I spent my entire life telling myself I was a good, caring, selfless person. But I’m also self-centred, selfish, overreactive and sometimes I do bad things. I’m struggling to find the balance. In my mind I can only be all good or all bad. At this point I don’t know who or what I am.
I guess in DBT terms that would be a good example of a dialectic – that good and bad can exist at the same time. Acceptance and commitment therapy would say that when we don’t act consistently with our underlying values that’s likely to cause distress, and we can work on choosing actions more in line with our values. Regardless, though, questions of identity are really, really hard.
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