begun to limit our contact with ourselves, with others, and with the present moment.
This resonates with what Spinelli describes: lived experience is continually unfolding, even when we try to stabilise it within a fixed image. What remains unfinished, what has not yet found a place within our story, may continue to draw our attention until we are able to make room for it.
For this reason, the work of therapy is not to persuade someone, through arguments, to adopt a new and more flexible story about themselves.
It is to create, together, a relationship safe enough for a rigid and demanding self-image to begin to loosen.
A space where uncertainty itself can be present, here and now, without immediately having to be transformed into another certainty.
We are not looking for the final, correct version of who we are.
We are looking for a relationship with ourselves that can tolerate not knowing everything in advance.
Perhaps the greatest freedom lies not in discovering who we “really are”, but in being able to meet ourselves again and again, without having to fit ourselves into a static definition.
Because our experience is always richer than any story we manage to tell about it.
References
- Spinelli, E. (2007). Practising Existential Psychotherapy: The Relational World. Sage Publications.
