All posts tagged: identity

You are your habits

You Are What You Do Every Day

Introduction My fortieth birthday was a tough one for me.  Behind me was half my life.  I found myself carrying a lot of heavy baggage.  Worse still was what I had left behind me: a trail of missed opportunities and dead dreams. Don’t get me wrong, I’m proud of who I’ve become.  But who among us is immune to existential crises and regrets?  Not me, and probably not you either. For me, turning 40 was a landmark event–bigger than any birthday I’d had prior. My perspective tipped–seemingly overnight–from “the future holds such promise” to “I’ve already decided what my life is and what it’s likely to be.”  Amidst this existential crisis I held the limp corpses of my abandoned dreams and demanded answers about how this came to be.  How did I allow this to happen? Baseball When my dad introduced me to baseball at the age of four, I couldn’t get enough.  I’d watch every televised game the Oakland A’s played, which fortunately was almost daily.  My dad taught me how to play catch.  …

Identity, Space and Time: Acknowledging Social Injustices in Psychotherapy

Identity, Space and Time: Acknowledging Social Injustices in Psychotherapy

A contextual approach to psychology acknowledges the struggles people face within the social environment. From this perspective, an individual is not only influenced by internal forces, thoughts, or feelings. Instead, a person responds to his or her social environment. Social norms and beliefs determine how a person can act in any given situation. This means that a person’s roots influence the routes they can take and the opportunities open to them. Social marginalization can result in mental health challenges. Without recognizing social injustice, an individual may be blamed for their own struggles and forced to adjust. Why is it important to acknowledge social context? Some aspects of identity can lead to people feeling disempowered. This can be due to racial identity, disability, gendered identity, national identity, deaf identity, sexualities, class, health and illness. Sometimes, aspects of identity may combine to create layers of struggle. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie shares the complexities of raced identity in Americanah: “The only reason you say that race was not an issue is because you wish it was not. We all …